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CubaBrief: WASP Network disbanded by the FBI 27 years ago today. How Castro helped Chavez and Maduro build up and expand The Cartel of the Suns in Venezuela

WASP Network disbanded by the FBI 27 years ago today

Ten, not five, Cuban spies captured by FBI on 9/12/98

Havana’s WASP spy network infiltrated the United States to gather information on military installations and personnel, sow division among Cuban exiles, locate places to store weapons and explosives, and terrorize then assassinate a CIA agent living in Florida with a mail bomb. They helped kill four in the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown.

On September 12, 1998, the FBI dismantled the largest Cuban spy ring ever discovered in the United States. Ten people were charged with being Cuban spies.

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), another Cuban intelligence officer. The remaining seven were mid-level or junior agents who passed their reports to one of these 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 U.S. born among these seven. Both joined the Democracy Movement to report on its nonviolent activities against the Castro regime. Two married couples, all American citizens, also worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, ages 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 already fled to Cuba, a day before Cuban MiGs launched missiles destroying two planes, and killing four. Three others identified as John Does were also charged. He was also an FBI informant who gave false information to federal agents.

Five defendants, Alejandro Alonzo, Nilo Hernandez and Linda Hernandez, Joseph Santos and Amarylis Santos, accepted plea bargains and cooperated with prosecutors. These five Cuban spies provided information about the other five.

The other five spies eventually went on trial. The trial revealed that the Cuban spy ring was engaged in both espionage, terrorism, and facilitated the extrajudicial killing of three U.S. citizens and a U.S. resident.

The regime in Cuba has spent 27 years attempting to airbrush this past. They’ve even enlisted the entertainment industry in this endeavor. NETFLIX settled a lawsuit out of court in January 2024 that accused the streaming giant of distorting key facts about Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto and his organization at the direction of the Cuban dictatorship. Left out of the NETFLIX propaganda piece was how the spy network’s head Gerardo Hernandez was convicted of espionage and murder conspiracy and sentenced to two life sentences.

However, one can assume that many more continue to operate. This explains why the following is not more widely known. [ This was recently compiled and published in a Substack on Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter.]

How Havana helped Chavez and Maduro build up and expand The Cartel of the Suns in Venezuela

The United States and Venezuela are still at odds. As it intensifies its campaign against narco-terrorists, the Pentagon has sent fighter planes and warships to the southern Caribbean to disrupt the trafficking of cocaine into the United States by the Cartel of the Suns.

The Cartel of the Suns, which had started operating in the 1990s, grew and increased their capacity to smuggle large quantities of cocaine first during the Chavez regime. The Wall Street Journal’s reporters Juan Forero and Kejal Vyas in their September 11, 2025 article “Denials and Defiance Shape Venezuela’s Response to U.S. Threats on Drugs” revealed the harm done by Caracas to the United States, and Europe, and that it has been going on for decades.

“Chávez himself ordered top lieutenants in the mid-2000s to work with Colombian guerrillas to flood the U.S. with cocaine as part of his efforts to combat the then-Bush administration, according to documents prepared by federal prosecutors in New York.

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the research group InSight Crime, said Maduro’s inner circle has sought relationships with criminal groups—from drug- to gold-smuggling gangs—to compensate for falling oil income while maintaining the regime’s patronage network. McDermott estimated that some 500 tons of cocaine—nearly 20% of the drug produced in Colombia—moves through Venezuela before shipment to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.”

What exactly is the Cartel of the Suns, and how does it operate?

Samantha Wutz, in a research paper she completed during her semester long internship with the Center for a Free Cuba in 2021 provided the following description of the Cartel of the Suns.

“The drug trafficking organization Cartel de Soles or Cartel of the Suns is comprised of a network of cells spread throughout the various branches of the Venezuelan military and government.[i] This group is involved in drug and gasoline smuggling, illegal mining, and other illegal activities.[ii] The Cartel de Soles started off within the military, specifically in the National Guard. Since then, other branches of the military have been connected to the cartel including the army, navy, and air force.[iii] The Cartel has connections to various Colombian guerrilla groups who mainly supply and traffic the cocaine. Cuban involvement with Venezuela’s security forces and government influenced the Cartel’s expansion. The group allegedly has members high up in the government making it difficult to investigate the cartel on Venezuelan soil.[iv]”

Europeans are also alarmed by this drug cartel.

