Alan Gross calls for help (Updated)

Jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross announced that he has begun a hunger strike, blaming both governments for his predicament and calling for President Obama to work for his release. 

If his move is prompted by reports that the United States is considering the release of the spy Jonathan Pollard to encourage Israel-Palestine peace talks and, separately, five Taliban prisoners to obtain the release of one U.S. soldier, one can hardly blame him.

Here is the statement announcing the hunger strike, released by the firm SKD Knickerbocker, including an afternoon update at the top:


For Immediate Release
April 8, 2014

Update on Alan Gross

From prison in Havana, Alan Gross spoke to his attorney, Scott Gilbert, on Tuesday afternoon. Gross said that he ate his last solid food on Wednesday evening, April 2nd.

On Thursday, April 3rd, he said he learned about USAID’s ZunZuneo program. Alan said the “Cuban twitter” effort “was the final straw for him” and prompted his decision to go on a hunger strike.

He has not eaten since, though he is drinking water. So far, he has lost about 10 pounds.

“When I asked him how long he planned to continue the hunger strike,” said Gilbert, “he said, ‘as long as it takes.’”

Gross has been imprisoned in Cuba for four years and four months. He has asked President Obama to personally intervene to help bring him home.


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For Immediate Release
April 8, 2014

USAID Contractor Alan Gross Begins Hunger Strike
From Havana Prison Calls for Resolution of "Shameful Ordeal"

Washington, D.C. - Alan Gross, the USAID subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba for the last four years and four months, launched a hunger strike last week protesting the inhumane treatment to which he has been subjected, calling on both countries to "resolve this shameful ordeal" so he can return home.

Said Gross: "I began a fast on April 3rd in protest of the treatment to which I am subjected by the governments of Cuba and the United States.  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. Once again, I am calling on President Obama to get personally involved in ending this stand-off so that I can return home to my wife and daughters."

Last week, the Associated Press revealed that USAID created a "Cuban Twitter" program called ZunZuneo shortly after Gross was arrested in Havana. During an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds USAID, called the program "dumb" and said that covert operations should not be conducted through USAID. USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah will testify today before Leahy's subcommittee.

Scott Gilbert, the lead attorney representing Gross, said that USAID's actions with ZunZuneo put Gross's life in greater jeopardy.

"Once Alan was arrested, it is shocking that USAID would imperil his safety even further by running a covert operation in Cuba," said Gilbert. "USAID has made one absurdly bad decision after another.  Running this program is contrary to everything we have been told by high-level representatives of the Obama Administration about USAID’s activities in Cuba.”

Since Gross, 64, was arrested and imprisoned, he has lost more than 110 pounds. He is confined to a small cell with two other prisoners for 23 hours a day, and the lights remain on 24 hours a day. He is in failing health. He faces another 11 years in prison.

Gross was arrested during his fifth trip to Cuba on behalf of USAID. He was sent there to help the Jewish community in Havana gain access to the Internet, which the Cuban government declared unlawful.

Gross's wife, Judy, said she fears that her husband will not be able to endure his confinement much longer. "I've been begging our government for more than four years to bring Alan home," said Judy Gross. "I'm worried sick about Alan's health, and I don't think he can survive much more of this."

The Alan Gross "sentencia" summarized

Why did Cuba jail USAID contractor Alan Gross? 

The official Cuban answer has consistently been about Cuban sovereignty and Gross’ conduct that was alleged to have threatened, as the charges against him put it, the “independence and territorial integrity” of Cuba.

If you have wondered what they mean by that, a court document that came to light this month explains in detail what the Cuban government found and what it perceived Gross to be doing. 

