The Daily - Why the U.S. Just Indicted Cuba’s Former President

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

The U.S. charged Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former leader and Communist general, with murder on Wednesday. It was the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to force political change on the island. The New York Times reporters Frances Robles and Julian Barnes break down what is behind the charges against Mr. Castro and what the American government really wants from Cuba. Guest: Frances Robles, an international correspondent covering Latin America and the Caribbean for The New York Times. Julian E. Barnes, a reporter covering the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The New York Times. Background reading:  The Justice Department charged the former Cuban president in fatal downing of planes. Here’s what happened on the day Cuba shot down two civilian planes. Photo: Norlys Perez/Reuters For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitcho. This is the Daily. On Wednesday, the U.S. charged Cuba's former leader and communist general, Raul Castro, with murder. The charges stem from Castro's role in a decades-old incident when three Americans were killed by the Cuban government, and they were the latest escalation in the Trump administration's campaign to force political change on the island. Today, my colleagues, Francis Robles, on the story. behind the charges against Castro, and Julian Barnes, on what the American government really wants from Cuba. It's Thursday, May 21st.

Frenchie, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me, Natalie. You just got out of this Department of Justice press conference in Miami. You are, in fact, still in your car, and we appreciate you making the time. So tell us what it was like. It was so interesting. I've been covering judicial events and press conferences and court cases and announcements for many, many years. And I can't say I've ever seen one quite like this.

Usually these are held at, you know, either at a courthouse or an office, maybe the district attorney's office or the DOJ. So they held it at the Freedom Tower. So that's the first thing that was really fascinating. It's a really important historic building in Miami. It's kind of a cool, old-looking tower. And the reason it's an important location. is because in the 1960s in the early 70s, it was the Cuban refugee center. So it's basically Ellis Islands for Cuban exiles. It was the first stop for many, many thousands of people who

left Cuba after the revolution and came to live in Miami. So a lot of symbolism there for people. Oh, 100%. A lot of symbolism. And not only that, this event was held today's Wednesday, May 20th, which is Cuban Independence Day. So that, you know, symbolism, for this event, an event where hundreds of people came to attend, politicians, mayors, federal prosecutors who haven't worked there in decades. I mean, it was a who's who of the Cuban exile community of Miami. It was a place to be. Absolutely.

Okay. And what happens at this event? How do the charges get rolled out? Good afternoon. I'm Madeline Pumariega, president of Miami-Dade College. welcome to the Freedom Tower. I was kind of struck, to be honest, that the first speaker was

Madeline Bumariega, who's a Cuban-American woman, the president of Miami-Dade College. The building that we were in is part of Miami-Dade College. And so it was interesting to me because she's a very prominent member of the community,

but she's not a prosecutor. So it told you a lot. It says that this isn't just a quote-unquote judicial or law enforcement event. This is a community event. And to our brothers and sisters, In Cuba, we hear you. Freedom will come. Kuba will be liberty.

It's an important event of the city of Miami and the people in this entire community who have been waiting 30 years for this day. It is now my distinct honor representing all of you to introduce the United States acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. And she introduced the Attorney General, the acting Attorney General. General, Todd Blanche. The hundreds of people in the room got up and gave him a standing ovation before the man even opened his mouth. Everybody was cheering him on because they knew what he was about to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be here in the great state of Florida. And what did he say?

Yeah, he got right into it. Today, we are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Just... One of his first words were conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. And they had to break after that, because everyone got up onto their feet and started applauding him again. And he just started reading out the charges.

Mr. Castro and the others are charged with additional crimes as well, including destruction of aircraft and four individual counts of murder. of murder. He was being charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, two counts of destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder. And just explain

what these charges are really about. What is the incident that they're referring to when they talk about murder? The incident that this case is about occurred in 1996. But really, to tell that story, I'm going to go

back further. I'm going to go a little early. in the 90s. There was a point in the 90s where Cubans were literally throwing themselves to the sea to make it to the United States. They were doing that on inner tubes. They were doing that on old cars that they rebuilt into a boat on rafts. And so it becomes what's known as the Cuban rafter crisis. Because there's so many people, literally thousands and thousands of people that were in the sea trying to and make it to the United States. And so with that crisis is born an organization called Brothers to the Rescue. And what they were doing, they were Cuban-American pilots who raised money to buy small planes,

and they would fly over the Straits of Florida, between the Florida Keys and Cuba. And it's where many, many people died trying to make their way to the United States. So they would fly over the waters and they would spot somebody on a raft and an inner tube, what have you, and they would call the Coast Guard for help. So this is a nonprofit organization that is attempting to help these people that are migrating en masse from Cuba. Absolutely. They saved hundreds, if not thousands of people. They did over 2,000 flights. It was a big deal. The Coast Guard was overwhelmed. The Coast Guard couldn't handle the volume. There was a point in the summer of 1994, Natalie, this is a true story where there were about 2,000 people a day were showing up in Key West. Crazy.

