Americans up the stakes

« Alpha 66 ‘catch-and-release’ Another bombing, this time in Varadero »

1998/06/03

June 3, 1998

Michael Kozak from the US Interests Section in Havana met with the Cubans again on June 3, 1998, to deliver the text of a statement he said the United States was planning to circulate to all airlines flying between the U.S. and Cuba directly, or via third countries to Cuba, as well as to the governments all those third countries:

“We have received unconfirmed information about a plot to place explosive devices on civil airliners which fly between Cuba and countries in Latin America. The people involved in the plot plan to leave a small explosive device on board an aircraft with the intention of activating it sometime during the flight. The explosive device, according to reports, is small, has a fuse and a digital timer that can be programmed 99 hours before it is to go off. The specific target, place and timeframe have not been identified. We cannot dismiss the possibility that the threat may extend to international cargo flights from the United States. The US government is still looking for additional information to clarify, verify or refute this threat.”

Under American law, Kozak explained, the Federal Aviation Agency had no choice but to send out such information circulars “whenever the U.S. government has any credible information concerning a possible threat to aircraft.”

Castro was apoplectic. He personally drafted the Cuban response: “We did not ask you to issue any warning to air companies,” it said. “That is not the way to deal with this problem; different kind of measures can and must be taken to deal with it. No one could guarantee discretion. An indiscretion in this case could make the investigation more difficult and place obstacles in the way of more efficient measures. Moreover, the circulation of such a warning might create panic, thus causing considerable damage to the Cuban economy, which is exactly what the terrorists want. This damage could also extend to the airlines. Therefore, we disagree with the issuance of a warning; we are seriously opposed to that. We can make a thorough analysis with your group of experts of the most advisable steps to take.”

Castro’s protests fell on deaf ears. The Americans, the Cubans soon realized after they began to look into the intricacies of American law, really did have no choice but to notify the airlines and governments about what they knew, or face serious liability issues should the worst happen and their foreknowledge be disclosed.

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Timeline
October 6, 1976
Cubana Airlines Flight 455 bombed
October 6, 1976

On October 6, 1976, two bombs placed inside a washroom aboard Cubana Airlines Flight 455 from Guyana to Havana by way of Barbados exploded, killing all 73 passengers and crew, including 24 members of the Cuban national fencing team, many of them teenagers who had just won a Caribbean fencing tournament.

For the most complete account of this first act of airline terrorisim in the Americas and its impact 30 years later, read "Twilight of the Assassins" by Ann Louise Bardach in The Atlantic Magazine.
March 25, 1983
Orlando Bosch Day

Orlando Bosch

The City of Miami declares Orlando Bosch Day in honour of one of those suspected of being the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of the Cubana Airlines plane that killed 76 people. Among the many Cuban exiles who lobbied for the day: Xavier Suarez, who would serve as mayor from 1985-90.
1988
Soviet collapse undermines economy
"In 1988 Cuba's economy was undermined overnight by the collapse of the USSR: GDP was reduced by 80% and the sweetness of the sugar industry, Cuba's major export to the Soviet bloc, became instead a bitter pill. Over the next decade, food rationing, lack of transport, electricity blackouts and much misery was experienced by the Cuban population. As the economy was gradually turned around, the once restricted tourist industry was encouraged and the US dollar permitted as a parallel currency. Now twenty years later, Cuba's economy - although still hindered by the US blockade - has recovered and is growing despite the 'credit crunch' and the collapsing economies of many of the world's leading financial institutions..."

— The International Journal for Cuban Studies
May 15, 1991
Basulto forms Brothers to the Rescue

José Basulto

José Basulto founds “Brothers to the Rescue.” Congresswoman Ileana Ross successfully lobbies U.S. President George H. Bush for three U.S. Air Force type 0-2 planes, the military version of the Cessna.
1992
CANF’s terrorist offshoot
In 1992, a few senior officials within the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation—the largest anti-Castro lobby in the U.S.—quietly established a “parallel secret military organization named the "Cuban National Front” to organize violent attacks against Cuba’s developing tourist industry. The Front’s key principals were two Cuban-born ex-CIA operatives named Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both had previously been charged in Venezuela with organizing the 1976 aircraft bombing and both were intimately involved in directing a campaign of violence against the Cuban government.
January 1, 1992
Castro turns to tourism
1992 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a reluctant Fidel Castro turned to tourism as his country’s new economic salvation. Cuba opened up scores of hotels and resorts, and launched Madison-Avenue-style ad campaigns to lure European and Canadian tourists to the island with its remarkable history and its glorious beaches.

