“If the Cuban system does not work, why the CIA have been spending billions for more than a century to destroy it? If you want to give the Cuban government the pretext to blame the embargo, get rid of the pretext! LET US FAIL BY OURSELVES! The system is going to fall by itself, but I keep pushing. And I am going to push it by spending billions of dollars in pushing. On the other hand you say, “Cuba is so awful, Cuba is so bad.” But I don’t know why the U.S. people don’t go there and see for themselves. There’s something wrong in that picture!”
– Gerardo Hernández, from this week’s interview.
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Imagine your community is under siege from a base 145 kilometres away.
A series of such terrorist plots have hit hundreds of civilians for a number of years.
Then imagine that is an officer loyal to your community you undertake the task of monitoring the groups in question, infiltrate them and prevent further assaults on your homeland.
Imagine that you were successful in preventing one such attack and as a result, a plane got shut down. Then imagine the enemy planning the attacks orchestrated a crack-down and succeeded in nailing you and a handful of your fellow defenders.
You get arrested and are put to a trial. You find yourself indicted for murder conspiracy, and are sentenced to two life sentences plus ten years.
This is precisely the kind of treatment that the Cuban Gerardo Hernández was subjected to! [1]
Hernández and four other intelligence officers, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, spent 17 months in isolation after their arrest on September 12, 1998. Having gone through a process of direct appeals, including a federal appeal at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, members of the so-called Cuban Five spent over a decade in prison. [2]
Then by the 17th of December, 2014, after more than 16 years, all five prisoners were finally freed and sent back to Cuba as a result of being granted clemency by U.S. President Barrack Obama. [3]
What made the situation that much worse was that Gerardo Hernández was not even allowed to meet in person with his wife Adriana throughout his detention. In the end, with U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy’s help, Hernández got his wife pregnant through artificial insemination. [4]
Now, nearly 11 years since he rejoined the Cuban people as a free man, Gerardo Hernández had an office at the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in downtown Havana. And he was incredibly busy! Especially during the days leading to International Workers Day!
I had been trying to set up an interview for months! I was unsuccessful at arranging chat time in December (the 10th anniversary of his being set free!) And after a week if trying to arrange something in the lead up to May Day , I finally got a date on the 6th of May.
Once we finally met, Gerardo was pleasant and friendly. We talked for over an hour. When I asked how much time he could spare, he replied, “how much do you need?”
I managed to tape our entire conversation. And we talked about a wide range of topics. From the original mission he was attempting to infiltrate and stop, to his time in prison to meeting with Fidel Castro upon his release, to Obama and the thaw or “normalization” of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. We also talked about the way the new “Obama” approach worked against Cubans and what they and Canadians alike could do to release the country from America’s imperial grip.
Gerardo Hernández was the leader of a Cuban espionage ring, known as the Wasp Network, dismantled by the FBI in South Florida in 1998. He was convicted of espionage and conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in Cuba’s shoot-down of two planes owned by the Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, in which four people were killed. He was freed along with two others in December of 2014 as part of a prisoner swap. Today, he serves as the national coordinator of the CDR.
(Global Research News Hour Episode 474)
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Transcript of interview with Gerardo Hernandez, May 6, 2025
Global Research: Cuban terrorism outfits basically like the Cuban American National Foundation and the Alpha 66 and so on.
Can you tell me a little bit about how, maybe the challenges involved in infiltrating this sort of group? And you also, the fellow known as Luis Posada-Carriles.
Gerardo Hernández: Well, since the triumph of the revolution in 1959, there have been attempts from the U.S. to defeat the revolution. And they have tried different means, and one of those means has been violence, terrorism.
For example, in 1976, a Cuban plane was blown up out of the sky by two bombs. And that was made by, you mentioned Posada-Carriles, Luis Posada-Carriles and Orlando Bosch, together with some people from Venezuela. They placed a bomb and killed 73 people, most of them Cubans, including young Cubans, and some of them Korean citizens.
Nobody paid, I mean, no Cuban terrorists paid for that. Posada-Carriles and Orlando Bosch passed away peacefully in Miami. But that’s not the only incident.
For example, in 1997, about six bombs exploded in different Cuban hotels. One of them killed a Canadian guy, a Canadian young guy named Fabio DiSelmo. He was in a hotel like a regular tourist, and the explosion killed him.
Again, nobody paid for that. From the people that organized that kind of crimes against Cuba, for many times they have had impunity by the, from the U.S. authorities. So at one point Cuba, exercising the right of all defense, self-defense, Cuba decided to send to the U.S. some intelligence operatives to infiltrate those groups, because there are many groups like that, paramilitary terrorist groups, operating specifically in Florida against Cuba.
I can tell you Alpha 66, Comandos L, P, U, and D, there was a time when Omega 7 was one of the worst terrorist organizations in the U.S. They even killed a Cuban diplomat, they killed a Chilean diplomat in Washington with a car bomb. Many of these facts are not knowledge of the majority of the American people. But Cuba decided to send some intelligence officers to infiltrate those groups and send the information back to Cuba to protect our country from those terrorist attacks.
Basically, that was what we were doing, infiltrating those organizations and getting information about the terrorist attacks and sending the information to Cuba to protect our people. That was basically what we were doing.
GR: Okay.
So you’d spent a long period of time in prison. Could you tell us a little bit about what you experienced in prison and maybe areas where you may have had, because you learn a lot as an intelligence officer, as much as you can, but it’s not the same as the actual experience. Could you, you know, expand on what you experienced?
GH: Yes.
In September 12, 1998, we were arrested. Ten people were arrested and five decided to plead guilty and the other five decided not to cooperate with the U.S. authorities and face a trial. We, well, it was one of the longest trials in the U.S. history.
