Published Thursday, May 31, 2001 in the
Miami Herald.
Cuban official plans visit to Puerto Rico
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- (AP) -- The head of Cuba's legislature, Ricardo
Alarcon, plans to visit the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico next month for an
event celebrating a Havana-based foundation that promotes ties between the two
islands.
Alarcon's office confirmed Wednesday the National Assembly president had
applied for a visa to visit Puerto Rico for the June 9 event, but had received
no word yet on whether the U.S. government would grant the visa.
The Mission of Puerto Rico in Cuba, a foundation established in Havana by
Puerto Rican pro-independence organizations, is celebrating its 35th anniversary
and has invited Alarcon to attend.
Some lawmakers also complained Puerto Rico should reject Cuba's support of
the territory's push to end U.S. Navy exercises on the Puerto Rican island of
Vieques.
On Saturday, Cuban President Fidel Castro led thousands in a Havana protest
against the U.S. bombing on Vieques.
Sen. Nelson plans trip to Cuba
He says he wants to learn about independents, island's future
By Frank Davies. fdavies@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is planning a trip to Cuba
in August "to learn everything I can'' about independent groups
on the island and how to "ease the transition'' to a post-Castro Cuba.
"It's in the long-term interest of Florida and the United States for me
to make this trip,'' said Nelson, who was elected in November and now serves on
the Foreign Relations Committee.
Dozens of current and past members of Congress have visited Cuba in recent
years, but Nelson would be the first senator from Florida to go.
Most congressional visitors oppose the U.S. embargo. Nelson strongly
supports sanctions and is a co-sponsor of the Cuban Solidarity Act, designed
assist dissidents and independent groups in Cuba.
Nelson said Wednesday that the trip is "still in the early planning
stages'' and he has not yet requested a visa from the Cuban government. He has
not been invited, but wants to go "on my own initiative.''
"They might refuse to let me in, but that would be just another example
of how out of touch they are,'' said Nelson.
Luis Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington,
said that if is trying to further isolate Cuba, he likely would not be welcome.
"If he wants to go to try and better relations, to talk about lifting
the embargo and restrictions on travel, then I think he would have better
chances of success. Other congressional members who have gone to Cuba with that
agenda have been well received,'' said Fernandez.
"But if his intent is to try to destroy the revolution, if the
objective is to finance opposition groups with U.S. government dollars, I don't
think it [the trip] will happen.''
Nelson plans to meet next week with Cuban Americans in Miami and other
groups around the state for advice on "what I should do and who I should
talk to.''
"If he's going to Cuba to promote democracy, that's not bad,'' said Joe
Garcia, a spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation. "The battle
for freedom is in Cuba. It's not in the streets in Miami.''
On Sept. 27, 1974, Sens. Jacob Javits, a New York Republican, and Claiborne
Pell, a Rhode Island Democrat, were the first U.S. senators to visit Fidel
Castro's Cuba.
Nelson compared his proposed trip to his visit to the Soviet Union in 1985
as chairman of the space subcommittee in the House. Nelson met with officials
including Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
"We were able to spend three hours with him, eyeball to eyeball, and
tell him he needed to change his ways of thinking,'' Nelson recalled. "We
were also able to reach out to dissidents and refuseniks.
"I would hope to . . . have a similar exchange with someone in the
Cuban government, and try to meet with a range of different people,'' said
Nelson.
The bill co-sponsored by Nelson and Florida Democrat Bob Graham was
introduced May 16 by Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. That and
a similar measure by Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, would
send up to $100 million over four years in financial aid, food and
communications equipment to individuals and nongovernmental groups on the
island.
Herald staff writer Nancy San Martin contributed to this report.
Suspects were active in spy ring, prosecutor says
But alleged agents 'were not perfect'
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com. Published
Wednesday, May 30, 2001
Five Cuban agents systematically fed information on anti-Castro groups and
military bases in South Florida to a tightly-controlled Havana-run intelligence
system in a conspiracy to uncover American secrets, a prosecutor told jurors
Tuesday in summing up the U.S. government's six-month spy trial.
