Cuba (Castro) promises fight for return of five Miami spies

HAVANA -- (AP) -- The government promised Tuesday to fight for the repatriation of five Cuban agents sentenced in Miami on espionage charges as it celebrated the 43rd anniversary of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

``Cuban men and women, we toast this heroic nation capable of so many great achievements, the revolution that illuminates our hopes, for the return of the heroes to the homeland,'' read the government's New Year's message, published on the front page of the Communist Party daily Granma.

Jan. 1 is the most important day on communist Cuba's calendar, marking the day in 1959 that Castro and his bearded revolutionaries entered the eastern city of Santiago after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country.

No large public events were held here on New Year's Eve, when most Cubans celebrate the holiday at home with their families. The government did organize a series of public concerts for Tuesday evening, featuring well-known performers such as nonagenarian musician Compay Segundo and the Los Van Van band.

This year's Jan. 1 message indicates that the government plans to devote as much time and energy to the fight for the five agents as it did to the battle for the repatriation of boat-wreck survivor Elian Gonzalez. The child was returned to Cuba in June 2000 after a seven-month custody battle between his family in Miami and his father on the island.

The battle over the five spies has not created the kind of sympathy among average Americans or Cubans that the fight for Elian did.

But it has become a top priority for Castro. Last week, he called a special session of the National Assembly, which unanimously agreed to bestow the title of ``Heroes of the Republic of Cuba'' on the five men convicted on charges of spying on the United States.

After a six-month trial, the men were given sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison for espionage conspiracy and lesser counts.

Castro says the men are patriots who were protecting their country from possible terrorist attacks.

During the special parliamentary session on Saturday, Castro told the assembly that because of the men's importance, 2002 would be officially known as the ``Year of the Heroic Prisoners of the Empire'' -- the ``empire'' being the United States. The Cuban government regularly chooses a slogan for each year, which is then used in official correspondence and in state media instead of the year's number.

In its New Year message, Havana also mentioned the country's economic problems, deepened by world recession, the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States and widespread damage caused by Hurricane Michelle.

The message said Cubans were working together to recovery from the damage the hurricane caused in early November. ``Not a single Cuban was forgotten in the tragedy,'' the letter said.

It also repeated earlier government estimates that the Cuban economy grew 3 percent during 2001, despite a drop in tourism and sinking prices for Cuban exports.

Cuba rallies for convicted spies-- Some in the United States say the five members of the "Wasp network'' should have been deported, not put on trial. -- By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent © St. Petersburg Times published January 2, 2002

[Full Text] HAVANA -- For more than seven years Candido Gonzalez, 71, refused to speak to his son, a talented Cuban pilot.

In what at the time appeared to be a stunning act of betrayal, Rene Gonzalez stole a Cuban plane in 1991 and defected to Miami. His father, a retired bus driver and staunch revolutionary, was mortified.

But these days, there's a wry smile on Candido Gonzalez's face as he tells of a refound pride in his son's deeds.

No matter that his son was sentenced in December to 15 years in prison by a Miami judge on charges of spying for Cuba against the United States. The former traitor is now a national hero.

"We were happy to discover the truth about who he really was," said the elder Gonzalez, rocking gently in a chair at a house where the government had arranged for him to be interviewed.

Even so, that truth remains hard to grasp, wrapped in competing claims and decades of distrust in U.S.-Cuban relations that are hard to unravel.

Rene Gonzalez's conviction along with four other Cuban spies known as the "Wasp network" passed largely unnoticed in the United States. Even in Miami, where scandals involving Cuba are a dime a dozen, the seven-month trial barely made the front pages.

Not so in Havana, where the five spies are now the subject of a massive public campaign to link their fate to the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorism.

The unprecedented case -- Cuban foreign agents had never been tried in the United States -- concluded Thursday with the sentencing of the last of the five men. Gonzalez's sentence was the least severe. Three others were jailed for life.

The severity of the sentences has prompted cries of outrage in Cuba. The government has mobilized millions of Cubans in rallies calling for their release.

The "free the five" campaign dominates Cuba's state-run media. A nightly round-table TV show, titled In the Entrails of the Monster, provides regular updates on the five, including family interviews and letters and poems sent from jail.

The presentencing court statements of the five -- all spoke of their unwavering revolutionary patriotism -- have been reprinted in the Communist Party daily, Granma.

While Cuba admits that the five were part of an official undercover operation, complete with multiple false identities and sophisticated espionage training, Havana claims the Wasps were not spies in the traditional sense. Instead of hunting for top secret U.S. defense intelligence, Cuba claims, they were on a legitimate mission to infiltrate militant Cuban-American groups in Miami, which it accuses of engaging in terrorism.

"The five never posed a risk to the national security of the United States," said Lazaro Barredo, a leading member of Cuba's one-party National Assembly and a regular on the round-table program. "In fact, the U.S. should thank us for what those young men did."

In making their claims, Cuban officials recite a long list of alleged terrorist acts committed by the United States against their island, commencing with the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Cuba claims more than 5,000 victims, including about 3,400 dead, of U.S.-based terrorism committed by both the U.S. government and Cuban-American exile groups. Instead of punishing those responsible, Cuba says, the United States has looked the other way.

