Michael Moore probably didn’t get a Christmas card from the Bushes this year — or any year for that matter. But he did recently get a nice letter from OFAC telling him we was under investigation.

It seems that Moore made a trip to Cuba in March 2007 while filming his new film “Sicko” and it seems that he didn’t have a license. So why didn’t OFAC simply fire off a charging letter and tell Moore to open up his checkbook? Because, as the OFAC letter states,

OFAC has information indicating that you claimed to qualify under the provision for general license [sic] for full-time journalists

That evidence is probably an April 15 New York Post article where a producer for the film told the Post reporter that the film crew traveled to Cuba pursuant to a “”general license that allows for journalistic endeavors there.”

The OFAC letter demands that, if Moore is claiming the general license for journalists, Moore should:

provide evidence [he is] regularly employed as a journalist by a news-reporting organization.

The general license for journalists to travel to Cuba is set forth in 31 C.F.R. § 515.563 and it covers travel to Cuba by individuals “regularly employed as a journalist by a news-reporting organization.”

Now Moore’s occupation and employment are not exactly state secrets and should be well known even to folks chained to their desks in the Cuba section at OFAC. He’s a documentary film-maker. Documentary film-makers are journalists. He’s employed by his production company Dog Eat Dog which makes documentaries. Companies that make documentaries are news-reporting organizations plain and simple.

This is the first instance I am aware of where OFAC has challenged the bona fides of a documentary film-maker who has traveled to Cuba on the general license to make a documentary film. Charlize Theron traveled to Cuba, apparently on a general license, to make her documentary on Cuban hip-hop and she hasn’t been asked to cough up her journalistic credentials. Perhaps that was because her documentary criticized Castro’s pervasive censorship of the arts in Cuba.

Moore may be controversial. People might not agree with what he says and think he’s a big fat liar. But that doesn’t mean that he isn’t a journalist or that his documentary film company isn’t a news-gathering organization.

During an investigation of Col. William Steele for alleged improprieties in his oversight of the prison in Baghdad where high value detainees are kept, an interesting tidbit was revealed. Witnesses testified that Col. Steele provided Saddam Hussein with Cuban cigars. Hair dye too, but it’s the Cohibas that are causing the ruckus.

Army Brig. Gen. Kevin McBride of the 43rd Military Police Brigade of Rhode Island, who oversaw Iraq’s detention facilities while Steele was running Camp Cropper, said purchases of cigars for Saddam had been approved before either he or Steele assumed their commands.

OFAC mavens, of course, will understand that the folks over at OFAC are going to bust a gut over this. They are probably drafting a charging letter right now and trying to decide which military officials will be the happy recipients. Or maybe not.

The problem, you see, is that it’s not just illegal to import Cuban cigars. It’s illegal to buy them anywhere in the world even if you have no plans to bring them back to the United States. The “Cuban Cigar Update” posted on the OFAC website is succinct on this point:

The question is often asked whether United States citizens or permanent resident aliens of the United States may legally purchase Cuban origin goods, including tobacco and alcohol products, in a third country for personal use outside the United States. The answer is no.

Remember this the next time you’re in Europe and someone tries to slip you a Cohiba Cigar or a shot of Havana Club Rum.

(Via Export Boy.)

Last week OFAC released its typically opaque monthly report on recently imposed civil penalties. This report reveals that, once again, the full force of the Federal government was brought to bear on two hapless web surfers who bought some Cuban stogies over the Internet. We understand that a spokesman for Fidel Castro said that this OFAC action was the final straw and that Castro was, at last, going to resign and go into alcohol rehab, claiming that it was a serious drinking problem that caused him to become a communist dictator in the first place.

A.N. Deringer, the freight-forwarding company, was fined $700 for helping somebody or other export something or other to Iran.