It worked. By 1996, tourism had become Cuba’s biggest source of foreign exchange and the country was welcoming more than a million tourists a year. Not bad, considering that, a decade earlier, fewer than 150,000 tourists had made the island their vacation destination. And the government was now optimistically predicting it could goose the growing tourist count by another 200,000 in 1997.
January 1, 1992
Red Avispa builds its nest
1992

February 1, 1992
Juan Pablo Roque “defects”
In February 1992, disillusioned Cuban air force officer Juan Pablo Roque donned scuba gear and swam to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to defect.

He ended up in Miami where he befriended Brothers to the Rescue founder José Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue. He joined in 1993, flying 11 missions. For part of that time, he was also acting as an agent for the FBI, reporting on the Brother's missions.

On February 23, 1996, he returned to Cuba just before the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. He said he'd grown frustrated "living in the belly of the beast."
May 20, 1993
Alpha 66 ‘catch-and-release’

U.S. Customs agents arrested a number of members of the anti-Castro militant group Alpha 66 aboard boats loaded with weapons, including handguns, automatic rifles, grenades, pipe bombs, a grenade launcher and a Baretta semi-automatic rifle. One man was charged but acquitted.

Over the course of next year and a half, members of Alpha 66 were caught on at least two other occasions. On one occasion (June 10, 1994) agents seized weapons but didn't arrest anyone; on another (July 11, 1993) "the men were not arrested, and the weapons and vessels were not seized."
January 1, 1994
Posada plot foiled

“La Red Avispa,” or the Wasp Network, was a group of Cuban spies sent to Florida to infiltrate and report back to Havana on plans by anti-Catsro exile groups to attack Cuba.

It was so successful that Havana was actually able to subvert several planned attacks, including a bombing in 1994. In that case, CANF’s militant wing unknowingly paid one of the Cuban government’s agents, Percy Francisco Alvarado, $20,000 to carry out the attacks.

Alvarado (who had been code-named “Monk “by the Cubans and “44” by CANF, who believed he was one of their agents) flew from Miami to Guatemala to pick up the explosive devices and get instructions from Luis Posada on how to use them.

He then flew to Havana but, instead of detonating the devices as instructed, he turned them over to Cuban authorities. At their instructions, he informed his Miami bosses that he’d gotten cold feet.

His explanation must have been convincing. After he returned to Miami, his handlers, including Pepe Hernandez, the president of the CANF, “offered me still another $20,000 on top of that to set them off.”
July 13, 1995
Basulto violates Cuban air space

During a flotilla demonstrating against the Cuban government, José Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue flew his Cessna 337 into Cuban airspace without permission from the Cuban government, crossed over Havana and dropped religious medallions and bumper stickers from the sky.

The stickers boasted the slogan ``Companeros No. Hermanos,'' or "Not Comrades. Brothers.''

The Cuban government protested the violation to American authorities.

Charles Smith of the Federal Aviation Administration testified during the trial of the Five that he warned Basulto that Cuba might shoot his plane down or force him to land.

"'You know I always play by the rules," Smith says Basulto told him, "but you must understand I have a mission in life to perform."'

In February 1998, the Cuban government shot down two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft. The shootdown became a key element of the prosecution case against the Five.
February 24, 1996
BTTR aircraft shot down
February 24, 1996

On February 24, 1996, Cuban MiG jets shot down two aircraft operated by the Miami-based anti-Castro Brothers to the Rescue group, killing four of those on board.

The anti-Castro’s group’s ostensible purpose had been to rescue Cuban balseros—rafters trying to escape from Cuba to the U.S. across the Florida Straits. But Brothers did more than patrol the Straits looking for needy refugees. Its aircraft often strayed into Cuban airspace, occasionally buzzing low over Havana. Its supporters claimed the Brothers were simply dropping pamphlets—like the text of the UN Declaration of Human Rights—on Havana to inform residents there of their rights.

The Cubans begged to differ. They accused Brothers to the Rescue of dropping smoke bombs into the heart of Havana as well as—more significantly—plotting to sabotage the Cienfuegos oil refinery and blow up high tension pylons to disrupt electrical power in Havana province Over the course of 20 months leading up to the shooting down of the two aircraft, in fact, the Cubans had documented 25 incidents in which Brothers aircraft had violated its airspace. When their official complaints to American officials failed to stop the flights, the Cubans threatened to—and finally did—shoot down the planes.

