Three Ground Zero workers who accompanied filmmaker Michael Moore on a trip to Cuba for medical treatment featured in his new movie Sicko charged Friday they were targeted by the U.S. government because of their participation.''It's ridiculous after what we did for the city and the country on that day, that they won't allow us to go 90 miles offshore to get treated,'' said Reggie Cervantes, a 46-year-old EMT who worked with only a thin dust mask after the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
The three workers expect to receive a letter from OFAC at the Treasury Department, which spends more resources tracking Cuba travel violators than Al Qaeda terrorists, similar to the one Michael Moore received after taking them and several other emergency workers to Cuba to seek medical aid at the US prison camps Guantanamo Bay.
Moore went to Guantanamo with the emergency workers after they were denied compensation for medical treatment they undertook for injuries incurred while working during the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
To counter evidence that the Bush administration ordered the mistreatment and abuse of detainees at the prison camps at Guantanamo, Bush claimed that detainees there got the best treatment including complete and free medical care.
As part of his forthcoming documentary "Sicko," Moore sought to bring the emergency workers to Guantanamo to receive the same free care that people whom the administration is claiming are our worst enemies are supposedly getting.Moore and the emergency workers than visited Cuba itself to witness Cuba's advanced and universal health care system in operation.
The Treasury Department ignored Moore's request for permission to travel to Cuba as a journalist. Now the Bush administration has launched an investigation of Moore's trip.
--Joel Wendland
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