In brief, the Cuban court held that Gross was working on a project that he designed, that he described in his own papers as focused on political objectives and contributing to the Bush Administration’s regime change objectives; that he imported and installed three satellite Internet/Wifi systems for Cuba’s Jewish community, never representing himself as working for a U.S. government program; that those communications systems were chosen because they do not operate on the Cuban communications network; that he traveled to Cuba five times in one year, carrying some equipment himself and enlisting unwitting Americans who were traveling to Cuba for religious exchanges to carry the rest; that he was going to be assigned to repair a satellite communications system that another USAID grantee had installed; and that he had a discussion – at Cuba’s Hotel Nacional, of all places – about installing satellite communications systems for Cuba’s Masonic Lodges.

If just half of that is true, the real question becomes: Is there a more surefire scheme for sending an American into Cuba to get arrested?

Regardless of one’s view of Gross’ conduct, USAID programs, Cuba’s reaction, or Cuba’s legal system, this document is an important addition to the discussion. 

After the jump, a summary and comments on it.

An Alan Gross reader

In recent weeks a number of new documents have come to light in the case of jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross, mainly thanks to reporter/blogger Tracey Eaton.  Tracey has written a Q&A with lots of basic information on the case; it’s a very good primer for those not inclined to read all the documents below. 

The documents, summarized by Tracey here, are:

---A memo summarizing an August 2008 meeting between USAID officials and Gross’ employer DAI as DAI was embarking on its Cuba project; the memo is written by DAI.

---An October 2009 modification of the contract between DAI and Alan Gross’ company.

---A September 2009 memo by Alan Gross on his Cuba project, which he called “Para la Isla.”

---DAI’s January 2013 motion in court seeking dismissal of Gross’ lawsuit against the company.

Tracey also has a post on USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, which ran Cuba programs through an office in Costa Rica, now closed.

In addition to all this information, there’s the February 2012 Associated Press story based in part on trip reports submitted by Gross, and my summary of the Cuban court’s sentencia, which is the Cuban government’s rendition of the facts and legal issues in the case.

There’s also the August 2008 USAID contract with DAI, which has a long preamble describing the Bush Administration’s Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program, which derives from that Administration’s Cuba transition commissions.

Finally, everything on this blog about the case is here.

In sum, the new documents have added interesting detail, but no big new departure, to what we know about this story. 

A few comments on the new documents:

·         In the past I have written, based on a U.S. official’s account to me, that Gross was paid $585,000 for his work.  That is not so.  His contracts totaled $590,608, of which he was paid $258,274, Tracey reports, and it is likely that he received another $65,000 before his last trip to Cuba.  The rest was to be paid in later installments.

·         The AP story reported that Gross planned to use a special SIM card in the BGAN satellite Internet equipment that he installed in synagogues in Cuba.  The card, not commercially available, would mask the location of the equipment so it could evade detection by Cuban agencies.  (A normal SIM card would reveal the unit’s GPS location.)  AP’s report generated some controversy, but Gross’ own memo settles the question; he did plan to use such a “discreet” SIM card.

·         Gross’ memo refers to the Jewish community as the “current target group” and in his discussion of “follow-on components” to his program he refers to a “new target group.”  This new group is not identified.  The Cuban court alleged that he discussed providing BGAN equipment to Masonic Lodges in Cuba.

·         The Obama Administration’s practice has been to describe Gross as a humanitarian and not to connect his work for the U.S. government to broader political objectives, much less regime-change objectives.  Secretary Clinton, for example, called him “an American who was passing out information and helping elderly Cubans communicate through the Internet.”  DAI’s motion, in a section titled “The Origin of This Case in U.S. Government Policy Toward Cuba” (p.15), states: “This case arises out of the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program (the ‘Cuba Program’), a foreign policy program of the U.S. Government.  The Cuba Program seeks to foster changes in the leadership of the Cuban government and to hasten a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba.”

·         Gross’ memo refers to paid “local support staff” that assisted in his project.  I wonder if one of those was Jose Manuel Collera, who had contact with Gross and others in the USAID program, according to the Cuban court document, and whom the Cuban government revealed in 2011 to be one of its own undercover state security agents.  (According to that document, another USAID contractor phoned Collera immediately when Gross was arrested.)

