Wayne Smith And His Declassified Legacy On Cuba

WAYNE S. SMITH, August 16, 1933 - June 28, 2024 His Declassified Legacy on Cuba Wayne Archive Posts Selection of Once Secret Documents Recording Wayne Smith’s Policy Advocacy of Normalized Relations with Cuba Declassified Record of Efforts to Improve U.S.-Cuba Ties Remains Relevant to Current Policy Debate and Deliberations Published: Jul 12, 2024 Briefing Book # 865 Edited by Peter Kornbluh and William M. LeoGrande For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or peter.kornbluh@gmail.com Regions Cuba and Caribbean Project Cuba Back Channel to Cuba The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana William M. LeoGrande, Peter Kornbluh University of North Carolina Press back channel Spanish cover Diplomacia encubierta con Cuba. Historia de las negociaciones secretas entre Washington y La Habana LeoGrande, William M., y Peter Kornbluh FONDO DE CULTURA ECONÓMICA (FCE) Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba Edited by Peter Kornbluh Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader by National Security Archive (Compiler), Laurence Chang (Editor), Peter Kornbluh (Editor) Washington, D.C. July 12, 2024 - “Cuba,” as former Foreign Service officer, Wayne S. Smith, was fond of observing, “seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.” As the leading proponent for a rational and productive U.S. policy toward the Cuban revolution, Smith devoted his career—in and out of government—to advancing the cause of dialogue, diplomacy and normalized relations between Washington and Havana. He lived to see many of his tireless efforts come to fruition when the Obama administration moved to restore official diplomatic relations, normalize travel, and expand commerce between 2014 and 2016. But those advances were mostly rescinded during the Trump era and have not been fully restored by President Biden. At the time of Smith’s death at age 91 on June 28, 2024, the cause that he championed—rapprochement between Washington and Havana—remains as critical as ever. As a tribute to Smith’s life and legacy, the National Security Archive today is posting a small selection of the hundreds of formerly secret cables, memoranda of conversation, options papers and reports he generated during his 25-year career as the State Department’s leading expert on Cuba. The selected documents represent the diplomacy and dedication that Smith brought to his foreign service career, as well as his advocacy for a common-sense approach to the controversial issue of Cuba policy. paragraph 11 Wayne Smith was one of the first U.S. officials to present an argument for incrementally lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Smith’s Cuba-related career was exceptional and unique. As a young diplomat, he was posted to Havana as the third secretary of the U.S. Embassy only months before the triumph of the Fidel Castro-led Cuban revolution. He was one of the last U.S. officials to close the Embassy doors and depart the island by ferry after the Eisenhower administration broke relations with Cuba on January 3, 1961. “When the break came,” Smith recalled, “we merely packed our bags, turned out the lights, and were ready to go.” Eighteen years later, Smith returned to help turn the lights back on as “Principal Officer” of the recently opened “Interests Section”—part of the Carter administration’s incremental and often halting efforts to restore diplomatic ties with Havana. In his capacity as director of the State Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs during the first two years of the Carter Administration, Smith pressed for significant U.S. gestures to advance the goal of normalized relations. In a comprehensive and witty options memorandum, “Possible Steps to Improve Relations with Cuba,” he recommended key economic, cultural, military and diplomatic steps to reset U.S. policy and move toward normalized relations. He was one of the first U.S. officials to push a plan to incrementally lift the trade embargo, starting with food and medicine. “Many consider the embargo on the sale of medicines unconscionable,” he wrote, “irrespective of the state of our bilateral relations.” The U.S. should also open the door to selected Cuban exports, especially seafood products—shrimp, lobster, and crabs—he argued, along with Cuba’s renowned tobacco products (of which Smith was a connoisseur). “Few, save U.S. cigar makers, would object to the importation of fine Cuban cigars,” he noted in his options memo. Culturally, Smith suggested, the U.S. should allow the American Ballet to perform in Cuba and organize a special baseball exhibition game in Havana. Given Cubans fanatical love of the sport, Smith argued, baseball diplomacy could provide “more bang for the buck” than any other aspect of normalized relations and “emphasize the affinities between our two countries in a way that serves our long term objectives,” pointing out that “the Soviet Union does not play baseball.” Smith was also one of