[Ppnews] Flurry of Questions on Couple's Arrest

[Political Prisoner News]

 From the Los Angeles Times
THE NATION
Flurry of Questions on Couple's Arrest
Colleagues and students of a Miami professor are 
bewildered by federal charges alleging that he 
and his wife are secret agents for Cuba.
By John-Thor Dahlburg
Times Staff Writer

January 13, 2006

MIAMI — As Florida International University's 
spring semester got underway, office 335A was 
locked, and a policewoman stood guard outside.

Associate professor Carlos Alvarez wouldn't be 
coming in any time soon. He and his wife are in 
federal lockup, accused of working for more than 
two decades as Cuban secret agents.

Many here who know Alvarez, 61, a longtime and 
well-regarded member of the faculty, said they 
had a hard time comprehending the charges against 
him and his wife, Elsa, 55, who is a part-time employee at the university.

"This man is a highly respected man. He's a 
good-to-the-bone man," said Joan T. Wynne, a 
professor in FIU's College of Education whose 
office is catty-corner to Alvarez's. "The 
students raved about him, and how much he taught them."

The Alvarezes have been charged with acting as 
agents of a foreign power without registering 
with the U.S. government, as required by law.

After they were ordered held without bond by a 
federal magistrate judge on Monday, Wynne took 
over one of Alvarez's classes on cross-cultural studies.

The students, she said, were full of questions 
about what had happened to their professor — and as bewildered as she was.

"What happens when someone you know, a good 
person, gets put in jail for such a nebulous 
charge?" Wynne asked. Three years ago, she said, 
she arrived here from Georgia State University 
and quickly took a shine to Alvarez.

"I found him to be a broad-minded, open-minded 
scholar," she said. "Beyond that, he was a 
profoundly sensitive man, a very gentle soul. One 
of those people you instantly like."

According to an indictment unsealed Monday, the 
Alvarezes sent information about the Cuban 
American community and officials of the U.S. 
government and FBI to Cuba's spy agency, using 
shortwave radios, coded messages and 
computer-encrypted files. U.S. Atty. R. Alexander 
Acosta said the couple had acknowledged those activities.

They were being held at the Miami Federal 
Detention Center, awaiting a Jan. 19 arraignment. 
If convicted, they could face prison sentences of 
up to 10 years and be fined $250,000.

"From the beginning, the one shared emotion has 
been shock," said Mark Riordan, a university 
spokesman. "We're a busy, large institution, with 
nearly 38,000 students, and we normally don't get this kind of scrutiny."

The university's main campus, which is near Miami 
International Airport, is primarily a commuter school.

The professor and his wife, a psychological 
services counselor, were put on paid 
administrative leave "pending the outcome of the matter," Riordan said.

Modesto A. Maidique, president of the state-run 
school, is a longtime friend of the Cuban-born 
couple. In a statement issued this week, he 
called the Alvarezes "valued members of the FIU 
community for many years" but said the charges 
against them were "very serious."

"If the allegations stipulated by the U.S. 
attorney are substantiated, this will constitute 
a very significant breach of university trust and values," Maidique said.

The Miami Herald reported on its website Thursday 
that as early as 1982, Florida investigators had 
informed a congressional committee that Elsa 
Alvarez, then at the University of Miami, was 
sending private information on mentally ill 
patients at a Miami hospital to the Cuban 
government. A lawyer for the woman denied the accusation, the report said.

The Alvarezes married in 1980 and have three 
children; Carlos Alvarez has two children from a 
previous marriage. They live in South Miami, 
where they were arrested Jan. 6 at their home. 
Friends said Elsa Alvarez suffers from a 
debilitating disease that has seriously affected her health.

After U.S. officials alleged this week that the 
couple also tried to recruit young Cuban 
Americans to serve as agents, and led trips to 
Cuba where young people might have been given a 
favorable impression of the regime of Fidel 
Castro, FIU started its own independent 
investigation, Maidique said. Roberto Martinez, a 
former U.S. attorney, is leading the investigation, he said.

The school's investigation so far had determined 
that the Alvarezes hadn't enlisted any FIU 
students to work as Cuban agents, or taken any 
students to Cuba under the auspices of an FIU program, Riordan said Thursday.

Some who knew Carlos Alvarez, who earned a 
doctorate in clinical psychology from the 
University of Florida, said they had found he had 
nothing of the pro-Castro zealot.

According to the federal indictment, Alvarez had 
allegedly spied for Cuba since 1977, and his wife since 1982.

"I'm flabbergasted," said Herbert C. Kelman, 
emeritus professor of social ethics at Harvard 
University, who mentored Alvarez in conflict 
resolution and traveled with him to Cuba. "I 
considered him an honorary student of mine. I 
have the highest regard for him as a fine and 
knowledgeable colleague with the best of intentions.

"We talked about improving relations between Cuba 
and America, and that had nothing to do with 
sympathy for the current Cuban government, but sympathy for the Cuban people."

Alvarez left Cuba for Miami when he was 17. In 
1991, he returned to Cuba and later wrote a 
newspaper op-ed piece that accused its Communist 
rulers of responding to Cubans' aspirations "with 
ideological rhetoric and actions framed within 
rigid and anachronistic political schemes."

Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of Puentes 
Cubanos, which seeks to foster closer relations 
between Cuba and the United States, said Alvarez 
was hired by her organization several times as an 
expert in conflict-resolution techniques. Wilhelm 
said Alvarez went to Havana for Puentes Cubanos 
to help foster dialogue between Cubans and young 
Cuban American professionals visiting from the United States.

"Every time he traveled for Puentes Cubanos to 
Cuba, he did so completely legally, with a 
license from the Treasury Department," Wilhelm said.

In 2004, she said, Puentes Cubanos lost its 
license to organize trips to Cuba when President 
Bush clamped down on such travel as a way to punish the Cuban government.

"I've known Dr. Alvarez for many, many years," 
Wilhelm said. "Right now, I feel about 250 years 
old. It's not been a good week."

"He needs his day in court," Wilhelm said. "That's the way our system works."

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