Though the aircraft the MiGs blew out of the air had violated Cuban air space, they were unarmed and had actually escaped into international airspace by the time the jets intercepted them. The resulting furor, especially among Cuban-American exiles in Florida, spelled an instant end to any possibility of rapprochement between Washington and Havana.

April 12, 1997
Bombing campaign begins

A bomb explodes in the “Aché” discotheque at the Melia Cohiba hotel.
April 30, 1997
Melia Hotel attack foiled

Special Forces from Cuba's Ministry of the Interior deactivate an explosive charge discovered on the 15th floor of the Melia Cohiba hotel.
July 12, 1997
Capri, Nacional hotels bombed

Explosions occur almost simultaneously in the Capri and Nacional Hotels. Four people are wounded.
August 4, 1997
Melia Cohiba hotel explosion

August 11, 1997
CANF responds to bombings
August 11, 1997

The board of directors of the Cuban American National Foundation describes the bombing campaign as “incidents of internal rebellion which have been taking place in Cuba over the last few weeks.” It adds “the Cuban American National Foundation […] supports these without hesitation or reservations.”
August 22, 1997
Another bombing, this time in Varadero
 Bomb explodes in the "Sol Palmeras" Hotel in Varadero.

September 4, 1997
Bomb explodes at Havana’s Copa
September 4, 1997

Cruz León

Shortly after 10:30 on the morning of September 4, 1997, a 27-year-old Salvadoran named Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon ambled into the lobby bar of the Copacabana Hotel in Havana’s Miramar embassy district and asked the bartender for a Bucanero. While he waited for his beer, Cruz Leon slipped into the washroom, removed a small explosive device from his backpack, set its timer, returned to the bar and placed it inside a metal ashtray standing beside the bar. After finishing his drink, he left the Copacabana and made his way down the block to the nearby Chateau Hotel.

Fabio Di Celmo

An hour later, Fabio di Celmo came downstairs and into the lobby bar. The 32-year-old Montreal-based Italian-Canadian entrepreneur was staying in the Copacabana with his father while they attempted to negotiate some joint venture tourism deals with the Cuban government. On this day, he had arranged to meet a recently married Italian couple for lunch in the bar. At his suggestion, the couple, whom he’d known since childhood, had spent their honeymoon in Cuba and Di Celmo was anxious to hear how they’d enjoyed their stay.

Their drinks had just arrived when a sudden, violent explosion ripped through the hotel lobby, shattering bottles and glasses, destroying the furniture and blowing the hotel’s lobby windows, twisted frames and all, into the street. When the dust had settled, Fabio Di Clemo lay face down on the green-carpeted floor in a rapidly expanding pool of his own bright red blood. A metal shard from the ashtray had rocketed through the air and sliced open his throat, severing his carotid artery and killing him almost instantly.

September 10, 1997
Arrest in Havana hotel bombing

Raúl Cruz León

The Cuban Government announces it has arrested Salvadoran Raúl Cruz León for planting six of the bomb, including the one that killed Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo. Cruz León was paid $4,500 US for each bomb.
October 1, 1997
US warns of “another bomb”
October 1, 1997

At 11 p.m. on October 1, 1997—just three weeks after the Copacabana bombing—Michael Kozak, the head of the United States Interests Section in Havana telephoned a contact in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior to pass on a warning from Washington. The United States had received information from “a third party” about the possibility of yet another bomb being set off in a tourist area, he said, and offered details of what they claimed they’d learned from their source.

Four days later, Cuban officials summoned Kozak to their offices to read him a message to send back to Washington: “We wish to let [the American government] know that the source which provided them with this information has been shown to be truthful. We have acted with utmost discretion, as we were asked to do. We are very appreciative.”
October 19, 1997
Still another bombing attempt
Officials discover explosive device is found in a tourist van.

October 27, 1997
A(nother) Castro assassination plot
On October 27, 1997, the U.S. Coast Guard boarded a yacht call La Esperanza near Puerto Rico, discovering a cache of weapons, including two high-powered sniper rifles.

One of those on board the vessel, Angel Alfonso Aleman claimed ownership. "I placed them there myself," he said. "They are weapons for the purpose of assassinating Fidel Castro."