the first officials to identify advantages for U.S. national interests in a Coast Guard collaboration with the Cuban navy on counternarcotics operations. “DEA is enthusiastic,” Smith reported. “Further, this strikes me as an initiative to which only the Mafia could object strongly.” As head of the U.S. Interests Section from mid 1979 to mid 1982, Smith navigated diplomatic discord between Washington and Havana on such divisive issues as Cuban support for the Sandinista revolution and other insurgencies in Central America, Cuba’s role in Africa, and the 1980 immigration crisis known as the Mariel boatlift. The change in administrations from Carter to Reagan generated significant tensions between the State Department and the Interests Section as Reagan officials deliberately misrepresented Cuba’s interest in negotiations on Central America and threatened Castro with military force if Cuba continued to support insurgent groups there. “And as for keeping the heat on,” he wrote to his superiors in an angry cable protesting their distortion of Cuba’s negotiating positions on Central America, “we have kept it on for more than 20 years to no avail. The Cubans have seen it all before and are no more likely to respond now than previously.” Smith was so disgusted with the mendacity of his own government that he turned down an ambassadorial appointment and retired, on principle, from his career as a foreign service officer. “We obviously proceed from totally incompatible perceptions of Cuban reality,” he cabled Washington. “There is clearly no possibility of reconciliation of my views and those put forward by the [State] Department. I have therefore advised through other channels the situation in which I believe that leaves us—or more correctly, leaves me.” Sixteen days later, on his 51th birthday, Smith tendered his resignation and ended his diplomatic career at the State Department. Smith holding photo of himself and Fidel As a diplomat, and after he left the State Department, Wayne Smith met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro numerous times. Leaving government liberated Smith to become the most prolific and prominent proponent of a rational U.S. policy toward Cuba. Working out of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and then the non-profit Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., as a senior fellow, Smith published his candid memoir, The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic History of the Castro Years, along with countless opinion articles, reports, policy pamphlets, newsletters and interviews for over 30 years, criticizing hostile U.S. policies for “reaching new heights of absurdity.” He traveled to Cuba innumerable times for meetings and conferences, including as part of the National Security Archive’s delegations to the 40th anniversary conferences with Fidel Castro on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wayne's C-SPAN appearance As a leading critic of hostile U.S. policies toward Cuba, Wayne Smith appeared in many televised interviews. He frequently labeled U.S. efforts to sanction and pressure Cuba as "absurd." For Smith, freedom to travel to Cuba was a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Over the years, he took creative and strategic action to challenge U.S. restrictions on travel, including engaging in open civil disobedience. In December 1994, he organized a delegation of academics to openly visit Cuba without the prerequisite license—with the intent of getting fined and fostering a legal case to challenge the restrictions. “We traveled to Cuba to defend the rights of North Americans to go where they want—to Ireland, Switzerland, it doesn’t matter where,” Smith declared at a press conference in the Miami airport terminal, after the group had been detained on the plane and interrogated on the hot tarmac by Treasury Department agents. “We are ready to be prosecuted; we would like to be prosecuted because that will permit us to bring this case to the Supreme Court and win,” he declared. Ten years later, as director of Johns Hopkins University’s Cuba Exchange Program, Smith created and chaired The Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET) and then filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department to challenge new Bush administration restrictions on academic study abroad programs in Cuba. “This is a case concerning academic freedom,” the suit stated, “specifically the right of professors and students of higher education to, free from government interference, organize, teach, and attend their institutions’ courses conducted abroad.” The suit was eventually dismissed by the U.S. District Court, and ECDET’s appeals were also rejected. Wayne Smith’s penultimate visit to Cuba remains his most poignant. As part of Barack Obama’s and Raúl Castro’s December 17, 2014, agreement to normalize bilateral ties, formal diplomatic relations were restored in the summer of 2015. Accompanied by his daughter, Melinda, Smith attended