By Vanessa Bauzá The
Sun-Sentinel. Web-posted: 11:23 p.m. Dec. 11, 2000
MIAMI -- Two years before making any arrests, federal agents entered the
homes of five alleged Cuban spies with federal court orders and surreptitiously
copied hundreds of encrypted computer diskettes.
For years, they watched the comings and goings of the alleged ringleader
from an apartment they rented across the street from his North Miami Beach home.
Details of the FBI's investigation into the alleged "Wasp Network"
spy ring surfaced Monday in special agent Vicente M. Rosado's testimony in
federal court in Miami.
Rosado said he and other agents from the bureau's Computer Analysis
Response Team entered the homes of the five accused spies five times from
September 1996 to April 1998, carefully copying the diskettes and then placing
them exactly where they found them.
The defendants were arrested on Sept. 12, 1998, and charged with acting
as unregistered agents of the Cuban government. The U.S. government has accused
three of the men of penetrating U.S. military installations and passing defense
secrets to Havana.
The man accused of being the ringleader, Gerardo Hernández, faces
the most-serious charge: conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of four
Brothers to the Rescue fliers who were shot down by Cuban MiGs in 1996.
Rosado, a 20-year FBI veteran who specializes in Cuban
counterintelligence, testified Monday that he decoded some of the encrypted
disks by using Spanish passwords such as "afinacion," "mambi,"
"cientifico," and "fuerte." He said he found reports
relating to the activities the exile organization, Brothers to the Rescue.
Searches of the modest apartments, in Hollywood, North Miami Beach and
Miami Beach, also yielded two shortwave radios, a Tandy computer and an Epson
laptop.
Defense attorneys do not dispute their clients were working in South
Florida on orders from the Cuban government. However, they argue that the
alleged spies did not pass U.S. defense secrets to their bosses in Havana or do
anything to endanger the United States. Rather, they say, the suspects
infiltrated exile organizations to prevent terrorism on their island.
Defense attorneys also say the men acted as de facto agents of the FBI.
On Monday, defense attorney Phil Horowitz told jurors his client, Rene Gonzalez,
gave the agency information about cocaine smuggling by a member of a now-defunct
paramilitary group.
Three of the men had worked here under the aliases Manuel Viramontes,
Luis Medina and Ruben Campa. In addition to Hernández, the defendants are
Antonio Guerrero, Rene González, Ramon Labañino and Fernando González.
Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vbauza@sun-sentinel.com or
305-810-5007. | 