Castro Spy Declares Opposition Is Disabled *** HAVANA - An undercover Cuban agent credited with giving some of the most damaging courtroom evidence against dissidents said the island's opposition movement has been shattered. "The opposition is finished, it has ended, it will never lift its head again," Aleida de las Mercedes Godinez told The Associated Press. "The opposition will never flourish again - never!"
……… Godinez provided a rare glimpse inside Castro's intelligence network and demonstrated just how deeply loyal his agents were. She said she never felt any remorse or sorrow for her work even though she worked with some dissidents for years. "Marta Beatriz was an objective of my mission," she said. "I could never be friends with a counterrevolutionary." Godinez said Roque, also a leading member of the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society, handled as much as $5,000 every month from various groups in the United States that were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The USAID Cuba program has given more than $20 million to U.S. groups working with the opposition on the communist-run island since 1996 to bring about a peaceful transition to democracy. Godinez, a former math teacher, said she received about $700 a month from U.S. organizations as head of the National Independent Workers Union of Cuba.
…………………Other agents were just as loyal as her. Dr. Pedro Luis Veliz Martinez, a 39-year-old internist and a member of a long-trusted communist family, told the AP in a separate interview Monday that he was first approached by an Interior Ministry official while doing late-night hospital rounds in 1996. "I never had any doubts," Veliz said. "I am a revolutionary. I am Marxist-Leninist. I believe in communism." After gaining the confidence of government opponents in the Liberal Party and the organizations in Miami that support them, Veliz founded the Independent Medical College, a professional organization for dissident physicians, in 1999. ***