``Our Cuba policy is in the hands of the Cuban government, not because it has to be but because that's where this administration has left it,'' Richard Nuccio, the president's former special adviser for Cuba policy, said Saturday.
Richard Feinberg, former Latin American specialist for the National Security Council, noted that even Clinton recently admitted U.S. policy toward Cuba has not resulted in any appreciable change in the Cuban regime.
``That's a rather remarkable admission for a president after 35 years [of the U.S. embargo of Cuba]. And even more remarkable that that admission would no way imply in his own mind that we should think about a new policy,'' Feinberg said.
The two men spoke at a conference of the Latin American Studies Association, which includes thousands of U.S. and foreign scholars.
Nuccio resigned from the State Department after the CIA canceled his security clearance for leaking revelations about its ties to Guatemalan military officers accused of involvement in killing a U.S. citizen. He now works for Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J.
Feinberg left the government in March 1996 to take a post at the University of California in San Diego.
Both said the administration's lack of preparedness contributed to the passage of the Helms-Burton Act in March 1996, largely in response to Cuba's downing of two small airplanes flown by a Miami-based exile group. Clinton earlier opposed the act.
``Under the Helms-Burton Act, the basic model of change in Cuba is societal collapse leading to a violent upheaval,'' Nuccio said, adding that such violence could lead to U.S. military intervention.
That, he said, along with the prospect of mass immigration, was the chief Cuban threat to U.S. interests.
The Helms-Burton law is intended to punish foreign companies that do business in Cuba using property confiscated from Americans after the 1959 revolution.
It also removes the president's ability to ease parts of the U.S. embargo of Cuba in order to encourage democratic changes.
``There is no administration other than this one in the post-Cold War period that would have surrendered as much executive authority to Congress on any issue . . . as President Clinton did in signing the Helms-Burton legislation. That's what's wrong,'' Nuccio said.
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