Posted on 11/07/2002 2:26:28 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
For the first time since 2000, the United States Tuesday expelled Cuban diplomats from its soil and gave them ten days to leave the country. U.S. officials said the action was taken in retaliation for an espionage operation that penetrated America's military establishment at the Pentagon for almost a decade.
The Bush administration told two Washington-based Cuban diplomats to leave and requested that the United Nations expel two world body based diplomats as well.
''In response to unacceptable activities, the United States decided to take strong action,'' said Charles Barclay, a State Department spokesman.
Ana Belen Montes pleaded guilty last month to espionage charges and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Montes, a U.S. intelligence analyst was arrested last September. Investigators said she was spying for Cuba from the time she began working at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985 until her arrest.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) provides analyses of foreign countries' military capabilities and troop strengths for the Pentagon.
Two diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section, the Castro government's diplomatic mission in Washington, and two diplomats at its U.N mission in New York were informed last Friday that they had 10 days to leave the country, Barclay said. He identified the workers at the Cuban Interests Section as Oscar Redondo Toledo and Gustavo Machin Gomez, both with a diplomatic rank of first secretary.
Barclay did not disclose the names of the expelled diplomats at the U.N. The U.S. said it was acting in accordance with United Nations "host country rules."
The last time Washington expelled a Cuban diplomat was in February 2000, when it told envoy Jose Imperatori to leave the country. Imperatori's expulsion followed allegations that he was linked to a U.S. immigration official, Mariano Faget, accused of spying for Cuba.
Montes confessed in March to revealing the identities of at least four U.S. intelligence agents and providing coded secret and top-secret information on defense matters to Havana in a spying career that began in 1985.
At the time of her sentencing, Montes said she spied for Cuba because she believed U.S. policy toward the communist nation was "morally wrong."
"Perhaps Cuba's right to exist, free of political and economic coercion, did not justify giving the island classified information to help it defend itself. I can only say that I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice," she said.
"My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding," she said.
Cuba and the United States do not have diplomatic relations but maintain interest sections in each other's capital. The Cuban Interests Section in Washington is headquartered in the Swiss Embassy.
The Castro government issued no official reaction to the expulsions. The United Nations did not issue any official reaction either.
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