U.S. Orders Cuban Diplomat's Expulsion in Spy Case
By Stephen Barr. Washington Post Staff Writer. Sunday, February 20, 2000; Page A25
The State Department ordered the expulsion yesterday of a Cuban diplomat linked to a U.S. immigration official arrested in Miami on espionage charges.
The Cuban, whose name was not released, "acted in a manner incompatible with his diplomatic status," State Department spokesman James Foley said. Foley said the diplomat was expected to leave within a few days, but the Cuban government rejected the order to withdraw the diplomat,
calling it a "low and vengeful blow."
The department "acted on evidence presented to us by the FBI," Foley said, indicating that the Cuban diplomat apparently had acted as a Washington of Mariano Faget, the immigration official arrested Thursday night in an FBI sting operation.
Faget, a 34-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had access to classified information about law enforcement sources and Cuban defectors as part of his job, authorities said.
Officials suspect that Faget, who was born in Havana, may have ed on information about defectors as a Cuban spy.
Faget, who carried a secret clearance and supervised naturalization decisions and requests for political asylum in Miami, is the first INS official to be charged with spying.
The FBI said it had watched Faget make unauthorized s with Cuban intelligence officers in Miami, with an official in the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington and with a New York businessman with ties to Cuban intelligence.
Yesterday afternoon, the State Department summoned Felix Wilson, the acting head of the Cuban mission, and formally requested that he "withdraw a member who has diplomatic immunity," Foley said.
At the meeting, officials specified which diplomat they wanted to leave the country.
Cuban President Fidel Castro was at a rally yesterday in eastern Cuba as a government statement was read calling the U.S. expulsion order a "desperate and spectacular maneuver."
"The Cuban government will not withdraw any officer" from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Reuters quoted the statement as saying. Instead, "this compatriot, so vilely accused, [should] remain in United States territory to give testimony and demonstrate the total
falseness of this accusation, whatever the consequences may be."
The demonstration, one of dozens of protests in Cuba since 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez was turned over to Miami relatives after surviving a shipwreck, was staged to demand Elian's return. Havana has linked the Faget allegations and the plight of Elian.
State Department officials said they believe yesterday's expulsion to be the first since 1996.
That year, Cuba expelled Robin Meyer, a diplomat in the U.S. mission in Havana. In retaliation, the United States then asked a Cuban to leave.
Nun's Story About Elian Is Disputed
By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. Monday, February 21, 2000; Page A02
Influential Remarks By Grandmothers At Issue in Miami
In an interview published yesterday in the Miami Herald, Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, the Dominican nun whose Miami home was the site of last month's meeting between Elian Gonzalez and his Cuban grandmothers, offered what she said was crucial new information related to the controversy over the boy.
Late yesterday, however, O'Laughlin said she had no firsthand knowledge of that information and was relating details told to her by an unnamed third party.
O'Laughlin, the Herald reported, said she decided Elian should stay in the United States after one of the grandmothers told her she wanted to defect to the United States and that Elian's father was abusive to his mother. The other grandmother said that Elian's Cuban family knew and approved in
advance of the boy's departure from Cuba.
The Herald reported that she said the information was communicated to her in Spanish by the women when they spoke for several minutes after their meeting with Elian, but she had not revealed it before because she "did not want to endanger the family in Cuba."
Last night, however, O'Laughlin said the Herald was wrong in saying that she learned the information from the women, saying she never "met with the grandmothers alone."
"Any information attributed to them came from other sources," she said in a statement.
The Herald's executive editor, Martin Baron, said in a statement: "We can say without hesitation that our story was an accurate of what Sister Jeanne told us."
The new of the meeting, which the Herald said she did not speak of during a three-hour interview last Tuesday, was volunteered Friday after O'Laughlin met with Roger Bernstein, one of several Miami attorneys representing the family of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez. Lazaro and
other Gonzalez relatives have refused to comply with an Immigration and Naturalization Service order to return Elian, the 6-year-old boy who survived a November shipwreck in which his mother was drowned, to his father in Cuba.
The morning after the meeting with the grandmothers, O'Laughlin, who previously had said she was neutral in the dispute, stated she had changed her mind and now thought Elian should stay in this country. The reasons she gave were vague, including that she had seen "fear" on the faces
of the grandmothers.
At her request, she traveled to Washington to meet privately with Attorney General Janet Reno and INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. She did not share with them the she gave the Herald on Friday. Reno has said she heard nothing from O'Laughlin that changed her of the INS decision
to reunite the boy with his father.
It was not clear from O'Laughlin's statement last night whether she was disputing any of the substance of her in the Herald, or simply the original source of it. Nor was it clear from whom she now says she first heard it, or when.
Much of the new report is reminiscent of previously reported aspects of the Elian controversy, but with crucial differences.
Maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriguez has said in numerous interviews that the man with whom Elian and his mother left Cuba, Lazaro Munero, was abusive to the mother. She has described her daughter's relationship with her ex-husband, Elian's father, as close and affectionate.
Reports that Rodriguez wanted to defect--allegedly communicated by her to her half-sister, a Cuban exile living in Miami--circulated throughout Miami and Washington immediately following the grandmother's meeting with Elian. The White House, the Justice Department and INS investigated, and the
half-sister was questioned, but nothing was found to the reports.
Perhaps more puzzling is the Herald report's contention that the other grandmother, Mariela Gonzalez, said she was present when her husband called Lazaro Gonzalez 10 days before Elian and his mother departed from Cuba to say the two were coming. Although the Miami Gonzalezes have long contended
that Elian's father must have known about their impending departure, they have not reported receiving such a call from his family.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, who was scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday to decide whether the court has jurisdiction in Elian's case, was hospitalized yesterday with stroke-like symptoms, his wife and doctor told the Associated Press.
Chief U.S. District Judge Edward B. Davis said last night that he would hold the hearing and assign the case to another judge later.
© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company |