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Posted on Thu, Mar. 28, 2002 in
The Miami
Herald
Prosecutor: Don't move Cuban's trial for torture
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com.
The Eriberto Mederos torture trial should remain in Miami because some
government witnesses are elderly and should not be forced to travel and because
last year's Cuban spy case showed an impartial jury could be seated here, the
federal prosecutor said in a court filing this week.
Mederos recently requested that his trial be moved because he would be
denied a fair jury given ''deeply rooted'' anti-Castro sentiment in the exile
community and ''inflammatory'' pretrial media coverage.
In a response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Tamen wrote that the spy case
-- in which five Cuban intelligence agents were convicted after a seven-month
trial in Miami -- showed a fair jury could be picked in an emotion-charged
environment.
Tamen also noted that pretrial coverage in the Mederos case has not been as
intense as in the spy case.
''The government believes it will be possible to select a fair and impartial
jury in Miami-Dade County,'' Tamen wrote.
Tamen also argued that moving the trial would inconvenience government
witnesses who accuse Mederos of having tortured them with electroshock treatment
at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital between 1968 and 1978.
Mederos has denied that the treatment was torture.
He has described it as a medical procedure prescribed by doctors.
Cuban spy passed polygraph at least once
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com.
WASHINGTON - Even though confessed Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes already
outwitted a lie-detector test, the government plans to rely on polygraph exams
to check her honesty as they debrief her about her 16-year spying career while
working for U.S. military intelligence.
Montes took a polygraph examination at least once during her career as an
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, her attorney says.
''At the time she was polygraphed, she passed it,'' said prominent
Washington attorney Plato Cacheris, who added that he did not know when the exam
was given.
Critics of polygraph exams, which are designed to snare liars, say they are
astounded that U.S. officials would rely on them to determine if Montes is
telling the truth.
''Isn't this incredibly ironic?'' asked Drew C. Richardson, a retired FBI
agent who wrote a doctorate dissertation on polygraph research. "She beats
the polygraph and now we're going to use a polygraph to assess the damage? It's
utterly, unbelievably stupid.''
Montes, 45, is the most senior spy for Cuba ever caught. FBI agents arrested
her Sept. 21 at her workplace. In a plea agreement with the Justice Department,
Montes confessed March 19 to spying for Cuba and offered to reveal all details
of her betrayal to investigators before her Sept. 24 sentencing. If polygraph
exams show that she has been honest and candid, she will get a 25-year jail
term, with five years of parole.
Montes isn't the first turncoat in the U.S. intelligence community to beat
the polygraph, or lie-detector, exam, and her case is sure to add to controversy
over whether the government can rely on the polygraph to catch spies.
Some critics assert that the polygraph tests lure counterintelligence units
into a false sense of security, and should be abandoned for other methods.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the preeminent military
intelligence arm of the Pentagon, declines to say whether -- or when -- Montes
was given a polygraph exam after her hiring in September 1985. It also refuses
to provide details of results of any exams given to Montes.
''All DIA employees are subject to polygraphs,'' said an agency spokesman,
Lt. Cmdr. James E. Brooks, declining further details.
REGULAR TESTS
All government intelligence agencies require employees to agree to regular
polygraph examinations. In such tests, an examiner asks a subject questions
while a polygraph machine measures changes in a subject's heartbeat, blood
pressure and respiratory rate. If the subject lies, the theory goes, then the
examiner can detect faster heartbeats, higher blood pressure and other telltale
physiological changes.
The FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, federal and state
governments, local police departments and numerous private agencies routinely
use polygraph tests to detect suspected criminal activity.
''The use of polygraph is controversial even within the law enforcement and
intelligence community,'' said John L. Martin, the former head of internal
security at the Justice Department.
Some form of polygraph machines have been around since 1917, and their use
is now widespread, even if still controversial. ''There may be about 3,000
examiners [in the United States],'' said Dan Sosnowski, a spokesman for the
American Polygraph Association, a trade group.
In 1988, Congress barred most private employers from probing possible
criminal activity of job applicants through polygraph exams. Law enforcement
agencies and some limited categories of private companies can still require a
polygraph exam as a preemployment requirement.
While statutes vary from state to state, polygraphs can sometimes be
introduced as evidence at criminal trials if attorneys for all parties agree,
Sosnowski said. They are inadmissible in Florida courts unless the prosecution
and defense agree to admit them.
The CIA is known as the agency with the most-freewheeling polygraph tests,
delving even into intimate details of the lives of employees in an effort to
unmask spies.
''There's a schedule of polygraphs that you have over your career. And they
can be aperiodic as well,'' said CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. "It is one of
many tools that are used at the CIA as a security procedure.''
Curiously, among those criticizing the use of polygraph tests is Aldrich
Ames, a CIA veteran arrested in 1994 and accused of receiving more than $2
million to reveal to the KGB the names of U.S. agents in Russia. At least 10
agents were later killed.
PASSED EXAMS
Ames passed two polygraph exams in the CIA while spying for Russia, said one
knowledgeable official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The polygraphs were not done correctly, he said: "It indicated
deception. They didn't pursue it.''
Ames calls the polygraph tests "pseudoscience.''
''Like most junk science that just won't die [graphology, astrology and
homeopathy come to mind], because of the usefulness or profit their
practitioners enjoy, the polygraph stays with us,'' Ames wrote in November 2000
from his cell at Allenwood federal prison in Pennsylvania.
''The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive
reliance on the polygraph. . . . It has gotten us into a lot of trouble,'' Ames
added in letter to a staff employee of the Federation of American Scientists,
Steven Aftergood.
Another career CIA analyst, Larry Wu-tai Chin, arrested in 1985 as a spy for
Beijing, also beat the polygraph exams he was administered.
Martin, the former chief counterintelligence officer, said the polygraph
exam, if administered with precisely phrased questions, can lead to new avenues
of interrogation, and uncover deception.
''It can be effective if used properly,'' Martin said.
Aftergood, the official at the Federation of American Scientists, said
evaluation of polygraph tests "is a subjective matter.''
''There is a widespread recognition that it is not an entirely reliable
technology,'' Aftergood said. | 
