Wife of USAID contractor jailed in Cuba speaks at Stevenson synagogue Sunday. (VoB Photo/Alan Z. Forman)
USAID CONTRACTOR’S SPOUSE
ADDRESSES SMALL AUDIENCE
AT STEVENSON SYNAGOGUE
Pope Benedict is asked to intercede;
innocence of Alan Gross in question
ACCUSED GREW UP IN BALTIMORE
By Alan Z. Forman
The wife of a Baltimore native incarcerated for more than two years in Cuba on charges of attempting to overthrow the Castro Government came to Stevenson (Md.) early Sunday to drum up support for getting her husband released from a Havana prison.
Judy Gross, wife of computer technician Alan Phillip Gross, 61, who went to Cuba to provide Internet service to Havana’s Jewish community one too many times, is serving a 15-year sentence for espionage for what his family insists are trumped-up charges.
Having been denied an appeal last August by Cuba’s highest court, Gross’s family hopes to influence President Raúl Castro to release him from the maximum-security military hospital in Havana on “humanitarian grounds” based on illness and family hardship.
Gross’s 89-year-old mother is in her last days, his older daughter just underwent a double-mastectomy, and he, according to telephone conversations with his wife, has lost more than 100 pounds off his six-foot 250-lb. frame while in prison.
Castro has said the Baltimore native and recent resident of Potomac Md. is an American spy.
PLEADED WITH SMALL GATHERING
On Sunday, Gross’s wife Judy pleaded with a small gathering at Chizuk Amuno Congregation near Pikesville, who came to hear her describe her husband’s plight, asking the audience of about 35-40 synagogue members to send letters and emails to American diplomats and officials in hopes they’ll intercede on his behalf, and to sign an online petition at the website FreeAlanGrossNow.com.
The petition implores Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Nuncio to the United States to encourage the Pontiff to “obtain Alan’s release from prison during his upcoming visit to Cuba” scheduled for late next month.
Previous high-level intercession — most notably by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter when he visited Havana in March 2011 — failed to result in helping Gross get out of jail.
A Washington Post editorial in July tacitly described Carter’s effort as being “unfortunately” connected to pleas by “Hollywood celebrities [and] Nobelists” (Nobel Prize winners) to secure the return of five Cuban spies from the United States.
MET WITH GROSS LAST MARCH
Carter was allowed to meet with Gross last March, then said he believed the Baltimore native’s fate should be “separate” from that of the Cuban spies incarcerated in the U.S.
However the Cuban government sees Gross as a bargaining chip in its effort to win the release of the five spies, a “political football” as described by Judy Gross on Sunday, who also charged American political interests with using her husband “to get rid of the AID Program.”
Gross was an American government contractor working under the auspices of the USAID Program.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, considered a nemesis of the Castro government because of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s.
AID’s stated mission is to “extend a helping hand to those people overseas struggling to make a better life, recover from a disaster or striving to live in a free and democratic country.”
Judy Gross chats briefly following scripted talk at Chizuk Amuno Synagogue Sunday. (VoB Photo/Alan Z. Forman)
Its objectives include providing “economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States.”
In addition to Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, USAID operates in Europe, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eurasia and the Near East.
Despite the agency’s denial that any of its work is covert, the communist government in Havana considers its democracy-promotion activities to be illegal and a threat to Cuban national security.
Gross’s company, JBDC Inc., which specializes in establishing Internet access in remote areas of the globe, was hired by Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), of Bethesda (Md.), under a multimillion-dollar contract with USAID to provide “technological outreach through phone banks, satellite Internet and cell phones” in an attempt to crack Cuba’s information blockade.
According to American officials familiar with Gross’s contract, who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to discuss the case, JBDC was paid a half-million dollars for its owner’s work in Cuba as a USAID subcontractor.
However Gross never identified himself as a representative of the United States Government or revealed his connection to USAID, telling Cubans instead he was connected with private organizations attempting to provide Internet access to Cuba’s 1500-member Jewish community.
WAS NOT DOING ANYTHING SUBVERSIVE?
Despite his wife and family’s denial that he was doing anything subversive or that he was even aware of any danger to himself based on his activities in Cuba, the Associated Press has obtained and published reports filed by Gross indicating the exact opposite.
The reports detail his four visits over a five-month period in 2009 prior to his incarceration — during which he brought cellphones, laptop computers and satellite communications equipment into the communist nation — plus an additional report filed by a representative of his firm following his arrest in Havana on Dec. 3, 2009.
“Together, the reports detail the lengths to which Gross went to escape Cuban authorities’ detection,” the AP says, including renting a car and driving seven hours to avoid airport security, and instructing “helpers” to bring pieces of electronic equipment — some of them banned in Cuba — one article at a time, in carry-on luggage rather than checked baggage so as not to “risk airport searches.”
HIS FINAL TRIP
On his final trip, at the conclusion of which he was arrested, he brought in and installed what the reports describe as a “discreet” SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) intended to obfuscate the location of satellite phone transmissions within 250 miles — a SIM card most frequently used by the U.S. Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to the AP, when questioned about how Gross obtained the card, a USAID spokesman said only that “the agency played no role in helping Gross acquire equipment.
