Jorge Mas Canosa

Jorge Lincoln Mas Canosa (21 September 1939 – 24 November 1997) was a Cuban-American businessman who founded the Cuban American National Foundation and MasTec, a publicly traded company.

Regarded within the United States as a powerful lobbyist on Cuban and anti-Castro political positions, he was labeled a "counterrevolutionary" by the Cuban Communist Party.

Mas Canosa was the driving force behind the creation of both Radio Marti and TV Marti and was appointed chairman of the advisory panel by President Ronald Reagan.

Jorge Mas Canosa was born and raised in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba on September 21, 1939.

His father (Jorge Mas Santos) was the son of Antoni Mas Oliver (from Can Tranquil) and Catalina Carbonell Monjo (from Roqueta), Spanish immigrants from Maria de la Salut, in Majorca.

At age fourteen, Mas was arrested for his role in an anti-Batista radio broadcast.

Mas Canosa was sent by his father to the United States where he studied at a Presbyterian Junior College in Maxton, North Carolina.

He returned to Cuba in 1959 a week after Castro seized power, and briefly attended law school at Oriente University.

Not long after his return to Cuba, he was implicated in antigovernment activities by the Castro regime and arrested for plastering anti-Castro stickers on buildings.

In the early 1960s, he was trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs Invasion and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

Under his leadership, the Cuban-American national Foundation received criticism for its role in covert operations in Cuba.

In 1960, he fled Cuba for the United States and settled in Miami, Florida, where he joined the Cuban exile force being trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to launch the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

During the invasion, Mas Canosa's boat was held offshore during the invasion and after a short time in the United States Army, he left the army.

After the army, Mas Canosa held blue-collar jobs, washed dishes and delivered milk to support his family.

In the early 1960s Mas Canosa was deeply involved with the CIA-backed group RECE (Cuban Representation in Exile), and, according to his brother Ricardo, its military arm, CORU (Commandos of the United Revolutionary Organizations), an alliance of twenty men of the most extreme anti-Castro groups run by dedicated militants such as Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and Ignacio and Guillermo Novo.

The New York Times reported that he devoted his time to the anti-Castro movement and raised money to obtain weapons and research locations in the Caribbean which could be used as a base for attacks on Cuba.

In 1961, he married Irma Santos, his highschool sweetheart from Santiago.

Mas Canosa also worked as a broadcaster at Radio Swan, a CIA anti Castro propaganda station, under the tutelage of David Atlee Phillips.

Through his connections with RECE, Mas Canosa met Ignacio Iglesias and Hector Torres and joined their telephone cable company Iglesias & Torres in 1968.

In 1971, he acquired the firm for $50,000 and translated the former name into the English form Church & Tower.

The organization would go on to become the foundation of a telecommunications empire and multinational corporation MasTec.

Mr. Mas would become one of the wealthiest Hispanic businessmen in the United States, with a net worth of over $100 million at the time of his death.

In 1981, Mas Canosa and Raul Masvidal established the non-profit Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).

Throughout his leadership of the organization, Canosa and CANF held immense influence over the U.S policy with Cuba.

Mas said he only met North once, in either late 1984 or early 1985, during a White House visit.

However, North's notebook refers to a Jorge Mas a number of times.

In 1986, Mr. Mas challenged City Commissioner Joe Carollo, to a duel on a field of honor at an undisclosed place in Central America.

Mr. Carollo agreed, but only with water pistols.

Mas Canosa's friend Félix Rodríguez confirmed at a Senate hearing in 1988 that he was given $50,000 from Mas Canosa to pass on to Oliver North.

Throughout his life, Mas Canosa was involved in several highly publicized lawsuits and personal feuds.

Later in 1990 a Dade County jury found that Mas Canosa had libeled his own brother, Ricardo, and ordered him to pay $900,000.

Congressman Robert Torricelli credited Mas Canosa with aiding him in the design of the 1994 Cuban Democracy Act and the Helms-Burton Act.

During the Iran–Contra affair, the name Jorge Mas and four phone numbers (including Mas Canosa's private home line) were found in the notes of Oliver North.

Mas Canosa suggested that Oliver North was referring to another Jorge Mas and denied ever providing money to North.

In 1996, Jorge Mas Canosa debated Ricardo Alarcón who at the time was the leader of the Cuban National Assembly of Popular Power.

The debate was broadcast on CBS-TeleNoticias and both participants answered questions from journalists and responded to each other's comments.

A question was posed to see if the two would support each other if a democratic election was held in Cuba.

Mas Canosa responded in the affirmative:"Yes sir, if Mr. Alarcón won in a free and democratic election - one that allows political parties and access to mass communication - we would support him."

Alarcón said no with his reasoning being "Because he's not Cuban."

In 1998, The New York Times published several articles on Mas Canosa's relationship with Luis Posada Carriles, a militant anti-communist Cuban exile.