It lasted about six months and it happened in 2001. We were found guilty of every count that we had been charged with and then given, we were given the maximum sentence possible because the trial happened in Miami. We always wanted to change the venue, but the government denied the change of venue.
So for people like us, working openly for Cuba, having a trial in Miami, we had no chance at all. And the government knew that. That’s why they didn’t want to move the trial from Miami.
So after we were sentenced, the five of us were sent to different prisons around the U.S. and I was sent to Lompoc in California, which is a prison in Santa Barbara, California. So a new life began at that moment because like you mentioned, we have received training in other things, but not how you live in a prison together with regular prisoners. Because some people believe that because we were not criminal in the sense that we were political prisoners because we were defending our people against terrorists, that we have been placed in different spaces, but not.
We were sharing even the cells with criminals, people from mobsters, people from Mara Salvatrucha, Mara 18 from El Salvador, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, many different gangs. And we have to live all the time with them. OF course I had never been in prison before.
So we had to spend 21 hours a day with people like that. You get to know people that you know are good people that maybe had one experience in their life and were paying for a mistake or whatever, but you also met people that are not so good. Being in prison, we witnessed a prisoner killing an old one, and we witnessed a prisoner hanging himself up, or cutting their veins, all those episodes.
One way or the other, we were able to see the person.
GR: What was it like for you, because you’re a family man, and you had a wife, Adriane, and she stood by you, but she was never able to actually visit you. I’m wondering, was this a source of, did you ever feel any kind of despair, or was that at the same time a sense of anguish that you’re going to, you are, to me that’s like the light on the horizon, you’re going to connect with her.
GH: I was looking forward to see her again, of course, and the government, the U.S. government, didn’t let her visit me for 12 years. So, for 12 years, we couldn’t see each other, and that was very hard. But, very early in our mission, we assumed that something like that could happen.
When they got arrested, I knew that a long time would be ahead, and we prepared for that, and of course, we keep the hope that one day we’ll be out, and we will get together again. Hope is something that you could lose in that environment. So, we all the time think, used to thinking positive, and keeping the hope that one day we will fight for being released, and reunited with our families.
For her, it was very hard, but she was the public face of the campaign in Cuba, defending our right to advocating for our freedom, and that’s something that I am very grateful for her, to her for that, and at the same time, I feel very, very proud of her.
GR: So, finally you were released in December 2014, you and then two of the other prisoners that were still remaining, and you finally got on a jet, and you landed there, and then you were just embraced by the entire Cuban population, and you were embraced by Fidel Castro. First of all, could you talk about your reaction to the sight of all the Cubans that, yeah, I think I’m actually free this time, or, you know, and could you talk about your reaction to Castro, like both before, when he said goodbye or whatever, and seeing him again?
GH: Yeah, before my mission, I had not met Castro, Fidel Castro personally.
I mean, like many Cubans, I was present in the Revolution Square, for example, when he was giving a speech, or get close to him, maybe in a specific meeting, open space nearby him, and I used to say, wow, Fidel is there, but it’s not because we knew each other, it’s not because of my job or anything. After I came back, it was another story, of course, but coming back to Cuba after so many years, it was very emotional, and for me, that spent 16 years in prison, the change was kind of a shock, because you get used to the life in prison, and suddenly you are free, and you are in your land, and everybody wants to touch you and hug you, and you feel kind of weird for that. That transition is not easy, and on the other hand, you start feeling the love of your people and many signs of love, and that is good, that kind of helps you to live and forget the past.
In the case of Fidel Castro, we knew that the truth, victory, the real victory in our case, would be when we met with him. The day we came back, we were received by Raul Castro. Fidel was already ill, he was already an old person, and a time passed between the day we came back and the day we got together with him.
It was about a month in between, and of course, we were desperate to meet him, but he, when we came back, he said, let the kids have their time and spend time with their families, and they are not going to see him, because I don’t want to interrupt the joy of reuniting with the family. But in February 2015, that meeting between Fidel Castro and the five took place, and it was a wonderful moment. It was a historic moment for us, being able to visit him in his house, and sit with him in a very close space, and having lunch with him, and a snack, and talking, and talking.
As a matter of fact, he, at the time, was writing some reflections. He used to write, once in a while, an essay, like they call reflection of the Comandante. And that day, when we met, he wrote a beautiful reflection that he mentioned, Today I was happy for five hours, talking with the five, something like that.
It was very moving, what he wrote, and the impression that he had of that meeting. And in our side, we knew that that was really the close of our case. The moment of the victory of the Cuban Five struggle happened that moment, when we met Fidel, and we were able to celebrate the victory with Fidel.
Because remember, I, for example, I was sentenced to two life sentences, plus 15 years. I would never be out of prison. As a matter of fact, I got friends that are still there serving life sentences.
And one day, Fidel says, in front of all the Cuban people, he said, It’s going to be a long struggle. It’s not going to be an easy struggle. It’s going to take months, probably years, but I can already assure you one thing.
They will come back. And that became kind of a slogan for the Cuban people. They will come back.
They will come back. People, in Spanish, it’s volverán. And people used to repeat it.
Nobody knew how or when, but people knew that because Fidel said so, we would come back. And we came back. It doesn’t matter my two life sentences, all the many years of each sentence, we were able to come back.
And people celebrate that as a Cuban victory, Cuban people victory, but also as Fidel’s victory. And if Fidel had passed away with the five in prison, even if we came back after that, it would have been the same. The fact that we came back and we were able to celebrate with Fidel that that was a real victory, that he was able to see that what he mentioned one day became true.
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