“We are a development agency, not an intelligence agency,” AID spokesman Drew Bailey said, echoing other U.S. officials’ claims that Gross was simply carrying out the “normal mission” of USAID and that he did “nothing wrong.”
Gross said however at his trial that he was a “trusting fool” who was “duped”; and according to the AP account, “his trip reports indicate that he knew his activities were illegal in Cuba and that he worried about the danger, including possible expulsion.”
Alan and Judy Gross, in happier days before he was incarcerated in Havana, given a 15-year prison sentence for crimes against the Cu- ban government. His family wants the Cubans to let him come home.
One report quotes a Cuban community leader as making it “abundantly clear [to Gross] that we are all ‘playing with fire.’” And on another occasion, Gross apparently said: “This is very risky business in no uncertain terms…. Detection of satellite signals will be catastrophic.”
Prominent Jewish leaders in Cuba have denied working with Gross.
In December, Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-8th), Gross’s congressman, and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) sent separate letters to Cuba’s top diplomat in Washington urging Gross’s immediate release.
The letters were co-signed by 72 House of Representatives members and 18 U.S. Senators, respectively. And President Barack Obama has also called for his release, as has Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in July urged Jewish groups to put pressure on Cuba to free Gross.
In addition, the State Department has publicly “deplore[d] the ruling of the Cuban Supreme Court upholding the conviction of imprisoned U.S. citizen Alan Gross,” adding that the department “will continue to use every available diplomatic channel to press for his immediate release.”
According to news reports, Judy Gross spoke with her husband by telephone on Saturday, Nov. 26th — and most recently, she told the Chizuk Amuno audience, “on Friday” Feb. 17th.
REFERRED VoB TO HER LAWYER
However, when asked for details by Voice of Baltimore, she referred a reporter to her lawyer, Peter J. Kahn, of Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington D.C.
Before her speech in Stevenson Sunday morning began, the audience was told there would be “no public discussion” permitted and that “Mrs. Gross will not take any questions from the floor.”
She then read from a prepared text, never deviating from the scripted word except to correct herself on several occasions.
She said Gross told her in their conversation Friday that he is “comforted by the fact he hasn’t been forgotten [but that] he continues to suffer terribly: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually….
“He grew up right here in Baltimore,” she said.
Gross is a graduate of Milford Mill High School and the University of Maryland — and attended Sudbrook Junior High School in 1962-63, according to classmate Steve King, who told VoB he remembers Gross as “a really nice guy” that he finds impossible to believe is a spy.
DON’T BELIEVE ‘BLOGOSPHERE’ DEBATES
“Do not believe the ‘blogosphere’ debates on Alan’s ‘real intention,’” Judy Gross urged the synagogue audience, going on to declare her husband’s sentence “inhumane” and “unjust.”
He is “not physically well” and is “desperate,” she continued. “And we [his family] are desperate for him to return home.”
His mother, Evelyn Gross, is due to turn 90 in April and has lung cancer. And his wife, a psychotherapist at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, was forced last year to sell their Potomac Md. home because of inability to make mortgage payments without her husband’s income.
She now lives in an apartment in Washington.
Said one attendee at the Sunday morning session — who grew up and went to school with Alan Gross but did not wish to be identified by name — regarding Judy Gross’s talk and her refusal to take questions:
“What she doesn’t want to discuss is what he was doing in Cuba that he shouldn’t have been doing.”
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
TO READ THE AP’S FEB. 12 REPORT IN FULL, CLICK HERE
February 21st, 2012 - 9:14 PM
This is a real head scratcher. Why would ANYONE want to go to such a God-forsaken place to begin with? He knew, or should have known, that the idiots who are running Cuba would take any opportunity to try to embarass the United States by taking a U.S. citizen into custody on trumped up charges.
I feel sorry for his family, but I can’t have much sympathy for this man.
February 23rd, 2012 - 9:21 AM
In the short term, the only way for Alan Gross to be released is for both governments to indicate to the Pope that they would respond positively to an appeal on his part that Alan and the Cuban Five be released for humanitarian reasons.
Neither government believes that its agent or agents were doing wrong or were treated fairly.
The bottom line is that the US feels it has the right to intervene in Cuba and other countries if it disagrees with their political systems, in this case to create an independent satellite linked encryptable internet node that was accessible to anyone in the vicinity, not just the visible recipients in the Jewish community.
In the case of Cuba the presumption of a right to intervene is a problem that has plagued our relationship for more than a century and is exacerbated by the agenda of exiles.
Judy Gross has unfortunately linked her husband’s fate to supporting US policy and spin rather than challenging it. Alan will not win release by denial of the serious illegality of his actions under Cuban law, or for that matter under US law had he been an unregistered agent of a hostile foreign power operating covertly here.
