Miamian, embargo foe, sues author for 'spy' claims

[Billy Burnett]

Miamian, embargo foe, sues author for 'spy' claims http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/799892.html

BY FRANCES ROBLES
[e-mail]
A veteran spy catcher, who publicly named people he claims are Cuban government agents, was sued Thursday in Miami federal court, where he was accused of malicious defamation.

Lt. Col. Chris Simmons is an Army Reserve counterintelligence officer and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with a career in catching Cuban spies. Now he's writing a book, starting a new business, and going on Spanish language TV shows to ``name names.''

On Oct. 8, Simmons appeared on América TeVe Channel 41 show A Mano Limpia and identified anti-embargo activist Silvia Wilhelm as a Cuban government collaborator.

Wilhelm, executive director of Puentes Cubanos and the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, filed a defamation suit against Simmons seeking more than $75,000.

Simmons had said former FIU professor Carlos Alvarez, convicted of spying for Cuba, identified Wilhelm in his confession to the FBI. She since ''retired'' from her duties after the FBI approached her, Simmons said.

''My suit speaks for itself,'' Wilhelm said Thursday. She referred questions to her attorney, Bruce Rogow, who could not be reached for comment.

Simmons, who lives in Virginia, also could not be reached.

Simmons caused a buzz in Spanish-languauge media when he first appeared on the show hosted by Oscar Haza naming several academics as spies for the government. He offered no proof. He has been on the show twice and identified seven people.

''I'm glad Silvia is doing this,'' said FIU Professor Lisandro Pérez, who said he is considering also filing suit against Simmons for calling him a spy. ``Suing for defamation is an onerous process and would take a great deal of money and time. You have to prove you are not a spy.

``It's time someone put a halt to this outrageous guy who goes on the air, says we are spies and seemingly gets away with it.''

Simmons also accused frequent Miami Herald op-ed contributor Marifeli Pérez-Stable, who declined to comment.

Others accused of spying -- FBI informant Gilberto Abascal, former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alberto Coll, Cuba expert Julia Sweig and retired academic Gillian Gunn Clissold -- also could not be reached for comment. All have denied Simmons' accusations.

Simmons has said he relied on declassified records, interviews with Cuban intelligence defectors and witnesses he didn't name.Collaborating with Simmons is Ana Margarita Martínez, who unwittingly married a Cuban spy who fled to Havana on the eve of the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.

Here's an interview from www.blogtalkradio.com with Ana Margarita Martínez, who won won a $27 million judgment in court ...

It's a doozy!

Link at bottom is a 14 mb MP3 file you can download or click on to hear with whatever default player you have for MP3 files.

Show Name She Took on the castro Regime and Won- Interview with Cuban spy's ex-wife, Ana Margarita Martinez
Date / Time 1/7/2008 6:00:00 PM
Show Length 1 Hour
Show Description
First Ana Margarita Martinez was forced to leave her homeland when fidel castro imposed his tyrannical regime on the Cuban people. Years later she would be duped into marrying a Cuban double agent who disappeared one day, only to turn up on Cuban tv, denouncing the United States. She sued castro for rape and won- find out how this remarkable woman bounced back from the ultimate betrayal and took on fidel castro.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BloggingforLibertad/2008/01/07/Interview-with-Ana-Margarita-Martinez-former-wife-of-Cuban-spy-Juan-Pablo-Roque.mp3

[Judi Lynn]

1. Oh, God. Ana Margarita Martinez! Nowhere in the WORLD could she pull off such a scam outside

South Florida.

Suing CUBA for rape because a "spy" who came to South Florida to find out what the terrorists in South Florida were planning to do to further terrorize Cubans on the island, after decades of attacks, murders, bombings, etc. married her while he was in Miami. The very idea this skank could sue Cuba for rape and WIN is an insult to humanity.

No one held a gun to her pig face to get her to marry the guy. That was her choice.

Here's her grotesquely self-centered story as the New York Times would tell it, and as certain elements in South Florida viewed as completely appropriate in their "value system":

Ex-Wife Is Suing Cuba Over a Spy's Deception

By RICK BRAGG
Published: August 15, 1999

To Ana Margarita Martinez, an avowed anti-Communist Cuban-American, the dashing young jet pilot seemed to have dropped from heaven.

Juan Pablo Roque, a disenchanted officer in the Cuban air force, escaped the Communist-controlled island by swimming to the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in February 1992. He denounced President Fidel Castro of Cuba and quickly became a vocal militant in the Cuban exiles's pro-democracy movement in Miami.

He even flew planes for Brothers to the Rescue, a group of Cuban-American pilots who cruised the Florida Straits searching for refugees fleeing Cuba on rafts. He met Ms. Martinez his first year in Miami, in church, and they fell in love. They were married in 1995, as he established himself as one of the city's more visible anti-Communists. He wrote a book called ''The Deserter.''

It was all a lie. Mr. Roque, in reality a spy for the Cuban Government sent to infiltrate exile groups like Brothers to the Rescue, vanished from Miami on Feb. 23, 1996 and returned to Cuba, four years after his swim to Guantanamo.

The next day, Cuban jets shot down two of the small planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue, just outside Cuban air space in international waters. Law-enforcement authorities in Miami and Cuban exiles blamed Mr. Roque for the deaths of the four fliers.

Cuban exiles who had trusted Mr. Roque felt violated.

To Ms. Martinez, the betrayal was rape. She never would have married him, never would have shared a bed with him, Ms. Martinez said, if she had known the man she thought was an anti-Communist was actually an agent of the Castro Government.

Now, saying that her consent to have sex with the man over the 11 months of their marriage was based on a lie, she is suing the Cuban Government for sexual battery -- rape.

More:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E0DB1339F936A2575BC0A96F958260



The fair maiden, Ana Magarita Martinez



Juan Pablo Roque
Cuban "spy"

[Billy Burnett]

2. Did you listen to her quacking in that "interview"?

She's a real piece of work.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. Hard-Liners Have A Special Color-Blindness...

Cuban exile hard-liners have a special color-blindness. They see only red when they find someone who oppose their item-by-item right-wing political and social agendas. You don't have to be a devoted Marxist-Leninist or a starry-eyed revolutionary "Sandalista" groupie to be called a Castro-loving crypto-Commie; you need only be someone with common sense and the ability to acknowledge disagreeable facts that run counter to their world-view. That's ALL it takes.

Those people took some severe lumps in the last national elections. It should be interesting to see if the Obama administration gives them as much credence as the Clintons did, or whether they'll find themselves being put on the shelf.

:dem:

[Billy Burnett]

4. Unfortunately, it looks like Mr. Obama does.

As you can see here Mr. Obama uses all of the sickening key talking points of hard line exile Miami in this address to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqO37BBhCqY


I don't have hope for change in US/Cuba policy.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. Yes, I Imagine You'd Find Obama's Speech Bothersome.

Yes, I imagine that you'd find then-Senator Obama's speech bothersome. He certainly use the word "liberty" a lot, something I don't seem to recall Castro's defenders employing very much.

I also missed the part of the speech where Barack Obama advocated returning the older exiles' properties back along with financial penalties for depreciation while they were under the control of the post-1959 regime.

:sarcasm: