AP revisits 1996 account of Cuban jets shooting down exile planes

In a republishing of its own 1996 reporting, the Associated Press revisited an incident that it said began with Cuban fighter jets shooting down planes flown by members of the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The AP’s Saturday reprint, written by Nicole Winfield, describes how the episode unfolded in international waters off Havana and how U.S. officials responded as the Coast Guard searched for people on board.

The 1996 account said the Coast Guard was searching international waters off Havana for four people aboard the Brothers to the Rescue planes, and that two Navy ships were also in the area. It reported that officials said there were no debris or signs of survivors at first. The AP said a third plane’s pilot returned to Miami and told his wife that he had seen survivors in the water, while the wife said the pilot denied entering Cuban airspace.

President Bill Clinton, according to the AP report, condemned the shootdown of “two American civilian airplanes” and ordered the U.S. military to protect search-and-rescue operations. The report also said Clinton ordered the U.S. interest section in Havana to demand an immediate explanation, reflecting the incident’s diplomatic impact.

The AP report described confusion around the flight plans. It said the aircraft—Cessna 337 Skymasters—took off from Florida after filing flight plans that listed their destination as the Bahamas, as White House press secretary Mike McCurry said. It added that spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn later corrected McCurry’s account, saying the flight plans were to take off from Miami, fly south and return, with no touchdown.

According to the report, the Coast Guard searched roughly 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of Cuban waters, using a C-130 cargo plane, a helicopter and two cutters from Key West, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) north. AP said Coast Guard Petty Officer David French described the early sightings, including that the first Coast Guard jet on the scene reported seeing two oil slicks in the area.

The account also included details from the Cuban diplomatic channels. It said Cuban official news media made no immediate mention of the shootdown, and that Roberto Gutierrez, who answered the phone at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, said he knew nothing about the report. It also described the Brothers to the Rescue headquarters at Opa-Locka Airport, where Mirta Iglesias, the wife of the returned pilot Arnaldo Iglesias, spoke about what her husband had told her.

Brothers to the Rescue, the AP report said, had been operating for years as a Cuban exile group that worked to help people attempting to flee the island. The AP said the group flew over Cuba in January and in July 1995, dropping anti-government and human rights pamphlets, and said the Cuban government warned it would not tolerate such flights. The report stated that the group’s weekly flights typically aimed at dropping supplies to refugees in camps in the Bahamas.

The AP reported that for that Saturday mission, Bahamian officials refused permission and the group instead flew over the Florida Straits in search of rafters. It said Mirta Iglesias identified the missing four as Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Pena, Pablo Morales and Carlos Costas. The report also said the group belonged to Concilio Cubano, which postponed a meeting in Havana scheduled for that Saturday after the arrest of at least 50 members of human rights groups, with many freed within hours or days.

Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, condemned the attack in the AP report. He said: “For two warplanes from the Castro government to shoot down two unarmed civilian planes with American flags on a humanitarian mission should be considered an act of war against the United States.”