Cuba’s WASP spy and terrorist network, dismantled by the FBI 25 years ago this week

25 years after their capture: Setting the record straight on the Castro regime's WASP spy network

Adapted from CubaBrief

On Saturday,  September 12, 1998, the FBI dismantled the largest Cuban spy ring ever discovered in the United States. Ten Cubans were charged with spying for the Cuban regime. Cuba’s government has spent 25 years airbrushing and distorting what they did.

South African Bishop and theologian Desmond Tutu understood that covering up past crimes would not lead to authentic reconciliation or lasting peace. In that spirit we review the record of the WASP network.

According to the Defense Human Resources Activity at the U.S. Department of Defense, the ten members of the WASP network captured were: "GERARDO HERNANDEZ, 31 (alias Manuel Viramontes), the spymaster; FERNANDO GONZALEZ, 33 (alias Ruben Campa), and RAMON LABANINO, 30 (alias Luis Medina), Cuban intelligence officers.  The remaining seven were mid-level or junior agents who reported to the three senior agents. Included were ANTONIO GUERRERO, 39, who observed aircraft landings at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station from his job as a sheet-metal worker there; ALEJANDRO ALONSO, 39, a boat pilot; and RENE GONZALEZ, 42, a skilled aircraft pilot and the only Cuban national among these seven. Both joined the exile group Movimiento Democracia to report on its activities -all non-violent- against the Castro regime. Also, two married couples, Americans, worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, 44 and 41 respectively, and JOSEPH and AMARYLIS SANTOS, both 39."

Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque escaped.

 

JUAN PABLO ROQUE, an eleventh spy also charged and linked to the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, had fled to Cuba one day before Cuban MiGs launched missiles destroying two Brothers to the Rescue planes, and killing four pilots. Three others, identified as John Does, were also charged.

Five defendants -Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez, Joseph and Amarylis Santos- accepted plea bargains and cooperated with prosecutors. These five Cuban spies provided information about the other five. These five eventually went on trial, where it was revealed that the Cuban spy ring was engaged in both espionage and terrorism.

The Wasp Network engaged in espionage: it infiltrated two non-violent exile groups; provided information that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996; targeted U.S. military facilities; planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the United States, and carried out other active measures to sow division, shape public opinion, and meddle in U.S. elections. 

Hernandez guilty of murder conspiracy in 2/24/96 shoot down.

The Wasp Network gathered personal information on American military personnel, "compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the top officers of the United States Southern Command as well as hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West."

The spies had received orders from Havana to burn down an airport hangar; sabotage planes; and to terrorize a CIA operative identified as Jesus Cruza Flor, with warnings that he was "nearing execution,'' and then to send a mail bomb to murder him at his Bal Harbour residence.

Cuban spies targeted military personnel at the Boca Chica Naval Station.

On June 8, 2001, the five Wasp defendants who had not entered into plea bargains were found guilty on all counts. In December 2001, three of the spies were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage. Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, both Cuban nationals, and Antonio Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, were sentenced to life in prison. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, both Cuban nationals, were sentenced to 19 and 10 years in prison, respectively, for conspiracy and operating as unregistered agents of a foreign power.

The five who pleaded guilty to one count of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power and cooperated received lesser sentences: Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez were sentenced to seven years in prison; Joseph Santos was sentenced to four years, and Amarylis Santos was sentenced to three and a half years. Gerardo Hernandez, the head of the network, was convicted of murder conspiracy and espionage and condemned to a double life sentence.

President Obama commuted Hernandez's double life sentences on December 17, 2014, as part of the concessions made in the effort to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States. Once back in Cuba, Hernandez was promoted to Deputy National Coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in April 2020, tasked with monitoring neighborhood committees to spy on all Cubans on the island. He was also appointed to the Castro dictatorship's Council of State, the 31-member body that oversees day-to-day life on the island, on December 17, 2020. Gerardo Hernández visited Moscow on May 31, 2023, and laid a wreath on a monument to Fidel Castro.

Cuban spy convicted in 2000 of murder conspiracy in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, Gerardo Hernández, is visiting Russia. On 5/31/23 he placed a wreath at a monument erected by Putin to Fidel Castro in Moscow. Mr. Obama commuted his life sentence in 2014. #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/llSlABVT0X

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) May 31, 2023

 The 2009 book Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five, by Matt Lawrence and Thomas Van Hare provides a compendium of the evidence. It exposes the facts about what happened and who knew prior to the murder of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots -three Americans and one legal resident- who were volunteers out to save the lives of fleeing refugees what would transpire. Lawrence, one of the authors had volunteered his time, and flown search and rescue missions for Brothers to the Rescue.

 The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation conducted by Ana Belen Montes to direct blame away from the Castro regime, and onto the victims, drew the attention of investigators, and in September 2001 led to the arrest of Montes, a spy for Havana who worked in a sensitive position at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon. This is also explored in the book by Lawrence and Van Hare.

