CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

June 12, 2001



Cuba News

Miami Herald

Published Tuesday, June 12, 2001 in the Miami Herald

Juror: Disks made spy case easy

By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com

Deliberating last week on the fates of five Cuban spies, juror David G. Buker glanced through thousands of pages of secret documents seized from the defendants' apartments on coded computer disks and wondered, "Why did they keep this stuff?''

"I don't know what they were thinking,'' Buker said Monday, "but I'm happy for the people of the United States that they did!''

In the first interview with a juror from the six-month spying trial, Buker, 45, said the secret documents were the prosecution's best evidence; that the lead defense lawyer "insulted our intelligence'' with parts of his case; and that the government was "darn right'' in prosecuting spymaster Gerardo Hernández for murder conspiracy in connection with the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down that claimed four lives.

Buker is computer systems manager of the South Florida Natural Resources Center, the science wing of Everglades National Park. He and his 11 fellow jurors convicted the five men on all charges Friday. Three of the spies face a maximum of life in prison when they are sentenced in the fall. Two face 10-year maximum terms.

Deciding the case was made easier, Buker said, because of the secret documents. More than 2,000 pages of communications between Havana and Miami were on coded disks seized by the FBI.

"It wasn't the complete case, but it was damaging,'' he said. "There wasn't much the defense could say about them. They were found in their apartments, and they said a lot of damaging things.''

To make their deliberations easier, the jurors started last Monday with the 20 counts at the end of the indictment charging the spies with acting as unregistered foreign agents and possessing fraudulent documents. Then, they came back to the three conspiracy charges, Buker said.

"The fact that we'd already gone through and found them guilty of those individual [foreign agent] counts formed the basis of then looking at the conspiracy aspects,'' he said.

"We were very deliberate and methodical in going through each count'' and reviewing the judge's instructions. The 20 individual counts took until Wednesday afternoon to resolve, with more agreement than not from the outset, Buker said.

The unregistered foreign agent charges "pretty much were very clear,'' he said. "They were hiding the fact that they were representatives of the Cuban government.''

Defense arguments that the spies didn't have to register with the attorney general because they were sent to Miami for temporary assignments "didn't wash with anybody,'' Buker said.

As for the fraudulent documents, they were there for jurors to see.

Late Wednesday afternoon the jurors started deliberating on Count 1, conspiracy to act as unregistered foreign agents, and Count 2, conspiracy to commit espionage. They started on Count 3 -- the controversial murder conspiracy -- by about noon Thursday, reaching a final verdict late Friday afternoon.

The key to the espionage conviction was that the indictment charged a conspiracy, not actual espionage, Buker said. That meant it didn't matter whether the spies were successful in obtaining U.S. national defense secrets -- only that they had tried.

"Contrary to what the defense said, it was very clear in the documents that they were being urged to get as much as they could, secret information included, whatever way they could do it,'' Buker said.

Nor did jurors buy defense arguments that spying on U.S. military installations and exile groups was justified to protect Cuba from a possible invasion or terrorist bombings.

"We totally rejected that because what they were trying to do was damaging to the United States and helpful to Cuba. We also found that argument irrelevant because there's no exemption in the law'' that allows spies to conspire to commit espionage "for a good cause.''

Count 3, the murder conspiracy, nearly ended in a deadlock with one or two holdouts, according to an alternate juror who spoke to The Herald on Sunday.

Buker declined to comment in detail on the deliberations.

But he did say that the "primary issue'' was whether prosecutors had proved that Hernández knew in advance that Cuba planned to shoot down the Brothers planes.

"There were various different pieces of evidence that different people found compelling and so it wasn't necessarily one thing that answered that question in everyone's mind,'' he said.

Most compelling for Buker were shortwave radio messages between Havana and Cuba warning that spies René González and Juan Pablo Roque should not fly with Brothers for several days in February 1996 -- including the day of the shoot-down.

"To me, those messages not to fly on those days only meant one thing: They were going to shoot down the planes,'' he said, adding that other evidence showed Hernández had passed along those warnings to the two men.

Buker said the jurors all agreed, despite defense lawyer Paul McKenna's arguments, that the air attack occurred in international airspace.

Much of McKenna's case "insulted our intelligence,'' Buker said, especially when McKenna argued that a blurry object seen from Brothers founder José Basulto's Cessna immediately before the shoot-down was a Cuban MiG flying a warning pass, and when McKenna used Cuban radar data to try to put the attack in Cuban airspace.

"I don't know whether Mr. McKenna totally misjudged this jury or what, but I would have to say this was not a jury that could be easily fooled,'' Buker said.

McKenna could not be reached for comment Monday.

To those who questioned whether the jury would convict because it had no Cuban Americans, Buker said: "We're humans, we care about our country. I'm absolutely convinced that good people of any race, ethnicity or nationality can evaluate information. I wouldn't have convicted anybody just because they were Cuban Communists, if that's the implication, and I have to hope Cuban Americans wouldn't have either.''