·         DAI’s memo on its August 2008 meeting with USAID shows the Bush Administration to be in a big hurry to get the program under way in the five months then remaining in the President’s term: “This Administration expects immediate results from this program, definitely before mid Janauary.”  The memo also explains that USAID chose not to classify its Cuba program activities “because USAID wanted to send the message that this is a transparent process. Also, a classified project imposes significant security, documentation burdens, and delays.”

• Throughout these documents, there is awareness on everyone’s part of the risk that Mr. Gross’ program would be detected by Cuban intelligence.  For example, DAI’s memo indicates a “point of emphasis” in USAID’s briefing on the program: that “creativity” is needed “in the face of opposition from the Cuban state – one anchored in the past and resistant to change – while protecting the security of participants and change agents.”  There is a legal argument about responsibility and alleged negligence, and there’s a political argument as to whether the risks should have been assumed in the first place, but there’s no doubt that all knew of the risks.  Mr. Gross, according to the cable from U.S. diplomats in Havana reporting on their virst visit to him, said that “Government of Cuba officials knew ‘everything’ before he was taken into custody and had asked for details of all his activities, i.e., the projects and companies he had worked for in the 54 countries he had travelled to during his 30-year career.  He asked the Consul General if there were other Americans in the same situation, i.e., other American citizens entering Cuba on the same type of program who had been detained.”

Nobody's man in Havana

USAID contractor Alan Gross, 64, has been captive in Cuba for four years and is wondering if anyone cares about getting him out before he serves the remaining 11 years of his jail sentence.

Those who most support the program that sent him to Cuba and who defend his activities there – the Obama Administration, Senator Menendez and allies in Congress – seem to have the least to offer when it comes to bringing him home.

Their solution is clear and simple: demand his unilateral and unconditional release.  (See this letter from Senator Menendez and this State Department statement.)

It’s all well and good to have a democracy development program that expands Internet access around the world.  And it sounds good to carry out that program wherever we like as if the concept of national sovereignty is quaint and irrelevant because, as Secretary Clinton used to argue, access to information is a universal right. 

All that idealism makes for good political speeches and strong-sounding letters to the President, it keeps the program going in Congress, and it provides the money that got Alan Gross the businessman interested in becoming a USAID operative in Cuba.

But the idealism was of no help to Alan Gross the operative because the program ignored – as did Mr. Gross – some basic operational realities.  Such as: The Cuban government cares about its own sovereignty especially vis-à-vis the United States.  The Cuban intelligence service is not a casual, 9-to-5 operation.  It is foolish to send anyone, much less an untrained USAID contractor, to operate on that service’s home turf.  And the placement of satellite Internet units with Wi-Fi hotspots would probably appear to the Cuban government to be a lot more than assistance to the Jewish community, especially because the operation was funded by a U.S. law (Helms-Burton) that seeks to overturn the political order in Cuba.

It has been four years and the demands for Mr. Gross’ unconditional release have not worked.  Is anyone responsible now for finding an approach that does work?

The Bush Administration designed the satellite Internet program and issued the contract that sent Mr. Gross to Cuba, but the Bush Administration is out of office.

USAID, to be fair, has long included warnings in its documents about its Cuba program that the program is illegal in Cuba and its operatives are at risk there.  USAID bristles at the idea that Mr. Gross would be traded for someone else, because that is how we get spies released, and Mr. Gross was not a spy.  The implication seems to be that USAID’s work is on a higher moral plane than that of intelligence agencies.  The time to think of such niceties, I would say, was before the agency decided to send contractors to attempt to operate covertly, or “discreetly” as USAID prefers to say, in another country.

The Obama Administration didn’t make the decision to send Mr. Gross to Cuba, but he went on the Administration’s watch, albeit in its first year when its personnel were still being placed in their jobs and those who were in place were not monitoring the missions of U.S. contractors to Cuba. 

