By Jose Dante Parra Herrera,
The Sun-Sentinel. Web-posted: 10:33 p.m.
Dec. 31, 2000
When bombs started going off in Havana hotels in 1997, Cuban President
Fidel Castro did not wait long to blame Cuban exile organizations in Miami.
He told the U.S. government he had proof, but when the State Department
asked him to produce evidence, all he did was point to articles in Cuba's
official newspaper Granma.
Now, more than three years after the shattered glass was swept away, a
trial of five men accused of spying for the Cuban government casts light on the
type of information Castro might have been getting about the activities of exile
groups at the time.
Among more than 1,400 pages of documents the FBI seized from the five
suspects are reports of model airplanes loaded with explosives aimed at killing
the "commander-in-chief " and striking a refinery and thermoelectrical
plants.
The reports also discuss commandos armed and financed by the exiles.
Exile groups dismiss the reports as fantasies of a rag-tag band of
alleged spies dreamed up to keep their demanding bosses in Havana happy.
In the more than two years the FBI has had this information, no
indictments have been handed down against any exile organization or their
members.
"Clearly they're making up stuff," said Joe Garcia, executive
director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "Part of their lives is
that if you can't get it, then you make it up."
After almost two years of intercepting radio messages and secretly
breaking into homes to copy computer diskettes, the FBI arrested 10 people in
1998. They were accused of being unregistered agents of a foreign government and
of trying to infiltrate U.S. military installations. One of them, Gerardo
Hernandez, is accused of cooperating with the Cuban government in the shoot-down
over international waters near Cuba of two Cessna planes from the exile group
Brothers to the Rescue.
Five people pleaded guilty and are expected to testify against the men on
trial in Miami federal court in a case expected to last through March.
The defense lawyers do not deny their clients infiltrated exile groups.
Quite the contrary, they argue the reason Havana had to place people in South
Florida was because the U.S. government was doing nothing to curb terrorism
against Cuba.
In 1997, more than a half dozen bombings rocked Havana hotels, one of
them killing an Italian tourist.
After arresting several Central American men and charging them with the
bombings, Cuban authorities said the men had been recruited by Luis Posada
Carriles, an exile and former CIA operative living in Central America who is
widely known for his attempts to kill Castro and was convicted of the bombing of
a Cubana de Aviacion jetliner in the late 1970s. The alleged spy documents link
Posada to members of the foundation.
Foundation leaders have denied any link to Posada and contend they use
nonviolent means to accomplish their mission of bringing democracy to Cuba.
Also, later in 1997, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped a fishing boat near
Puerto Rico and found sniper rifles and night scopes. The government later
accused seven exiles, including a director of the Cuban American National
Foundation, of plotting to kill Castro.
In 1999, a federal jury in Puerto Rico acquitted all seven.
The evidence released two weeks ago in federal court does not link any
exile groups to the bombings or the boat incident, but casts light on the type
of reports Havana possibly was getting from operatives at the time that could
have been used as a basis for allegations against exile organizations.
One of the documents has instructions for Castor, the code name for
defendant René Gonzalez, to keep an eye open for terrorist activities in
the exile community and gives him information compiled by another agent.
The document, written a few months after the 1996 shoot-down of the
Cessnas, tells how in March of that year another agent learned that a man by the
name of Andres Alvariño had "a project with CANF to form a group of
40 men with professional military experience."
The document described how Alvariño, a National Guardsman, was
recruiting "persons on active duty in the military branches ... for the
executions of paramilitary missions against Cuba" and that Roberto Martin
Perez, one of CANF's top people, would be in charge of the project.
The document says that a "highly reliable source" had informed
of a plot to use remote-controlled model airplanes loaded with explosives aimed
at the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana during a speech by Castro.
The document said that the late Jorge Mas Canosa, the former head of the
foundation, contacted an ex-NASA scientist to "make an attempt against the
Commander in Chief and other leaders of the revolution using light planes loaded
with explosives, remotely controlled with a satellite."
Garcia, the foundation's executive director, said his organization's
members were aware that once the defense starts to make its case in the next few
weeks, this type of evidence will be used to try to convince the jury that their
clients are the good guys.
"It's more junk. It's all fantasy," Garcia said. "In the
end these people are victims, they're pathetic victims."
Mas Canosa, he said, was a man who always strived for change in Cuba
through peaceful means. That is why the foundation's trademark has been its
effective lobbying of Congress and the White House to influence Cuba policy,
Garcia said.
"He (Mas Canosa) was a guy who had a history of nonviolence,"
he said. "He was a patriot."
José Dante Parra Herrera can be reached at
jparra@sun-sentinel.com or at 305-810-5005. | 