It is unimportant whether the Key West-to-Hollywood spy ring that was
rounded up in September 1998 actually harmed national security, prosecutor
Caroline Heck Miller said. Rather, it is enough that they conspired to pass
along information -- using one member, René González, to
infiltrate anti-Castro groups by posing as a sympathizer and another, Antonio
Guerrero, to work as a janitor at a U.S. Navy base in Key West to snoop on air
defenses and surveillance operations, Miller told jurors.
"These spies were not perfect. But they were spies. They never did get
anybody a job at Southcom,'' the Pentagon's headquarters for Latin American
operations in Miami. "But that doesn't mean they didn't try. That doesn't
mean that the conspiracy doesn't exist.''
Miller will continue her arguments before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard
for about another hour today and then the defense attorneys will argue for
acquittal. Jurors could begin deliberating Monday.
Miller, meantime, has yet to focus on the most explosive part of the case --
that so-called ringleader Gerardo Hernández, who lived in Miami-Dade as
the cartoonist Manuel Viramontes, conspired in the murders of four Brothers to
the Rescue members whose Cessnas were rocketed by a Cuban MiG in 1996.
FBI EVIDENCE
Throughout her closing, Miller used an overhead projector and huge poster
board enlargements of documents and intelligence intercepts to recap FBI
evidence of Cuban spycraft. They included:
A packet of death certificates of U.S. children of Hispanic background from
which ring members culled their cover stories. "Ladies and gentlemen, I
don't know if you saw that old movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers,'' she said.
"But, that's what this is: New identities ready to be sown by the agents of
the Cuban Intelligence Service.''
Forms for amassing biographical data on U.S. military members, their
families and civilian Pentagon employees in South Florida to help Havana
controllers choose Americans who might be seduced into collaboration; the
template included space for possible areas of exploitation -- sex, money and
politics.
Guidelines and running tips on what observations to report back to the
Intelligence Directorate in Havana, and how quickly; Miller called the
conspiracy "opportunistic,'' meaning members were assigned to "aggressively
seek information . . . within the framework of the control of the Cuban
Intelligence Service.''
Wallet-size "cheat sheets,'' or business cards that contained personal
details of the agents' bogus identities as well as intercepted diskettes and
modem transmissions of data that showed their reporting.
Secretly made FBI photographs of meetings between the accused and their
alleged handlers, including one meeting in the men's room of a Wendy's
restaurant in New York with a diplomat from the Cuban mission to the United
Nations.
The prosecutor also sought to stave off defense lawyers' efforts to
marginalize their client's activities by casting the Cuban operatives as
underpaid, overworked, not capable at their craft and easily detected by FBI
agents who shadowed the ring for years.
'GROUP OF BUMBLERS'
"Maybe in retrospect, they looked like a group of bumblers with their
identities laid bare to the world,'' she said. But with tinted contact lenses to
change their eye colors and encrypted disks that at first appeared empty, "they
were masters of numerous identities'' and "a formidable challenge to
detection.''
Guerrero's job as a janitor at the Key West base gave him access to areas
that were off limits to the general public, such as the Bachelor Officers
Quarters, a hotel, where he might have cozied up to pilots on training missions
and befriended local civilians who cleaned their rooms.
"Cleaning people are the very people who sometimes blend into the
wallpaper and become invisible,'' Miller said, describing the work of the spy
ring as seeking to uncover America's secrets, even when they were not labeled "top
secret'' or "classified.''
U.S. RESERVISTS
For example, she said, by learning how U.S. air reservists train, Cuba would
be able to learn how they would fight in time of conflict and "that is
vital information to the experts of the Cuban Intelligence Service.''
She also urged the jurors to set aside their personal politics when
considering evidence that one spy sought to work on the campaign of Rep. Lincoln
Díaz-Balart and another got Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to write U.S.
diplomats in Havana to help his wife immigrate here. Both are Republicans of
Cuban American background.
What is important, she said was a bid "to infiltrate and participate in
U.S. political activity without notice of the U.S. Attorney General. Ladies and
gentlemen, this is a crime.''
Also accused with Hernández, González and Guerrero are Ramón
Labañino and Fernando González, who is no relation to René
González.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald
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