Supporters of the USAID Cuba programs blame the Cuban government for, of course, arresting and sentencing Mr. Gross, and never seem troubled by the program’s naive operational design which led to the loss of one man’s freedom, the total waste of taxpayer dollars, and the gift of satellite equipment to the Cuban government. 

This letter from Senator Leahy and 65 other Senators seems to tell President Obama that it is his responsibility to act by taking “whatever steps are in the national interest to obtain his release.”  Taken together with Senator Menendez’ letter urging the President to stick with the demands of the past four years, signed by only 14 Senators, this is a clear message to the President that his approach serves neither Mr. Gross nor the national interest, and should change.

The hangup for many is that the United States might give something to Cuba in return for Mr. Gross’ release.  That’s understandable, but it’s not an objection that comes up in other cases where we bargain for the release of our people. 

No one objected when the United States paid Egypt – a government that gets more than $1 billion in U.S. aid each year – $330,000 per head for the release of staffers for the International Republican Institute and the International Democratic Institute last year.  (They operated openly, but were arrested because the Egyptian government disliked their activities.)  Two of those who signed Senator Menendez’ letter, Senators McCain and Kirk, are directors of the International Republican Institute.

No one objected in 2010 when we obtained the release of four Russians who had apparently been working for us by sending 10 freshly arrested Russian agents home.  The whole thing took 11 days, from the arrest of the Russians to their flight home.

No one objected in 2011 when the United States worked out an arrangement in which $1.5 million was paid to Iran for the release of three hapless American hikers who apparently crossed into Iranian territory.

So what can President Obama do? 

He can get involved as he has in the case of Robert Levinson, an American held in Iran since 2007.  Mr. Levinson is described as a retired FBI agent who went to Iran on a tobacco company’s behalf to investigate cigarette smuggling.  President Obama has spoken on the phone to the President of Iran about the case.  In the photo above, he is shown meeting with Mr. Levinson’s wife.  Update: Levinson is a retired FBI agent and then some, AP reports.

On a strategic level, he can try to do with Cuba what he is attempting to do with Iran, where he is trying to solve both the immediate concern (nuclear development) and to find a way to put relations with that country on a better plane, for our benefit and that of the region.  A tall order, but a wise use of American leadership that does not put military action front and center.

In Cuba’s case the immediate issue of Mr. Gross is far simpler and there is no issue that threatens U.S. or regional security.  If President Obama starts serious discussions with Cuba, the end-game might not involve direct bargaining for Mr. Gross, but rather a series of measures to improve U.S.-Cuba relations where his release is one of many results.  If U.S. policy changes in the bargain, so much the better.  Since so much of our policy toward Cuba is contrary to our own interests, we could come out ahead, far more than the President imagines.

Well worth reading: Alan Gross’ letter to President Obama, the Washington Post’s story on it, Cuba’s reiteration this week that it is willing to negotiate, Julia Sweig’s argument that the Obama Administration should seize a diplomatic opportunity with Cuba, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus’ assessment that the Alan Gross case is a low priority for the Obama Administration, and this article by former USAID lawyer Stephen Kaplitt, who now represents Mr. Gross.

Alan Gross, on his own

I have nothing against governments sending operatives into other countries to carry out missions that they would never be permitted to carry out openly, and that are illegal under local law to carry out in secret.

Almost all governments do that even as they demand respect for their own sovereignty and profess respect for everyone else’s. We and Cuba have done it to each other, friends have done it to us, and I trust we have snooped on friends.

It’s a little hypocritical, but spying and covert operations are vital aspects of international relations. They help governments verify what other governments are doing and what their intentions are.

They have contributed to peace and security, and they are also employed for questionable purposes. The eye of the beholder has a lot to do with it.

But as a practical matter they are always risky business.

When they go wrong, the offending government typically stays quiet and starts looking for a solution, such as the trade that occurred within days of the arrests of Russian spies in the United States last year.

USAID is different. In the case of Cuba it has used clandestine means to carry out democracy programs, and it has a different way of dealing with operations gone wrong.

