Cuban Missive Crisis

For years the infamous Wasp Network collected reams of data on Miami's anti-Castro forces -- and the sundry, sometimes bizarre, attempts to infiltrate them

A A A Comments By Kirk Nielsen Thursday, Feb 1 2001

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Three Wasps who got caught: Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, and Fernando Gonzalez, who concentrated on a naval air station in Key West and a military headquarters in west Miami-Dade

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In a November 1997 report to Hernandez, Gonzalez reported "discord" and "demoralization" in the Democracy Movement. Gonzalez provided details from a meeting led by Sanchez and attended by about twenty people at the Democracy office. The organization also was in financial trouble, he wrote. It had to remove one of its boats from a marina because it couldn't make dockage payments. A woman who had sold the group a boat was threatening to sue because it had not yet paid her. A two-hour dispute over the validity of an election three months earlier of the group's executive board pushed the meeting past midnight.

"This is where the movement currently stands. These people have no goals, without definite objectives, and no concrete plans," agent Gonzalez concluded. "Even though one cannot underestimate Saul's perseverance, the Democracy Movement is wounded and can die if urgent measures are not taken, which I'm not really sure Saul will [provide], given his behavior at the meeting. He appears to be very susceptible to what anyone says. This prevents him from using his leadership at times such as these." Gerardo Hernandez added his analysis, describing Democracy as "largely geriatric and senile," and he sent the intelligence to Havana.