Police eventually charged seven Cuban exiles, including prominent members of the Miami exile community—one a board member of the Cuban American National Foundation, with a plot "to kill, with malice aforethought, Fidel Castro."

On December 9, 1999, a jury in Puerto Rico acquitted all the defendants. The decision seemed to have less to do with evidence than politics. Explained the jury foreman after the verdict: "This was a message to the Cuban people that we're with you, and not to lose hope."

Interestingly, the FBI officer in charge of the original investigation was Hector Pesquera. In May 1998, he would be appointed the FBI's agent in charge in Miami where he played a key role in the arrest of the Cuban Five.
October 30, 1997
Explosive device discovered at airport

The device was in a kiosk outside Terminal 2 at Havana's José Martí International Airport.
November 16, 1997
Posada named “key link”
November 16, 1997

In a report published in the Miami Herald on November 16, 1997, the newspaper—citing “dozens of interviews with security officials, friends of the bombers, Cuban exiles and others in El Salvador, Miami, Guatemala and Honduras”—traced the Havana hotel attacks to a “ring of Salvadoran car thieves and armed robbers directed and financed by Cuban exiles in El Salvador and Miami... Luis Posada Carriles,” the story claimed, “was the key link between El Salvador and the South Florida exiles, who raised $15,000 for the operation.”
April 18, 1998
Castro decides to send a message

"In view of the positive exchanges (with the US government) and knowing that writer Gabriel García Márquez would be traveling to the United States soon where he would meeting with William Clinton, a reader and admirer of his books —as so many other people in the world— whom García Márquez had met before, I decided to send a message to the US president, which I personally drafted.

The message touched on seven subjects briefly and in synthesis. I shall limit myself in this report to that most directly related with the serious events taking place today, that is, the terrorist attacks against the Cuban people organized and financed from the United States. It was entitled:

SUMMARY OF ISSUES THAT GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ MAY CONFIDENTIALLY TRANSMIT TO PRESIDENT CLINTON.
Point 1 (literally)
“An important issue. Plans for terrorist actions against Cuba continue to be hatched and paid by the Cuban American National Foundation using Central American mercenaries. Two new attempts at setting up bombs in tourist resorts have been undertaken before, and after, the Pope's visit. In the first case, those responsible failed, they were able to escape and return to Central America by plane leaving behind the technical means and explosives, which were then seized. In the second case, three mercenaries were arrested with explosives and other means. They are Guatemalans. They would have received 1500 USD for every bomb exploded.
“In both cases they were hired and supplied by agents of the ring organized by the Cuban American National Foundation. Now, they are plotting and taking steps to set up bombs in planes from Cuba or any other country airline carrying tourist to, or from, Cuba to Latin American countries. The method is similar: to hide a small device at a certain place inside the plane, a powerful explosive with a fuse controlled by a digital clock that can be programmed 99 hours in advance, then easily abandon the plane at foreseen destination; the explosion would take place either on the ground or while the plane is in flight to its next destination. Really devilish procedures: easy to handle mechanisms, components whose detection is practically impossible, a minimum training required for their use, almost absolute impunity. Extremely dangerous to airlines and to tourist facilities or of any other type. Tools suitable for a crime, very serious crimes. lf they were revealed and their possibilities exposed, they might become an epidemic as the hijacking of planes once became. Other Cuban extremist groups living in the United States are beginning to move in that direction.
“The American investigation and intelligence agencies are in possession of enough reliable information on the main people responsible. lf they really want to, they have the possibility of preventing in time this new modality of terrorism. It will be impossible to stop it if the United States doesn't discharge its fundamental duty of fighting it. The responsibility to fight it can't be left to Cuba alone since any other country of the world might also be a victim of such actions.”
May 1, 1998
Pesquera FBI’s new Miami boss

The FBI's new Miami boss was Hector Pesquera. Soon after his May 1998 arrival, he “began to fraternize with key members of the exile leadership,” including CANF. As one of Pesquera’s agents later told a reporter, he “quickly made a brusque turn toward the right, and all investigations related to terrorism were abandoned.” In a newspaper interview on July 29, 1998, in fact, the new head of the FBI’s Miami office declared that he “understands the animosity that Cubans feel toward the government of Fidel Castro.” He had no plans, he added, to “raise the priority” of Bureau investigations into any alleged plots against Cuba’s tourist industry by Cuban-Americans living in Miami.

