^[1]

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

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.”

^[2]

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. ^[3]

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.”

^[4]

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 ^[3]