The European Parliament on September 11, 2025 passed a resolution urging the European Union to include the Cartel of the Suns in their list of terrorist organizations, following accusations of supporting insurgents in Colombia. Latin Times reported on it as follows.

The European Parliament voted Thursday to urge the European Union to add Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles to its list of designated terrorist organizations, with Spanish lawmaker Alma Ezcurra declaring that, through the organization, President Nicolás Maduro had achieved what drug lord Pablo Escobar once only imagined.

“What Pablo Escobar once dreamed of, Maduro has achieved: he controls a loyal army, has embassies in our capitals, and sits in the United Nations,” Ezcurra told fellow members during debate on the resolution.

Left out of the discussion is the role of Havana in the development of the Cartel of the Suns in Venezuela, and their six decade long history of working with drug trafficking networks. This is in part due to the Cuban government’s effective espionage apparatus that has successfully infiltrated government, academic, and media institutions in the United States to steal information, shape policy, and manipulate public opinion. They have recruited Americans, used Cuban diplomats, and infiltrated illegal agents to advance these goals. They have also conducted active measures in America that got Americans killed.

However, they do make mistakes and U.S. counterintelligence discovered some of them. Above is a brief examination of one of the biggest.

Venezuelan journalist Casto Ocando in the short documentary the Havana Cartel (2023) provides an overview of Havana’s involvement in drug trafficking and terrorism over the past six decades. It is also available in Spanish.

Cuba carried out a campaign of narco-terrorism promoted by Moscow, against Western democracies, through Jan Sejna, a former high-level Czech official who described in “detail his meetings with Raul Castro, usually four times a year from 1961 until 1968, when Mr. Sejna defected to the United States. Drug trafficking was always a major item on the agenda. Cuba and Czechoslovakia worked together to establish drug-trafficking networks throughout Latin America and to infiltrate those already in existence. The United States was the main target. Jan Sejna was the secretary of the Czech Defense Council and assisted in the planning of this activity and monitored its implementation.”

The idea was to increase the capacity of narcotics networks to flood the U.S., and poison its soft underbelly.

Cuba was first added to U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism on March 1, 1982.

This came less than three months after the State Department acknowledged that Havana was utilizing a narcotics ring to transport both weaponry and funds to the Colombian M19 terrorist group, which was then fighting to destabilize Colombia’s democratic government.

The February 1991 Frontline documentary “Cuba and Cocaine” revealed the links of current Cuban dictator Raul Castro to cocaine trafficking into the United States.

A full transcript of the program is available online, and above is the video.

A declassified CIA report from 1984 reveals the extensive and direct involvement of the highest levels of the Castro regime in drug trafficking.

Lt. Commander Jeff Karonis of the United States Coast Guard in the Frontline documentary described how they would observe an airdrop going on in Cuban waters in the middle of the day. A small twin-engine plane carrying 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of cocaine would fly over Cuba and drop the shipment at a rendezvous point with several boats. A Cuban military vessel would be nearby, right on site to provide them cover.

Things changed when the United States invaded Panama, and captured Manuel Noriega. The Cuban government lowered its profile in the drug trade and served up some sacrificial lambs in a Stalinist show trial. But in 1999 when Hugo Chavez took power in Venezuela, they assisted the expansion of the Suns Cartel.

Christopher Dickey World News Editor at The Daily Beast on June 4, 2018 wrote a well researched and documented article “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State” that outlines the Castro regime’s involvement in linking up Venezuelan officials with drug traffickers and guerrilla groups, but begins with the 1989 Ochoa Trial.

This was the effort by the Cuban autocrats to whitewash their drug trafficking image by executing the high ranking Cuban general Arnaldo Ochoa in a political show trial. Together with other officials who could directly link the Castro brothers to the narcotics trade.

This ended one chapter of large-scale drug trafficking for the Castros, but a new chapter would begin with the Chavez regime in Venezuela according to Dickey.

“In the years that followed the Ochoa trial, Cuba offered to cooperate with the United States fighting against drug traffickers. The Clinton administration shelved proposed indictments of the regime, and as relations gradually warmed, the U.S. would begin to liaise with Cuban authorities in the war on drugs. But at the same time the Cuban intelligence services were reaching out in other directions, to networks that would become the world’s biggest suppliers of cocaine: the narco-guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Venezuela’s security forces. Cuban counterintelligence is said to have tutored the Venezuelan spies, domestic and foreign, and helped to organize them to root out opposition to the regime of Hugo Chávez. Indeed, the Cubans taught them to do whatever might be necessary to survive.Over time, many of Chavez’s officers would become known as the Cartel de los Soles, the Cartel of the Suns: “cartel” because of their involvement with the drug trade on a scale that nobody in 1989 could have imagined; “the suns” for the insignias on the epaulets of Venezuela’s generals.”