Readers who want to know more should look at the original AP story and at the summary and analysis of Cuba’s sentencing document.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ap-impact-usaid-contractor-work-in-cuba-detailed-1.3523709
http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2012/02/alan-gross-sentencia-summarized.html
John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
February 25th, 2012 - 3:17 AM
This is a thoughtful and insightful report. From this and the AP story, it’s clear that Gross and AID knew they were violating Cuban law, and, arguably, given the sordid history of U.S. attempts to dominate Cuba, also violating its sovereignty.
By contrast, the Cuban Five violated only the law requiring their registration as foreign agents. And how could they register, when their mission was to inform Cuba of plans to bomb and otherwise terrorize their homeland by exiled Cubans who were tolerated, if not encouraged, by official U.S. agencies?
In fact, the Cuban Five were neither accused nor convicted as spies — except in pro-U.S. media — because they at no time possessed classified U.S. information. Instead they were convicted, in blatantly unfair trials, of “conspiracy” to commit espionage, etc. — a much vaguer charge on which it’s much easier to persuade a Miami jury.
Thus the story’s casual reference to Cuban “spies” is its only major flaw.
February 25th, 2012 - 4:16 PM
That Alan Gross, among his many questionable acts, was delivering a sim card, which is does not have any civilian application, but used by the CIA and intelligence communities, alone would be reason for him to be held by the Cuban government as a ‘spy’ since only ‘spy’ agencies have access to sim cards. I can’t imagine what would happen to someone from any other country who tried to provide such technology to people within or outside the US to be used to destabilize the US government.
Alan Gross is a paid private contractor, what used to be called a mercenary. He was paid to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, one with which the US has a very hostile policy towards, that openly calls for a ‘regime change’. That so few people seem to respect Cuba’s sovereignty, or right to defend itself against such efforts is a major problem in resolving this.
The Cuban 5 should all be released and allowed to return to their families. The prison terms have have/are enduring are profoundly inhumane and have been condemned worldwide. While they have been in maximum security prisons in the U.S. denied access to their families, their families have also suffered death, illness, and children growing up without ever knowing their fathers.
If we want to seek mercy, we must teach by example. Free the Five, and then make humanitarian appeals for Gross.
February 26th, 2012 - 10:01 AM
Anyone who thinks that the current President of the United States is going to get involved in this controversy in an election year needs to have their heads examined. Furthermore, once the 2012 election is resolved, don’t hold your breath expecting anyone in our government to pay more than lip service to this guy’s “plight”. With rising galoline prices, a stratospheric national debt, high unemployment, our involvment in the war on terror in various foreign sites, and all of the other major problems facing our nation, the ultimate fate of the “Cuban 5” is way, way, way down on EVERYONE’s agenda. This guy willingly got himself into this and I don’t think that anyone (other than his family and close friends) is all that fired up about trying to help him.
February 26th, 2012 - 9:47 PM
TO Harry Callahan:
I find the “headscratcher” to be why a person with scant knowledge of a country or its culture would call it “God-forsaken” and its leaders “idiots.” Not the way to open rational discussion.
I agree that this Alan Gross matter will not be touched in the USA until after the elections, if then. And as you pointed out, he got himself into this knowingly and so does not merit sympathy. I feel very sad to know that an apparently intelligent and reasonable man could lose his moral compass to the point of violating another country’s sovereignty, and leaving his wife and aging mother and the rest of his family at such risk because of his actions.
Did it seem worth it for the half-million dollars that he got, for starters? Or was it the thrill of fantasizing that he was the hero of some sort of Grahame Greene novel? Come to think of it, if the USAID has paid off as promised, why did his wife have to sell their house? Very, very sad for his suffering family.
The USA meddles in the affairs of sovereign nations with impunity, but that does not make it right. Gross made the mistake of following a criminal model and failing to recognize the dimensions of his actions. If the rest of us could learn this lesson, it would be at least one thing positive to come of this mess.
February 26th, 2012 - 10:25 PM
To Lisa Valanti:
I agree that the five Cuban citizens we have held in solitary prison cells for well over a decade should be allowed to go home immediately. Their mission here was to keep a watch on some known, even confessed, terrorists living in the US, some of whom had already done terrible harm to Cuba. For their efforts to protect their country, they have been forced to miss their children’s growing up and the embrace of their wives, and to lose their most youthful and precious years of service to their country. They did NOT come here to make trouble in any way, and their punishment must come to an end. The situation with Alan Gross should not be linked to this case. They are in no way comparable. The Cuban Five were sacrificing themselves to protect their fellow humans, and Gross was only serving himself at the expense of others.
February 26th, 2012 - 10:35 PM
Insightful commentary, everyone. Thanks for weighing in. —Ed.
February 28th, 2012 - 8:16 PM
THIS is what I like to see. A lively discussion with a number of varying points of view. I was beginning to think that I was the only person visiting this fine website. Now, everyone, let’s get out there and tell all of your friends about this web site. And, tell them about posting responses to the stories on it. Let’s build the readership up to what it was on the old site (the name of which I have somehow forgotten).
February 29th, 2012 - 10:35 PM
Thanks, Harry, your comment is eminently worthy of a Leap Day response! —Ed.
October 1st, 2013 - 4:03 AM
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