Obama could use Gross and the Five to restore relations

By Saul Landau

President Obama has an opportunity to right some injustices, perform a humanitarian act, and begin the process of repairing fifty plus years of broken U.S.-Cuba relations.

On December 2, Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s Parliament, offered that his country is open to having reciprocal humanitarian gestures that would free Alan Gross, an American contractor, from a Cuban military hospital where he is serving a 15 years sentence for attempting to subvert Cuba’s government, if the United States would spring five Cuban agents known as the Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, who are serving long sentences in U.S. prisons and René González, on parole in Florida to which he is restricted).

In the 1990s, the Five had infiltrated terrorist groups in Miami who were bombing Cuban hotels, bars and restaurants and plotting other violence. Their job was to stop the violence. The Cuban government shared their intelligence with the FBI. The evidence from the testimony of the Salvadoran employees, arrested by Cuban police, about the man who orchestrated the violence, Luis Posada Carriles, showed that this notorious perpetrator of violence against Cuba had hired Slavadoran men to pose as tourists. Once in their Havana hotels, these Salvadorans made, planted and detonated bombs to scare off European and Canadian visitors to Cuba. One Italian tourist died in a hotel blast.

The FBI, however, allowed the anti-Castro terrorists to live happily in Miami and instead busted their own informants, the Cuban agents who had fed them information about terrorist activities in south Florida. The U.S. Attorney charged the five with conspiracy to commit espionage although the prosecutor produced no solid evidence that the men were looking for military or strategic documents. But trying Cuban agents in Miami was equivalent to trying Jewish agents in Berlin under Nazi rule. Members of the jury, who were all identified after the press photographed and published their license plate numbers, understood that rendering anything but a guilty verdict would bring about highly negative consequences from “the militant community.”

The guilty verdicts came with very harsh sentences from the judge, which were ameliorated later by an appeals court. But Gerardo Hernandez, one member of the five is serving two consecutive life sentences, plus fifteen years, for conspiracy to commit espionage and aiding and abetting murder (referring to the death of the two pilots and two co-pilots of Brothers to the Rescue planes who had entered Cuban airspace after dismissing a warning not to enter, and were shot down by Cuban MIGs). Gerado, a low-level agent, supposedly knew that Cuba’s leaders planned to shoot down the intruding planes. Ironically, the Brothers to the Rescue chief, Jose Basulto, released the information about the flights on that fatal day, the act Gerardo was charged with and never did.

Alan Gross, who worked for DAI, a company that had contracted with USAID, brought unlicensed sensitive communication equipment into Cuba, some of it secreted in the back packs of American Jews traveling to Cuba on religious missions, so it would be less likely Cuban Customs agents would make a fuss. Gross insisted his mission was to help the Jewish community get better internet access. Jewish community leaders in Cuba dismissed this idea.

In an Associated Press article, Desmond Butler described how "Piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags, American aid contractor Alan Gross made sure laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment were secreted into Cuba. The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was the last one: a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track." The purpose, according to Butler’s review of Gross’ trip reports to Cuba, "was to set up uncensored satellite Internet service for Cuba’s small Jewish community."

Gross carried a restricted access and very expensive Sim card – used by the CIA and Pentagon – to make untraceable the signals sent by satellite phones and laptops he delivered to supposed dissidents. “Maybe,” suggested one wit, “he didn’t want Cubans to have access to our secret matzo ball recipe.”

A Cuban court heard Gross’ case and found him guilty of attempting to subvert the Cuban government An appeals court upheld the fifteen year sentence.

Gross’ wife, Judy, filed a multi million dollar law suit against DAI, the company that hired Gross, and against the State Department, for failing to have alerted Alan to the dangers of his mission. She has insisted Alan is innocent and has demanded that Cuba release him on humanitarian grounds. He has lost much weight, she complains, and possibly has cancer. Cuban authorities countered by submitting their doctors’ diagnosis of Gross’ maladies, which said that Gross, when arrested was obese and has now lost enough weight to qualify as healthy. The Cubans also make sure Gross does regular exercise. He has a hematoma on his shoulder that is not cancerous, the Cuban doctors reported. A visiting U.S. rabbi, also a medical doctor, confirmed the Cubans’ diagnosis. Judy was not satisfied. Cubans have allowed the Gross family to have several conjugal visits. But the U.S. government has not allowed some of the wives of the Cuban five to visit their husbands. None has been permitted a conjugal visit.

The five Cuban agents point out that they admitted traveling to the United States on false passports, to having used false identification and not having registered as foreign agents. But they strongly deny they did espionage. They point to the fact that U.S. agents in Muslim countries are doing exactly what the Cuban Five did in Florida, infiltrating groups likely to be plotting violence against the United States, so as to try to prevent the violence.

President Obama could assent to the reciprocal humanitarian gestures that would bring Gross home and send the Cuban Five back to their island and their families. Only the extreme right wing Cuban exiles in south Florida and in northern New Jersey would loudly complain. Most Americans don’t know who the Cuban Five are. The gesture would also open the road for more relations with Cuba, may be even a lifting of the travel ban that prevents American from going to the island, and a loosening of the economic embargo – good for U.S. business. All of Latin America would praise Obama as would most of the world.

Saul Landau’s FIDEL and WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP are available on dvd from cinemalibrestore.com.