This also concurs with earlier reporting by Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post on the Venezuela, FARC, Cuba trafficking axis in the May 24, 2015 in the article “A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela“:

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known.

[…]

The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, and last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar and other defectors, who say Cuba’s communist regime and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking. That was followed by a lengthy report last week in the Wall Street Journal that said Cabello’s cartel had turned Venezuela into “a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.”

Furthermore there are interviews with individuals that witnessed first hand the links of the highest levels of the Cuban government with drug trafficking. This includes Fidel Castro’s bodyguard who wrote a tell all memoir, “The Double Life of Fidel Castro.”

The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2025

Denials and Defiance Shape Venezuela’s Response to U.S. Threats on Drugs

With U.S. warships in the Caribbean to stop Venezuelan cocaine shipments, Caracas claims it knows nothing about the trafficking of drugs

By Juan Forero and Kejal Vyas

BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Venezuela’s generals say they are deploying thousands of troops to battle drug traffickers. State television is broadcasting images of militia members training for combat.

And the U.S.’s deadly strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela provoked a tart response. Authorities have called it a hoax.

President Nicolás Maduro and his circle of ministers and military are constructing an alternate reality since the U.S. began a military buildup in the Caribbean and threatened to target narcotics traffickers in Venezuela and its waters.

[ Full article ]

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/denials-and-defiance-shape-venezuelas-response-to-u-s-threats-on-drugs-abeb1078

The Latin Times, September 11, 2025

Politics

EU Lawmaker on Terrorist Label for ‘Cartel de los Soles’: ‘What Pablo Escobar Dreamed of, Maduro Has Achieved’

The European Parliament on Thursday urged the European Union to add Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles with 355 votes in favor and 173 against

By Pedro Camacho

The European Parliament voted Thursday to urge the European Union to add Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles to its list of designated terrorist organizations, with Spanish lawmaker Alma Ezcurra declaring that, through the organization, President Nicolás Maduro had achieved what drug lord Pablo Escobar once only imagined.

“What Pablo Escobar once dreamed of, Maduro has achieved: he controls a loyal army, has embassies in our capitals, and sits in the United Nations,” Ezcurra told fellow members during debate on the resolution. “Maduro is a narco, yes, but with state power, and he uses terror to subjugate his people with the complicity of governments and leaders in Europe.”

Ezcurra, who belongs to Spain’s People’s Party, continued:

“That is why today the Popular Party wants to ask our Chamber for two things: first, that Europeans jointly declare the Cartel de los Soles, led by Maduro along with the Colombian narco, as terrorist organizations. And second, that this be only the first step toward actions that are much more decisive, much deeper, and much braver, because the world and Europe cannot remain passive in the face of what the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia are suffering”

The resolution, adopted with 355 votes in favor and 173 against, calls on the EU Council to update its terrorism list to reflect current realities in Colombia and the wider region. It specifically names the Cartel de los Soles, along with the Clan del Golfo and FARC dissident groups, as organizations providing support, refuge, and logistics to Colombian armed groups.

Parliamentarians described the cartel as a criminal network allegedly led by Maduro and other senior officials including Diosdado Cabello, Jorge Rodríguez, Delcy Rodríguez, and General Vladimir Padrino López. The resolution echoes prior U.S. designations, accusing the group of facilitating narcoterrorism, cocaine trafficking to the United States and Europe, and using Venezuelan state institutions to corrupt military and judicial officials.

https://www.latintimes.com/eu-lawmaker-terrorist-label-cartel-de-los-soles-what-pablo-escobar-dreamed-maduro-has-589460

Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter, September 7, 2025

The Cartel of the Suns exists in Venezuela, and expanded over three decades with Havana’s help.

A network of cells dispersed across branches of the Venezuelan military and government make up the drug trafficking organization Cartel de Soles, also known as the Cartel of the Suns in English.

Former Venezuelan presidential security chief Leamsy Salazar, who defected to the United States in 2015, disclosed that the Cuban government enabled part of the Cartel’s illicit operations.

