René González responds to Washington Post editorial on Alan Gross
On December 31, 2011, the Washington Post published an editorial demanding the return of Alan Gross, an American government contractor sentenced to 15 years in Cuban prison for illegally bringing telecommunications equipment into the country.
In the editorial, the Post claimed Cuba saw Gross as a "potential bargaining chip" to win the release of the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents sentenced to harsh prison terms in the U.S. for "conspiracy to commit" espionage.
"There is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between the illegal espionage of the Cubans and the conduct of Mr. Gross. The five Cubans were sentenced to long prison terms in 2001 for, among other things, operating as undeclared foreign agents and infiltrating U.S. military installations in South Florida. All are acknowledged intelligence officers, unlike Mr. Gross, a would-be humanitarian who got himself caught up in the U.S.-Cuban dispute over U.S. efforts to promote civil society on the island."
René González, the only one of the Five to be released from prison—but who is still currently forced to serve his parole in the U.S.—has written a powerful, thoughtful response to the editorial (see below).
He's encouraging others to read the Post's editorial and write their own letters to the editor to challenge the inaccuracies in the piece and to push the American media to finally report completely and fairly on the case of the Five.
****
From: René González
mailing address: undisclosed for personal safety.
relation to the issue: I'm one of the Cuban Five mentioned in the editorial.
Telephone: undisclosed for personal safety.
Dear Editor:
Your editorial regarding the case of Alan Gross -and in passing the one of the Cuban Five- is so charged with factual inaccuracies that it can only be explained -at least in part- by the astonishing decision by the American media to not publish anything of the longest "espionage" trial in the history of the country, which ended up on such harsh sentences that would suggest a danger to the US that everybody on the planet should have been aware of. I won't burden you with all the inaccuracies and will only refer to a few of them.
It is true that it is illegal for Cuba to connect to the Internet. After all, the whole country is banned by the US government to hook up to the underwater cable that runs parallel to the Cuban coast, just north of the island. It strains credibility that the Washington Post wouldn't be able to find the truth about such a simple factual matter. That the same government that prohibits the whole island to connect to the web then devices a clandestine operation to decide which Cubans will have the privilege to circumvent the very prohibition that he imposes on the country's citizenry can hardly be considered of a humanitarian character.
That the Jewish Cuban community had anything to do with that operation has been the most often repeated lie of the last two years. The cynicism of having played the Jewish card on this case lies on somebody else other than any Cuban official, and has been the basis of the mayor disinformation on this issue. It would surely be easy for the Washington Post also to find out the truth by simply contacting the people that the editorial cites as having visited Mr Gross in prison: The Cuban Jewish leaders, whose community enjoys every benefit when it comes to communications that a country under so much limitations in that regard can give them.
Well before the arrest of Mr Gross the Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations Humans Right Commission, Amnesty International, more than a hundred Brithish MP's, ten Nobel price winners, the entire Mexican Senate, 56 Canadian MP's and thousands of personalities, political and civil organizations all over the world called for an end to the vindictive and arbitrary treatment of the Five. It would have taken any news outlet, including the Post, to just read the decision of the Appellate panel on the 11th Circuit -August 5, 2005-, where the terrorist activities against Cuba which we were watching on are listed, to explain why so many people support us.
That also explains the reasons of my incapacity to give you my mailing address or telephone number. After all, during my sentencing, the prosecutors asked the Judge
-who granted it- that "the defendant should be prohibited from associating with terrorists or to visit places where it is known that terrorists, people who promote violence or organized crime figures meet". They forgot, nevertheless, to offer me the same protection against the terrorists, who enjoy any freedom to come after me if they only new my location.
Some times bad actions have unintended consequences, and this applies now. Every one of those who decided to spill on the five of us his hatred towards the Cuban government, now has put that same government on a position when it would be impossible for him to exercise the generosity that -to take just an example- was exercised with the Bay of Pigs invaders. I have nothing personal against Mr Gross and wish him well, but it is not wise -as suggested by the editorial- to think that the recycling of the same arrogance and lies will do him any good. It doesn't make sense to mistreat somebody and at the same time demand generosity from him. That logic should come to an end, the sooner the better for our two peoples.
