As we approach the one year anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, imagine this scenario:
Five Navy Seals are left behind in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They are taken into custody, tried as spies in Pakistan courts and sentenced to "life in prison" and are still locked up 14 years later.
This would shock the conscience of the world. There would be justifiable calls to bomb Pakistan to smithereens. The CIA has hundreds of covert agents operating in Pakistan and other countries trying to uncover terrorist threats and protect American civilians.
How can a civilized nation in the 21st century protect and harbor known and self admitted terrorists?
And how can a civilized nation harshly, punish intelligence agents who are trying to prevent terrorism and innocent deaths?
This is precisely the situation of the Cuban Five -- Castro's intelligence agents, who came to Florida to try and thwart the ongoing terrorism against Cuban civilians. There is not much question about the terrorism of many of the right-wing Cuban exiles over the last few decades.
Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile leader, confessed -- boasted to me about his role in blowing up a civilian plane killing 73, and organizing other terrorist bombings, in an exclusive jailhouse interview, as I testified before a Congressional Committee on Terrorism.
Bosch, a hero in the exile community, was pardoned by President George Bush in 1990 and lived a peaceful life in Miami for 20 years until his death last year.
Luis Posada, who was trained in explosives by the U.S. Army, admitted in an interview with Louise Bardach for the New York Times to planning a number of bombings in Havana, killing civilians and tourists. He also acknowledged his role to me personally in blowing up the civilian plane. Posada, a self admitted terrorist, was allowed to stay in the U.S. after a half-hearted attempt to extradite him last year.
After a particularly savage wave of bombings in 1997, Castro rightly felt that the U.S. was not doing much to stop exile Cuban terrorists from killing civilians. 3,400 Cubans, including some foreign tourists, have been killed by U.S. supported Cuban exile terrorism, according to the Cuban authorities.
So Castro sent a number of the anti-terrorist intelligence agents to Florida to see if they could contain the carnage,but the spies were soon caught.
After his arrest, one of the spies, Tony Guerrero, explained to the sentencing Judge why he had been sent to the United States.
"Allow me to explain my reasons, your Honor, in the clearest and most concise way: Cuba, my little country, has been attacked, assaulted, and slandered, decade after decade, by a cruel, inhuman and absurd policy. A real terrorist war... Where have such unceasing, ruthless acts been hatched and financed? For the most part, in the United States of America."
The Cuban agents did not try to infiltrate U.S. government agencies, nor did they obtain any classified documents, nor did they commit or plan any acts of violence.
Their purpose was to penatrate and gather evidence from the exile community, so that the FBI would arrest the terrorists. (One did count airplanes at a military base to try and see if the U.S. was planning another invasion of Cuba.) Indeed, in June of 1998, the FBI, with President Clinton's approval, met with Cuban officials who turned over nearly 200 pages of evidence about past 30 exile terrorist attacks.
They need not have bothered. As Stephen Kimber points out in a forthcoming book, What Lies Across the Water; The Real Story of the Cuban Five, everything the Cubans told the Americans, the FBI already knew. They had been following the Cubans for years, breaking into their apartments, hacking their computers, and tapping their phones.
For example, as one Cuban intelligence agent met clandestinely, he thought, with an officer from the New York Cuban Mission in a Wendy's, the FBI had seven video cameras and 35 of their own agents in the small fast food emporium.
The FBI knew from the beginning that the Cuban Five were not out to steal U.S. security secrets or to plan violent acts in the U.S.
The brother of one of the terrorists described his sibling, Rene Gonzalez, as not particularly political.
"He has said you can be a capitalist, and be a good person, or be a communist, and be good. What you can't be is a terrorist and a good person," said Roberto Gonzalez, 47.
This aversion to violence led Rene Gonzalez to infiltrate exile groups in Florida after returning to the United States in the early 1990s, his brother said. Attacks on Cuba, which later included a string of Havana bombings that killed a tourist in 1997, appalled him. Roberto Gonzalez said his brother felt the attacks originated in the Cuban exile community and that U.S authorities weren't doing enough to stop them.
Gonzalez first became a media darling when the 34-year-old pilot bid his wife and daughter goodbye and stole a plane from a Cuban Flying school. In a daring full throttled flight, Gonzalez flew low to avoid the Cuban jets and landed in Key West with 10 minutes of gasoline left.
With his story of heroism -- courage, feelings of love for the Cuban countryside -- the daring Gonzalez had no trouble being accepted by the anti Castro groups in South Florida, according to the Miami Herald.
