The Story
The Sting of the Wasp:
Castro, Clinton, Marquez and the Cuban Five
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.
The September 1997 bombing at
Havana's Hotel Copacabana
killed an Italian-Canadian tourist.
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.
Bombing at the Aché disco
The evidence it had gathered, the Cubans told the FBI agents, showed that 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 didn’t.
Instead, three months later, FBI agents in Miami swooped down and arrested members of La Red Avispa—the Wasp Network—the clandestine group of Cuban intelligence agents who’d infiltrated the CANF and other anti-Castro militant exile groups and assembled the evidence of their involvement in various terrorist plots.
Not one of the plotters the Cubans fingered was ever arrested by U.S. authorities.
The Cuban Five—as the arrested men quickly became known—were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for what they claim was nothing more sinister than trying to prevent terrorist attacks on their homeland. They are all still serving time in U.S. jails.
Though their story is barely known in America, they are a cause célèbre in Cuba—and elsewhere.
The Sting of the Wasp
By Stephen Kimber
Nonfiction Book In Progress
Copyright 2009 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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