The Record Hackensack, New Jersey Tuesday, August 10, 1965 - Page 26
Student Travel To Cuba Has Been Halted
Washington (CDN) — The United States Government, in a little-noticed victory for its Cuban policy, appears to have halted travel by U. S. student groups to the Communist island.
Fifty-eight students traveled to Cuba in defiance of State Department restrictions. They gave a propaganda boost for Fidel Castro, freely issuing pro-Cuba statements while on the island and after their return to this country.
FOUR REASONS
There appear to be four possible reasons why student travel to Cuba has stopped:
1. Eleven persons have been indicted, two of them twice, in connection with the 1963 and 1964 trips.
2. The Supreme Court handed down a decision this spring supporting U. S. restrictions on Cuban travel.
3. Cuba is short of money and may have decided to cut costs by not paying the bills for the students this year.
4. The Progressive Labor Movement, a pro-Peking Communist organization, which spearheaded the two Cuba trips, seems to have turned most of its attention to other subjects.
There are two indictments pending in the travel cases, one naming four persons for conspiring to organize the 1963 trip, and another naming nine in connection with the 1964 visit.
TRIAL IN FALL
Lee Levi Laub and Phillip Abbott Luce, both of New York and both associated with the Progressive Labor Movement, were named in both indictments.
The cases are expected to come to trial in the U. S. District Court in Brooklyn, N. Y., in October or November. The defendants face maximum penalties of 5 years in prison or $10,000 fines.
Legal observers think that the Government's case has been significantly strengthened by a decision handed down by the Supreme Court last May 3.
In a lawsuit brought by Louis Zemmel of Middlefield, Conn., the court ruled 6 to 3 that the State Department could constitutionally refuse to issue a visa for travel to Cuba.
Zemmel was not associated with the student groups and never traveled to Cuba. He brought suit when the State Department refused to give him a visa to go.
A U. S. passport is not sufficient for travel to Cuba. A visa is also required—a special stamp which the State Department has issued to few people other than newsmen. The Department recently, for example, refused to issue a visa for U. S. chess champion Bobby Fischer to play in a tournament in Havana.
The students flew to Cuba by way of eastern Europe, on tickets estimated to have cost several hundred dollars each round trip. Perhaps, observers here suggest, Castro decided that the students weren't worth the money this year.
