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The
Untold Story of the Cuban Five (Part V)
By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the
National Assembly of People's Power
The
first indictment in September 1998 charged the Cuban
Five of being unregistered Cuban agents and of other
minor violations. The government also charged three
of them--Gerardo, Ramón and Antonio--with
“conspiracy to commit espionage” (Count Two of the
indictment)
Prosecutors didn’t
accuse any of them of actual espionage for a very
simple reason: there was not such a thing and thus
it could never be proven. The prosecutors went even
farther. At their opening statement they warned the
jury not to expect them to present any secrets or
anything of that sort. The only thing the
prosecution needed was to “convince” the
jurors that the defendants were really bad people
capable of conceiving an attempt to endanger the
national security of the United States sometime in a
hypothetical future. And, they argued, the
defendants had to get the most severe punishment
possible because they were the really bad guys
disrupting the peace and tranquility in Miami.
Remember Elian?
In order to achieve
that goal the prosecutors, notwithstanding what
their own indictment said, made the most
inflammatory kinds of statements at trial, accusing
the Five of no less than trying “to destroy the
United States” and reminding the scared jurors
that if they failed to condemn them they will
“betray the community”.
The media did the
rest of the job. They have always portrayed the
Cuban Five as “spies” or as people accused of being
“spies”. The media went into overdrive in
performing their task. They keep repeating the same
tune even after the en banc Court of
Appeals unanimously determined in September 2008
that there was no evidence that the accused had “gathered
or transmitted top secret information” or that
they had damaged the national security of the United
States and thus it decided that the sentences for
Charge 2 (conspiracy to commit espionage) were
erroneous, it vacated them and remanded Ramon and
Antonio for resentencing (Eleventh Circuit Appeals
Court, No. 01-17176, D.C Docket No. 98-00721-CR-JAL,
pages 70-81). Nevertheless, even though it
acknowledged that the same procedure should be
applied to Gerardo, in an astounding act of judicial
discrimination, the court refused to do so adducing
that a life sentence was already weighing against
him.
As a matter of fact,
it was very easy to realize that in this case no
secret or military information was involved and that
the national security of the US was never affected.
That was what the Pentagon said, in clear, plain
language before the trial started. That was the
testimony, under oath, by Admiral (R) Eugene Carroll
(official transcripts pages 8196-8301), Army General
(R) Edward Breed Atkeson (Idem pages 11049-11199),
General and former Commander of Southern Command
Charles Elliot Wilhelm (Idem pages 11491-11547), Air
Force Lieutenant General (R) James R. Clapper (Idem
pages 13089-13235).
Their testimonies
were not secret, but were made voluntarily in open
court. Probably such a parade of distinguished and
decorated military chiefs sustaining the innocence
of some young Cuban revolutionaries has not happen
before a US Court of law. This didn’t make the news
out of Miami, but the official transcripts of the
trial are there for anybody to read.
Since the Cuban Five
were condemned there have been other cases whose
results sharply contrast with theirs. Let’s very
briefly consider a few of them.
Khaled Abdel-Latif
Dumeisi, accused of being an unregistered agent of
the Saddam Hussein Government, was sentenced in
April 2004, in the middle of the US war with Iraq,
to 3 years and 10 months in prison.
Leandro Aragoncillo
was found guilty in July 2007 of transmitting secret
national defense information of the United States (around
800 classified documents) obtained from his office
in the White House, where he worked as military
assistant to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick
Cheney. Mister Aragoncillo was sentenced to 10 years
in prison while his co-conspirator Michael Ray
Aquino got 6 years and 4 months.
Gregg W. Bergersen,
a Defense Department analyst was found guilty in
July 2008 of providing national defense information
to unauthorized persons in exchange for money and
gifts and was sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in
prison.
Lawrence Anthony
Franklyn, a US Air Force Reserves colonel, working
in the Defense Department was found guilty of giving
classified and national defense information,
including military secrets, to representatives of a
foreign government and was sentenced to 12 years and
7 months. But he never entered a federal prison. He
was free while appealing and last May the Justice
Department dropped the charges that sustained his
case.
It goes without
saying that none of the cases referred to above were
tried in Southern Florida or involved any attempts
to frustrate criminal plans.
The Cuban Five got,
together, 4 life terms plus 77 years. They didn’t
work at the White House, or the Pentagon, or the
State Department. They never had or sought access
to any secret information. But they did something
unforgivable. They fought anti-Cuban terrorism and
they did it in Miami.
Taken from
Counterpunch |