I respectfully suggest that there is still time for the Post to take this matter seriously. Open a real debate on all this issues and don't keep going down the same worn out path that goes nowhere.
It reads in the Bible that "the truth will set you free". That might apply to Mr Gross today.
Respectfully submitted.
René González Sehwerert
Copyright 2012 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Welcome to America’s war on terrorism (fighters)… continued
On Friday, October 7, René González will become the first member of the Cuban Five to be released from an American prison. In 2001, the Five were convicted in Miami of spying for Cuba. Cuba insists they were—justifiably—trying to prevent anti-Castro exiles from launching terrorist attacks against their homeland. The Five have since become heroes in Cuba, and their case has sparked international controversy—as has González’s pending release. Last week, the same Florida judge who originally sentenced him decided González must remain in the United States during his parole rather than granting his request to return home to his family in Havana. Why?
On the eve of René González’s release Friday from an American prison—but not his prison America will now become—it’s worth reminding ourselves what terrible crimes he committed.
Why was he sentenced to 15 years in jail? And why do American officials now insist he serve his post-prison parole in The United States instead of in Cuba?
In 1998, González—a member of the Cuban Five spy ring— was charged with failing to formally register as an agent of a foreign government.
Guilty as charged.
René González
In December 1990, González “stole” a small plane from a Havana airfield and “defected” to Florida. Not surprisingly, he didn’t tell authorities he was a Cuban intelligence agent whose mission was to infiltrate militant Miami exile groups.
The reason he didn’t—the reason he’d been sent to Florida in the first place—was that U.S. authorities rarely charged Cuban exiles, even those clearly violating American Neutrality Act prohibitions against launching armed attacks on another country from U.S. soil.
Cuba certainly isn’t the only country to dispatch clandestine agents to other countries in order to protect its homeland from attack. Consider… well how about post-9/11 America? How many American agents are currently operating secretly inside Pakistan because the U.S. government believes Pakistan is unable or unwilling to deal with terrorist threats there? How many of those agents registered with Pakistani authorities?
It’s also worth noting how the U.S. has dealt with other unregistered foreign agents. Last year, 10 Russians pled guilty to being long-term Moscow agents inside the United States. Instead of sending them to prison, Americans authorities sent them home in a swap for four foreign nationals the Russians had convicted of spying on them.
The Cold War was over. Except, of course, when that hot-cold war involved Cuba. Welcome to America’s war on terrorism (fighters).
In addition to feloniously failing to tell American authorities he was not an anti-Castro “freedom fighter,” René González also stood accused of… “general conspiracy”?
General what?
Despite thousands of seized documents and two years’ of pre-arrest surveillance, prosecutors couldn’t produce a shred of evidence González had ever stolen—or tried to steal, or even thought about stealing—any of America’s state secrets.
So they charged him with… general conspiracy. Which apparently means if they can’t arrest you for what you’re doing, they’ll get you for what you’re thinking… or what they think you’re thinking.
What did González really do?
While researching a book on the Five, I spent months poring over 20,000+ pages of their trial transcript and other evidence.
Here’s what the record shows René González did.
He infiltrated—and reported back to Havana on—a militant Cuban exile organization called Partido Unidad Nacional Democracia, or PUND.
PUND trained in Florida for armed attacks against Cuba. They did so openly. In 1995, the FBI questioned members of the group in connection with one plot—but released them without charges.
González also infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, a supposedly humanitarian group that boasted of illegal incursions into Cuban air space. Thanks to González and other agents, Havana learned:
• Brothers’ founder José Basulto inquired about purchasing a used Czech fighter jet;
• Exile militants wanted to use a Brothers’ planes for a mid-air attack on an aircraft carrying Fidel Castro to the United Nations;
• Brothers to the Rescue members test-fired anti-personnel weapons for possible use in Cuba.
And González infiltrated another supposedly peaceful group— Movimiento Democracia—whose members openly violated Cuban territorial waters.
During his time as an agent in Florida, González even served briefly as an FBI informant. A PUND member had enlisted him to ferry cocaine from Puerto Rico to Florida to raise money to buy more weapons to attack Cuba. González tipped off the FBI.
Based on the evidence, that is the sum of René González’s “general conspiracy.”
