U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta to head FIU law school (Bushie--Southern District of FL)

R. Alexander Acosta, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has just been named dean of Florida International University's Law School.

Acosta immediately offered his resignation Wednesday, effective a week from Friday.

Acosta, 40, will become the second dean to lead the College of Law. ''I am confident that Alex Acosta's energy and his passion for the law and commitment to FIU and our community will take our law school to the next level,'' said FIU President Modesto A. Maidique. ``His connections at the national and local level and his proven leadership here at home will inspire the next generation of law students at FIU.''

Acosta will take over his new post on July 1.

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The son of Cuban parents raised in Miami, Acosta earned his degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School before clerking with Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. when he served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

He has been U.S. Attorney since 2005. He supervised 284 attorneys encompassing nine counties, from Monroe to Highlands. During his tenure, Acosta has placed particular focus on health care fraud prosecutions, hosting the first Health Care Fraud strike force in the nation, and on the prosecution of gang and gun-related violence, having seen an increase in the prosecutions in both of these areas of more than 30 percent.

August 30, 2005:


When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Acosta's stated goal of prosecuting distributors of adult porn has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office. They say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.

His own prosecutors have warned Acosta that prioritizing adult porn would reduce resources for prosecuting other crimes, including porn involving children. According to high-level sources who did not want to be identified, Acosta has assigned prosecutors porn cases over their objections.

Acosta, who told the Daily Business Review last month that prosecuting obscenity was a priority for Gonzales, did not return calls for comment.

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Former CIA agent tells: How US infiltrates "civil society" to overthrow governments, August 3, 2003


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The administration of US President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s decided that more than terrorist operations were needed to impose regime change in Cuba. Terrorism hadn't worked, nor had the Bay of Pigs invasion, nor had Cuba's diplomatic isolation, nor had the economic embargo. Now Cuba would be included in a new world-wide program to finance and develop non-governmental and voluntary organisations, what was to become known as “civil society”, within the context of US global neoliberal policies.

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The CIA and the Agency for International Development (AID) would have key roles in this program as well as a new organisation christened in 1983 — the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Actually, the new program was not really new. Since its founding in 1947, the CIA had been deeply involved in secretly funding and manipulating foreign non-governmental voluntary organisations.

These vast operations circled the globe and targeted political parties, trade unions and business associations, youth and student organisations, women's groups, civic organisations, religious communities, professional, intellectual and cultural societies, and the public information media. The network functioned at local, national, regional and global levels.

Over the years, the CIA exerted phenomenal influence behind the scenes in country after country, using these powerful elements of civil society to penetrate, divide, weaken and destroy organisations on the left, and indeed to impose regime change by toppling governments.

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The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but it receives a yearly appropriation from the US Congress. The money is channelled through four “core foundations”. These are the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (linked to the Democratic Party); the International Republican Institute (Republican Party); the American Center for International Labor Solidarity; and the Center for International Private Enterprise (US Chamber of Commerce).

According to its web site, the NED also gives money directly to “groups abroad who are working for human rights, independent media, the rule of law, and a wide range of civil society initiatives.”

The NED's NGO status provides the fiction that recipients of NED money are getting “private” rather than US government money. This is important because so many countries, including both the US and Cuba, have laws relating to their citizens being paid to carry out activities for foreign governments.

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One may wonder why the CIA would be needed in these programs. There were several reasons. One reason from the beginning was the CIA's long experience and huge stable of agents and contacts in the civil societies of countries around the world. By joining with the CIA, the NED and AID would come on board on-going operations whose funding they could take over while leaving the secret day-to-day direction on the ground to CIA officers.

In addition, someone had to monitor and report the effectiveness of the local recipients' activities. NED would not have people in the field to do this, nor would their core foundations in normal conditions. And since NED money was ostensibly private, only the CIA had the people and techniques to carry out discreet control in order to avoid compromising the civil society recipients, especially if they were in opposition to their governments.

Finally, the CIA had ample funds of its own to pass quietly when conditions required. In Cuba, participation by CIA officers under cover in the US Interests Section would be particularly useful, since NED and AID funding would go to US NGOs that would have to find covert ways, if possible, to get equipment and cash to recipients inside Cuba. The CIA could help with this quite well.