the ceremony to officially reopen the U.S. Embassy—the same building that Smith had closed as a young attaché in January 1961. Walking with her father to the Embassy, Melinda Smith recalls all the Cubans in the streets reaching out to shake his hand, yelling out to him, “Gracias Smith. Gracias, gracias.” The raising of the American flag to re-inaugurate the Embassy represented “the pinnacle of his life’s work and he cried when it went up the pole,” Melinda remembered. “But the people’s recognition and gratitude for that work and personal sacrifice was what he most cherished and kept with him until the day he died.” THE DOCUMENTS doc1 ebb 865 Document 1 State Department, U.S. Embassy Havana, Cable, “Reaction of Castro Regime to Election of Senator Kennedy,” Confidential, December 13, 1960 Dec 13, 1960 Source Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1958–1960, CUBA, Volume VI This cable, drafted by a young Embassy attaché, Wayne Smith (but signed by the political affairs officer, Harvey R. Wellman), reports on Cuba’s reaction to the narrow election of Senator John F. Kennedy over Vice President Richard Nixon. Smith reports that the young Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro expects the same “sterile imperialist policy” of the Eisenhower era to continue under Kennedy, and that “Yankee imperialism” will remain Cuba’s leading enemy. doc 2 ebb 865 Document 2 State Department, Options Memorandum, “Possible Steps to Improve Relations with Cuba,” Secret, c. August 30, 1978 Aug 1, 1978 Source National Security Archive DNSA collection, “Cuba and the U.S., 1959-2016” As “Cuba Desk Officer” in the State Department during the first two years of the Carter Administration, Wayne Smith pressed creative ideas for normalizing relations with Cuba. In this detailed memo, he recommended a number of economic, cultural, military and basic diplomatic steps to reset U.S. policy and move toward normalized relations. Among his suggestions were lifting the trade embargo on transfers of food and medicines to Cuba, as well as on certain Cuban exports to the United States—among them Cuban tobacco products (of which Smith was a connoisseur). “Few, save U.S. cigar makers, would object to the importation of fine Cuban cigars,” he noted in his options memo. He also suggested a Coast Guard collaboration with the Cubans on counternarcotics operations. “DEA is enthusiastic,” Smith reported. “Further, this strikes me as an initiative to which only the Mafia could object strongly.” doc 3 ebb 865 Document 3 State Department, Memcon, “U.S.-Cuban Relations,” Secret, December 2, 1977 Dec 2, 1977 Source Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Vol. XXIII As head of the State Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs, Smith met with Cuban officials in Washington. This meeting, held at a Washington restaurant with the head of the recently created Cuban Interest Section, Ramon Sanchez-Parodi, focused on a key obstacle to moving forward with normalized relations—Cuba’s expanding military presence in Africa. During the meeting, Smith diplomatically presses Sanchez-Parodi on the need to reduce the number of Cuban troops in Africa. Smith notes that the Ford administration had initiated secret talks on improved relations only to see Cuba send troops to Angola. “The present Administration,” Smith states, “obviously would have reservations about going ahead with the process of normalization in the face of any build-up in Angola and perhaps a repetition in Ethiopia of the Angola pattern.” doc 4 ebb 865 Document 4 State Department, U.S. Interests Section, Havana, Cable, “State of U.S.-Cuban Relations,” Secret, August 29, 1979 Aug 29, 1979 Source NARA By the time Wayne Smith assumed the role of Charge’ at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in mid 1979, the promise of a full rapprochement from the early months of the Carter administration had faded in the wake of political discord over Cuba’s military role in Africa, support for the Sandinista revolution, and the presence of Soviet personnel and MIG aircraft on the island. This summary of Smith’s meeting with a top aide to Fidel Castro reflects Smith’s diplomatic capabilities to assess and deflect Cuba’s more rhetorical positions toward the United States. In his conversation with Castro’s aide, Smith suggests that intemperate propaganda attacks on the United States “hardly enhanced prospects for normalization” of relations. But he advises the State Department that “the Cubans have written off any significant improvement in relations with the US for the foreseeable future” and “suggestions on our part that objectionable actions or rhetoric on theirs will impede normalization are likely to have little impact.” doc 5 ebb 865 Document 5 State Department, U.S. Interests Section, Havana, Cable, “Approach to Cubans on Presence in Nicaragua,” Secret, August 13, 1979 Aug 13, 1979 Source NARA In the aftermath of the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in mid-July 1979, the