Insight Crime reported on January 27, 2015 that Leamsy Salazar accused Diosdado Cabello Rondón, Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace, of heading the “Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns). Cabello has oversight of Venezuela’s police forces and prisons.

Samantha Wutz, in a research paper she completed during her internship with the Center for a Free Cuba in 2021 provided the following summary of the Cartel of the Suns.

To understand what is taking place in Venezuela with the Cartel of the Suns, necessitates examining Havana’s role in the South American nation, and its six decade history collaborating with drug trafficking networks.

The idea was to increase the capacity of narcotics networks to flood the U.S., and poison its soft underbelly.

Cuba was first added to U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism on March 1, 1982.

The February 1991 Frontline documentary “Cuba and Cocaine” revealed the links of current Cuban dictator Raul Castro to cocaine trafficking into the United States.

A full transcript of the program is available online, and above is the video.

A declassified CIA report from 1984 reveals the extensive and direct involvement of the highest levels of the Castro regime in drug trafficking.

This ended one chapter of large-scale drug trafficking for the Castros, but a new chapter would begin with the Chavez regime in Venezuela according to Dickey.

[…]

https://notesfromthecubanexilequarter.substack.com/p/the-suns-cartel-exists-and-expanded

Miami Herald, May 13, 2024

History of Cuban spying and the harm done to the U.S.

Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, an ex-career U.S. diplomat, was sentenced on, April 12, 2024, in Miami federal court to 15 years in prison for being a covert agent for the Cuban government.

By John Suarez

Updated May 21, 2024

Victor Manuel Rocha is the latest Cuban spy sentenced, but he’s far from the first captured. In all cases, the damage done is hard to gauge.

Rocha spent over 40 years spying for communist Cuba at the U.S. State Department, holding important postings in Latin America, and in the National Security Council. Later, he worked as a private consultant for the U.S. Southern Command in Doral, which oversees Cuba. The Associated Press reports that “Federal authorities have been conducting a confidential damage assessment that could take years to complete,” and when discovered, much of it will remain classified.

Rocha was sentenced in April to 15 years in federal prison and fined $500,000. Other spies have stolen U.S. intelligence that got Americans killed, and engaged in influence operations to downplay Havana’s threat to the U.S.

Spying for Havana were Ana Belen Montes, who spent 17 years at the Pentagon in the Defense Intelligence Agency; Walter Kendall Myers, a high ranking analyst at the State Department who spent 30 years spying with his wife Gwendolyn; and Marta Rita Velazquez, a legal officer at the Agency for International Development, who recruited Montes.”

Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University, admitted in 2007 he spent nearly 30 years sharing information with the Cuban government about Miami’s exile community. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered Cuban agent and was sentenced to five years in prison. His wife Elsa pleaded guilty to concealing her husband’s actions and was sentenced to three years. Philip Agee, who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, defected to Cuba in 1973 and outed 250 CIA officers and agents.

Philip Agee who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency defected to Cuba in 1973 and outed 250 CIA officers and agents.

In addition Castro’s spies, who pass themselves off as diplomats, operate in Havana’s embassy in Washington, and at Cuba’s United Nations Mission in New York City. The Cuban dictatorship also sends illegal agents to spy and conduct active measures in America.

These practices began in 1959. In 1961, the Soviet Defense Council gave Czechoslovakia orders to use Cuban intelligence to infiltrate existing drug operations in the U.S. and Latin America and to lay the groundwork for “recruiting” these independent activities. The former high-ranking Czech official Jan Sejna gave a detailed account of his meetings with Raul Castro, which he had on average four times a year between 1961 and 1968, the year Sejna defected to the U.S..

After the State Department determined in January 1982 that Havana had armed the M-19 terrorist group in exchange for drugs smuggling to the U.S., Cuba was added to the state terror sponsors list on March 1, 1982

Four high-ranking Cuban officials were indicted by a US grand jury for narcotics smuggling on November 5, 1982.

Rene Rodriguez-Cruz, Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship With The Peoples.
Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado, a vice admiral in the Cuban navy and Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member.
Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, Cuban ambassador to Colombia.
Gonzalo Bassols-Suarez, former minister-counsel of the Cuban embassy in Bogota and Cuban Communist Party member.

Ana Belen Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence agents in New York City in December 1984, and on September 30, 1985 she reported to work at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon.

