The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five, are five Cuban intelligence officers who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami, Florida of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. The Five were in the U.S. to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. They were part of La Red Avispa composed of at least 27 Cuban spies.
Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, who headed the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), described by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a terrorist organization. Born in Cuba, Bosch attended medical school at the University of Havana, where he befriended Fidel Castro. He worked as a doctor in Santa Clara Province in the 1950s, but moved to Miami in 1960 after he stopped supporting the Cuban Revolution.
Otto Juan Reich is an American diplomat and lobbyist who worked in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Reich was born in Cuba; his family moved to North Carolina when he was fifteen. He graduated from University of North Carolina in 1966, and after a two-year stint in the US Army, received a master's degree from Georgetown University in 1973. After graduating, Reich worked for the state and federal governments in Florida and Washington, D.C.
Luis Clemente Posada Carriles was a Cuban exile militant and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. He was considered a terrorist by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Government of Cuba, among others.
The Cuban American National Foundation is a foundation with the aim of assisting members of the Cuban community in Miami, Florida.
Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down on 6 October 1976 by a terrorist bomb attack. All 73 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed after two time bombs went off and the plane crashed into the sea. The crash killed every member of the Cuban national fencing team.
Michael Vernon Townley is an American-born former agent of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the secret police of Chile during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. In 1978, Townley pleaded guilty to the 1976 murders of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States, and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, Letelier's co-worker at the Institute for Policy Studies. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, serving 62 months. As part of his plea bargain, Townley received immunity from further prosecution; he was not extradited to Argentina to stand trial for the 1974 assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert in Buenos Aires.
The Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations was a militant group responsible for a number of terrorist activities directed at the Cuban government following the Cuban Revolution. The United States government provided them with extensive financial and logistical support throughout their existence. It was founded by a group that included Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both of whom worked with the CIA at various times, and was composed chiefly of Cuban exiles opposed to the Castro government. It was formed in 1976 as an umbrella group for a number of anti-Castro militant groups. Its activities included a number of bombings and assassinations, including the killing of human-rights activist Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., and the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 which killed 73 people.
Jorge Lincoln Mas Canosa was a Cuban-American businessman who founded the Cuban American National Foundation and MasTec, a publicly traded company. Regarded within the United States as a powerful lobbyist on Cuban and anti-Castro political positions, he was labeled a "counterrevolutionary" by the Cuban Communist Party.
Ilona Marita Lorenz was a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life.
Relations between Cuba and Venezuela were established in 1902. The relationship deteriorated in the 1960s and Venezuela broke relations in late 1961 following the Betancourt Doctrine policy of not having ties with governments that had come to power by non-electoral means. A destabilizing factor was the Cuban support for the antigovernment guerrilla force that operates in remote rural areas. Relations were reestablished in 1974.
Francisco José Hernández, known as "Pepe", is a Cuban exile of the 1960s, anti-Castro, and Bay of Pigs Invasion participant who is co-founder and president of the Cuban American National Foundation that claims to be taking a less overt position against the Cuban form of government.
Oscar Jose Corral is a Cuban-American journalist and filmmaker. In 2012, Corral directed and produced a documentary film, Tom Wolfe Gets Back to Blood, which enjoyed a national run on PBS and was screened in more than 40 independent theaters around the country. It is the only film ever made about Tom Wolfe, an iconic author and satirist whose stature in American letters has loomed large for the last half century. The film is about how Wolfe researched his Miami-set novel, Back to Blood, in South Florida.
Ann Louise Bardach is an American journalist and nonfiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami", by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.
DISIP was an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency inside and outside of Venezuela between 1969 and 2009 when SEBIN was created by former President Hugo Chávez. DISIP was established in March 1969 by then-president Rafael Caldera, replacing the Directorate General of Police (DIGEPOL).
The United States has at various times in recent history provided support to terrorist and paramilitary organizations around the world. It has also provided assistance to numerous authoritarian regimes that have used state terrorism as a tool of repression.
Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo was a Cuban exile living in Miami. An associate of Luis Posada Carriles, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap a Cuban consul in Mexico in 1976, for which he served 27 months in prison. He was also convicted of attempting to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, and was jailed until 2004 when he was pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.
Wasp Network is a 2019 spy thriller film written and directed by Olivier Assayas, based on the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War by Fernando Morais. It stars Penélope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, Gael García Bernal, Ana de Armas and Wagner Moura. It tells the true story of Cuban spies in American territory during the 1990s.
Ricardo Morales Navarette, also known by the moniker "El Mono", was a Cuban exile and agent of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. He also worked for the DISIP, or Venezuelan intelligence service, and as an informant for the US FBI, CIA, and DEA.
Eulalio Francisco Castro Paz was a Cuban-American freedom fighter, anticommunist revolutionary, gang leader, arms dealer, terrorist group leader, intelligence operative, undercover agent, drug and narcotics smuggler, decades-long jewelry store owner, and pillar of the Little Havana community who has a street named after him in Miami.