"It took some assassins to blow up the twin towers for the U.S. to take terrorism seriously," said Barredo. "We wouldn't have to send our people over there if the U.S. ended the impunity for those terrorist groups operating in Miami."

Most recently, Cuba cites the case of a spate of Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed one tourist and injured several others. Although the bombings were allegedly financed by Cuban exiles in Miami, no arrests have been made.

In April, three Cuban-Americans were arrested in Cuba after entering the island illegally armed with AK-47 assault rifles. Cuba accuses the three of planning to blow up the Tropicana, Havana's world-famous nightclub.

More generally Cuba accuses the United States of permitting a climate in Miami of open encouragement of terrorist attacks against the island, largely fomented on Miami radio stations.

New Times, a Miami weekly, recently asked representatives of several leading Cuban exile groups if they supported terrorist attacks against Cuba. While none said they condoned terrorism, they were also unwilling to condemn its use in Cuba.

"We do not condemn a person who attempts to end conditions that oppress his people," responded Ramon Raul Sanchez, head of the Democracy Movement, a militant exile group. "I cannot condemn somebody who is willing to risk his or her life for the well-being of other people."

The magazine went on to quote President Bush's Nov. 10 speech at the United Nations in which he said any ambivalence toward terrorism is unacceptable.

"Some governments still turn a blind eye to the terrorists, hoping that the threat will pass them by," he said. "They are mistaken. The allies of terror are equally guilty and equally accountable."

While there may be some truth to Cuba's complaints about Miami terrorism, prosecutors in the trial of the Wasps argued successfully that the five did not limit their efforts to spying on exile groups.

Trial evidence also highlighted their efforts to infiltrate U.S. military installations in South Florida. Facilities targeted included the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Miami, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in the Florida Keys.

All efforts at infiltration were a dismal failure, although one of the five did manage to get hired as a manual laborer at Boca Chica. While none of the Wasps ever obtained classified information, prosecutors argued that the knowledge the five gleaned over years of observations in and around the bases, including detailed charts of takeoffs and landings of military planes, was potentially harmful to U.S. security.

The most serious allegation in the case linked two of the men to the 1996 shootdown of two small aircraft belonging to the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, resulting in the deaths of four of its volunteer pilots.

In sentencing the last of the five Thursday, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard dismissed the alleged terrorist activities of Cuban exiles in Miami as an excuse for sending spies to Miami.

"Wherever terrorism is committed against innocents it is evil and it is wrong," she said. But, she added, "the terrorist acts of others cannot excuse the actions of these defendants."

Despite seven months of court proceedings, aspects of the case are still a mystery.

As evidence of its good intentions, Cuba claims it has offered to share information with U.S. law enforcement authorities about exile activities in Miami. It cites a visit by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to Havana in the summer of 1998.

During the trial, retired FBI Agent Stuart Hoyt confirmed in court that Cuba had shared information on violent exile groups, albeit "on a limited basis."

The FBI has so far declined to comment in detail on the substance of the Cuban information. "There was some information brought to our attention through diplomatic channels. We, in discharging our duties, looked into it," is all that FBI Miami director Hector Pesquera is willing to say.

Questions also remain about the decision to prosecute the case, which defense attorneys argue was politically motivated.

Attorneys for the five point out that it is almost unheard of for foreign agents to be put on trial in the United States. Instead, they argued, it is common counterintelligence practice not to arrest suspected foreign agents but to keep them under close surveillance. If arrested they are normally shipped quietly back overseas.

A retired Army major general, Edward Atkeson, testified at the trial that during the Cold War spies were frequently caught and exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie, a border post that once separated East and West Berlin. He also testified that Cuba represented no serious military threat to the United States.

Navy Adm. Eugene Carroll, an expert on U.S.-Cuban military capabilities, testified that far more detailed information than that gathered by the spies is widely available in publications such as Jane's Defense Weekly magazine.

"There was no legal precedent for this case," said Paul McKenna, attorney for Gerardo Hernandez, the Wasps' ringleader. "They (the government) needed a big scapegoat for the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown," he added, referring to the 1996 incident regarded by many exiles as one of Fidel Castro's worst atrocities.

Attorneys also claim the five were first detected by U.S. intelligence services in the mid 1990s, yet no decision was taken to arrest them until September 1998. At the time the Clinton administration was under attack from Cuban exile groups for being too soft on Cuba.

"There's absolutely no question the case was politically motivated and locally driven," McKenna said. "Cooler heads should have prevailed here. They should have been sent home. It's ridiculous they got life sentences."

After sentencing was over Thursday, the federal prosecutor who led the case, Caroline Heck Miller, declared a sweeping victory. "The U.S. rule of law has been enforced and the national security has been protected."

But her words were unlikely to resonate outside Miami.

"These guys are bigger heroes because they lost," said defense attorney Jack Blumenthal. "These same acts in Afghanistan on behalf of the United States would be considered heroic."

That's certainly the view in Havana.

Not only is Candido Gonzalez now back on speaking terms with his son, Rene, he is also thinking of visiting him in prison.

"We have a lot to talk about," he said. "But mostly I want to tell him how proud I am of what he has done for his country." [End]

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So, we should just roll over and play dead so as not to give Castro a platform? --(September 21, 2001)--Pentagon Analyst Accused of Spying for Cuba

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