Talk:Leyla Express and Johnny Express incidents

Post-FAC notes and work

I am pulling over some of the notes from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Leyla Express and Johnny Express incidents/archive1 (and its talk page) so we can continue work here.

Newspaper clippings

• This confirms there was a three-man delegation, as mentioned in the radio broadcast transcripts. Says that Fidel released all but Cubans.
• From this, since we are seeing tonnage all over the place (and it means nothing to laypeople, as it measures volume rather than weight), the 235-foot freighter might be a better description of the ship.
• Here we get full name of José Villa Díaz. Royna and Explorer ??? And Villa was not accused of anything aboard the Johnny. Castro was "serving notice" on US by seizing these ships, rather than the one he alleged was involved in Oriente attacks. Warning from US State Dept to Cuban exiles. Calls Villa a "political hostage"
• This discusses interrogation, freed on Dec 27.
• This names other ships from company, discusses channels frequently used in cargo runs. Mentions Villa was only US citizen.
• This is confusing. How did Castro get the ships back if they were sent to Panama? Were they sent to Panama? Reminder that Jose de la Torriente took credit for incursions, need to work that in (found in other sources).
• This gives some description of attacking ship (there is more in other sources). Has Villa born in Cuba ... what to make of sources that say he was Spanish. Says he was transporting coffee, baseballs and household goods.
• Here Cuban torpedo boat 020, shooting with heavy machine guns. Concern for proximity to Nixon because of past incidents.
• Here attack included grenades. Navy denounced for failing to come to aid.
• Titan and Castro claims. Released others, kept Cubans.
• Here Betancourt gets one of the four released. Mentions growing affinity between Castro and Torrijos. Mentions as stated in earlier sources, meanwhile, that Castro was using the ships in Cuba.
• Here we have two crew members still held, ships turned over to Panama. An agreement signed by Betancourt (obscured print?). Prisoner believed to have died in custody.
• And, here we again have Villa as Spanish born ... sheesh already !!
• Here ships turned over to Panama. Circuit court to decide on a case. Same.
• I can't read this.
• Two clips of part 1b, need to find part 1a, [1] But another still in jail, and another believed to have died. (Would love to see declassified info on that death.)
• Associated Press, in Ft Lauderdale news
• This same is found in other sources,[2] Villa denies charges, yada, yada
• This is hard to read, and a duplicate of other sources, [3]
• Torres still in prison here, do we know when/if he was ever released? [4]

See Yo Soy Fidel book excerpt at JSTOR. I can find no further information about what became of Jose Torres, last reported in Cuban prison in 1974. But while searching for "Johnny Express" sources, I found this, which seems to disclaim the notion that Noriega was the key to the Torrijos-Castro budding friendship: [5] Has Escobar Bethancourt as key and relationship warming up before Noriega's involvement. (Shows up on search because of a different Jose Torres.) This translation may help a bit, if you overlook translation errors and the "revolutionary" POV. To be used, I would have to do a more careful translation ... but it provides an alternate to the Dignes POV that has Noriega as the center of the universe controlled by the Evil Empire to the North. (Search the document for "Express" and then start reading several paragraphs ahead of that.) It provides a take on Panamanian-Cuban relations a bit beyond Dignes's narrow view of LatinAmericans as nothing more than US puppets. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• Johnny crew list SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:41, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Context from Yo Soy Fidel

Translation from here with editorial comments from me in brackets. This is more relevant at Manual Noriega, but gives an explanation alternate to Dignes about how the relationship between Cuba and Panama developed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:20, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Rómulo Escobar Bethancourt, veteran political advisor to General Torrijos—and who also led the team that negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties with the United States—was his [referring to Torrijos] personal emissary to establish contact with two of his main interlocutors, Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro, with whom [plural] Omar came to have genuine friendship. As Romulus tells it, mutual trust with Carter not only emerged during that negotiation, but from their understanding to contribute to the defeat of the Somoza tyranny. Like [similar], in turn, Torrijos' fraternal relationship with Fidel was born from their quick mutual, expressive understanding of the characteristics of both men, and of the political processes they led.

