Espionage Cuba

The television film showed people identified as "diplomats from the United States" wandering in woods outside Havana, looking suspicious. They picked up bags and briefcases, made marks on benches and dropped off some sort of electronic gear. It appeared that they had no idea they were being watched--but they were on "Candid Camera," Cuban-style. The television show was the first of a nationally broadcast, six-part series aimed at detailing alleged spying by the CIA in Cuba.

Ana Belen Montes, a senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Department, appeared before a federal magistrate for the first time, charged with giving classified defense information to Cuba. Judge Deborah Robinson granted a 30-day extension requested by both the state and the defense before the case is brought to court. Montes, 44, who is being held without bail, faces a possible death penalty if convicted.

A Florida couple have pleaded guilty to charges that they acted as spies for the Cuban government against the United States, an attorney for one of the defendants said. George and Marisol Gari, arrested in Orlando, Fla., last month, were part of the "Wasp Network," a Cuban espionage ring that attempted to infiltrate the Southern Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Latin America, and spied on anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, such as the Cuban American National Foundation, U.S.

A Florida couple have pleaded guilty to charges that they acted as spies for the Cuban government against the United States, an attorney for one of the defendants said. George and Marisol Gari, arrested in Orlando, Fla., last month, were part of the "Wasp Network," a Cuban espionage ring that attempted to infiltrate the Southern Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Latin America, and spied on anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, such as the Cuban American National Foundation, U.S.

Philip Agee, a renegade CIA officer who has conducted a long-running public crusade against the agency, has taken money repeatedly from the Cuban intelligence service, according to a high-ranking Cuban defector, an ex-CIA chief and a top CIA official.

A U.S. immigration official charged with spying for Cuba was arrested after falling into a trap set by the FBI, investigators said Friday. The FBI said it fed Mariano Faget, 54, phony information about a pending defection and then caught him passing it on 12 minutes later to a contact with ties to the Cuban government.

Capping a day of high diplomatic drama, federal agents Saturday night detained a Cuban diplomat accused of spying and forcibly expelled him from the country after he refused to leave voluntarily. U.S. officials said Jose Imperatori, vice consul at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, was put on a government airplane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in suburban Virginia and was flown to Montreal. From there, he will be returned to Cuba today, officials said.

A Cuban diplomat who was expelled from the United States on allegations of spying and deported to Canada stayed inside the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa on Monday as the time limit on his transit visa ran out. Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy said Jose Imperatori would become an illegal alien if he remained in Canada beyond the two-day limit allowed by the visa granted him on Saturday.

Fidel Castro admits that spies were sent to America because the United States "tolerates those who organize sabotage." But in an interview to be shown tonight on CNN, the Cuban leader denied that there was an attempt to gather military secrets. "Yes, we have sometimes dispatched Cuban citizens to the United States to infiltrate counterrevolutionary organizations, to inform us about activities that are of great interest to us," Castro said.

The U.S. government has expelled the third secretary of Cuba's mission to the United Nations on charges of spying, the State Department announced Tuesday. Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the diplomat, Carlos Manuel Collazo Usullan, must leave the country within 48 hours. He declined to reveal any details of Collazo's activities. According to a statement, the Administration ordered Collazo's expulsion Monday.

A senior analyst with the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested Friday and charged with conspiring to spy for Cuban intelligence officials during the last five years. An FBI affidavit said the analyst, Ana B. Montes, 44, delivered classified and secret material "relating to the national defense of the United States" to agents of President Fidel Castro's regime.

Rene Gonzalez and Olga Salanueva seemed every bit the model immigrant couple pursuing the American dream when they moved into their small suburban Miami condo in 1996. Both had been lifelong communists. But six years earlier, Gonzalez had walked away from the Cuban capital and his job as a government flight instructor to toil as a roofer and fly volunteer missions for fiercely anti-Communist Cuban American organizations.

A former high-ranking U.S. immigration agent was sentenced in Miami to five years in prison for disclosing official secrets to Cuba in an espionage case that prompted Washington to expel a Cuban diplomat. Mariano Faget, 55, was convicted in May 2000 of four counts of violating the Espionage Act by disclosing secrets and lying about his contact with a Cuban diplomat, Jose Imperatori. Faget, who as an INS supervisor had security clearance, was arrested in February 2000.

Five Cubans were convicted Friday of conspiring to spy on the United States for Cuban President Fidel Castro's Communist regime. The leader of the group faces up to life in prison for his role in a Cuban air force attack that killed four U.S. fliers. Gerardo Hernandez was found guilty of contributing to the deaths of the four members of Brothers to the Rescue who were shot down by Cuban jet fighters in international airspace in 1996.

A woman who sued Cuba after she unwittingly married an alleged Cuban spy was awarded $20 million in punitive damages. Invoking a federal anti-terrorism law, Judge Alan Postman in Miami ordered the amount paid to Ana Margarita Martinez in addition to the $7.1 million in compensatory damages he awarded her earlier this month. Martinez, 40, will try to collect the money from Cuban assets frozen in the United States.

The FBI intercepted messages between Cuba and alleged spies in Florida that show the Havana government warned its operatives not to fly on an exile group's aircraft on specific days, the Miami Herald reported. The dates included Feb. 24, 1996, when Cuban fighter planes shot down two unarmed aircraft belonging to the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people. The shortwave radio messages were released during the trial of five men accused of spying for Cuba.

Five men accused of spying for Cuba went on trial in Miami, with a prosecutor charging that they served as Fidel Castro's eyes and ears in Florida for years. The defendants--three Cuban intelligence officers and two U.S. citizens--used coded computer disks, high-frequency radio transmissions and electronic phone messages to infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups, Assistant U.S. Atty. David Buckner said.

Juan Manuel Rodriguez Camejo, who acknowledges having worked for more than 20 years as a Cuban counterintelligence agent, says he wants to defect to the United States. To that end, he crossed the border illegally from Tijuana last month. But in this case, there's a twist: U.S. officials, who often welcome Cuban defectors, say they don't want him. They call him a security risk. Rodriguez says U.S.

Five men accused of spying for Cuba went on trial in Miami, with a prosecutor charging that they served as Fidel Castro's eyes and ears in Florida for years. The defendants--three Cuban intelligence officers and two U.S. citizens--used coded computer disks, high-frequency radio transmissions and electronic phone messages to infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups, Assistant U.S. Atty. David Buckner said.

A reputed Cuban intelligence official who fled to Mexico seeking political asylum was summarily sent home Wednesday, raising a howl of protest from human rights officials who said they feared for his life. Pedro Riera Escalante, a former Cuban diplomat based in Mexico, admitted to authorities here that he had specialized in spying on CIA operations abroad, according to human rights activists who had helped the Cuban in his quest for asylum.