U.S. prosecutors were so unsure of their conspiracy case they offered González ever sweeter—and more sour—inducements to cop a plea before his trial.
At one point, they dangled the carrot of avoiding trial by pleading guilty to a single count of being an unregistered agent. But “the last paragraph of the plea agreement draft,” González recalls, included “a not-so-veiled invitation to consider my wife’s resident status is at stake.”
González drew a middle finger in the space left for his signature.
The next day, August 16, 2000, immigration officials arrested his wife. In one final effort to change his mind, they brought her—now dressed in orange prison jumpsuit—to visit him in jail. When he didn’t relent, they deported her. He has not been allowed to see her since..
René González has now done his time. He’s been in jail since his arrest in 1998. He spent his first 17 months in solitary confinement. He has been, by all accounts, a model prisoner. He’s studied economics, taken up running, even completed a few half-marathons in his medium security prison. As required by Florida law, he will have served 85 per cent of his sentence inside prison before being paroled.
Now he wants to go home to Havana to see his family.
There’s no public benefit to forcing him to serve his parole in hostile Florida. He is not about to be “reintegrated” into American society, and he could be in physical danger from vengeful exiles. Still U.S. prosecutors opposed his application. The same judge who originally sentenced him sided with prosecutors.
The issue is that González continues to defend what he did.
“I have no reason to be remorseful,” González told his original sentencing hearing. He condemned the hypocrisy of the American justice system for charging him and his fellow defendants for the non-crime of trying to protect their country from terrorist attack while ignoring the real crimes of exile terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who stood accused of the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people, and a string of 1997 attacks on Cuban tourist hotels that killed a Canadian.
So on Friday René González will be released from his physical prison but only into another, psychic one.
Welcome to America’s continuing war on terrorism (fighters)…. Continued.
***
Stephen Kimber is a Canadian journalist who’s writing a book on the case of the Cuban Five.
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
FBI claims they have ‘no records…’ They’ve got to be kidding
An open letter to the FBI about a certain meeting that took place in Havana in June 1998 and why they now claim to have no records of it...
Dear David M. Hardy,
Thanks for your letter of January 25, 2011, in which you inform me that “a new search of the indices of our Central records System was conducted for records concerning the subject of your request. Through this search we determined there are no records responsive to your request.”
No records? You’re kidding, right? Seriously? No records?
I know you must get a lot of Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts (FOIPA) requests (which is probably why it seems to take so long for you to tell me you have nothing to tell me), so let me remind you of the “subject” of my request.
On May 5, 2010, I submitted a request for:
“all reports, correspondence, memos, notes, emails and other records concerning a meeting between a delegation from the FBI and Cuban State Security in Havana in June 1998. My understanding is that the meeting itself took place from June 15-17, but I am also seeking any material relating to preparations for this meeting as well as follow-up from it for the period from May 1, 1998 to September 15, 1998.”
You responded a few months later to say that you had given my request a bureaucratic identification number (see, you do keep records)—FOI/PA #1150092—but that you had scoured the entire dead file room on my behalf and come up with nothing. Nada. Sorry.
You didn’t say you wouldn’t give me the documents. You said there were no documents.
But if I was so inclined, you kindly added, I could ask again.
So I did. Nicely.
On October 5, 2010, I wrote you again, repeating my original request and adding some additional information I hoped would provide bread-crumb clues on your path past the departmental dust bunnies to the files I sought.
I wrote:
- The records I am seeking relate to meetings in Havana in connection with an FBI investigation into a series of bombings that had occurred at hotels and resorts in Cuba during the mid-1990s. My understanding is that Cuban authorities claimed they had evidence of American involvement in the bomb plots and that the purpose of the meetings was for the Cubans to share information they had gathered.
- According to evidence presented at the trial of the Cuban Five (Transcript 10925-6), in the year prior to the meeting in Havana, “the United States sent five separate diplomatic notes to the Government of Cuba requesting a meeting concerning the evidence that the government of Cuba had regarding those bombings” and that the FBI “had requested such a meeting for over a year” prior to June 1998.
- Also according to evidence presented at the trial of the Cuban Five (Transcript P10871), two of the Americans involved in the meetings in Havana in June 1998 were described as FBI agents Agustin Rodriguez and Luis Rodriguez.