At the beginning of the 70's all the Latin American governments, except for Mexico, had given in to North American pressure and broken relations with Cuba. Under these circumstances, at the end of 1971, the revolutionary navy [Cuba] seized the ships Layla and Johnny Express, of the Panamanian flag, when they disembarked agents and teams of the CIA on the Cuban coast. Those ships belonged to a conspicuous counterrevolutionary, former magnate of Oriente province, and none of its crew was Panamanian.

US authorities lobbied to orchestrate a scandal and make Panama demand the surrender of both captains. Omar had controlled political power for just over a year and did not want a complaint with Cuba, because that implied assuming an attitude contrary to his Revolution. He was very attentive to what Fidel would say about it and, in the company of Rómulo, he listened to him on shortwave [radio?]. He [Torrijos] was impressed that Fidel was willing to give explanations to the Panamanian government, but not that of Washington. Hearing this he [Torrijos] exclaimed: "This is the time to send a delegation to Cuba", and commissioned Romulo to head it.

Rómulo Escobar was at that time Rector of the University of Panama, of whose democratization he was in charge, and he was occupied with rebuilding the relations between the incipient torrijismo and the student organizations. Consequently, the imprint of the delegation was marked by university students, not by the military. Fidel explained the matter of the ships and offered to hand them over to the Panamanian government, on condition that it did not return them to their previous owner. In addition, he spoke on all the other matters that the Panamanians wanted.

He [Fidel] told Rómulo that, although he did not know Torrijos, he had the impression that this man truly believed in what he was doing and was willing to die for the liberation of his country. But in an aside, he asked him [Romulo] to tell Omar that he was running the risk of being trapped in a dead end, and that the NorthAmericans could massacre the Panamanian people as they were doing in Vietnam. That as a leader he had the responsibility to act in such a way that if he could avoid violence, he should avoid it.

When Romulo transmitted that message to Omar, he [Torrijos] was taken aback. "That's what he told you!" and made him repeat the message. And then he commented: "I was convinced that this man [Fidel] was going to send a machine gun". He was shocked that Fidel did not send him a message of revolutionary violence but of friendly concern. According to Romulo, there was born the admiration and affection that Omar took for Fidel, and from then on, he wanted to go to Cuba to meet him, although it was not until the beginning of 1975 that he was able to do so.

Foreign radio transcripts

@Niteshift36, Location, and Rgr09: could you add any information about this book? It is CIA-generated (I guess?) transcripts of foreign radio broadcasts. Radio broadcasts are typically reliable sources, but what are we looking at in a transcript when it comes from the CIA? It gives what appears to be a reliable account of the "Panamanian commission" sent to Cuba, headed by Jorge Illueca, one of Noriega's later "presidents". This commission seems to have had three members, including Escobar Bethancourt and Carlos Gonzalez de la Lastra, who examined the ships' logs. The Cuban government invited them via the Mexican Foreign Ministry. The Cuban claim was that these ships participated in the 1971 Oriente issue, the logs did not reveal that. The logs revealed the ships were in the area on other dates. And "close to the areas" claimed by the Cuban gov't on other dates. I am unsure if we can use this information at all, but it syncs with all other reliably sourced information I have found, except that Ilueca is never mentioned elsewhere. Can we use it selectively? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Crappola. I just realized I have been misspelling Ilueca ... it has two ls ... that means my searches have been inaccurate. Will re-do newspaper.com and other searches next. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Yep; when entering the correct spelling for Illueca (not Ilueca, my error), newspapers.com returns verifying info that Illueca headed this Panama delegation. I don't know why I am not able to coerce newspapers.com into producing clippings of the articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• I disagree that this source is worth using. If we are to use it, though, I would like to see de la Lastra's statement used in full; that the logs "establish a possible connection with accusations by the Cuban government"; and that two crew members claim to have witnessed a landing. I do not see where anyone says the ships were elsewhere on the relevant dates; an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Again, I do not think this should be used at all, but certainly using this to contradict Gehring isn't okay, because it doesn't, when you read the full text. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:33, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Copying additional from User talk:SusunW. From these clippings, it appears that the radio broadcast generally reflects what the press was reporting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:15, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93 and SandyGeorgia: a search with both "Jorge Illueca" "Johnny Express" returns 10 results. Many of them are duplicates of the AP release from The San Francisco Examiner on 31 December, i.e. (The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, The Quad City Times, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, The Miami News, The Racine Journal Times.) Others are: 25 December (Appears twice in the search); 26 December; 29 December. Advise if I can help further. SusunW (talk) 16:32, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Bonus item January 1972 SusunW (talk) 16:51, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: In my opinion, Foreign Broadcast Information Service is a reliable source for the transcription of foreign (i.e. outside the US) newspapers and radio broadcasts; however, that does not mean the material in the newspaper or broadcast is accurate. I am not familiar with this topic, but I would be skeptical of anything coming out of Panama City Televisora Nacional in that time frame; note that the first of the two hits you linked to is also labeled "Foreign Ministry press communique". I think WP:INTEXT would apply if it were used.