So why do I start with that? So the reason that's important is because at some point, the situation gets so dire that the Clinton administration and the Cuban government reach an accord. People will try to prevent people from leaving the island and the United States agree, that when people are caught, they're going to be turned back. And so what does that mean? It means that the Brothers to the Rescue kind of no longer has a mission. So they change their mission.

And they start getting a little bit more provocative. And poking a stick in the eye of Fidel Castro. How so? They started dropping leaflets over Cuba. They dropped religious medallions, doing things like that. There were a little bit more protest actions as opposed to rescue missions. The Cuban government was furious.

They felt like this was an illegal incursion into their airspace. They kept on turning to the Clinton administration saying, you guys got to put a stop to this. Everybody in their mother warns the organization. You got to stop. This is going to blow up in your face. And the founder of the organization was a man named Jose Basulto. He felt really strongly that this was his right.

This was his right as a Cuban, as a Cuban American, and he was going to continue those flights. And he did. And what happened? So one day, February 24, 1996, he left an airport outside of Miami. He and two other planes left, and they fly down to Cuba. That day, they did cross what's known as the 24th parallel. It's international airspace.

But to the Cubans, they shouldn't have been there. And so the Cubans on air traffic, they're on air traffic control. and Jose Basulta, who's the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, as he's supposed to, he announces himself to the air traffic control. And he says, good afternoon. This is Jose Basuta from Brothers to the Rescue. You know, it's a beautiful day up in the skies above Havana. And the Cuban air traffic control responds to him,

saying, you know, if you're below the 24th parallel, that's an activated zone. That was the word that they used. And he says, this is my right. as a free Cuban, and they continue their journey. And so the Cuban government, the Cuban military, shot two of the planes out of the sky, killing four people, including three U.S. citizens. I can't even describe for you the sense of shock throughout South Florida.

You were covering this at the time, right, Frenchie? I actually attended a friend of mine wanted to go to the memorial service, at the Orange Bowl, which was a big football stadium that we used to have. And it was really dramatic. I mean, it was hard to not feel the emotion in the room. I remember so clearly, they started calling out the names of the guys, you know, Pablo Morales and everybody cried out together, present. Armando Alejandro, present.

I mean, I remember today, like it happened yesterday. It was a really dramatic moment with Miami. and for the United States. Right. And this ties to Raul Castro because I assume this is when he's Secretary of Defense. Is that right? He was the defense minister, and he gave the order. I mean, I don't think that there's too much doubt about that

because big pilots in Cuba are not going to be shooting planes out of the sky without very clear chain of command's orders. And just explain why, if it was so clear, didn't the U.S. bring charges against him then? I've asked that same question to a number of former federal prosecutors. And the sense that I got was it would just be really disabling to diplomatic relations, even though we didn't really have any, and destabilizing in the region.

Okay, obviously now there is the political will to indict Raul Castro, who we should say is a 94-year-old man. He was once the president of Cuba, but he's not anymore. But what you're saying is that targeting him is part of what you've already told us the last time you came on the show, which is there has been this escalating pressure campaign by the Trump administration on the Cuban regime. You see this as another step in that. Absolutely, Natalie. I do see this as the latest step in that escalating campaign.

The Trump administration cut off oil to Cuba. last week they announced they don't have any reserves left. That means places like Havana are going 22 hours a day without electricity. We keep asking people, what's it like when the power goes out that long? And I've gotten a very similar answer

several times. No, no, no. It's not when the power goes out. That's the problem. It's when the power comes on. Because the power comes on at maybe 11 o'clock at night or 12 o'clock and you've got to jump out of bed and you have to charge your phone, You have to charge your laptop.

And if you're, you know, a family, you know, ahead of a household, you're getting a pot of rice and beans on the stove to cook the next day's meals. You're hearing really, really dramatic stories like that. People having to walk hours and hours to their jobs. People are not able to work because their work depends on having electricity and having Internet. It's a really terrible situation. And when you talk to Cubans on the island, who do they blame for them? this? Do they blame the U.S. or their own government? I would say that the answer to that tends to be generational.