Evidence of the amount of money these agencies have been spending on their Cuban projects is fragmentary. Nothing is publicly available about the CIA's spending, but what is easily found about the other two is interesting. The AID web site cites $12 million spent for Cuba programs during 1996-2001, but for 2002 the budget jumped to $5 million plus unobligated funds of $3 million from 2001. AID's 2003 budget for Cuba is $6 million showing a tripling of annual funds since the George Bush junta seized power. No surprise given the number of Miami Cubans Bush has appointed to high office in his administration.

From 1996 to 2001, AID disbursed the $12 million to 22 NGOs, all apparently based in the US, mostly in Miami. By 2002, the number of front-line NGOs had shrunk to 12 — the University of Miami, Center for a Free Cuba, Pan-American Development Foundation, Florida International University, Freedom House, Grupo de Apoyo a la Disidencia, Cuba On-Line, CubaNet, National Policy Association, Accion Democratica Cubana and Carta de Cuba.

In addition, the International Republican Institute received AID money for a sub-grantee, the Directorio Revolucionario Democr tico Cubano, also based in Miami.

These NGOs have a double purpose, one directed to their counterpart groups in Cuba and one directed to the world, mainly through web sites. Whereas, on the one hand, they channel funds and equipment into Cuba, on the other they disseminate to the world the activities of the groups in Cuba. Cubanet in Miami, for example, publishes the writings of the “independent journalists” of the Independent Press Association of Cuba, based in Havana, and channels money to the writers.

Interestingly, AID claims on its web site that its “grantees are not authorised to use grant funds to provide cash assistance to any person or organisation in Cuba”. It's hard to believe that claim, but if it's true, all those millions are only going to support the US-based NGO infrastructure, a subsidised anti-Castro cottage industry of a sort, except for what can be delivered in Cuba in kind — computers, faxes, copy machines, cell phones, radios, TVS and VCRs, books, magazines and the like.

On its web site, AID lists purposes for the money: solidarity with human rights activists; dissemination of the work of independent journalists; development of independent NGOs; promoting workers' rights; outreach to the Cuban people; planning for future assistance to a transition government; and evaluation of the program. Anyone who wants to see which NGOs are getting how much can visit <http://www.usaid.gov/regions/lac/cu/upd-cub.htm>.

AID's claim that its grantees can't provide cash to Cubans in Cuba, makes one wonder about the more than $100,000 in cash that Cuban investigators found in the hands of the 75 mostly unemployed “dissidents” who went on trial. A clue may be found in the AID statement that “US policy encourages US NGOs and individuals to undertake humanitarian, informational and civil society-building activities in Cuba with private funds”. Could such “private funds” be money from the NED?

Recall the fiction that the NED is a “private” foundation, an NGO. It has no restrictions on its funds going for cash payments abroad, and it just happens to fund some of the same NGOs as AID. Be assured that this is not the result of rivalry or lack of coordination in Washington. The reason probably is that NED funds can go for salaries and other personal compensation to people on the ground in Cuba.

The Cuban organisations below the US NGOs in the command and money chain number nearly 100 and have names like Independent Libraries of Cuba, All United, Society of Journalists Marquez Sterling, Independent Press Association of Cuba, Assembly to Promote Civil Society and the Human Rights Party of Cuba.

NED's web site is conveniently out of date, showing only its Cuba program for 2001. But it is instructive. Its funds for Cuban activities in 2001 totalled only $765,000 — if one is to believe what they say. The money they gave to eight NGOs in 2001 averaged about $52,000, while a 9th NGO, the International Republican Institute received $350,000 for the Directorio Revolucionario Democratico Cubano for “strengthening civil society and human rights” in Cuba. In contrast, this NGO is to receive $2,174,462 in 2003 from AID through the same IRI.

Why would the NED be granting the lower amounts and AID such huge amounts, both channelled through IRI? The answer, apart from IRI's skim-off, probably is that the NED money is destined for the pockets of people in Cuba while the AID money supports the US NGO infrastructures.

Whatever the amount of money reaching Cuba may have been, everyone in Cuba working in the various dissident projects knows of US government's sponsorship, funding and of its purpose — regime change.

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