Former Army counterintelligence special agent Reg Brown also came to the DIA in 1985. Chris Simmons, a career Counterintelligence Officer, in his 2023 book, Castro’s Nemesis describes how Brown conducted an assessment that revealed the “Castro regime still trafficked drugs” and that this involved the “organized and sustained involvement by many of Fidel’s highest ranking officials.”

A Cuban spy in the DIA warned Havana that their role in flooding the U.S. with cocaine would be discovered.

This was not the end of the Havana Cartel. With the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, Havana played a major role in the formation of the Soles Cartel, and the dramatic increase in cocaine entering the U.S. over the next 25 years.

There is no doubt. Rocha and other Cuban spies like him harm the U.S. government and tens of thousands of innocents.

John Suarez is Executive Director for Center for a Free Cuba.

This story was originally published May 13, 2024, 11:03 PM.

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/article288182860.html

Yahoo! December 21, 2000

Alleged Cuba Spy Targeted CIA Agent

By Catherine Wilson, Associated Press Writer

MIAMI, 20 (AP) – Cuban spies once plotted to kill a CIA (news – web sites) employee with a mail bomb disguised as a book, according to decoded messages read Wednesday during the trial of five alleged Cuban agents.

The goal of Operation Parallel was to kill “CIA agent Jesus Cruza Flor” in Miami six years ago, according to the messages. He was to be threatened about his “nearing execution” before delivery of the bomb.

It was unclear how many of the five defendants are accused of taking part in the plot. Attorneys are under a gag order, CIA spokesman Anya Guilsher declined comment and the home phone number listed in the message for Cruza is assigned to a bank.

The trial includes some 1,300 pages of evidence from decoded messages that flowed between the Cuban government and Miami-based agents, according to prosecutors.

Some of the suspects are accused of trying to infiltrate military bases, including the U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for Cuba, and the Boca Chica Naval Air Station near Key West.

Suspected ringleader Gerardo Hernandez faces a possible life sentence on murder conspiracy and espionage conspiracy charges. The first count stems from the 1996 incident in which Cuba shot down two planes from the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters, killing four. The government accused Hernandez of providing Cuba with information about the flights.

He and the other four defendants were arrested in 1998. Five others secured plea bargains requiring them to cooperate, and four more are fugitives believed to be in Cuba.

Like Hernandez, two other defendants – Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino – were charged with espionage conspiracy and could face life in prison. The other two, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, no known relationship, face possible 10-year sentences on false-identity charges.

Attorneys for Hernandez, Labanino, Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez have said the men worked for the Cuban government. But they said their clients did not commit espionage because they obtained no classified information.

The clandestine methods used to transmit the information they obtained were necessary because Cuba and the United States do not have diplomatic relations, according to the defense attorneys.

The trial began this month and is expected to stretch into March.

https://www.cubanet.org/htdocs/CNews/y00/dec00/21e2.htm

The Miami Herald, December 21, 2000

Papers: Spies planned sabotage

Files show orders to discredit pilots

BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

Even before Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, killing four men, Fidel Castro’s intelligence bosses apparently targeted the Miami pilot group for sabotage and dissension, according to court documents in the Cuban spy trial.

Declassified communications from Cuban intelligence, read to jurors Wednesday, showed that accused spy and pilot Rene Gonzalez — one of five men on trial — was directed to burn the hangar and planes of the “counter-revolutionary organization” and to make it look like an “accident, negligence or self damage.”

“Rumors will leak that [Brothers leader Jose] Basulto and his people caused the damage themselves to collect the insurance and get more money from their contributors,” said the undated message, whose author was not revealed.

Operation Picada, or bite, as the anti-Brothers campaign was named, was one of dozens of missions allegedly linked to the five alleged spies now on trial in federal court. Picada also means nose dive.

Jurors also heard about orders from Cuban intelligence for someone to mail an “alleged book bomb” — complete with “plastique,” or plastic explosives — to a Miami-based CIA agent. Other missions sought to discredit the Cuban American National Foundation and Miami’s Cuban exile community at large.

The communications were contained on nearly 1,000 encrypted computer disks confiscated during FBI searches of the defendants’ South Florida apartments. Further testimony about the messages is expected when the trial resumes Jan. 3.

Developers of Operation Picada also directed Gonzalez — a pilot for Brothers to the Rescue and alleged double agent — to disable the group’s ground antennae and transmission equipment “making it seem like negligence.” The orders were directed to “Castor,” one of Gonzalez’s cover names, according to the
government.