I think older people are blaming the United States. You know, the talking points from the government is certainly that this is all the United States as far. And the younger people are much more apt to blame the Cuban government and for the mistakes that it's made during the management of its country that led to this fiasco. Okay. And what about the reaction? inside of the Cuban government. What are they saying about this vice grip

that the Trump administration has on them? They say it's an illegal, I think they've used the word genocide, that it's going to lead to a bloodbath and that it will be the United States as false. They don't recognize any errors that they've ever made, and they 100% see this as the fault of the Trump administration. And this is a group of people

who are used to weathering hard times and still holding on to power, kind of fighting through. And it sounds like they're still doing that. It's been 67 years, and they have had really severe hardship in the past, and they've always weathered. And I think a lot of people feel that maybe the Trump administration

is underestimating the degree to which these people will want to hang on to power at any cost. After the break, my colleague Julian Barron, takes us inside the U.S. government's broader strategy in Cuba. We'll be right back. Julian, you cover the U.S. intelligence community, and you've been reporting on this pressure campaign and the role of the CIA in amping that up. So just tell us what you've learned. What is the endgame in Cuba? Well, we don't know what the exact endgame is here.

We don't know exactly what the U.S. wants. But what's clear is that the pressure is only going to increase. This indictment is just the next step in that, right? Like, it is a message to the Cuban government that what happened in Venezuela could happen in Cuba. Just want to pause on that, because I think that is a big question. that's been hanging over all of this for those of us watching. Is this a prelude to what we saw in Venezuela, where Nicholas Maduro was indicted by the U.S. government

and then was extracted by the U.S. military? Is that what this is about? It's very important to note that our reporting shows that President Trump wants the option. He wants the option to do a military extract. to get Raul Castro, to put pressure on the Cuban government, you saw Todd Blanche raise that. He talked about how would they get Castro, right? And he talked about it being a Pentagon issue.

That said, it's also important to note that there aren't a lot of special operations forces in the region. There aren't special operations forces that we know of. that have been training for this kind of operation. Cuba's very different than Venezuela. The circumstances are different. It seems that a actual military extraction of Castro is pretty remote. You know, all the special operations forces are still in the Middle East.

They're still geared up to possible action against Iran, right? You have to reset and come. back for Cuba. And it wouldn't necessarily have the same effect. Like Nicholas Maduro was the official president of Venezuela, pulling him out, triggered a change in leadership. It allowed Vice President Delci Rodriguez to become the acting president, to take power. Raul Castro is a very important figure in Cuba. He is very politically influential. But if you grabbed him, it wouldn't change any official leadership, right? The Cuban government would continue on. Right. Everybody formally in charge would remain formally in charge because they would still be in the country.

Right. And so when you talk to outside experts, it is that reason that in the end they see this as a threat, as pressure, as a signal more than a sign of what is to come. Okay. If it's appropriately viewed as a threat, as a kind of chip in these negotiations, in this game of chicken that's happening. To what end? Like, what does the U.S. actually want from Cuba? Is the goal really wholesale regime change? They've been a little unclear in their public comments about this, and certainly the Cuban government wants to know what the U.S. demands are. But we did. in recent days start to get some answers. John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, last week, took a trip to Cuba, first Trump cabinet official to go down there. He delivered a message to the grandson

of Raul Castro, the interior minister, and the head of Cuba's intelligence services. And he talked vaguely about economic and political change, but he also... also said that Cuba can't be a platform for America's adversaries. And the Cubans knew exactly what he was talking about. That was a reference to the Chinese intelligence post and the Russian military posts that are on Cuba. These are installations. The Russians and the Chinese used to intercept communications inside the U.S. They are listening to Southcom. They may be listening up at Central Command.

These are very important military bases, and the U.S. wants them closed. And this is a concrete ask, and it is something the Cubans could do, right? Right. This is a step that they could take. There is a path to reduce that intelligence collection there, to either close the base or limit the number of people there or kind of restrict it. Radcliffe basically told the Cubans, look, if you want to do a deal with us, you got to kick our adversaries out. They're spying on us from your country. They have to go. What else did he ask for?

Well, the economic and political demands were a lot more vague. But we are getting a sense of the kinds of things the U.S. wants to see. And they range from more extreme to easier things to do. But they start off with reducing the power of the military industrial-backed conglomerate that controls a huge chunk of the Cuban economy. It could mean pushing more pragmatic, less dogmatic politicians forward. And it also could be a step toward free elections, right? Like you could see the U.S. pushing for elections at the local level to make those more meaningful. And that would be a real win.

