Council on Foreign Relations Caught Lying about Cuba-North Korea Arms Smugglingfrontpagemag.com
March 28, 2014 by Humberto Fontova
Back in July a North Korean ship trying to sneak military contraband through the Panama Canal after leaving Havana was stopped by Panamanian authorities on a tip it was carrying illegal drugs.
Instead the ship, named the Chon-Chon Gang, was found to be crammed with missiles, MIGS and mucho military contraband from terror-sponsoring Cuba en route to North Korea. Nuke-rattling North Korea, by the way, has been under a UN arms embargo since 2006.
At first, Cuban terror-sponsoring dictator Raul Castro tried threatening the Panamanian authorities behind the scenes to keep the issue mum, or at least parrot their version of the scam. But Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli scoffed at the blatant blackmail and made the truth known.
The Council on Foreign Relations, on the other hand, parroted the Castroite version of events almost instantly and almost word for word. Here’s Castro’s version of events:
“The 508-foot Chong Chon Gang carried 240 tons of obsolete defensive weapons were to have been repaired in North Korea and returned to Cuba as part of a commercial deal.” (July 17, 2013)
Now here’s the Council on Foreign Relations Latin American “expert” Julia Sweig’s version of events:
“It’s not about Havana trying to circumvent an arms embargo. It’s about: how about we refurbish our old weapons” (Julia Sweig (7/28/2013.)
Admittedly, the issue was in doubt at the time. No investigation had been conducted. So who knew the truth?
Fine. So why did an outfit like the Council on Foreign Relations, which bills itself as: “an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank,” not wait for an independent non-partisan investigation to determine the truth? Why did the Council on Foreign Relations instantly start parroting the version of this issue as concocted by the propaganda ministry of a regime modeled on Stalin’s?
A United Nations panel recently completed its investigation into the Chon-Chon Gang issue, among its findings: “The incident involving the Chong Chon Gang revealed a comprehensive, planned strategy to conceal the existence and nature of the cargo.“ The weapons, needless to add, were not “obsolete” or meant to be “refurbished.”
When the CFR’s Julia Sweig visited Cuba in 2010, accompanied by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, something caught Goldberg’s eye:
“We shook hands,” Goldberg writes about the meeting with Fidel Castro. “Then he [Castro] greeted Julia warmly. They [Castro and Sweig] have known each other for more than twenty years.”
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