On May 17, 2012 the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. Congress's Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on "Cuba’s Global Network of Terrorism, Intelligence, and Warfare." Among the experts who spoke at the hearing was Mr. Christopher Simmons, founding editor of Cuba Confidential, an online blog and source for news on Cuban espionage worldwide. He is an international authority on the Cuban Intelligence Service and retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency with over 23 years of experience as a counterintelligence officer, and played an important role in the capture of Ana Belen Montes.

Simmons ended his presentation outlining and summarizing the high profile act of state terrorism that killed four Cuban Americans in an operation conducted on orders from highest levels of the Castro regime.

"Last, but not least, of the highlighted issues, I'd like to address Operation Scorpion which was addressed earlier as a shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue. While this mission on February 24, 1996 predates the other information I discussed, it is important because this act of terrorism involves highest levels of the Castro regime. On February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two U.S. search and rescue aircraft in international waters. Code named Operation Scorpion, it was led by General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, the current head of Cuban intelligence. It was personally approved by Fidel Castro and supported by Raul Castro, the current President of Cuba. Four Americans were murdered in this act of terrorism."

  The case of the Cuban WASP Network and its involvement in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down conspiracy, and plotting to terrorize and murder a retired U.S. intelligence agent underscores once again the terrorist nature of the Cuban dictatorship. 

In order to achieve true reconciliation and peace, the regime in Havana would have to recognize its past crimes, repent, and stop sponsoring and engaging in terrorism.  Its continuing repressive actions in Venezuela, and Nicaragua; its ongoing support for the war in Ukraine, and its murder of non-violent dissidents in Cuba demonstrate that the Cuban dictatorship presently is not interested in reforming its behavior, or in true reconciliation, but rather in continuing its international outlaw status that is on a par with North Korea.

Prison conditions in Cuba: What we know, what we don't know and why

A polemical question?

Alan P. Gross: Before and after five years in a Cuban prison

Alan Gross was never debriefed by the U.S. government following five years in captivity in Cuba. The Obama Administration never placed him as a priority in the normalization campaign, and this was a contributing factor to his long and unjust incarceration. During these five years in a Cuban prison he lost 5 teeth, 110 pounds and contemplated suicide before his December 17, 2014 release.

According to Alan Gross in a 2015 Sixty Minutes interview, Cuban officials had "threatened to hang me. They threatened to pull out my fingernails. They said I'd never see the light of day."

Officially, Gross was jailed for trying to provide uncensored internet access to a local Cuban Jewish community. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on November 13, 2012 confirmed that Alan Gross has been arbitrarily detained and should be immediately released.

In reality, Gross was a hostage used by the Castro dictatorship as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of Cuban spies arrested for espionage that involved planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, gathering information on military bases and conspired to carry out an act of state terrorism that led to the deaths of four civilians.

I was treated better as a political prisoner in Cuba. https://t.co/iij39KQQUd

— Alan P. Gross (@AlanPGross) June 23, 2019

Gross commenting on the terrible conditions for migrants, including children, at the Clint border station in Texas has repeatedly made the claim that he was treated better as a political prisoner in Cuba.  

Mr. Gross was a special case, of high value for the Cuban government that led to the release of key members of their WASP spy network. Therefore his experience may not have been typical.

It is possible to learn what prison conditions are like in U.S. prisons, but it is not so easy to do so in Cuba. The last time the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch were granted permission to enter a Cuban prison was in 1988. The International Committee of the Red Cross prior to that had not had access since 1959.

British businessman spent 16 months in Cuban prisons

Other foreigners, such as British businessman Stephen Purvis, have written their own accounts of prison life in Cuba, but there are also reports from respected human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch that paint a grim picture. 

In their World Report 2019 Human Rights Watch provides the following summary on prison conditions in Cuba:

Prison Conditions

Prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners are forced to work 12-hour days and are punished if they do not meet production quotas, according to former political prisoners. Inmates have no effective complaint mechanism to seek redress for abuses. Those who criticize the government or engage in hunger strikes and other forms of protest often endure extended solitary confinement, beatings, and restrictions on family visits, and are denied medical care.

While the government allowed select members of the foreign press to conduct controlled visits to a handful of prisons in 2013, it continues to deny international human rights groups and independent Cuban organizations access to its prisons.

On August 9, Alejandro Pupo Echemendía died in police custody at Placetas, Villa Clara, while under investigation for a crime related to horse racing. Family members say his body showed signs of severe beatings; authorities contend he threw himself against a wall and died of a heart attack. Allegations have surfaced of family members and witnesses being coerced to withdraw their initial statements and to confirm the official version.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in their 2017 annual report cited the Cuban NGO Cubalex that "reported that since the 2013 Universal  Periodical  Review  (UPR)  there have been 22 suicides of inmates by hanging in Cuba."

We know about the dismal conditions in the Texas border station and in the Guantanamo Naval Base prison because there is oversight. The reason that so much is known about the Guantanamo detention facility with regards to the prisoners there is because the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited it over 100 times. Meanwhile the Castro regime over the past 60 years permitted only one visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuba's prisons and that was 31 years ago in 1988.

The lack of international outrage sends a message and that is that not allowing human rights organizations to visit prisons for decades has a lower cost then opening them up to international inspection.