Gonzalez was released on parole last October and was recently allowed a brief visit to Cuba to see his dying brother.
Four of the Cuban Five remain in prison serving life sentences, after being convicted in a Miami trial. In truth, they are certainly guilty of not registering as enemy agents and of carrying false IDs, surely a minor crime, something that hundreds of anti-terrorists CIA agents do every day in countries around the world.
But did they really deserve the harsh sentences that they got?
Consider the recent case of the 10 Russian spies, including media-darling Anna Chapman, who were recently caught in New Jersey, and were quickly traded for four US spies caught in Russia.
Could the Cuban Five have gotten a fair trial in Miami? Why wasn't the trial moved? This is the question that Amnesty International asked in a 2010 plea. The organization raised serious doubts about the fairness of the proceedings leading to their conviction and called for clemency.
On May 27, 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights criticized the U.S. for not providing a fair trial to the Cuban Five as defined in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party.
Monday, a full-page ad in the Washington Post proclaimed: "Men who prevented terrorism do not belong in jail." Quoted in the ad are former President Jimmy Carter, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and ten international Nobel Prize winners, including Desmond Tutu, Nadine Gordimer, and Günter Grass.
Four of the remaining Cuban Five have now been in prison for 13 years, and despite a worldwide movement to free them, media attention in the U.S. has been scant.
In most of the world, the Cuban Five are considered heroes, a cause celebre, because they risked their lives to protect innocent civilians from anti-Castro terrorists.
I would hope that our CIA has thousands of agents abroad infiltrating terrorist groups seeking to kill Americans. Imagine what the U.S. reactions would be if Italy or Egypt imprisoned anti-terrorist CIA agents for a long period of time?
If the U.S. hopes to convince the rest of the world that its campaign against terrorism is not one-sided and self-serving, the country must figure out a way to cut the long life sentences and harsh treatment of the four jailed terrorism fighters.
14 years in jail for trying to prevent terrorism is enough.
Write: jfleetwood@aol.com
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Not "5" but 12.
The "Five Cuban Heroes" proclaimed by the Cuban regime were actually part of a network of 12 spies.
In addition to the five spies who maintained their innocence but were convicted in a jury trial, five pleaded guilty to charges of spying in exchange for reduced sentences, one was deported, and one fled to Cuba.
Cuba originally denied they were Cuban agents.
The Cuban regime initially denied the five men were Cuban agents; it took almost three years, after the spies' conviction, for the regime to acknowledge that the five spies were in fact acting under its orders and that they were "heroes."
Complicit in extra-judicial killing.
The ringleader of the spies,intelligence agent Gerardo Hernandez, was found guilty of being closely involved in the Cuban air force's shoot-down of two civilian planes, over international waters, that resulted in the deaths of four persons.
Spying on military installations.
The object of the five's spying was not solely the anti-Castro community in Miami. Among the U.S. military installations of particular interest to the five spies was the Central Command located in Tampa, which focuses on the Middle East and has no operational responsibilities for Latin America.
Confirmed by one of the spies in the Avispa ring at her trial: Marisol Gari.
For lots of data see:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/avispa.htm
http://loscincodecuba.blogspot.com/p/lie-behind-5.html
University of Miami
Cuban Espionage Targets the U.S. Government - Vanessa Lopez
Some of these attempts became public knowledge with the dismantling of the Wasp Network in Florida, the trial of the five Cuban spies known as “the Cuban Five,” and the testimony of the other five Cuban agents captured in conjunction with “the Cuban Five” that made plea deals in 1998. It was revealed that Cuban agent Nilo Hernandez monitored movements at the Homestead Air Force Base and reported findings to Cuba. As instructed, Antonio Guerrero obtained a job at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, FL as a maintenance man and collected visual military intelligence for Cuba. Other military installations that the Wasp Network was ordered to infiltrate include U.S. Southern Command and MacDill Air Force Base. (17) In 2001, “The Cuban Five” were tried and received varying sentences. Hernandez received two life terms, Labanino and Guerrero received life in prison, Fernando Gonzales received 19 years, and Rene Gonzales received 15 years. However, after numerous motions of appeal, Labanino’s sentence was reduced to 30 years, Guerrero’s to 22 years, and Fernando Gonzalez’s to 18 years. The sentences of the other five spies whom pled guilty ranged between three and seven years. (18)
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ACADEMIC PAPER!
http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue145.htm
Blake Fleetwood! WITH YOUR EAGERNESS TO PROFESS YOUR SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT TO FREE THE "CUBAN 5" SPIES, YOU FORGOT TO CHECK YOUR FACTS ABOUT Orlando Bosch BEIGN ALIVE, SO YOU HAVE ONE LESS EXCUSE! JUST CURIOUS, DID YOU EVER PROFESS SUPPPORT FOR ALL THE UNJUSTLY ENCARCERATED POLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA? LOVE TO SEE A LINK PLEASE IF YOU DID!