- The transcript (P10871) also indicates that there was at least one follow-up meeting in Washington in 1999 to discuss the FBI’s analysis of material presented to them during the June 1998 meeting in Havana.
I had hoped that this finder’s aid might assist you in locating the documents but, alas, your letter of January 25 dashed my hopes once again.
Your new search had come up with the old result. Nothing.
What am I to make of this?
Are your telling me the meeting didn’t happen? Or that the meeting happened but no one wrote a single word about it before, during or after?
Let’s start with the first possibility. There was no meeting.
So far as I can tell, the first official mention of the meeting occurred in March 1999 when Cuban State Security Col. Adalberto Rabiero testified about it during the Havana trial of a Salvadoran mercenary accused of planting some of the bombs.
Rabeiro testified that information linking the hotel bombings to Luis Posada and the Cuban American National Foundation had been turned over to ”a team of specialists”—that, I believe, would be you folks in the FBI—who had been “sent by important U.S. officials” to Havana.
Commie propaganda? Disinformation?
Apparently not. On March 24, 1999, the Miami Herald followed up with a news story that began: “FBI agents have been examining evidence provided by Cuba officials linking exiles to terror attacks, but Havana has been avoiding a follow-up meeting with the investigators since December, U.S. officials say.”
A follow-up meeting. Meaning there must have been a meeting.
And there’s more. I’m attaching this title page from a 65-page document—INFORME SOBRE LAS ACTIVIADES TERRORISTAS CONTRA CUBA—that Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior says it prepared and gave to your officials at those meetings. Look at the bottom of the page. June 1998...
Ring any bells?
I also have a copy of another 52-page document—ANEXOS OPERATIVOS—Cuban authorities say they handed over at the same time. It includes names, then-current addresses, alternate addresses, phone numbers, car licence plate numbers, etc., etc., for various and sundry alleged anti-Castro terrorists, most of whom were living in the United States… just in case you ever wanted to find them.
Am I getting warmer?
I also have an actual FBI document—see, you do have documents!—filed in the ongoing, never-ending Luis Posada immigration fraud case in El Paso, Texas. It’s from a report prepared by one Thomas J. Mohnal (I believe he was another member of the FBI delegation in Havana, so you might ask him if he made other notes as well) concerning what he says was “a field examination of four (4) electric detonators… conducted in Havana, Cuba… on June 17, 1998.” On the third page, there's another reference to a "communication received June 18, 1998."
I’d tell you the Case ID# but it’s blacked out on the copy I have. I’m sure you can find it—and see what other documents might be in attached.
So… I think it’s fair to say there was a meeting between Cuban State Security officials and a delegation from the FBI in Havana in June 1998.
Which brings us to the second possibility: for whatever reasons, no one committed to paper anything, anywhere, anytime about these meetings. Before, during, or after.
I don’t know about the internal workings of the FBI, of course, but I can’t imagine any government agency anywhere that doesn’t run on paper.
If FBI officials went to Havana in June 1998—and I think we’ve established they did—then they must have left a trail, at the very least, of requisitions and receipts.
If they didn’t swim from the Florida Keys to Havana, then there should be a written record somewhere of how they got there.
If they were in Havana for three days, they must have stayed somewhere. My money’s on the Hotel Nacional. It’s near the United States Interests Section and is known to be popular with visiting American officials. I’ve stayed there myself, so I know it’s easy to get a receipt.
Plus… even FBI agents have to eat. Even in Cuba. Did anyone collect a restaurant receipt over the course of three days that they wanted to be reimbursed for?
Maybe they spent a night out at the famous Tropicana nightclub—for research purposes, of course, and kept the receipt. (According to the Cubans, the Tropicana, and its tourist patrons, were among the targets of the bombing campaign.)
More substantively, I’m guessing that—given that the U.S. “sent five separate diplomatic notes to the Government of Cuba requesting a meeting concerning the evidence that the government of Cuba had regarding those bombings” before the June 1998 meetings—there must have been some interest among higher ups in the FBI and Justice Department, perhaps even the White House, about the progress of negotiations for the get-together.