“Castor” also was requested to “inform us ahead of time” of who was flying Brothers planes and when, and to try to hide material in Brothers planes.

The documents mirror suspicions voiced previously by Basulto, who has speculated that Brothers planes were “sabotaged” several times: cut cables in an airplane’s control panel, a weight attached to the propeller of Basulto’s plane, metal particles in the oil drum of another aircraft.

Basulto has said that Gonzalez was the first person at the Brothers’ Opa-locka hangar after the 1996 tragedy. Gonzalez came to the United States in 1990 in a hijacked crop duster. He is accused of infiltrating exile groups and posing as an FBI informant.

Cuban intelligence bosses also tried to “discredit” the Cuban American National Foundation with Operation Finado, or deceased, according to other documents read to jurors.

CANF met in July 1998 to choose a successor to chairman Jorge Mas Canosa, who had died. The communications show that U.S.-based Cuban agents were directed to mail disparaging, anonymous flyers on possible candidates to some 40 people and media outlets.

“Who are you voting for as Chairman of the CANF?” the flyer was to start.

It listed disparaging accusations against Jorge Mas Santos, Dr. Alberto Hernandez, Pepe Hernandez, Diego Suarez and Domingo Moreira Jr., and ended, “Who should you vote for? Vote for the Finado.”

The five co-defendants — accused members of the so-called Wasp Network — were arrested Sept. 12, 1998, in the culmination of a major counterespionage investigation.

Lead defendant Gerardo Hernandez faces the most serious charge: conspiracy to murder the four Brothers fliers, allegedly by providing Cuban authorities the flight plan of two Brothers planes while instructing other spies to shun the doomed flight.

Though all of the accused spies acknowledge working on orders from Havana, they deny ever obtaining classified information or intending to harm U.S. interests.

Rather, they say they worked from a defensive posture, trying to identify the exiles presumably responsible for a series of bombings at tourist sites in Cuba and to find out if the United States had plans to invade the island.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/sabotage.htm

CBS News, September 14, 1998 MIAMI

10 Charged As Cuban Spies

Accused Of Infiltrating Exile Groups

(CBS) Ten people were charged Monday in what prosecutors said is the largest Cuban spy ring ever uncovered in the United States since Fidel Castro came to power nearly 40 years ago.

CBS News Correspondent Byron Pitts reports that, according to the FBI, the spy ring had been under surveillance in south Florida for three years.The eight men and two women tried to penetrate U.S. military bases, infiltrate anti-Castro groups, and manipulate U.S. media and political groups, federal investigators said Monday.

One suspect was a civilian employee at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Key West, Fla. “Some of his activities included…reporting on combat readiness of our airplanes, daily activities, and physical descriptions of the building inside, including security areas,” said U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Scott. “This spy ring was cast by the Cuban government to strike at the very heart of our national security system and our very democratic process.”

The FBI said one of the group’s targets was the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which runs American military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.The suspects were held without bond and face charges of espionage and acting as unregistered agents of the Cuban government. Prosecutors said the investigation is continuing, but would not say if more arrests were anticipated.

Charges against five of the suspects carry life sentences. Charges against the other five have maximum sentences of 15 years. Among those arrested was Rene Gonzalez, once a welcomed and award-winning member of the Miami-based Cuban exile group, Brothers to the Rescue. The group lost four members in 1996 when they were killed, shot down by a Cuban MIG fighter jet over international waters during a mercy mission between Florida and Cuba. There had been suspicion that spies played a role in the shooting. Investigators say Gonzalez posed as an informant for the FBI, but he was actually spying for the Cuban government.

Another suspect, Linda Hernandez, was said to be part of a husband-wife spy team. Both she and her husband are members of the Cuban military and longtime operatives, the FBI said. Her lawyer, Vincent Farina, said his client is a housewife, not a spy. “She had nothing to do with this whatsoever,” Farina said.

According to an FBI affidavit filed in support of the arrests, surveillance dating back to 1995 indicated all 10 members operated with code names and had escape plans and alibis.

FBI agent Raul Fernandez said in the affidavit that Manuel Viramontes, a Cuban military captain led the spy group and used computers with coded material on disk to communicate with other members.Viramontes had an apartment in Miami and it was there that the disks were found, investigators said.The disks provided a detailed overview of spy operations reminiscent of Cold War-era espionage, including references to agents as comrades.