Radio and TV Martí director resigns post

By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com

Lawyer Herminio San Román, who directed Radio and TV Martí's move to Miami, has submitted his resignation from the U.S. government operation that beams broadcasts to Cuba -- and several celebrated Miami broadcasters are being considered for the post.

Included on the short-list to become director of the U.S. Office of Cuban Broadcasting: veteran Spanish radio commentator Salvador Lew, 72 and Ninoska Pérez Castellón, 51, a spokeswoman for the Cuban American National Foundation and host of the popular Spanish call-in radio show -- Ninoska a la Una, Ninoska at One.

Also in consideration, according to political sources in Washington and Miami who are knowledgeable about the transition: former Radio Martí director Antonio "Tony'' Navarro, 78, of Key Biscayne, and documentary film maker Eduardo Alberto Palmer, 70.

"If I were to bet my money, I would bet on Salvador,'' radio announcer Agustín Acosta said Monday from WQBA, AM-1140, citing Lew's "many years of experience'' and "excellent reputation'' throughout the Spanish-language broadcast community.

Acosta, whose name also came up as a possible successor to San Román, denied that he was in contention.

President Clinton chose 43-year-old San Román, a Cuban-American Democrat, to take the job in March 1997. A lawyer with Miami's Adorno & Zeder, he earned $133,000 year at the time of his resignation, had a staff of 163, a $22 million budget and "top secret'' FBI clearance.

"It has been a rewarding experience,'' San Román wrote President Bush in his resignation, which he released Monday to become effective July 27.

The post, he said, let him "honorably serve the U.S. and at the same time serve millions of Cubans whose basic human rights are violated every day, by promoting democracy, accurate and balanced information and clear dissemination of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba.''

San Román's departure had been widely expected because he's a life-long Democrat and the job is considered in some quarters to be a political plum for a party loyalist. Unlike an ambassadorship, it requires no congressional confirmation.

He declined to say Monday whether he had already clashed with the Bush administration.

During his four-plus years on the job, he relocated to Miami from Washington the division that produces both video and audio broadcasts aimed at Cuba.

For the past two years he also oversaw live broadcasts, a bid to make programming more dynamic despite Cuban jamming.

San Román's stewardship has had some controversy.

In March 1999, the State Department's inspector general told Congress that a panel of independent journalists had found "problems with balance, fairness, objectivity and adequate sourcing that impacted credibility . . . particularly the live broadcasts.''

San Román said that he would take the summer to decide what to do next, although he said he expected to return to law.

"I hope that the administration names someone quick,'' he said, explaining it could take two months for the FBI to do his successor's background checks.

Lew, 72, is an Independent. Born in Las Villas province in Cuba, he was educated as a lawyer and twice exiled -- from 1957 to 1959 after he was jailed for distributing literature against the Fulgencio Batista regime, then again in 1961 after his disillusionment with Fidel Castro.

He has been aligned with previous Republican administrations, notably that of the president's father, George Bush, who appointed Lew to the Radio Martí governing board in 1992. President Clinton renewed his appointment. In 1984, Lew visited Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office to deliver 100,000 letters of support of U.S. Central American policy.

Lew may be best known as the former general manager and founder of WRHC-Cadena Azul, which he helped open in 1973. More recently he has been at home, convalescing from multiple heart bypass surgery. He could not be reached for comment.

Pérez Castellón, meanwhile, is a registered Republican who is closely identified with the influential Cuban lobby. The wife of once-jailed Cuban dissident Roberto Martín Pérez,

Several celebrated Miami broadcasters are being considered for the agency's top job.

she has been known to fake a Spanish accent and ring up Cuban government offices or island hotels to illustrate what she calls Cuba's policies of tourism apartheid.

Foundation officials describe her as among the most popular exile broadcasters to the island and rebroadcast her program to the island over their La Voz radio wing. They

During the ill-fated exile campaign to keep Elián González in the United States, Pérez Castellón occasionally acted as a national spokeswoman for the Cuban cause. Her national profile has diminished since, with a reorganization of the foundation hierarchy under heir Jorge Mas Santos that included the hiring of a professional executive director, Joe Garcia, and former U.S. Ambassador Dennis Hays as a vice president in the Washington office.

She was broadcasting Monday, but did not return a call to her foundation offices.

Navarro, who is a Democrat and a chemist by training, ran Radio Martí and introduced TV Martí during the first Bush administration.

A former director of Radio Europe and Radio Liberty, he is also the author of the 1981 book, Tocayo, about disenchantment with the Castro Revolution.

"I'm here if they need me,'' he said Monday evening. "I will think about it.''

Now retired and serving on several boards, Navarro said he had been contacted by President Bush's transition team about the job.

His aim, he said, would be to increase audience share, which plunged dramatically in the 1990s. He may be a long shot.

The transition team had said it would reappoint people to jobs they held during the earlier Bush and Reagan administrations.

Palmer, a Republican, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Copyright 2001 Miami Herald

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