In the case of Alan Gross, its operative who was arrested two years ago and is serving a 15-year sentence, USAID and others in the U.S. government assert that Gross had a perfect right to be doing what he was doing in Cuba.

“We think it has been a gross violation of his human rights and a humanitarian abuse that he has not been returned to his family,” the Secretary of State recently told Congress (see video below). She has been joined by a chorus that calls Gross a “hostage,” says Cuban law is illegitimate, and tries to paint Cuba as a place that is dangerous for humanitarian work, as if Gross were a humanitarian worker rather than a government contractor, and as if there were a risk to the thousands of Jews around the world who have brought fellowship and resources to Cuba’s Jewish community.

In effect, the U.S. message is that its agents are free to operate at will on Cuban territory and Cuban authorities have no right to intervene.

Call that what you will, but it is the direct opposite of an effort to free Alan Gross.

A swap, or giving Cuba anything of value in return for Mr. Gross’ release, is out of the question because the Administration fears the word “appeasement.” That word doesn’t come up in other cases because other cases are not part of the warped politics of the Cuba issue. To give something of value would even the score, since we already took something – a piece of Cuba’s sovereignty – and we would get our prisoner back.

If Washington chooses not to recognize Cuban sovereignty or to recognize it only partially – a legitimate policy option but one more attuned to a state of war – then Mr. Gross’ chances diminish.

USAID should amend the warnings it issues about the risk to those who carry out its programs in Cuba. Something like: “If you are caught and convicted under Cuban law you will be on your own. Our priority will be to defend the program, not you.”

And we should all tell our kids that if they want to go into covert operations they should join the CIA, which works to recover its people when operations go sour.

More on this case:

Last September Mr. Gross’ statement in court was released, in which he claimed to have been “used” and “duped.” He didn’t say who did the using and duping. Now in an interview with AP, his wife asserts that the culprit is DAI, the Maryland company that gave him nearly $600,000 in contracts.

According to her, Mr. Gross wanted to be assured that his activities would be legal in Cuba but DAI would not put the question to Cuban officials and barred him from doing so on his own. She says that he was assured that if he were to run into trouble he would be released “in two days.”

I can understand that DAI would not want to contact Cuban officials. The point of the USAID program is to sneak things into Cuba, after all.

The rest is less clear to me. Mr. Gross could have attempted to contact Cuban officials regardless of DAI’s advice. And anyone curious about the way USAID’s programs are viewed in Cuba could find USAID documents that are quite clear on that point (see here, here, and here, not to mention the warning in the State Department’s consular information sheet).

And more:

• Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and 18 Senate colleagues called on the Cuban government to release Mr. Gross on humanitarian grounds, citing his respect for Cuban sovereignty and noting that his release would allow the two governments to “resume a more positive path to the benefit of the American and Cuban people alike.” Senators Rubio and Menendez, perhaps disturbed by the word “positive,” did not sign. Café Fuerte has the letter (pdf).

• Café Fuerte also interviews Mrs. Gross, who says her husband has never compared himself to the Cuban Five and “in no way has advocated such an exchange.”

• The Jerusalem Post has an insipid editorial on the Gross case that patronizes Cuba’s Jews, claiming that fear prevented them from mentioning the American prisoner when Raul Castro attended Hanukkah celebrations in the Vedado synagogue last year. If they didn’t mention Gross, it could be because they did not appreciate his efforts. Cuba’s very small Jewish community has positive, very extensive connections to Jews around the world who – unlike USAID and Alan Gross – provide normal, aboveboard, respectful support. And whose “support” does not unwittingly drag a religious congregation into a foreign government’s political program, and into potential trouble with local law.

• AP: The Cuban Interests Section in Washington says Gross was working “undercover” for the U.S. government and did not tell Cubans with whom he worked that he was working for the U.S. government. Also, the statement reiterates Cuba’s interest in a resolution of the matter on “reciprocal” and “humanitarian” terms.