It would not be regime change. It would not be a total change in communist rule. But it would be a meaningful step forward. And would one of the smaller, more incremental of those demands, be seen as a real success by the Trump administration? I mean, in Venezuela, they had this trophy of Nicholas Maduro being brought to the U.S. to theoretically face justice. In this case, if they aren't going to extract Castro, and that's largely a symbolic move, if the goal is really these more modest changes, you could see the administration running the risk of being seen as making a common. with an authoritarian government in Cuba while allowing them to remain in power.

No? That is a very important point and one that we can't lose sight of. Inside the United States, there is a big constituency, an important constituency, an influential constituency for regime change in Cuba. Cuban Americans have wanted for years and years to end communism. control of Cuba, anything that is short of that is going to feel inadequate. On the other hand, the Trump administration knows that sometimes when they reach for the big goal, they fall short.

And when they reach for the smaller, they can be more successful. I assume when you're referring to reaching for a big and difficult to achieve goal, you're talking about Iran. Yes. If you remember, on the night of the Iran war this year, President Trump delivered a video address to the nation, and he talked expansively about war goals. He talked about regime change. He called on the Iranian people to rise up. Right. And pushing for regime change is not a narrow mission. It is not something that is easy to achieve. It's something that the U.S. has struggled with in war after war. They can do it, but it usually requires a very big ground force and unleashes forces that are out of anyone's control.

Iran is a mess. Like, they don't have a peace deal that's lasting yet. they're contemplating starting strikes again. The Supreme Leader has been killed, but the government is as hard line as ever. They are not backing down from their nuclear program demands. And if you look at President Trump's other foreign military adventures, foreign operations, they've been much more narrowly cast with a very specific goal to kill a specific leader, to bomb a specific nuclear site, or in the Venezuela case,

to capture Nicholas Maduro. When he has drawn the goals narrowly, he has seen more success. And so if you look at Cuba, the kind of long-term goal of many Cuban Americans of a Cuba free of communism, that's going to be harder to achieve. But if you look for more narrow goals,

reduction of the power of the military-industrial state, incremental steps toward elections. Those are achievable things. You could make meaningful progress. Even so, Julian, you more than anyone, know that Cuba has been in the sites of the CIA for a very long time. So why would the administration take this on right now, given everything you're saying, given that the administration is already in the middle of a war in the Middle East, that people are already skeptical of what the administration is doing abroad?

Why do this now? Well, as you just said, Cuba has been a thorn in America's side for decades and decades. This is not some adventure that came out of this administration's head, right? There have been generation of American leaders who have tried to change the government in Cuba. It is something that is very important to a powerful constituency in the United States. And Trump sees himself as someone who can cut through bureaucracy as someone who can solve problems that have bedeviled the United States for years. He's someone who has little patience for progress or history who believes through the force of will. He can fix them or change them.

And also, we do have Iran right now. And Iran looks like a really difficult problem. And all of a sudden, he's got Cuba and his pressure campaign is working better than they thought. So there's a sense here among some in the administration that Cuba could be the success that helps them move past the morass of Iran. Trump may essentially just be looking for a win, you're saying. If we know anything about Donald Trump, he's not. always looking for a win. Well, Julian,

thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol against a pro-Trump mob on January 6th

challenged the constitutionality of a new $1.8 billion fund that they warned could reward. those who participated in the attack. Their lawsuit will answer the question of whether anyone has the legal standing to stop the Trump administration from creating the controversial fund. That fund is expected to make payments to Trump supporters, including January 6th rioters, who claim their prosecutions were politically motivated.

And... So what I realized was a lot of Americans were not homophobic but thought they were supposed to be. And as more of us came out and our reality confronted the prejudice, we made great gains. Barney Frank, the blunt-talking former congressman from Massachusetts, who, for decades, was the most prominent gay politician in America, and who wrote the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. financial regulations since the Great Depression has died. He was 86. His signature legislation, the Dodd-Frank law, passed after the 2008 financials, financial crisis. It regulated derivatives that had worsened the crisis, imposed new rules on large banks, and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an industry watchdog.

Asked about complaints from business leaders about the law, Frank scoffed. Well, I hate to say this, but the infection I get most is that the feelings are hurt. Oh, you were rude to us. You said we were fat cats. You heard our feelings. Get over it. I mean, I'm in the kind of business. where people say rude things about us all the time. I've said that to them. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Nevetsky and Diana Wynn, with help from Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Linn and Michael Benoit.

Contains music by Alicia Bette Etup, Marion Lazzano, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Chitrow-F. See you tomorrow.