N.Y. TIMES: Orlando Bosch, Cuban Exile, Dies at 84- By DOUGLAS MARTIN - April 27, 2011
Orlando Bosch, a Cuban-American pediatrician and militant Cuban exile leader who was accused, and then acquitted, of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed, died Wednesday in Miami. He was 84.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28bosch.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Blake Fleetwood! WITH YOUR EAGERNESS TO PROFESS YOUR SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT TO FREE THE "CUBAN 5" SPIES, YOU FORGOT TO CHECK YOUR FACTS ABOUT Orlando Bosch BEIGN ALIVE, SO YOU HAVE ONE LESS EXCUSE! THIS TO ME PROVES THAT YOUR REAL AIM IS ABOUT DISHING OUT PROPAGANDA TO FREE THE "CUBAN 5" WHO WERE ACTUALLY 12 TOTAL CUBAN SPIES! AND JUST CURIOUS, DID YOU EVER PROFESS SUPPPORT FOR ALL THE UNJUSTLY ENCARCERATED POLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA? LOVE TO SEE A LINK PLEASE IF YOU DID!
N.Y. TIMES: Orlando Bosch, Cuban Exile, Dies at 84- By DOUGLAS MARTIN - April 27, 2011
Orlando Bosch, a Cuban-American pediatrician and militant Cuban exile leader who was accused, and then acquitted, of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed, died Wednesday in Miami. He was 84.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28bosch.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I have called for the release of Allan Gross from Cuban prisons and for the release of many Cubans who are still in Castro's jails.
Amnesty International does a pretty good job of identifying who is unjustly jailed,,, we should be the good guys.... even if other Governments are not.
Have you read the confessions of the other members of the Red Avispa?
I would recommend that you review the case of Marisol Gari.
Three of the 10 arrested were identified as senior agents who communicated directly with Cuban intelligence officials and received their instructions from Cuba. The three senior agents were all Cuban nationals. They were GERARDO HERNANDEZ, 31 (alias Manuel Viramontes), the spymaster; FERNANDO GONZALEZ, 33 (alias Ruben Campa), and RAMON LABANINO, 30 (alias Luis Medina), another Cuban intelligence officer. The remaining seven were mid-level or junior agents who passed their reports to one of these three senior agents. Included were ANTONIO GUERRERO, 39, who observed aircraft landings at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station from his job as a sheet-metal worker there; ALEJANDRO ALONSO, 39, a boat pilot; and RENE GONZALEZ, 42, a skilled aircraft pilot and the only Cuban national among these seven. Both joined the Democracy Movement to report on its activities devoted to harassing the Castro government with demonstrations and threats. Two married couples, all American citizens, also worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, ages 44 and 41 respectively, and JOSEPH and AMARYLIS SANTOS, both 39. Five defendants, Alonzo, the Hernandez’s, and the Santos’s, accepted a plea bargain and cooperated with the prosecutors, providing information about the others. The other five defendants eventually went to trial, which lasted six months.
http://www.eyespymag.com/spylistmain1.htm
The "Five Cuban Heroes" proclaimed by the Cuban regime were actually part of a network of 12 spies that infiltrated the U.S. In addition to the five spies who maintained their innocence but were convicted in a jury trial (with no Cuban-American jurors), five pleaded guilty to charges of spying in exchange for reduced sentences, one was deported, and one fled to Cuba to escape arrest. The trials cost U.S. taxpayers one million dollars to provide the defendants with a free legal representation.
THE CUBAN 5 (actually 12 total) "WASP NETWORK" A SUMMARY OF HISTORY AND TRIAL!
At Cuban Government direction, the Cuban spy ring collected and reported information on domestic, political, and humanitarian activity of anti-Castro organizations in the Miami-Dade county area; the operation of US military installations; and other US Government functions, including law enforcement activity. The spy ring also carried out tasks in the United States as directed by the Cuban Government, which included attempted penetration of US military installations, duplicitous participation in and manipulation of anti-Castro organizations, and attempted manipulation of US political institutions and government entities through disinformation and pretended cooperation. The spy ring received financial support from the Cuban Government to carry out its tasks.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE DOCUMENT!
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=94546591