Imagine, say, Jesse Helms or Pat Buchanan, visiting South Africa at the same time Wright and Jackson visited Cuban, then yelling “Viva Botha!” Our ears would STILL be ringing from the media uproar.

But have you ever heard of Eusebio Penalver? He lived in Miami for almost 20 years and would have been a cinch for the media to track down. Ever see a CNN interview with him? Ever see him on 60 Minutes? Ever read about him in the New York Times? The Boston Globe? Ever hear about him on NPR during Black History Month? Ever hear the NAACP or Congressional Black Caucus mention him?

Why do I bother asking?

Jackson and Wright's Cuban pilgrimage was arranged by the Cuban Council of Churches, who sprang for the full $300,000 tab. “ I have been affiliated with the Cuba Council of Churches since the 1980s,” boasted Reverend Jeremiah Wright in a sermon just last year. “I have several close Cuban friends who work with the Cuba Council of Churches and you have heard me preach about our affiliation and the Black Theology Project’s trips to Cuba.” And naturally the kicker: “Our denomination’s Global Ministries is committed to calling for an end to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba.”

This same denomination, needless to add, clamored FOR sanctions against South Africa.

The Cuban Council of Churches, according to Cuban intelligence defector, Juan Vives, is an arm of Cuba's ICAP (Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos) itself an arm of Cuba's DGI, Cuba's secret police, founded and mentored by the KGB and East German STASI. the ICAP's long-time chieftan was Rene Cruz Rodriguez whose meteoric rise through Cuba's Stalinist bureaucracy was facilitated by his diligence as an early executioner, often beating out Che Guevara and Raul Castro themselves in his zeal to shatter the firing-squad victim's skull with a coup d' grace from his .45. Also, on Nov. 5, 1982 a Dade County, Fla., grand jury indicted Rene Rodriguez Cruz, for drug smuggling.

Courtesy of Cuban-American professor, Tony de la Cova, we have dramatic proof of how some of Jeremiah Wright's “close friends” distinguished themselves as Cuban Revolutionaries.