Are you trying to tell me there wasn’t some quickly dashed-off note (“Hey, the Cubans said yes! We’re packing!") to let someone in authority know the meeting would actually take place? And then, of course, a post-it note or two on how the discussions had gone, plans for follow-up, etc., etc..
As I said in my initial letter way back when, I’m interested in this information because I’m working on a book on the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents known as the Wasp Network who were arrested in Miami less than three months after those FBI officials returned from Havana.
Some commentators have suggested those unprecedented June 1998 meetings in Havana could have signaled the beginning of a new era of cooperation the United States and Cuba. But any hopes that that could happen were dashed by the arrest of the Five.
What happened in the three months between the Havana meetings and the Miami arrests?
Why did the FBI suddenly choose to arrest the Cubans, whom they’d surreptitiously been following for close to three years?
Hector Pesquera—the Special Agent in charge of your Miami office at the time of both the meetings in Havana and the subsequent arrests—has said that when he took up his duties in Miami in the spring of 1998, he was briefed on all the Bureau’s ongoing investigations. He decided, he said, that the FBI’s priority to develop additional intelligence about Cuba’s spy networks “shouldn’t be there any more. [The investigation] should change course and become a criminal investigation.”
According to author Anne Louise Bardach in her 2003 book, Cuba Confidential, Pesquera’s decision caused consternation in the Miami field office where he was considered too friendly with some in the anti-Castro exile community (including, it should be noted, at least one prominent exile singled out in the Anexos Operativos). According to Bardach, one agent told her that Pesquera “abandon[ed] all investigations into exile terrorism. Instead he decided to make his name with the Wasp network.”
Pesquera acknowledged to the Miami Herald (July 10, 2001) that there had been disagreements about whether to arrest the Five, and that the case “never would have made it to court" if Pesquera himself had not directly lobbied then FBI Director Leonard Freeh.
I’m guessing there must be a paper trail there too, even just a few for-the-record notes of telephone or face-to-face conversations. I’d love to read those… assuming, as I do, that they exist.
Which is why I am asking you to take one more look for the information I’ve requested and—just in case the information got “somehow… attached to another folder,” as another piece of FBI correspondence to me delicately phrased it—let me expand the date range of my request to begin on September 4, 1997—the date of the Copacabana Hotel bombing—and end on December 31, 2000, at the beginning of the trial of the Cuban Five.
Thanks in advance for your assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
Stephen Kimber
Spanish version at Cubadebate.
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Cuba considers suing US to get satellite photos of shootdown
Fifteen years after Cuban MiGs blew two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft out of the sky, the Cuban government continues to insist the planes were inside Cuban airspace when they were brought down.
Ricardo Alarcon
In an interview in Havana last week, Cuban President Ricardo Alarcon told me his government is “considering suing” one of four American government agencies he says have refused to release satellite images of the incident. Alarcon believes those images will prove his country’s contention the shootdown took place inside Cuban territory.
On February 24, 1996—after protesting to no avail to U.S. authorities for more than seven months about Brothers’ persistent incursions into its airspace, and even after explicitly warning American officials on several occasions that it would not tolerate any more violations—Cuban MiGs shot down two of three aircraft belonging to the Florida-based anti-Castro group, killing four people.
At the time, Cuba says its radar data showed the Brothers’ aircraft were flying inside its territory; American radar placed the planes over international waters.
In the end, the International Civil Aviation Organization—the United Nations agency that investigated the accident—concluded the information the two countries provided “could not be reconciled.” So it based its own findings on the “recorded position and track” of a cruise ship that had been sailing near Cuba at the time of the incident.
Based on that information, the ICAO decided the shootdown took place in international waters.
But the accuracy of the cruise ship’s log became yet another issue of contention during the 2001 trial of the Cuban Five. One of the Five, Gerardo Hernandez, was accused of conspiracy to commit murder for his supposed role in the incident.
During the trial, a defence expert witnesses—retired American Air Force Colonel George Buchner—questioned the ICAO findings and suggested the only way to definitively determine exactly where the planes went down would be to examine photographs of the area that he claimed would have been taken that day by American satellites.
“It is my expert opinion,” Buchner testified, “that the government has satellite photos that would resolve this whole issue.”
Over defence objections, the judge ordered Buchner’s remarks stricken from the record.
