Alan Gross losing hope after 5 years in Cuban prison

Alan Gross losing hope after 5 years in Cuban prison
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD MWHITEFIELD@MIAMIHERALD.COM
11/30/2014 7:01 PM 12/01/2014 12:01 AM

In this Dec. 3, 2013 file photo, supporters of Alan Gross, on poster at
left, mark his fourth year in a Cuban prison with a protest in Lafayette
Park, across from the White House in Washington, D.C. CHARLES DHARAPAK AP
Story
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As the fifth anniversary of the arrest and imprisonment of U.S. Agency
for International Development subcontractor Alan Gross in Cuba
approaches, he has received recent visits from his lawyer and two
senators but refuses to see U.S. diplomats in Havana.

It's a reflection of his frustration with the U.S. government and its
efforts to win his freedom. Since his arrest on Dec. 3, 2009, for
smuggling satellite communications equipment to Cuba as part of USAID's
pro-democracy programs, Gross has grown increasingly despondent and his
wife Judy has said she worries that he'll "do something drastic" if he
isn't released soon.

"President Obama needs to bring Alan home now,'' said Scott Gilbert,
Gross' lawyer.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is trying to do that: "We
continue to use every possible diplomatic channel to press for Mr.
Gross' release, repeatedly, both publicly and privately. We have also
enlisted governments around the world and prominent figures to press for
Mr. Gross' release."

Just before he turned 65 last May 2, Gross — who is serving his 15-year
sentence at the Carlos J. Finlay Military Hospital in Havana — announced
"it will be my last birthday here." When his wife visited in June, he
said his goodbyes.

"We must remember that Alan was in Cuba serving the U.S. government
[USAID is part of the State Department]," said Gilbert, a Washington
lawyer who visited Gross in Havana last week. "Alan is about to give up,
and we are running out of time."

When Peter Kornbluh, a National Security Archive analyst, visited Gross
in prison last December he found that the development specialist's
physical condition seemed improved from a four-hour visit he had with
him in November 2012, but that his mental state had deteriorated.

Gross had gained back 23 of the 110 pounds he had lost and showed the
muscles he was developing with daily exercises. When Kornbluh asked him
if he was bulking up in preparation for a hunger strike, Gross instead
indicated a door separating their meeting room from the rest of the
prison. "Flimsy," he noted.

Kornbluh said that when he mentioned there were large, well-armed guards
on the other side, Gross responded: "I'm not afraid of anyone and God
help the person who challenges that. I'm a ticking time bomb…. Tick,
tick, tick."

Gross did, in fact, stage a nine-day hunger strike in April to protest
the lack of progress toward his release and grew even more depressed
after his mother, 92-year-old Evelyn Gross, died of cancer in June. The
Cuban government refused furlough requests from Gross during her illness
and to attend her funeral.

In the five years since Gross was arrested on his fifth trip to Cuba,
the wedge between his family and the U.S. government has grown.

In a $60-million lawsuit filed in federal court in the District of
Columbia, the Grosses blamed the U.S. government and Development
Alternatives Inc., the Maryland-based international development firm
that subcontracted the USAID project to Gross, for failing to adequately
train and prepare him for the risky situation he would face in Cuba.

In a memo submitted to DAI after his third trip to the island, for
example, he outlined his mounting concern: "This is very risky business
in no uncertain terms. Provincial authorities are apparently very strict
when it comes to unauthorized use of radio frequencies.... Detection
usually means confiscation of equipment and arrest of users." DAI,
according to the suit, ignored Gross' worries.

A judge dismissed the negligence case, saying the U.S. government is
immune from any claim arising in a foreign country, and earlier this
month the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
affirmed the dismissal. DAI settled with the Gross family for an
undisclosed sum.

But Scott said the Grosses' legal fight isn't over. He intends to
petition the Supreme Court for review of the case.

The State Department has described Gross' activities in Cuba as an
effort to bring Internet access to the Jewish community and insists the
program wasn't covert but rather "discreet."

But the Cuban government said Gross wasn't prosecuted for bringing
Internet access to Jewish communities in Havana, Camagüey and Santiago
de Cuba, which already were connected to the Internet before Gross made
his visits.

In a document defending their treatment of Gross, the Cubans said he was
convicted for "illegally and covertly introducing into Cuba
communication equipment" meant only for military purposes and to create
clandestine networks for the transmission and reception of data for a
program aimed at "subverting Cuba's constitutional order."

Documents made public during the Grosses' federal lawsuit also provide
details about the pilot project that Gross called Para la Isla (For the
Island). After making contact with the three Jewish communities and
setting up wireless networks, a proposal for a $332,334 expansion of the
project called for reaching three more target groups and providing them
with "Telco-In-a-Bag."

Such bags were to be filled with a Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN)
modem, four SIM cards, four iPods, a "discreet BGAN SIM card," four
unlocked smartphones, a wireless router, MacBook, cables for TV hookup,
flash drives and other equipment that would allow a global Internet
satellite link to make phone calls and send emails. The discreet SIM
Cards, Gross indicated, would make it difficult to track and locate signals.

The proposal notes that if BGAN usage for Internet access were
discovered by Cuban authorities, it would be "catastrophic."

Gross was beginning the next phase of the project when he was arrested.

These days he spends his time in a 10-by-12-foot cell with two other
prisoners. There is a small meeting room attached. A small table was
laid out with coffee and sweets both times Kornbluh visited.