Instead, he ordered his agents to figure out where Cuban State Security was getting its intelligence. By that point, of course, Pesquera already knew what the Cubans had turned over to the FBI in Havana in June concerning the airplane plot. “They informed me of what was going on,” he later told an interviewer for Radio Marti, the American government-funded, anti-Castro radio station. “We then began to stress that this investigation into the effects of intelligence should no longer remain as is, but should change direction and become a criminal investigation,” he explained, then added, “I had many problems convincing the Justice Department.” Some in the department “didn’t want to touch this,” he told another interviewer, and said that the disagreement went all the way to the top. “Everything was on the line.” Attorney General Janet Reno herself had to be “persuaded,” and it took FBI Director Freeh’s personal intervention to finally get the OK Pesquera needed to do what he wanted to do.

May 6, 1998
Garcia Marquez’s secret mission
May 6, 1998

In mid-April, 1998, Cuban President Fidel Castro asked his good friend, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to carry a message to Marquez's other good friend, U.S. President Bill Clinton, warning that American-based Cuban exile groups had hatched "a sinister terrorist plan" to blow up an airliner carrying tourists to Cuba from Europe or Canada. He didn't end up meeting with Clinton himself, but he did deliver the message to senior White House officials.

You can read a copy of the full report Marquez wrote for Castro after his mission as a go-between.

June 3, 1998
Americans up the stakes

Michael Kozak from the US Interests Section in Havana met with the Cubans again on June 3, 1998, to deliver the text of a statement he said the United States was planning to circulate to all airlines flying between the U.S. and Cuba directly, or via third countries to Cuba, as well as to the governments all those third countries:

“We have received unconfirmed information about a plot to place explosive devices on civil airliners which fly between Cuba and countries in Latin America. The people involved in the plot plan to leave a small explosive device on board an aircraft with the intention of activating it sometime during the flight. The explosive device, according to reports, is small, has a fuse and a digital timer that can be programmed 99 hours before it is to go off. The specific target, place and timeframe have not been identified. We cannot dismiss the possibility that the threat may extend to international cargo flights from the United States. The US government is still looking for additional information to clarify, verify or refute this threat.”

Under American law, Kozak explained, the Federal Aviation Agency had no choice but to send out such information circulars “whenever the U.S. government has any credible information concerning a possible threat to aircraft.”

Castro was apoplectic. He personally drafted the Cuban response: “We did not ask you to issue any warning to air companies,” it said. “That is not the way to deal with this problem; different kind of measures can and must be taken to deal with it. No one could guarantee discretion. An indiscretion in this case could make the investigation more difficult and place obstacles in the way of more efficient measures. Moreover, the circulation of such a warning might create panic, thus causing considerable damage to the Cuban economy, which is exactly what the terrorists want. This damage could also extend to the airlines. Therefore, we disagree with the issuance of a warning; we are seriously opposed to that. We can make a thorough analysis with your group of experts of the most advisable steps to take.”

Castro’s protests fell on deaf ears. The Americans, the Cubans soon realized after they began to look into the intricacies of American law, really did have no choice but to notify the airlines and governments about what they knew, or face serious liability issues should the worst happen and their foreknowledge be disclosed.
June 8, 1998
FAA issues airline plot warning

Federal Aviation Agency warning, issued over the objections of the Cubans:

“We have received unconfirmed information about a plot to place explosive devices on civil airliners which fly between Cuba and countries in Latin America. The people involved in the plot plan to leave a small explosive device on board an aircraft with the intention of activating it sometime during the flight. The explosive device, according to reports, is small, has a fuse and a digital timer that can be programmed 99 hours before it is to go off. The specific target, place and timeframe have not been identified.
“We cannot dismiss the possibility that the threat may extend to international cargo flights from the United States. The US government is still looking for additional information to clarify, verify or refute this threat”.
June 15, 1998
FBI meets Cuban State Security
June 15-17, 1998

On June 15, 1998, a remarkable secret meeting occurred in Havana between representatives of Cuban State Security and a visiting delegation of American FBI agents.

Over the course of three unprecedented days, the Cubans handed over to the FBI a mountain of documents, photographs, audio recordings, videos and physical evidence its intelligence agents had gathered. The Cubans claimed the material proved that key players in the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation—the largest anti-Castro exile group in the U.S., with direct links to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan—had not only provided the money and muscle for a wave of bombings at Cuban hotels and resorts but that they were also now in the process of ratcheting up both the stakes and the consequences in their campaign against Cuba.

