Gross Negligence

Over four years ago, on December 3, 2009, Alan Gross, a Jewish subcontractor doing work in Cuba for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was arrested in Havana Airport. In March 2011, he was convicted of performing “acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state” and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

This week, Gross announced that he began a hunger strike a week ago. In a telephoned statement to his lawyers he said “I am fasting to object to mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments, not only regarding their shared responsibility for my arbitrary detention, but also because of the lack of any reasonable or valid effort to resolve this shameful ordeal.”

Mr. Gross had visited Cuba four times before the trip when he was arrested, with the purpose of aiding Havana’s Jewish community gain unfettered access to the internet. Cuba, like many oppressive regimes, does not allow its citizens open access to the internet. Sites that are considered hostile to the Castro government are blocked, and communications are monitored.

Alan Gross’s mission was to help change that.

While there is a difference of opinion between Mr. Gross’s representatives and the American government regarding what exactly he knew about his mission and the risks it entailed, that is irrelevant to the current issue: is the U.S. government doing enough to secure his release?

Sadly, it seems that it is not.

Over the years of his confinement at the Carlos Finlay Military Hospital in Havana, the administration continually insisted that they were being “very active” on that front. But nothing has really changed; there has been no visible progress.

When Gross was first jailed, he was visited by Cuban attorney Armando Nuria Piñero Sierra. Sierra, who represented Gross through his trials and appeals, is also the attorney of the “Cuban Five,” men who were convicted in the United States in June 2001 of various charges, including espionage. The Cuban government has made it clear that they intend to swap Alan Gross for the four members of this group who are still in the States, three of them in prison.

But while the Cubans remain steadfast in their demands, so does the American government. The only thing it will accept is unconditional release of Mr. Gross. The U.S. continues to insist that there is no equivalency between the two cases, as the Cuban Five were convicted of espionage while all Gross did was provide online services to Jews in Cuba, a service that is legal in all free countries.

But so long as the government keeps insisting that there was nothing illegal about the USAID mission that Alan Gross was sent on, there is little hope of gaining his freedom.

Stephen B. Kaplitt, a special assistant to the general counsel of USAID and a senior adviser in the State Department during the time Mr. Gross was doing work for them, made this point in Politico back in December. Kaplitt, who now advises the law firm that represents the Gross family, pointed out that the current strategy being employed seems to confuse inaction with resolve.

When the Chinese forced a U.S. Navy aircraft down and held its crew prisoner, President Bush formally “apologized” to the Chinese Government; by sacrificing the short-term political interest of projecting strength, Bush was able to secure the release of the Navy men. In 1968, to gain the release of the crew of the USS Pueblo, President Johnson submitted a written apology to the North Koreans — even admitting to “crimes” they had never committed. But this State Department, pressed about what it is doing to secure Gross’s release, keeps saying the same old thing — that it is working on a number of fronts.

Unfortunately for Alan Gross and his family, nothing seems to be happening.

What astounds those following the Gross ordeal is the revelation that, after Mr. Gross was captured, USAID launched a program called ZunZuneo, a Twitter-like network that was not monitored by the Cuban Government. The plan was to use this messaging platform to send messages to Cubans in order to undermine the Castro government.

The U.S. may work to spread freedom by undermining tyrannical regimes. But it is outrageous that USAID, not an intelligence agency, would be used to conduct a CIA-like operation during the time that Mr. Gross was standing trial. Insisting that USAID, the contractor for Gross’s mission, did not conduct clandestine operations, and simultaneously having it launch a large-scale clandestine operation, does not give the protestations about Gross’s innocence much credibility in Cuba.

If the government truly wanted to secure Alan Gross’s freedom, it wouldn’t be undermining its own argument by contradicting it.

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