The Cubans have been trying to get their hands on those photos ever since.
“Several American agencies operate satellites that are constantly monitoring and photographing Cuba and the rest of the world,” Alarcon points out. “We don’t have satellites; they have satellites. But they refuse to provide the images. Why?”
On December 29, 2009, American lawyers working on Hernandez’ last-ditch habeas corpus appeal of his murder conviction filed Freedom of Information requests with five U.S. government agencies—the CIA, the Department of Defence’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the US. Geological Survey—for copies of satellite images from the day of the shootdown.
All the agencies turned down the Cuban request, though only one—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—claimed not to have what the Cubans were seeking.
On May 5 last year, Hernandez’s lawyers filed a “complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief” against NASA and the Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Though the question of exactly where the shootdown took place isn’t central to Hernandez’s appeal—Hernandez insists he had no advance knowledge the shootdown would take place and no role in organizing or ordering it—the location continues to be a matter of significance to Cuban authorities.
The ICAO report claiming the incident took place in international waters sparked international condemnation of Cuba’s actions.
And the shootdown—which prompted outrage in the U.S. that was only exacerbated by the ICAO conclusions—had a dramatic impact on relations between Washington and Havana.
In the months leading up to the incident, there had been a noticeable thaw in the usually icy relations between Havana and Washington. There was even optimistic, if muted talk in Washington that U.S. President Bill Clinton might finally end the then-35-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.
Instead, in the aftermath of the incident, Clinton not only condemned Cuba for being “repressive, violent [and] scornful of international law,” but he also signed a bill he’d previous opposed—the notorious Helms-Burton Act that gave Americans the right to sue foreign companies that did business with Cuba.
To make matters worse, that law—still on the books—prevents any future president from lifting the embargo against Cuba without prior Congressional approval.
Proving the 1996 incident took place over Cuban waters would not, of course, eliminate all criticism of the decision to shoot down the planes. Many observers, even those friendly to Cuba, argue Havana had other options besides shooting down what turned out to be unarmed civilian aircraft.
Still demonstrating that the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were inside Cuban airspace—again—would help bolster Havana's case that it was justified in taking action to protect its territory.
Related Stories:
- January 1996: Cuba protests another Brothers incursion
- July 1995: Brothers to the Rescue flies over Havana
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Interview on Posada trial with CBC Radio’s Dispatches
The interview is now available online.
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Shedding light, perhaps, on an assassination plot
Luis Posada Carriles
A legal argument Thursday over whether prosecutors should be permitted to tell the jury that Luis Posada allegedly talked with an FBI agent while in prison in Panama in 2000 may have inadvertently opened a new, if small window on what we know about a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Posada and three accomplices were charged in November 2000 in connection with a botched attack on the Cuban leader.
On November 22, 2000, while Posada was still in jail awaiting trial, he met with local FBI legal attaché Gil Torres.
During that conversation, Posada supposedly told Torres he had, in fact, “planned the attack” on Castro but “abandoned it when he realized there would be too much collateral damage.”
Posada has always—before and since—publicly denied any involvement in the plot, insisting he was in Panama at the time only to meet with a wannabe Cuban military defector.
Five years later, during his 2005 asylum hearing, a Homeland Security lawyer again asked Posada whether he’d told the FBI he had planned the attack.
Posada answered “I don’t recall.”
Because the 2000 Panama interview took place in prison and Posada didn’t have counsel present, Judge Kathleen Cardone had already ruled the transcript couldn’t be used as evidence during Posada’s current immigration fraud case.
But prosecutors argued Thursday that shouldn’t stop them from simply making reference to the fact of the 2000 interview based on what Posada had said—under oath and with his lawyer present—during his asylum hearing five years later. During the ensuing arguments between the lawyers, the snippet about the FBI interview came out.
In the end, Judge Cardone rejected the government request.
What that means is that the jury won’t get to hear anything about the 2000 interview in which Posada confessed to planning the assassination, while—as he so often does—contradicting other statements he’d already made.
But thanks to the lawyerly arguments, we now at least know what Posada supposedly told the FBI about his role.
Not that that necessarily gets us any closer to the truth…
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
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About
This is the site for Sting of the Wasp, 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 are all now serving 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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