The evidence it had gathered, the Cubans told the FBI agents, showed that elements in the exile group had hatched a deadly plan to blow up airplanes filled with Cuba-bound tourists from Europe or Canada.

The agents thanked the Cubans, took their material and promised to get back to them as soon as they’d had a chance to analyze all the evidence.

They never did.
July 12, 1998
Posada claims bombing “credit”
Luis Posada Carriles

A series of New York Times articles by Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter brought Luis Posada Carrile's role in the bombing campaign—and other terrorist acts—into sharp focus.

July 12, 1998: A Bomber's Tale: Part 1

July 13, 1998: A Bomber's Tale: Part 2
August 20, 1998
Posada meets to plot killing Castro
In late August 1998, Luis Posada Carrile arranged a meeting with other exilies in the Guatemala City Holiday Inn Hotel to plan how to kill Castro at a Summit of Heads of State and Government of CARIFORUM in the Dominican Republic.
August 26, 1998
CANF board member indicted in Castro plot
August 26, 1998

"A member of the board of the principal Cuban exile organization in the United States was indicted here today with six other men on charges that they conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro when he was on an official visit to Venezuela last year."

(More...)
September 12, 1998
Arrest of the Five
On September 12, 1998, at 5 a.m., heavily armed FBI agents conducted dozens of raids in and around Miami, smashing down doors, confiscating computers, files and communications equipment and arresting 10 men.

The arrests, of course, marked only the end of the beginning of the larger story of the Cuban Five. And the legal proceedings turned out to be no less controversial—or complicated.

Of the 10 members of the Avispa network, five pleaded guilty in exchange for lighter sentences and testified against the others. The five whose cases did go forward were charged with 26, mostly technical violations of American law (failing to register as a foreign agent, living in the U.S. under a phony name, etc.). None of the charges—as the Cubans were quick to point out—involved actual acts of espionage against the United States government.

One of the Five, however, did face a much more serious charge. Prosecutors accused Gerardo Hernandez of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the 1996 shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue airplanes. They claimed that Hernandez had received secret instructions from Havana to warn two of his undercover agents not to board Brothers to the Rescue flights to Cuba between February 23 and February 27, 1996. Cuba shot down the planes on February 26. That meant, the prosecutors alleged, that Hernandez must have known of the plans to shoot them down and was therefore guilt of conspiracy to commit murder. In Miami, where the deaths of the four Brothers to the Rescue fliers were still an emotional issue, that conspiracy charge was—and remains—the case’s red flag, and the major stumbling block to finding a political solution.

1999
Cuban complains to the UN
Cuba tells the United Nations that "terrorist" attacks by Miami-based exile groups have been responsible for the deaths of 3,478 Cubans and injuries to 2,099 others.

November 25, 1999
Elian Gonzalez arrives in U.S.
November 25, 1999

The Thanksgiving weekend arrival of the five-year-old Cuban boy aboard an inner tube—he survived the crossing from Cuba in which his mother died—touched off a highly publicized tug-of-war between Elian's father and the Cuban government on one side, and Miami-based anti-Castro exiles, who wanted to keep him in the U.S., on the other

Publicity over Elian's fate dominated the news in the months leading up to the trial of the Cuban Five
December 9, 1999
Castro plotters acquitted
December 9, 1999

A federal jury Wednesday acquitted five Cuban exiles accused of plotting to kill Fidel Castro, a bitter defeat for U.S. efforts to crack down on anti-Castro conspiracies.
In a stunning finale to the 14-day trial, two jurors later said the verdict was a "message" to the Cuban people, embraced the defendants and went off to celebrate with them at a popular Cuban restaurant.
Defendant Jose Antonio Llama, on the board of directors of the Cuban American National Foundation, sobbed openly and vowed that the verdict would invigorate "our efforts to continue to get freedom for our country."
"Not even the United States can control the minds and spirits of the people who want to fight for their country," said Llama, 68, a Miami businessman. "This is not the end. This is just the beginning again."

Miami Herald
December 9, 1999
April 22, 2000
Government seizes Elian

The U.S. government, over the objections of the Miami-based exile community, seizes Elian from his American relatives and returns him to his father. Elian becomes a hero in Cuba. And the Castro government becomes even more "the bad guy" in Miami.

