2 at Interests Section in D.C., 2 from U.N. tied to spying case
By Tim Johnson. Tjohnson@herald.com.
The Miami Herald, November
6, 2002.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Tuesday that it is expelling two
Cuban diplomats and asking two others to leave the United States in retaliation
for a U.S. senior intelligence analyst spying for Havana.
''In response to unacceptable activities, the United States decided to take
strong action,'' said Charles Barclay, a State Department spokesman for the
Bureau of Western Hemisphere affairs.
Almost three weeks ago, a federal judge handed down a 25-year jail term to a
senior analyst at the top-secret Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Belen Montes,
for her lengthy spying career. Montes is the most important spy for Cuba ever
unmasked within the U.S. intelligence community.
Two diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section, the island's diplomatic
mission in Washington, were informed last Friday that they had 10 days to leave
the country, Barclay said. He identified them as Oscar Redondo Toledo and
Gustavo Machín Gómez, both with a diplomatic rank of first
secretary.
''These expulsions represent our response to the unacceptable Cuban
activities for which Ana Belen Montes was arrested and convicted,'' Barclay
said. "The Montes matter is extremely serious.''
Separately, two diplomats at Cuba's mission to the United Nations in New
York City ''have been requested to leave the United States for activities deemed
outside their official capacity,'' Barclay said. He did not identify them.
Counter-espionage sources describe the Cuban mission in New York as a nexus
for very active intelligence operations within the United States.
While U.S. officials did not say the four Cuban diplomats directed Montes
during her 16-year espionage career, they indicated that the diplomats had
intelligence functions.
One senior Bush administration official indicated their official diplomatic
ranks could conceal higher ranks within the Cuban government. Asked why more
senior Cuban diplomats were not expelled, the official replied: "Their
ranks are what they tell us they are.''
One of the Cuban diplomats in Washington declared persona non grata, Machín,
has variously served as a spokesman, first secretary or business affairs
secretary since 1997.
The other diplomat, Redondo, appeared to keep a lower profile.
Under rules that govern diplomats accredited to the United Nations, the
State Department was prohibited from flatly expelling the two Cuban diplomats at
that mission.
Machín's expulsion is considered a blow to the Cuban government
because he has experience in dealing with the business and congressional
community.
''The expulsion of Mr. Machín hits at the epicenter of the Cuban
interface with the business community and the U.S. Congress,'' said John
Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which assists
companies seeking to trade with Cuba.
Kavulich said that before coming to Washington, Machín had been
deputy head of the U.S. department at Cuba's Foreign Ministry, frequently
dealing with U.S. business representatives in that role as well. Machín,
whose father was killed with Cuba's revolutionary hero Ché Guevara in
Bolivia, early last week left the United States for the birth of a child.
The expulsions are likely to increase tensions with Havana -- even as the
Cuban government has found growing bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for prying
open the 4-decade-old U.S. embargo of Fidel Castro's communist regime.
President Bush has vowed to maintain the embargo.
The last time Washington expelled a Cuban diplomat was in February 2000,
when it told envoy José Imperatori to leave the country. His expulsion
followed allegations linking him to a U.S. immigration official, Mariano Faget,
accused of spying for Cuba.
Montes, a 45-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, confessed in March to
revealing the identities of at least four U.S. intelligence agents and providing
coded secret and top-secret information on defense matters to Havana in a spying
career that began in 1985.
Montes underwent extensive monthslong debriefing by counterterrorism experts
to determine the extent of her espionage. The FBI has publicly disclosed only
minimal details about her betrayals, saying it is too sensitive to reveal more.
At her sentencing, an unrepentant Montes declared that U.S. policy toward
Cuba is ''cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly.'' She said she "felt
morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose
our values and our political system on it.''
Havana kept mum following the arrest of Montes at a Washington military base
in September 2001. But two days after her sentencing, Cuban Foreign Minister
Felipe Pérez Roque said that he felt ''profound respect and admiration''
for Montes.
''Her actions were moved by ethics and by an admirable sense of justice,''
he said.
Herald staff writer Juan O. Tamayo contributed to this report, which was
supplemented with Herald wire services. |