NOTHING, PRESIDENT CLINTON KNEW, could make up for the loss of their loved ones. But at least the families of Americans murdered in terrorist attacks should have the right to sue the nations that dispatched the killers. About that he was adamant. As he stood before the cameras on Feb. 26, 1996 — two days after the Cuban Air Force murdered four unarmed Americans who were flying a humanitarian mission over the Florida Straits — his sincerity seemed beyond question.
Calling the shootdown "an appalling reminder of the nature of the Cuban regime — repressive, violent, scornful of international law," Clinton urged that the victims' families be permitted to seek legal redress.
"I am asking that Congress pass legislation that will provide immediate compensation to the families — something to which they are entitled under international law — out of Cuba's blocked assets here in the United States. If Congress passes this legislation, we can provide the compensation immediately."
Within weeks Congress passed the law Clinton wanted — the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. The president signed it with much fanfare. It empowered American citizens for the first time to seek damages in federal court from foreign governments that sponsor terrorism and to collect the judgment out of those governments' frozen assets in the United States.
Among those invited to the signing ceremony was Stephen Flatow, whose daughter Alisa had been murdered a year earlier. A Brandeis University student spending a semester abroad, she was one of seven victims killed when a terrorist trained by Islamic Jihad blew up the bus they were riding.
![]() Stephen Flatow with Alisa at her high school graduation in 1992 |
Flatow decided to invoke the new law and file suit against Iran, Islamic Jihad's chief backer. When he notified Clinton of his intentions — he met the president at a fund-raiser — Clinton said: "I know what you're doing. We're behind you 100 percent." Sure enough, when Flatow and his lawyers asked the government for data on Iranian assets, the information was readily provided. When they needed to serve documents on the Iranian government, the State Department rushed to help.
"We didn't take on the responsibility of suing a foreign country lightly," Flatow told a Senate hearing last week. "In fact, we might not have done it at all if not for the very clear signals from the Clinton administration that it would back us."
Meanwhile, the families of the men shot down by Cuban missiles — Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, and Mario de la Pena — went to court as well. They, too, had been encouraged by the Clinton administration. In private meetings in Washington they were assured that the government would support their efforts to seek compensation from the Cuban government. Relying on that assurance, they filed suit.
In December 1997, the Florida families were awarded $187 million in damages by the federal court in Miami. Three months later, Alisa Flatow's parents won a $247.5 million judgment against the government of Iran.
Overnight, everything changed.
Suddenly the administration was doing everything it could to prevent the families from collecting. The Treasury Department refused to release any Iranian or Cuban assets. Dismayed, Congress passed an amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Act that stripped Treasury of its power to thwart the families. Clinton signed the new bill — then turned around and signed a directive suspending it for reasons of "national security."
When the Florida families' lawyers beseeched the court for help in enforcing the judgments they had won, they were stunned to discover that the administration was working to defeat them.
"No words can possibly explain our shock when we went to court," said Maggie Khuly, Armando Alejandre's sister, at the Senate hearing last week, "and found US attorneys sitting down at the same table with Cuba's attorneys. How can you explain to a mother who has lost her son, a wife who has lost her husband, that their own government is taking the murderers' side?"
The administration argues that frozen assets provide leverage for US diplomats negotiating with terrorist states. It claims that permitting such assets to be seized would endanger US properties overseas. And it maintains that allowing the families of the murdered pilots to collect their judgment would be unfair to the thousands of Cuban-Americans who have longstanding claims for property stolen by the Castro regime.
That last argument is specious. The law has never allowed refugees to settle property claims out of frozen assets; Cuban immigrants were specifically told as much when they registered their claims.
But even the administration's "valid" arguments are moot. It has been 3½ years since Congress debated the wisdom of making blocked assets available to the victims of terrorism and voted to permit it. The Anti-Terrorism Act is the law of the land. Clinton's responsibility is not to undermine it but to enforce it — especially since it was he who demanded the law in the first place.
The president's betrayal has infuriated the families' supporters in Congress, especially Senator Connie Mack of Florida, their foremost champion. "What kind of message are we sending," he asks, "when the US government chooses to protect terrorists from US law and deny justice to American citizens?"
To lose a loved one to terrorism is an agony few of us will ever know. That the president would compound that agony by promoting the interests of the killers over those of their victims is unspeakable. But if he feels twinges of remorse for the pain he is causing the families of those who died, he has at least this consolation: In Teheran and Havana, his actions are a source of considerable delight.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
-- ## --
Follow Jeff Jacoby on X (aka Twitter).
Discuss his columns on Facebook.
Want to read something different? Sign up for "Arguable," Jeff Jacoby's free weekly email newsletter.