FYI: in Talk:Manuel Noriega I recently posted a similar link to this document from Radio TV Reports, Inc. to the CIA. Per this legal case, "Plaintiff Radio TV Reports (RTV) is a New York corporation in the business of recording, transcribing, and monitoring radio and video programming for its clients." Although RTVR now appears to be defunct, I have seen many similar documents at cia.gov. - Location (talk) 19:32, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Jorden

I have just re-read some of Jorden, encompassing more pages around the cited 257 page; a more careful look at Jorden might help us sort out of some of the contradictions found in sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Parmet

Parmet had no access to classified documents, and merely repeats what Dinges claimed. I am not sure why we are doubling down here, and if we need both sources; the claim comes from Dignes, who overplays the "Noriega as a puppet" hand. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Johnston

Johnston never mentions this incident; the use here is SYNTH, only used to reinforce the Dinges POV of Noriega's role (which is a role that differs according to some other sources). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:49, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Moving forward

I will deal with the newspaper sources by and by. However, SG, you've restated objections to Parmet and Johnsten, entirely ignoring multiple responses to those objections on my part. If points this minor are going to be a deal-breaker for you at FAC, it's fairly certain to me the standard I'm being held to is unattainable. So, this is going to drop a long down my list of priorities, because I can write a substantive article from scratch in the same time it would take me to move this even a little closer to promotion. If anyone else wishes to work on it with an eye to promotion, they are free to do so. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:52, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I do believe you can get an FA out of this, and that we are not that far off, but understand if it is not worth it to you in terms of time needed. But separately from FA status, and more importantly, we need to address weight issues throughout the Noriega articles that are coming from Dinges and lending a pro-Cuban, US-interventionist, bias leaving the impression that Latinamericans don’t think for themselves or have their own, internal, motivations and factors. And can be bought. And are only puppets. There is so much more to these stories ... overlooked when a book is rushed to print. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

You haven't directly answered my specific point. The princicples are all very well; nobody is denying them. But when your interpretation of those principles it to require contradicting scholarly sources (Gehring, Parmet) with selectively interpreted primary sources, that is straying to far into original research for me, an unreasaonble interpretation of those principles, and not a standard I am interested in being held to. I will work through the news sources, because I care about completeness. If that's insufficient for you at FAC, then I'm not interested in taking this through FAC. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:52, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

As of now, there is one sentence sourced to Johnston, which is SYNTH; I don't see how one sentence can be such a sticking point. Independently, we've gone around in some circles unnecessarily simply because we didn't have sources. Now we have newspaper accounts, and I will receive Dinges in the mail sometime in the next few days. I don't think this article is out of reach for FAC. And I do think we have enough other sources now that it is apparent that there is much more of a story here than Dignes's one-sided view. We'll have a better sense as you work through the newspapers, and I read portions of Dinges. And I have never asked you to contradict "scholarly sources"; the issue here is a dearth of sources related specifically to this incident. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 20 October 2020 (UTC)