By Catherine Wilson. Associated Press. Posted May 29 2001.
The Sun-Sentinel
MIAMI -- Five Cuban agents worked to hobble the United States and elude
detection while operating secretly for years in South Florida, a federal
prosecutor claimed Tuesday in summarizing the six-month espionage conspiracy
trial.
A 12-member jury will be hearing from attorneys making their closing
arguments at least through the end of the week in the case against the
self-proclaimed Wasp Network rounded up in 1998 just before one of the agents
was to return to Cuba.
``They act carefully, they act cautiously, but they act,'' said chief
prosecutor Caroline Miller.
``Obviously these conspirators wanted secret, nonpublic information. They
were sniffing around the edges, and they were graded on it.''
None of the agents is charged with espionage, an acknowledgment that they
never got any U.S. secrets.
But three defendants face life sentences if convicted of espionage
conspiracy, a charge requiring only an agreement to break the law.
Reputed ringleader Gerardo Hernandez faces the most politically charged
count of murder conspiracy for allegedly helping a Cuban MiG shoot down two U.S.
civilian planes when a third crossed into Cuban airspace after repeated warnings
in 1996. Four fliers with the exile group Brothers to the Rescue were killed.
Miller appealed to the jury to avoid moral judgments and strained U.S.-Cuba
relations when evaluating the case, which relies heavily on about 2,000 pages of
decoded messages seized when the agents were arrested.
``It's not the trial of the government of Cuba against the government of the
United States,'' she said. ``This trial is not about a political struggle
between two ideologies.''
The communiques are peppered with communist rhetoric and repeatedly refer to
the United States as ``the enemy.''
Miller noted the numerous code words for agents, cities, aircraft and other
information were hard to remember even for the agents. She said they kept
``cheat sheets'' on everything from yellow Post-It notes to a business card from
a Chinese restaurant.
She laboriously tied excerpts from dryly written, decrypted documents to
specific criminal charges in the 26-count indictment, which at times left
jurors, marshals and spectators drowsy.
Miller contended the defense ``just tries to blow by the evidence and offer
excuses for conduct that clearly violates the law.''
The defense has focused on the fact that the poorly funded agents never
acquired any secrets from targeted military bases and claimed their work against
exile groups was intended to thwart support by U.S. residents for terrorist
attacks in Cuba.
The defendants were allegedly part of a 14-member ring accused of trying to
infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups. Five pleaded guilty in
return for leniency and promises to cooperate, and four are fugitives believed
to be in Cuba.
The roundup was the largest U.S. effort targeting foreign agents in decades
and came in contrast to the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats earlier this
year.
Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, who occasionally spelled Hernandez as head of the
Miami-based operation, and Antonio Guerrero, a manual laborer at the Key West
Naval Air Station for five years, could face life sentences.
Exile infiltrator Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez, who also substituted
for Hernandez, face up to 10 years if convicted of working as unregistered
foreign agents.
Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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