NF: So did your wife find out before she came to join you in the US, or was it after?
RG: She found out here in Cuba. When a woman wants to know something…, she started putting two and two together. At the end she was able to locate some people and she just went and faced them and told them, “You know what? You aren’t fooling me but not anymore.” Then they had to – after everything that happened – they had to call her and tell her, you know what? He’s doing this and this.
”Cuba gave the FBI concrete information related to terrorism against Cuba in hopes that the US would follow those leads and the two countries could work together.”
NF: There are some people who are more politically progressive and follow information, and they’re following the case of the Five. They know that your arrest along with others was the result of the Cuban government sharing information with the FBI, and trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Some people say that they think it was naïve for the Cuban government to trust the FBI to do the right thing. What are your thoughts on that?
RG: Well, there are two things that cannot be confused. The Cuban government didn’t give the FBI information that led them to us. As a matter of fact, the evidence showed that the FBI was after us a little while before Cuba approached the FBI. Cuba gave the FBI concrete information related to terrorism against Cuba in hopes that the US would follow those leads and the two countries could work together. So what happened, in fact, is both governments were approaching, that there was some kind of approach between the Clinton administration and Cuba that could lead to working together against terrorism. This brought up the political decision by some people of prosecuting us, to put an end to that potential cooperation. So it’s two different things.
That’s part of the dynamics of the relations between Cuba and the U.S. Usually every time that the two governments can approach, that there is a potential for approach between the two governments, there is a sector of the US political establishment, especially in Miami, which do something in order to prevent that from happening. And that’s exactly what happened this time around. Cuba sent a Nobel Peace Prize [winner] there on a personal mission. Fidel personally sent him to talk to Clinton. He opened up the door for some cooperation about terrorism. Then the FBI sent a delegation to Cuba in May 1998, or June, I’m sorry. They met here. They gave a lot of evidence – names, telephone numbers, recordings, a lot of stuff. The FBI guy said they would do something and all of a sudden the tables turned and the FBI arrested us and put an end to that cooperation. You can locate some people. I mean, the head of the FBI in Miami back then was a Puerto Rican guy who was tied to all those terrorists. He was a friend with those terrorists. He himself had said he put pressure on Reno to indict us. Of course we know that the representatives there in Congress, the Cuban-American representatives there, they are on a political line of confrontation against Cuba. So it’s a collusion between different forces. What I would say maybe is that, although I don’t blame Clinton directly as being the one who did it personally, probably they were weak in front of those people. You know how they play politics. So in the end they allowed themselves to be led by those people who live on confrontation. And the result was our arrest and the trial.