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 |