But lately Gross has "been adamant about not wanting to see most
people," said a family spokesman. Personnel from the U.S. Interests
Section used to visit monthly, but now Gross rebuffs those visits.

He did, however, see Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM,
a few weeks ago during their trip to the island.

The senators, who both are critical of the U.S. embargo against Cuba,
said there wasn't any indication that his release was imminent. But at a
news conference , Flake said, "I do feel we are closer there. One,
because of what Alan Gross has said himself — this is going to end one
way or another. We have gone on five years and any benefit the Cuban
government may have seen has to have evaporated."

Flake said another positive was that "there won't be any more covert
programs run out of AID anymore." He was referring to an Associated
Press report that USAID was preparing internal rules that would, in
effect, end its undercover work — such as the program Gross was engaged
in and another that aimed to set up a secretive Twitter-like social
network to encourage young Cuban dissidents — in hostile countries.

Gross' case, which has thwarted improvement in the difficult U.S.-Cuba
relationship, is also complicated by its intersection with another
politically and emotionally charged case — that of five Cubans convicted
in 2001 of infiltrating South Florida military installations and spying
on the exile community.

Prosecutors linked their intelligence activities to the Feb. 24, 1996,
shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes as they neared island
air space, resulting in the deaths of four exile pilots.

The Brothers, an exile group that searched the Florida Straits for
overdue rafters, also had repeatedly flown into Cuban airspace in the
past, dropping leaflets, and, once, medallions that said "Brothers not
Comrades" over Cuba.

The Cuban agents were part of a larger group sent to Miami in the 1990s
as Havana grew increasingly testy over a series of hotel bombings linked
to exiles and the airspace incursions. The five were convicted of
various conspiracy-related and espionage charges and sentenced to
lengthy terms in federal prison.

While the U.S. government has repeatedly called for the immediate,
humanitarian release of Gross, the Cuban government has said that the
United States can't make such a unilateral demand without taking into
consideration humanitarian concerns for the agents, known as the Cuban Five.

In the time Gross has been in jail,, the Cuban Five — who have been
elevated to hero status in Cuba — have become the Cuban Three.

Two of the Cuban spies — René González, who was released in 2011 and
spent a year on probation in the United States, and Fernando González,
who was released in February after serving 15 years — are now back in Cuba.

The next two Cubans are scheduled for release in 2017 and 2024, but
Gerardo Hernández, who was also convicted of conspiracy to commit
murder, is serving two life sentences and isn't eligible for parole.

The United States has said many times it is not considering release of
any of the Cubans in exchange for Gross because the USAID subcontractor
isn't a spy and can't be part of a spy-for-spy swap.

Last week a State Department spokesperson explained: "We've always made
it clear that there's no equivalence between an international
development worker imprisoned... for doing nothing more than helping
Cuban citizens gain access to the Internet, and convicted Cuban
intelligence agents."

But there is, in fact, historical precedent for non-equivalent swaps.
Twice before there have been these non-trade trades couched as separate,
dual humanitarian gestures.

In their new book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of
Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, William LeoGrande and
Kornbluh outline a tricky negotiation during the Carter administration
to win release of four CIA agents held in Havana.

Fidel Castro at first balked, saying the agents had conspired to
overthrow the government and take the lives of Cuban leaders and
compared them to four Puerto Rican nationalists jailed in the United
States for opening fire from the visitors' gallery of the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1954, wounding five congressmen, and for the
attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950.

Castro, long sympathetic to the cause of Puerto Rican independence,
suggested an exchange. But the United States didn't want an explicit
quid pro quo, the book said. Months passed but on Sept. 6, 1979,
President Jimmy Carter announced clemency for the Puerto Ricans and 11
days later Castro ordered the release of the four CIA agents in a
"reciprocal humanitarian gesture."

"We never gave up trying to get our spies out," said Kornbluh. "If
[Gross] were a real CIA guy, the CIA would be pushing for his release."

In 1963, there were also negotiations for release of prisoners held by
both sides. They culminated in the same day release of 27 U.S. citizens
(including three CIA agents) arrested as spies and saboteurs in Cuba,
and four Cubans jailed in the U.S. One of those Cubans had been
convicted in the accidental shooting of a nine-year-old girl during a
1960 clash with anti-Castro Cubans. The others were charged with
plotting sabotage in New York.

They were not defined as prisoner swaps but rather mutual acts of
clemency, according to the book.

Kornbluh and LeoGrande said these two precedents might suggest a way
forward in winning Gross' release. "If the United States is serious
about getting Gross out, then it will have to have a more flexible
position," said LeoGrande, an American University government professor
who specializes in Latin America.

But for South Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, this is no
time to show flexibility toward the Cuban government.

Alan Gross "should have never been jailed and should be released
unconditionally," she said in a statement. "A cavalcade of diplomats,
members of Congress and others have visited Gross in prison to no avail.
Additionally, the Obama administration eased sanctions in 2011 with no
benefit for Gross."

Now, she said, it is time for the administration to "tighten sanctions
to punish the regime's criminal act and continue to press for Gross'
release."

Meanwhile, Gross' family and his supporters keep up the steady drumbeat
for his release despite the lack of progress. "We like to remain
hopeful,'' said the family spokesman.

Source: Alan Gross losing hope after 5 years in Cuban prison | The Miami
Herald -
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