The Kinecta Federal Credit Union coughed up $3,102 for initiating a funds transfer to a Cuban national. In case you haven’t heard of Kinecta, which started out as the Hughes Aircraft Employees Federal Credit Union, here’s an interesting little quote I found on Kinecta’s website from the its founder:

I went to Mr. Hughes’ office in Hollywood and talked to his secretary Nadine. I gave her all the facts and Mr. Hughes said, ‘Sure. Start the Credit Union. Just keep my name clean. I don’t want anything funny going on.’ I said, you can be sure of that. And Hughes Credit Union was born.

It’s a good thing Howard Hughes is no longer around to hear about this!

Finally a more substantial fine of $66,547.31 (every penny counts!) was imposed on G.E. subsidiary Datex-Ohmeda for shipments of medical equipment through Dubai to Iran made by its former subsidiary Spacelabs Medical . This enforcement action arose from a voluntary disclosure, no doubt one that was insisted on by OSI Systems when it bought Spacelabs from Datex-Ohmeda in 2004. Datex-Ohmeda was forced to spin-off Spacelabs as a condition to GE’s acquisition of Datex-Ohmeda’s parent company. It’s reasonable to suppose that Spacelabs’ Iranian problem was caught by a sharp-eyed lawyer for OSI (not me) during due diligence and that, as a result, OSI required the disclosure and required Datex-Ohmeda to pay any fine.

Oddly this is yet another recent case where medical equipment — which is of course eligible for a license to Iran under TSRA — is shipped without a license. It seems to me a heckuvalot easier just to get the license in the first place rather than go through the whole rigmarole of transshipping the goods through Dubai. What is going on here? Are there a large number of exporters that simply do not know about TSRA?

Steve Clemons, a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and a popular blogger who blogs at The Washington Note, has announced that he will soon be starting The Havana Note. He bills this new blog as a “new resource for those interested in yet another dimension of US foreign policy as well as evolving political realities in Cuba.” We certainly look forward to Clemons’s insights in this area, but regret to, er, note that he appears to have already gotten himself caught up in the byzantine complexities of the Cuba Sanctions Regulations administered by the Office of Foreign Asset Controls (“OFAC”).

In his announcement, Clemons says that The Havana Note will publish blog posts by Abel Prieto, Cuba’s Minister of Culture, whom Clemons recently met during a trip to Cuba:

[Prieto] said that he had thought of launching his own blog. He said he doodles all the time and might want to post some of these doodles with a few lines now and then. . . . But as i thought about it, the chances of Abel Prieto actually starting a blog . . . are pretty low. But. . .that said, Abel Prieto ought to send some doodles and commentary our way — to test the waters of blogging — and we’d be happy to post those as his original expression (allowed actually under the rules of the Treasury Department’s OFAC restrictions) on The Havana Note (and HuffPost!)

Clemons might want to go back and read the regulations a bit more carefully if he thinks that he and The Huffington Post can post Prieto’s doodles and commentary without risking a nastygram from the Cuba police at OFAC.

Clemons apparently got the idea that he could be the blogospheric amanuensis for Prieto from the General License for Publishing Activities which OFAC released back in 2004. The purpose of that General License was to get rid of the much-maligned “camera-ready” rule. Under the “camera-ready” rule, articles from authors in sanctioned countries could be published under the information exception only if they supplied “camera ready” copy to the publisher. Typesetting and editing the article were deemed to be services that the publisher couldn’t render under that exception. Under the General License, publishers may engage in “all transactions necessary and ordinarily incident to the publishing and marketing” of manuscripts, books and newspapers in paper and electronic form.”

Unfortunately for Clemons’s plans there is a significant exception. Under section 515.577(a) of the Cuba Sanctions Regulations, this license doesn’t apply if the author is “any person occupying the positions identified in [section] 515.570(a)(3).” And the Minister of Culture is one of the positions identified in section 515.570(a)(3).

Oops.

Regular readers know that we oppose all unilateral sanctions programs, including the U.S. embargo on Cuba. So we are not agreeing with the policy that forbids Clemons to publish Prieto’s thoughts on his new blog. We also think that significant First Amendment interests are implicated by applying OFAC’s rules to prevent such publication. But that being said, I’d be surprised if OFAC doesn’t put up a fight to stop Clemons from printing Prieto.