“To say the least, folks, this operation was sophisticated,” Scott said. Two of those arrested were identified as U.S. citizens and one as a resident alien. The citizenship of the others was not released, but the FBI said some were agents who slipped in and out of the United States.

Congressional sources said the arrests made without incident Saturday were timed to avert an operation planned by the suspects. They provided no further details.

Part of the operation focused on infiltrating six exile groups, according to the FBI. The affidavit said two of the suspects set up a surveillance of the Southern Command, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West.

The two allegedly produced detailed reports, complete with photos, on the Southern Command and were assigned to report any “unusual exercises, maneuvers, and other activity related to combat readiness at the Naval air station.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20101115151309/https://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/09/14/national/main17486.shtml

Transcribed and translated excerpts from seized diskettes:

DAV-118 (E) RTF (AIRPORT.DIR)

WORK DIRECTIVES FOR OPERATION “AEROPUERTO”

1-. THE IDEA OF THE OPERATION:

SINCE THE VERY BEGINNING THE ESSENTIAL IDEA OF THE OPERATION WAS FOR A-32 TO JOIN WITH THE ILLEGAL CENTER THAT WAS BEING DIRECTED BY A-4 AND WAS FUNCTIONING IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA.

2-. OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES:

THE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVE OF THE OPERATION IS TO ESTABLISH S/A A-32 IN KEY WEST FOR THE PURPOSE OF PENETRATING AND OBTAINING INFORMATION ON THE NAVAL AIR STATION LOCATED IN THAT CITY.

ALSO, TO MAKE CONTACTS WHICH CAN PROVIDE US WITH MILITARY, POLITICAL , BIOGRAPHICAL AND OPERATIONAL INFORMATION AS AS TO STUDY COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS EXISTING IN THE AREA AND CARRY OUT STUDIES ON THE OPERATIONAL SITUATION OF ROADS, MAINLY IN KEY WEST.

3-. PARTICIPANTS

A-32 WILL BE THE MAIN PARTICIPANT AND HE WILL BE DIRECTLY UNDER I.O. A-4.

WORK DIRECTIVES FOR OPERATION “GIRÓN.”

1-. IDEA OF THE OPERATION

Reviewed by: LS Salomon

Declassified by: KMDJr / RJG

Cred. #10517

11/27/00 1

[…]

DHo-101 (E) CMA (Disk 17).wpd

OPERATION “PICADA’

OBJECTIVES:

1.-) TRY TO IMPEDE THE CONSUMPTION OF INTENTIONS OF THE OPERATION P.A.L. (PAN, AMOR Y LIBERTAD) OF THE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION BROTHER’S TO THE RESCUE.

2.-) AFFECT AND DISCREDIT THE IMAGE OF SAID ORGANIZATION.

ACTIONS TO BE DEVELOPED:

1.-) PERFORM THE OPERATIONAL SITUATION STUDY OF THE HANGAR AT THE OPA LOCKA BASE WHERE THE ORGANIZATION KEEPS AND OPERATES THEIR PLANES.

2.-) THE POSSIBILITY OF BURNING DOWN THE WAREHOUSE OF THE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION, AND AFFECT THEIR PLANES, MAKING IT SEEM LIKE AN ACCIDENT, NEGLIGENCE OR SELF DAMAGE.

KEEPING IN MIND THAT THIS PLACE MAY BE SECURED AND THAT IN CASES LIKE THESE, INVESTIGATIONS ARE PERFORMED, RUMORS WILL LEAK THAT BASULTO AND HIS PEOPLE CAUSED THE DAMAGE THEMSELVES TO COLLECT THE INSURANCE AND GET MORE MONEY FROM THEIR CONTRIBUTORS.

3.-) ATTEMPT TO DISABLE THEIR EQUIPMENT AND TRANSMISSION ANTENNAE ON LAND, THE ONES THEY USE TO COMMUNICATE WITH DURING THEIR MISSIONS, MAKING IT SEEM LIKE NEGLIGENCE.

NOTE: THESE THREE POINTS WERE REQUESTED OF CASTOR VIA RADIO MESSAGE. IT HAS TO BE DETERMINED WHAT HE HAS BEEN ABLE TO OBTAIN.

