Tuesday, December 6, 2011

More on Alan Gross

  • These guys are right: If Alan Gross had been working for the CIA, the U.S. government would be working seriously to get him out.

  • EFE: Alan Gross’ attorney says Cuba’s charges against Gross are “preposterous.” Gross speaks no Spanish, engaged in no subversion, and “spent his days showing his fellow Jews pictures of the world and setting up a community intranet to share recipes and prayers,” he says.

  • And in the Forward, Arturo Lopez Levy notes that Gross “was naive about going to Cuba under the USAID program and did not seek the informed consent of the Cuban-Jewish leadership for his activities.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i wonder what color the sky is in the world that Gross's lawyer lives in. Defending your client is understandable, making yourself foolish in the face of the facts does nothing but a disservice to that client.

Anonymous said...

The US Government's position is ridiculous. I agree if Gross was a private citizen or working for an independent charitable organization, than the US should not make concessions. But that is NOT the case.

Everyone ADMITS he was working for a U.S. government-funded democracy-building program. The stated purpose of these programs is to promote democracy by providing tools that could lead to destabilizing the current government. Nobody disagrees that this is what he was involved in when he was arrested. It's clear he broke Cuban law.

It's unfortunate that he was not a "spy", but the US government should give in and admit he was working for the government (albeit indirectly) and he was doing something they knew is contrary to Cuban law (even if we don't agree with the law) and therefore will make certain concessions.

The Administration accuses Cuba of using him as a pawn, when they are doing the same thing by claiming he is a simple private citizen and they should have no responsibility even if he was actually working on the US Government's behalf. But he's not a "spy".

brianmack said...

I've seen some videos of Mr. Gross' wife and it is a bit sad that this woman has to endure the heartbreak of having a husband incarcerated in Cuba.
The question then becomes why you would have allowed your husband to take the task, that any average IQ human being would know was a very dangerous endeavor.
The Cuban fiasco gets crazier and crazier and unless the expatriate's
and the totalitarian gang in Havana
get to compromise, it's totally sad, and anything but intelligent.
Let's free the five Cuban's held in the USA, get Mr. Gross back to his wife and end the embargo so we no longer have to worry about Cuban's having the means to learn about a better way of life.