By Rui Ferreira . El Nuevo Herald. Published Tuesday, August 22, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Attorneys for two alleged Cuban spies were unsuccessful in a bid to bring a Cuban military officer to Florida to testify as a defense witness at their clients' trial.
Jack R. Blumenfeld and William Norris, who represent defendants Luis Medina and Antonio Guerrero, visited Havana Aug. 6 to 11 to try to persuade Interior Ministry authorities to let the officer -- identified only as "Col. Escalante'' -- appear live at the trial, which is expected to begin
Nov. 6.
The lawyers came back empty-handed and now hope that Escalante will submit a written deposition to U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard, who is hearing the case.
"On Tuesday, Aug. 8, I interviewed Colonel Escalante, a really extraordinary man with great experience as a leader and deep understanding in matters of intelligence,'' Norris wrote in a memorandum to Lenard.
The lawyer described the officer as "a fantastic witness for the defense.''
Cuba refused to allow Escalante to travel to the United States "for reasons of security,'' Norris wrote, so "we initiated the process to obtain his sworn statement.''
The officer is believed to be Gen. Fabián Escalante Font, former deputy minister of the interior and one of the judges in the trial of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who was executed in 1989 for allegedly endangering the security of the nation.
An expert on intelligence, Escalante wrote The Secret War, a book about the activities of the CIA against the government of President Fidel Castro.
Blumenfeld and Norris, as well as other defense lawyers in the case, are trying to show that their clients -- arrested in 1998 and charged with spying for the Cuban government as the "Wasp Network'' -- were only keeping Havana informed about the activities of anti-Castro Miamians.
Cuba has blamed Miami Cubans for a wave of bombings in 1997 that left one person dead and 11 injured.
Norris told Lenard that he showed Escalante declassified documents that revealed "everything the [U.S.] government appears to have about the defendants, the Wasp Network, and what they did at the Boca Chica naval base and the Southern Command in Miami.''
According to the indictments, the defendants tracked the activities of U.S. Navy and Air Force units in South Florida and conveyed that information to the Cuban military.
But Escalante told the lawyers that the intelligence allegedly collected by the defendants "simply has no usefulness in the modern world. And surely it is not useful at all for Cuban military readiness.''
Norris paraphrased Escalante as saying that "in today's global village . . . [Cuban intelligence] can obtain that kind of detailed information through CNN or its own devices.''
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