Published Sunday, June 10, 2001, in the Miami Herald

Spy trial verdict challenges us all

by Robert Steinback

  The all-counts verdict in the Cuban spy trial is a resounding validation for Cuban Americans who have tried, with only marginal success, to warn other Americans that Fidel Castro's threat to liberty is real.  That the five spies were inept doesn't mitigate that Castro attempted to undermine the U.S. political process, penetrate the U.S. military structure and manipulate public opinion using underhanded tactics.

  Worst of all, evidence of the Cuban government's conspiracy in plotting the 1996 executions of four Brothers to the Rescue fliers -- three of them U.S. citizens, two born in this country -- deserves American public outrage.

 Whether the Cuban and non-Cuban-American public will be made wiser for the revelations of this trial remains, alas, an unresolved question.

 The jury -- which included no Cuban Americans -- laid waste to the silly rationale put forth by defense attorneys that the spies' mission was a case of justified Cuban self-defense against hostile exiles.

 If this argument had acquired even a trace of credibility, any attempt by Americans to promote freedom in another country could be construed as a hostile act.

 Americans typically bristle at the idea of foreign thugs toying with our country and its institutions. Any non-Cuban American who is untroubled by Castro's intrigues on U.S. soil is certainly less than patriotic -- and flirting with racism.

 The reason: Most Cuban-American immigrants, and certainly their children, are American citizens. Americans should never qualify their commitment to fellow citizens based on ethnicity, race or national origin -- or their determination to bring freedom to another nation.

 But that's happened before. American public reaction after Cuban military jets shot down the two Brothers airplanes was one of the most shameful displays of patriotic indifference I've ever witnessed. The customary U.S. pride that tolerates no foreign power messing with American citizens melted into wishy-washy equivocation on that occasion.

 That must not happen this time.

 Cuban Americans also face challenges in the wake of the trial's outcome.

 For one, they must ponder the reality that those who conspired against them are Cubans themselves.

 The exile mission must go beyond the demise of Castro; they will also need strategies for winning over the loyalties of Cubans who still support him.

 They also need to introspect about how to make themselves  less vulnerable to Castro's manipulations.

 Beyond this, I hope Cuban Americans will use the spy trial verdicts as an educational tool, not as a hammer, in conversations with non-Cubans.

 The outcome doesn't make Cuban Americans right on every issue related to Cuba, and it doesn't invalidate all opposing views. It doesn't automatically prove, for example, that the U.S. embargo of Cuba is wise policy or that Elián González shouldn't have been returned to the custody of his father. Those remain open debates with strong arguments on both sides.

 Nor does the espionage trial change the urgency Cuban Americans should feel to improve domestic relations with Miami's other ethnic communities -- which has nothing to do with Cuba.

 But the convictions should serve as powerful proof to non-Cubans that the exile community has a legitimate basis for its passion about overthrowing the Cuban tyrant. Those who are inclined to think of Fidel Castro in benign terms should think again. A U.S. courtroom has proven the Cuban government will utilize any immoral tactic -- even murder -- to achieve its aims.

 Which means that if non-Cuban Americans truly believe in freedom, human rights and democracy, as we so often profess, then we must view the Cuban-American cause sympathetically. Their story of oppression and victimization as a people continues.

 We trivialize the exile cause at the risk of our own integrity.

more: Spy ring for Cuba uncovered

Copyright 2001 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is  Herald