U.S. Envoy to Cuba Is No Diplomat

Re “Castro Risks World’s Ire, Envoy Says,” April 8: Only the Bush administration could possibly have produced a fool such as U.S. envoy James Cason, the head of the massive U.S. Interests Section in Havana. What right has this man to blatantly foment anti-government sentiment in Cuba? Is that what he calls diplomacy? Would we want the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington to step over the line and advocate anti-government acts here?

Cason tells us that Fidel Castro wouldn’t dare close our Havana facility because such “would provoke a tit-for-tat expulsion that would deprive Havana of its lobbying office in Washington.” Wrong! He doesn’t know Castro like I, and many others, do (which helps to prove he’s the wrong man for the job). First of all, Castro does what he wants (as we’ve so often seen) and cares nothing for world opinion. Second, Castro’s facility in “the District” is no more a lobbying entity than any other foreign embassy because embassies are prohibited from political activity in the countries where they are guests. Which brings us back to the fact that Cason should keep his mouth shut, although it may be too late.

Oliver Berliner

Beverly Hills

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Your article on Castro’s arrests of Cuban dissidents neglects the corrosive role of Cason, whose constant insulting language about Cuba puts him in the category of agent provocateur. I imagine if an emissary of Castro’s were allowed in the United States and unleashed volley after volley of anti-U.S. vitriol, followers of said emissary would at the least be investigated or, in these times, maybe even jailed under the USA Patriot Act. Cason is not a diplomat; he is an anti-Castro agitator who speaks the same cowboy prose as his president, George W. Bush.

Forrest Murray

Santa Monica

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It appears that Michael Ramirez’s editorial cartoon on Castro (Commentary, April 8) has a typo and the wrong image. The image should be Bush, with the words: “USA/Bush’s Political Machine/Ramirez” across his chest. And Bush would be strangling a war-protesting grandmother. The words across her chest would read: “Freedom of Speech.”

Laurel Wetzork

Santa Barbara