We know more people are refused licenses than are approved. Here is our chance to document and make transparent for Congress, our many frustrations dealing with OFAC trying to promote people-to-people relations with Cuba. Please respond, this could help tip the scales: Nothing is 'too stupid' to report!

Friends:

As part of their work on Cuba policy, members of the Cuba Working Group in the House of Representatives are keeping an eye on the Cuba licensing activity of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

In that connection they have asked me to help them by gathering information on actual licensing decisions that have been made by OFAC. So I am contacting a wide number of people, and I encourage you to pass this note on to others.

This is simply an attempt to discover patterns in OFAC's treatment of Cuba license applications: what is approved, what is not, how regulatory criteria are being interpreted, how applicants are treated. I hope that this information exercise will shed light on impressions many of us have about trends in OFAC's actions on license applications. License refusals are just as important as license approval.

I'm interested in the following:

- Approvals and denials of license applications for travel, people-to-people programs, information gathering, humanitarian or religious activity -- any activity under the Cuba sections of the assets control regulations.

- Questions asked of applicants and criteria applied to applications. Of special interest is information about changes in licensing criteria, for example as applied to renewals of licenses under a particular category.

- How applicants were treated and how long it took for applications to be decided.

- Enforcement actions and efforts by OFAC to gather information about American travelers to Cuba.

- Anything else that you think Members of Congress should know.

I am NOT asking you to make your name public. If you want to give me information in confidence, I will keep your identity and that of your organization confidential.

My role is simply to compile information. If I write an interesting report, it is of course up to the Members of Congress to decide on any action that may follow. In the past, they have contacted OFAC to raise specific policy issues and to ask OFAC to act on certain cases. (The Cuba Working Group is in favor of eliminating all restrictions on travel to Cuba.)

5837, or you can call me at 703 522 9639.

Thank you.

Regards,

Phil Peters