A telephone conversation with Gerardo Hernandez — Part 1

By Weekly Archive On Apr 15, 2009

(This
conversation took place on April 1, 2009. Our film crew
received
Justice Department approval to talk with “the prisoner,” with a
prison official in the room. Before his 1998 arrest, Gerardo directed
the operations of the other Cuban State Security agents who
infiltrated violent groups in the Miami area for the purposes of
stopping them from carrying out terrorist attacks on tourist sites in
Cuba. We took complete and careful notes.)

Saul
Landau:
What was your mission and why?

Gerardo
Hernandez:
In the U.S. in general and Florida specifically, many groups
contemplated and carried out acts of terrorism in Cuba. We were
collecting information on Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban
American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. Many years
have passed and I hope that nothing has escaped me but I think those
were the principal groups in which we working [infiltrating].

Landau:
What did you learn through your infiltration?

Hernandez:
The first thing that struck me was the impunity with which these
groups operated, violating the laws of the U.S.: The Neutrality Acts
[of the 1790s]
that
supposedly means no organization can use American soil to commit
terrorism against another country.

In
the case of Alpha 66, the operatives would take a fast boat and shoot
at targets along Cuba’s coast. When they would return to Miami,
they would hold a press conference and openly say what they had done.

And
when someone would ask, “Hey, doesn’t that violate the neutrality
laws,” they would reply: “Not really, because first we went to
one of the Keys somewhere in the Caribbean and then we went to Cuba.
So technically, we didn’t leave from the U.S.” They did this
openly and no U.S. agency took responsibility.

Landau:
In what years?

Hernandez:
This has been going on since 1959. I personally began dealing with
this in the 1990s. Since I’ve been here in prison in Victorville
[California] about 3 years ago, I think in 2005 they arrested a Cuban
right here in this county with an arsenal, all kinds of weapons in
his house. And the first thing he said was, “Well, I am a member of
Alpha 66 and I’m using these weapons in the struggle for Cuban
freedom.” That was his defense.

Landau:
Were the Cuban Five all volunteers? How does one prepare to
infiltrate an enemy group in an enemy country? And then act as if you
were enemies of your country and friends of them?

Hernandez:
Yes, all volunteers. In my case, I’m not a career military man. I
studied to be a diplomat. It took me 6 years to complete my degree in
International and Political Relations. Afterwards, I went to Angola,
as part of a voluntary international mission. And while I was in
Angola it seems I sparked the attention of the Cuban intelligence
services, and when I got back, they approached me with this mission.
They said, “We know you studied to be a diplomat, but you know our
country has a certain situation with these terrorist groups that are
coming from Florida to commit all kinds of crimes and we need someone
to go and fulfill these tasks.”

I
could have said “No, I studied diplomacy, I want to be a diplomat,”
but Cubans, those who were raised with the Revolution, know that
during the past 50 years our country has faced almost a war
environment. In Cuba, he who doesn’t know personally a victim of
terrorism, at least knows about the plane that exploded over
Barbados, killing 73 people [October 1976]. Who doesn’t know about
the bomb [in 1997] that killed Fabio di Celmo [an Italian tourist and
guest at Havana’s Hotel Copacabana detonated by a Salvadoran who
said he was hired by Luis Posada] just to mention a few acts? There
was a pre-school where the counter revolutionaries lit a [gas] tank
on fire. These actions are part of the Cuban conscience. So, I told
the Intelligence officers, “Yes, I am prepared to fulfill this
mission.”

Landau:
How did you manage to infiltrate these groups? How did you convince
them, people like Jose Basulto [head of Brothers to the Rescue], for
example?

Hernandez:
For Cubans in this country, everything is connected. Cubans in the
United States have enormous privileges, ones that no other citizens
of the world have. Cubans arrive by any route, including with false
passports, and the only thing they have to say is, “I come seeking
freedom,” and right away the U.S. gives them all the documents they
need. So, in the case of Basulto, for example, one of our comrades
who infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue had originally “stolen” a
plane from Cuba.
Rene
[Gonzalez,
another of the Cuban Five] flew his plane here and, as is the custom,
he was received as a hero. He got lots of attention and, later joined
the Brothers. His job was collecting information about that
organization.

So,
if you ask me how, I say that we used as our foundation for
infiltration the very privileges all Cubans receive when they arrive
in this country; even those who took others with them, and have
hijacked airplanes, or have put a gun up to a pilot’s head. Look at
people like Leonel Matias, who [in 1994 he hijacked a boat in Cuba
and killed a naval officer in the process]
killed
someone on a boat, arrived here on that boat, with his gun — and the
body was even discovered. But despite all of that, he didn’t have
to face any processes in the U.S. justice system. Those people are
automatically pardoned. So using exactly that kind of advantage, we
were able to penetrate to a certain level, these organizations.

When
I mention Brothers to the Rescue, some might think, “This is a
humanitarian organization that rescued balseros [rafters].” On the
contrary, while their activities were limited to rescuing balseros,
they had no problems with the Cuban authorities. What people tend to
not know is that Jose Basulto, the head of that organization, has a
long record… He trained with the CIA, and infiltrated Cuba in the
1960s. In 1962, he came to Cuba on a fast boat and fired shells at
the Cuban coast, including targeting a hotel. Even Basulto, with all
his known history, had no problems while he limited his actions to
rescuing balseros. In 1995, however, the United States and Cuba
signed migratory agreements specifying that boats intercepted at sea
would no longer be brought to the United States; rather they would be
returned to Cuba. At that point, people stopped contributing money to
Basulto and his organization because, they said: “Why are we going
to give money to Basulto’s organization? When he calls the coast
guard, they are just going to return those balseros to Cuba?”

So,
when Basulto saw his business in danger, he invented this invasion
[in 1995] of Cuban airspace as a way to keep people donating money.
We presented this evidence in our case. If the press hasn’t wanted
to pay much attention to this … well, they don’t want to touch
such material. It doesn’t behoove them. I am referring to the
corporate press. The documents are all there showing how Basulto and
the Brothers to the Rescue were trying out handmade weapons in order
to introduce them in Cuba.

When
Basulto testified at our trial [2001], our attorneys asked him what
he intended to do with all those weapons. All this is in the trial
record, though no one seems to want to pay attention to it. People
tend to talk about the Brothers to the Rescue as if they were a
humanitarian organization, omitting the part about terrorism; like
they omit the facts that the FBI had penetrated that organization as
well. The FBI had someone inside the group giving them information on
the Brothers’ activities. Why would the FBI penetrate a
humanitarian organization?

Saul
Landau is currently making (with Jack Willis) a film on the Cuban
Five. His other films are available on DVD from
roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.