FIU professor, wife accused of being spies for Cuba's Castro

[RagingInMiami]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-19fiuprof,0,4716753.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

MIAMI -- A college professor and his wife, a university administrator, have been charged with being illegal agents of Cuba's communist government run by President Fidel Castro, according to court documents unsealed Monday.

Carlos Alvarez, 61, a psychology professor at Florida International University, and his wife, 55-year-old Elsa Alvarez, have been charged with acting as agents of Cuba without registering with the U.S. government as required.

They were ordered held without bond by U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton, who rejected pleas by their attorneys for release on bail. Simonton said she agreed with federal prosecutors that the couple would leave their five children and return to Cuba if released.

Neither defendant entered a plea, and another hearing was set for Jan. 19. They were arrested Friday, months after giving voluntary statements this summer about their contacts with Cuba to the FBI, prosecutors said.

[RagingInMiami]

1. The irony of the following statement

"The FBI said the evidence the couple provided Cuba's government focused on Cuban exile groups in Miami and that there was no classified or sensitive military information provided to Cuba. The couple also provided Cuban officials with the identity of an FBI agent.

If convicted, they face prison sentences of seven to 10 years. Another hearing is set for Jan. 19."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13585766.htm

[IndianaGreen]

6. Reporting on the terrorist activities of exile groups is bad

enabling the terrorist activities against a peaceful nation is good.

If I knew that a exile group was planning a terrorist attack against Cuba or Venezuela, you bet I will be alerting the Cubans and Venezuelans. Our own FBI won't do shit about it!

[mom cat]

7. They just go after Quaker grannies, the real terrorists.

[Mika]

11. Alpha 66 is still training for terror ops - training children also.

Here's an article on Cuban exile terrorist group Alpha 66, who are still training for, and committing, armed incursions into Cuba.

They are training CHILDREN to continue for at least another generation.

I suppose that the author of this story could be arrested for spying on Cuban exile groups like Alpha 66, like the Miami couple in the OP, because the Cuban gov could read this story on-line like the rest of us.

Interesting that the US gov busts people watching Cuban exile groups who openly train for terrorist ops BUT they do not bust the groups doing the training for such terra ops, isn't it?



Alpha Males
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1998-08-27/news/feature.html

Hustling down a dirt road surrounded by miles of farmland, Leslie Fernandez struggles to keep a rifle balanced on her shoulder. Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a white T-shirt, she catches up with her fellow commandos -- five men dressed in military fatigues and also toting weapons.

"What kind of gun is this?" she asks Jesus Hoyos, who is leading the team.
"That's an M-1," Hoyos explains curtly. He's cradling a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15.

The group stops and huddles. "This is the rally point," Hoyos tells them. He reviews the plan: Leslie will remain behind to guard the backpacks under cover of darkness while the men sneak into a Cuban military base and shoot at two MiGs parked in a large grassy field. "Let's go," Hoyos says quietly.

Leslie watches the men creep down the edge of the road -- two in front, three behind -- then disappear through an open metal gate surrounding a small military camp. Moments later machine guns pop. They pop again, faster. "Retreat! Retreat!" Hoyos shouts. The commandos pull back, turning and firing as they go. They scurry down the road and regroup, breathless, at the rally point, where Leslie has been patiently waiting. "Okay, enemy troops have the beach blocked," Hoyos pants. "Contingency plan A -- the helicopter -- was shot down. So we have to walk five miles to a point where they're going to pick us up at 0600."

But there are no enemy soldiers, no MiGs in the field. Only stacks of old tires. The bullets are blanks. It is not night, but Sunday morning. And Leslie is no companera; she's an eleven-year-old who has never been to Cuba and scarcely speaks Spanish.

[HuffleClaw]

2. suuuuuuuuuure

[superconnected]

3. We're going to see a lot of this.

When Alito gets in everything will be legalized through the supreme court.

I wonder who everyone on here will be accused of being spies for.

[High Plains]

4. Funny, they're not being charged with spying

and they're being held without bail.

Whatever happened to the Eight Amendment, anyhoo?

[struggle4progress]

8. Amazingly, however, this gets "SPYING" into the news without "NSA" eom

[High Plains]

10. Funny how that works.

[Mika]

5. Where are the DU Cubaphobes who say that the US doesn't do this?

Carlos Alvarez, 61, a psychology professor at Florida International University, and his wife, 55-year-old Elsa Alvarez, have been charged with acting as agents of Cuba without registering with the U.S. government as required.

On a recent DU thread about Cuba's program to cure poor blind Caribbean and Latin American citizens, that had devolved into a 'Castro this and Castro that' debate, several DU Cubaphobes said that the US doesn't arrest people for acting as foreign agents without registering w/the US government - as Cuba has.


The yet to be determined details include whether or not the couple in the OP story were receiving money from the Cuban government - as those who have been arrested in Cuba for the same type of charge are in the direct or indirect employ of the US government.

[Clara T]

9. Possibly agents of humanity even?

"Much of what they provided involved information about the U.S. political situation, prominent Cuban-Americans in South Florida and the names of at least one FBI agent, Frazier said."

US political situation- unbridled, reckless and deadly intent
Prominent Cuban-Americans- Free floating terrorists harbored in Miami looking to reestablish themselves in US puppet Gov't (See Haiti for more info)
FBI Agent- State sanctioned infiltrator doing bidding of empire.

Free the Cuban Five and Jose Padilla

Political prisoners

[Judi Lynn]

12. What threat Miami 'spies'?

What threat Miami 'spies'?
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published January 15, 2006


MIAMI - Over the years this city with its large Cuban exile population has had its inevitable share of spy scandals.

But when a local university professor and his wife were accused last week of operating as covert agents for Cuba, the news was especially shocking.

Known to friends and colleagues as a quiet, professional couple, Carlos and Elsa Alvarez are the first Cuban-American academics to face spying-related charges.

Local universities have in the past come under fire from exile hard-liners as being a nest of Castro sympathizers. But such allegations were traditionally dismissed as a byproduct of Miami's often over-heated political discourse.
(snip/...)

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/15/State/What_threat_Miami__sp.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

13. Alleged Cuba spy identified years ago

Posted on Fri, Jan. 13, 2006
SPY CASE
Alleged Cuba spy identified years ago

An FIU mental-health counselor accused of spying for Cuba was suspected of being an agent in 1982, according to Florida investigators who testified in Congress.BY OSCAR CORRAL AND JAY [e-mail]

The activities of a Florida International University mental-health counselor accused of operating as a covert agent for the Cuban government came to the attention of Congress as early as 1982 when she worked for the University of Miami, according to congressional records.

Florida investigators warned the federal government that several Cuban exiles in Miami, among them Elsa Prieto Alvarez, were providing sensitive information to Cuba's communist government just as Miami was struggling to absorb more than 125,000 Mariel refugees, hundreds of them prisoners with serious criminal backgrounds and patients with severe mental illnesses.

Prieto Alvarez's lawyer, Jane Moscowitz, said Thursday that her client ``never furnished any such records to the Cuban government.''
(snip)

Moscowitz said that if the congressional testimony were true, authorities either investigated Prieto Alvarez's activity and found nothing wrong -- or didn't bother to investigate because her work was not suspicious.
(snip/...)

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/13614901.htm