In My Opinion
'Spy' case really more a lesson in misplaced pride
By ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@MiamiHerald.com
And now, to a trial season crowded with absurdities, comes the case of
the fearsome Cuban ''spies,'' who traded no classified secrets,
endangered no country and took no money.
Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa were sentenced in federal court Tuesday
-- Carlos to the maximum five years in prison and Elsa to three years.
The couple were arrested last January, accused of being ''unregistered
foreign agents'' for Cuba. The case that has unfolded over the last year
features Carlos as a mild-mannered professor with a hidden penchant for
encrypted reports, secret meetings and encoded radio messages.
The most damning -- and personally embarrassing -- allegation is that he
shared information with Cuba about the personal finances of his friend,
Modesto Maidique, president of Florida International University, where
Alvarez was a professor.
The prosecution claimed the Alvarezes were dangerous agents ''engaged in
classic intelligence work.'' The defense says the couple engaged only in
``harmless gossip.''
Gossip is rarely ''harmless'' and ''classic intelligence work'' demands
a modicum of intelligence. In fact, the Alvarez case is more interesting
for what it reveals about the misguided policies and giant egos that
stalk the periphery of this case.
PERSONAL BETRAYALS
Contained in the dry court documents are all the personal betrayals and
self-important skullduggeries that through coups, revolution and exile
have remained a constant feature of Cuban political life.
In that context, Carlos' biggest sin was not ''spying'' but pride. Pride
that he could game Cuban intelligence. Pride that he could be the agent
of change by betraying friends. And pride that his academically informed
''conflict resolution'' skills could penetrate the miasma of cynicism
and calculation that has crippled U.S.-Cuba relations this last
half-century.
Whatever combination of personal ambition and hopeless naiveté first led
Carlos to open up to Cuban intelligence and then to the FBI, we can
never really know. Neither can we know who ultimately served him up to
U.S. prosecutors; that information is secret.
But the picture that emerges of Carlos and Elsa is less one of hardened
spies than of two highly educated and religious people who assumed
everyone shared their lofty ideals. A member of an underground
anti-Castro student movement, Carlos eventually fled to America and grew
to believe he could persuade Cuba and the United States to make nice.
SHARED GOALS
Carlos says he met a Cuban diplomat and a Cuban psychologist at a party
in 1977 and began talking to them because they seemed to share his goal
of thawing relations between Havana and Washington.
But each year the meetings became more secret. And the Cubans drew him
deeper into James Bond silliness like the encoded shortwave radio
transmissions. At one point, he was to travel to meet a ''handler'' with
an itinerary hidden in a book.
This is not intelligence to make or break a country. This is theater of
the cliché. By the time Carlos received a commendation from Cuba in
1991, he should have known he was being played in a game he'd long since
lost control of.
Tuesday morning, he shuffled into Judge K. Michael Moore's courtroom in
leg shackles. His sons and daughter were there. His lawyers had argued
for a reduced sentence. Friends submitted letters on his behalf, arguing
he was a man of peace.
And then the judge sentenced him to hard time. Carlos thought he could
be a one-man foreign policy machine and ended up betraying friends and
trusting scumbags. The over-the-top hysteria and paranoia surrounding
his slight story now must be giving Fidel sweet solace in his last days.
In the end, Carlos Alvarez's biggest victim was Carlos Alvarez. The
bigger tragedy would be if the cause of moderate Cubans goes down with
him. One suspects that, for the Cubans at least, that was the goal all
along.
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