In the United States, we have strong views on terrorism. Since September 11, 2001, the sentiment against terrorism has been one of the primary political and social issues. Presidents have said that terrorism is not to be tolerated or negotiated with.
What is defined as terrorism can be fluid, however. The United States' relationship with Cuba, for example, has created an interesting history of attacks, arrests and bureaucracy. In 1998, Cuban intelligence agents in Florida uncovered a terrorist plot to blow up a plane full of tourists. The information was delivered to the President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
FBI agents worked in Cuba to research and find evidence surrounding the plot, but made no arrests or attempts to find the known terrorists. The intelligence agents from Cuba, however, were arrested and tried for spying. They were tried in Miami, a city with a history notoriously anti-Cuban.
All five of the Cuban spies were convicted of espionage and treason, and four of them are still in U.S. prisons today. This seems like the normal procedure for treating spies, but if it had been U.S. agents uncovering a terrorist plot on behalf of a foreign country, we would demand the agents to be returned home.
By the late 1990s, Miami juries had become so notorious in cases involving Cuban exiles that federal prosecutors in a different case opposed a defense motion for a change of venue from Puerto Rico to Miami for some Cuban exiles accused of plotting to assassinate Castro.
Miami “is a very difficult venue for securing a conviction for so-called freedom fighters,” former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey explained to the Miami Herald at the time. “I had some convictions, but some acquittals that defied all reason.”
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