Carter administration decided to send a demarche to Cuba, protesting Cuba’s military support for the successful insurgency. In this cable, Wayne Smith advises that he hopes to present the U.S. protest to Jose Viera, a top Cuban official. But he seeks clearer evidence to support reports of “massive” arms shipments to the Sandinistas. “It would be useful to have something new and specific to back up those earlier reports,” he cables. “Has Embassy Nicaragua seen large quantities of specific items I could refer to, such as Soviet rocket launchers, machine guns, etc.? Or does INR (Intelligence and Research) have something hard I could use in demarche?” Unsubstantiated U.S. charges of an escalating Cuban role in Nicaragua and other Central American countries continued to create discord between Havana and Washington for the next several years and became a point of extreme contention between Smith and Reagan administration officials in 1981-1982, leading to Smith’s resignation from the State Department. doc 6 ebb 865 Document 6 State Department, U.S. Interests Section, Havana, Cable, “Castro Offers Good Offices,” Secret, November 18, 1979 Nov 18, 1979 Source NARA Wayne Smith met with Fidel Castro numerous times—in his capacity as head of the U.S. Interests Section, as well as on trips to Cuba after he resigned from the State Department. In this report on one of his early meetings, Smith cables Washington that Fidel Castro, as head of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), has offered his “good offices” to quietly press Iranian leaders to release the U.S. Embassy personnel who have been taken hostage in Tehran. According to Castro, “Cuba wished to help defuse situation which had dangerous implications not only for Iran and US but for whole world.” Castro, according to the Smith report, advises that his efforts need to be extended with “utmost discretion” if they are going to have any chance of success. Apparently concerned that the Carter Administration might launch a military attack on Iran, Castro urged patience and said “he would use any influence he had with [the Iranians] to bring about release of hostages and defuse situation.” doc 7 ebb 865 Document 7 State Department, U.S. Interests Section, Havana, Cable [Transmitted to White House Situation Room], “Cuban Interest in Negotiations,” Secret, July 31, 1982 Jul 31, 1982 Source Ronald Reagan Presidential Library In this forcefully written cable protesting the Reagan State Department’s refusal to engage Cuba on the issue of Central America and misrepresentation of Cuba’s negotiating position, Wayne Smith openly criticizes the failure of a U.S. policy of hostility and pressure to advance U.S. interests. “And as for keeping the heat on,” he writes to his superiors, “we have kept it on for more than 20 years to no avail. The Cubans have seen it all before and are no more likely to respond now than previously.” Smith concludes the cable by advising his superiors that he has reached a breaking point with their approach to Cuba policy. “We obviously proceed from totally incompatible perceptions of Cuban reality,” he wrote in an oblique reference to his decision to resign. “There is clearly no possibility of reconciliation of my views and those put forward by the [State] Department. I have therefore advised through other channels the situation in which I believe that leaves us—or more correctly, leaves me.” Sixteen days later, on his 50th birthday, Smith tendered his resignation as head of the U.S. Interests Section and the State Department, ending his career as a U.S. government diplomat. doc 8 ebb 865 Document 8 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET) v. U.S. Treasury Department, Case No. 1:06-CV-01215, Complaint, July 10, 2007 Jul 10, 2007 Source U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia On July 10, 2007, Wayne Smith became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department for curtailing academic exchange programs in Cuba as part of President George W. Bush’s new Cuba sanctions imposed during the 2004 electoral campaign. At the time, Smith was an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and director of the university’s Cuban Exchange Program. After the Treasury Department banned short-term academic exchange programs in 2004, Smith founded and chaired the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET) to press for the restoration of flexible academic study programs in Cuba. The ECDET suit charged that the Bush administration’s “restrictions have abridged Plaintiff’s First Amendment Right to academic freedom and their Fifth Amendment liberty interest in educational travel.” As defined in the suit, “this is a case concerning academic freedom—specifically the right of professors and students of higher education to, free from government interference, organize, teach, and attend their institutions’ courses conducted abroad.” The suit was eventually dismissed by the District Court, and ECDET’s appeals were also rejected.