New York Times Report – President Obama To Restore U.S. Embassy In Cuba Without Congressional Approval…

1/22/2015
By Sundance

Break out the “Bellbottoms”, dust off the “Earth Shoes”… Similar to establishing ties toward the Palestinian terror network, the Palestinian Authority/HAMAS, President Obama is once again set to complete the unfinished work of Jimmy Carter… this time with Cuba.

HAVANA — Fidel Castro called the building a “nest of spies,” routinely marshaling tens of thousands of people to protest at its doorstep. His government even made a television mini-series with what it called images of American diplomats lurking in a forest nearby, dropping off suspicious bags and marking benches in acts of espionage.

President George W. Bush took swipes of his own, installing a Times Square-style ticker on the building’s side to flash news and political statements. The move so enraged Cuban officials that they erected a thicket of 138 black flags on towering poles to block the sign.

Now the building, the American government’s main outpost in Cuba, for decades a hulking symbol of the tensions between the two countries, is supposed to become something else: a full-fledged embassy operating in the open for the first time in more than five decades.

Officially, the six-story embassy, in a choice spot along Havana’s seaside highway, was closed after President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ties with Cuba in 1961. Yet it has hardly been dormant. Since 1977, the United States has run it as an “interests section” to process visas, hold cultural events and keep some communication flowing between the two estranged neighbors.

[…] This week, as part of the détente between the nations, the Obama administration is sending the highest-ranking delegation of American officials to the island in nearly 40 years to restart diplomatic relations and set the stage to reopen the interests sections as embassies in the coming months.

[…] There were occasional spy arrests and prisoner exchanges over the years, he said, but President Jimmy Carter sought a thaw in relations and reached an agreement with the Cubans to open the interests sections, technically under the auspices of the Swiss Embassy.

Efforts to fully re-establish embassies stalled because of Cuba’s role in the Angola war and its insistence that the trade embargo be lifted unconditionally.

Then President Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, who took a hard line toward Cuba, and the standoff continued for decades. (read more)

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