4.-) ANALYZE WITH CASTOR IF HE COULD INFORM US AHEAD OF TIME (DETERMINE PRECISE TIME) WHEN THE BROTHER’S TO THE RESCUE PLANES WILL BE TAKING OFF, WHO IS IN THEM AND IF THEY ARE GOING TO LAND AT A SPECIFIC PLACE. WHAT PERSONNEL KNOWS THIS INFORMATION BEFOREHAND. AT SOME POINT, CAN IT BE DETERMINED WHO PROVIDED THIS INFORMATION.

5.-) ACCORDING TO THE FEATURES OF THE PLANES, THEIR SECURITY SYSTEM, AS WELL AS THE HANGAR WHERE THEY ARE LOCATED, IF AT ANY SPECIFIC MOMENT HE COULD HIDE SOME TYPE OF MATERIAL AND KEEP IT THERE WITHOUT BEING DETECTED. WHAT SIZE WOULD THAT MATERIAL HAVE TO BE

OPERATION PARALLELO:

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS OPERATION IS TO DEVELOP A SERIES OF ACTIONS AGAINST CIA AGENT JESUS CRUZA FLOR.

THESE ACTIONS WOULD BE:

1.-) PHOTOGRAPH OR VIDEO TAPE HIS HOUSE, LOCATED AT:

1440 S. BAYSHORE DR.

MIAMI, FLORIDA 33131

TELEPHONE (305)358-0762

2.-) ONCE THE HOUSE IS PHOTOGRAPHED, MAKE VARIOUS THREATENING TELEPHONE CALLS (TWO OR THREE) CONCERNING HIS NEARING EXECUTION.

THESE CALLS WOULD BE AT DIFFERENT HOURS AND DIFFERENT DAYS. TRY TO USE THE EQUIPMENT (CALLED SCRAMBLER OR SOMETHING SIMILAR) TO CHANGE THE VOICE. PHONE BOOTHS SHOULD BE SELECTED THAT ALLOW A QUICK EXIT OUT OF THE AREA. KEEP IN MIND THAT THE MEASURES IS AGAINST A CIA AGENT AND HE COULD HAVE CALLER ID TO FIND OUT THE TELEPHONE NUMBER THAT IS CALLING AND THE ADDRESS WHERE IT IS LOCATED. ON THE OTHER HAND, KEEP IN MIND THE REST OF THE SECURITY MEASURES THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN IN THE BOOTH, SUCH AS FINGERPRINTS, HAIR, ODORS, SALIVA, DRESS, THAT THERE BE NO PERMANENT PERSONNEL IN THE AREA TO RECOGNIZE THE CALLER. DO NOT LEAVE THE CAR WHERE IT CAN BE OBSERVED, THE DURATION OF THE CALL. DO NOT RESPOND TO ANY QUESTIONS ASKED.

3.-) PREPARE AN ALLEGED BOOK-BOMB (BOOK, CABLE, BATTERIES, PLASTIQUE, ETC., AND SEND IT VIA EXPRESS MAIL. KEEP IN MIND TO WRAP THE BOOK IN A PROTECTIVE PAPER, WHICH IF THE ENVELOPE IS PASSED THROUGH THE X-RAY MACHINES, IMPEDES THE DETECTION OF WHAT IS INSIDE, AND THEREFORE IT WILL NOT BE ROUTED THROUGH THE MAIL.

KEEP IN MIND TO OBTAIN THE ENVELOPE, AS WELL AS THE POSTAGE, MANY DAYS IN ADVANCE AND SELECT A BUSY PLACE. USE A SPECIFIC CAMOUFLAGE.

STUDY THE MAILBOX WHERE THE PACKAGE WILL BE DEPOSITED, AS WELL AS THE TIME IT WILL BE DEPOSITED. ANALYZE HOW YOU WILL GET OUT OF THE AREA.

DURING THE ENTIRE PROCESS KEEP THE SECURITY MEASURES IN MIND, SUCH AS THE ONES MENTIONED BEFORE, GIVING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO FINGER PRINTS DURING THE ENTIRE PROCESS.

EVALUATE THE POSSIBILITY OF USING MANOLO TO MAKE THE CALL, THE TOPOS TO DEPOSIT THE ENVELOPE AND A-4 TO PREPARE THE BOOK-BOMB.

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FEBRUARY 1, 1994

CONTACT AGENDA WITH 0-4 “ESELIN”

Reviewed by: LS Salomon

Declassified by: KMDJr

MM-#10517

9/24/00 2-6