US Attorney General Janet Reno, a Floridian and usual friend to the exiles, was vilified for her decision. She was attacked on local talk radio, received death threats at her home. Wrote the Miami Herald, one of the few newspapers in the U.S. to support the American family: "Janet Reno, born and raised on the fringes of Miami, loves to see things dearly: the law and her hometown. Because of her rigid devotion to the former, she is threatened with losing the other. It is one of this community's uglier tendencies that, when we disagree with someone on an issue, we try also to vilify him or her as a person."

Lamented Reno: "I was born and raised in that community. I love Miami when it is hurting, it hurts me."

November 17, 2000
Posada arrested in assassination plot
Posada among a group of exile militants arrested in Panama after slipping into the country with false documents, not to mention explosives and a sketch of Castro's route and schedule. Their plan: to assassinate Castro during the Ibero American Summit. The Cuban American National Foundation hired the lawyers who defended them.

December 5, 2000
Jury chosen, trial begins
December 5, 2000

The prosecution's first key witness was FBI agent Vincente Rosado who testified that investigators seized more than 500 computer disks from alleged spy-ring members' apartments in North Miami Beach, Hollywood and Miami Beach. He told jurors the disks, which required a special program and password to open, contained reports about the ring's activities, but he did not provide details.

The six-month trial would generate 119 volumes of testimony and more than 20,000 pages of exhibits.

Defence witnesses included three retired Army generals, a retired admiral, a former presidential advisor on Cuba, senior Cuban officials and even the head of Brothers to the Rescue.

June 8, 2001
Cuban Five convicted
On June 8, 2001—just two months before September 11—a Miami jury convicted all five men on all charges against them.

September 11, 2001
Terrorists attack New York, Washington
September 11, 2001

The deadly attacks highlighted America's vulnerability to—and fear of—terrorism. But it also provided a telling counterpoint to the prosecution of the Cuban Five.

The Five had been dispatched to Florida not to attack the U.S. but to infiltrate and report back on militant exile groups that were planning from the United States to terrorist attacks on Cuba.

The irony would be lost on the jurors in the Cuban Five case, as it was when President George W. Bush declared that anyone offering safe haven to a terrorist—think Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch—was, in fact, a terrorist as well.

September 24, 2001
Cuban Five sentenced
September 24, 2001

On September 24—less than two weeks after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre—the judge handed down their sentences. Gerardo Herandez got two life terms for his role in shooting down the Brothers to the Rescue airplanes. Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero received life sentences for conspiracy to commit espionage. And Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez got 19 and 15 years respectively.
May 27, 2005
UN criticizes trial, sentences

In “Opinion No. 19/2005,” the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention described the detention of the Cuban Five as "arbitrary," concluding “from the facts and circumstances in which the trial took place and from the nature of the charges and the harsh sentences handed down to the accused, that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality.”

August 9, 2005
Appeals court orders new trial

The 11th Circuit court of Appeals in Atlanta orders a re-trial in a different venue.

August 9, 2006
Appeal court reverses panel decision

Atlanta's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the 2005 decision of the three-judge panel 10-2 overturning the panel's decision to grant a new trial in a different venue. The defence appeals.

June 15, 2009
Supreme Court rejects review

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review of the case of the Cuban Five.

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About

This is the site for What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, collected research and other materials for an in-progress narrative nonfiction book about the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber.

The Cuban Five were members of "La Red Avispa"—the Wasp Network—spies Havana dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups that Cuba believed were plotting terrorist attacks on its soil. The Cuban Five were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in the United States.

In the United States, they are virtually unknown. In Cuba, they are heroes.

That’s the short version of the story. The long version is… well, more complicated... Stay tuned.

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- My Washington talk on the Cuban Five: Truth, Lies and the Miami Mafia. #cuba #freethefive #maimi http://t.co/Lb6JdprR 2012/04/24
- Me, the FBI and the Cuban Five documents that didn't exist and now do. Sort of... #miami #freethefive #FBI #cuba http://t.co/i0XNOmeF 2012/04/23
- "Shootdown: The Real Story of Brothers to the Rescue and the Cuban Five" http://t.co/W6wpsY5p 2012/04/17
- Shootdown: The Real Story of Brothers to the Rescue and the Cuban Five. Available as an ebook. #havana #miami #castro http://t.co/pmvJfk4S 2012/04/16
- Shootdown: The Real Story of Brothers to the Rescue and the Cuban Five. Available as an ebook. #freethefive #loscinco http://t.co/pmvJfk4S 2012/04/16
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Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection

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