After attending a briefing from the Cuban Five’s lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, Lawrence Wilkerson, who had served as a military aide and later senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote in The Havana Note on September 19, 2007:

“As a military officer for 31 years, I occasionally encountered Cuba. In exercises, I recall vividly that when we war-gamed ‘the Cuba scenario.’

“What happened was that the U.S. Navy, the FBI, the Florida State Police, the Coast Guard, and a host of other folks got involved not in invading Cuba, but in preventing a group of Cuban-Americans in Florida from doing so. [Italics added]

“I might add that such actions violated U.S. law and so, in the exercises—which were in my view very realistic—we spent our time attempting to stop several hundred small boats, loaded with automatic weapons, explosives, and lots of Cuban-Americans, from getting to Cuba.

“So, I was acquainted with some of the vagaries of U.S. Cuba policy.”