Cuba Arrests U.S. Citizen, Brother as Spies for CIA

A Cuban-born U.S. citizen and her brother have been arrested as CIA spies in Cuba, according to a Havana Radio report monitored here today.

The American citizen is Gladys Juana Oliva Garcia Hernandez of Miami, the station quoted the nation’s Interior Ministry as saying.

The ministry statement did not say when she and her brother, identified as Nestor Norberto Garcia Hernandez, were taken into custody.

The two are charged with “espionage activities against our country as U.S. Central Intelligence Agency agents,” said the ministry.

CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson said her agency routinely refuses to confirm or deny reports of espionage activity.

The State Department did not return phone calls on the matter.

Gladys Garcia Hernandez used humanitarian family visits allowed by the Cuban government to set up a spying operation with her brother, the statement by the Cuban Interior Ministry said.

The brother was identified as an official in the Cuban Department of Construction. His sister allegedly gave him “means of receiving and sending messages” during one of her visits.

“The woman spy trained her brother in the technical aspects of clandestine communications, evidence of which was being held by the authorities,” the statement said.

Nestor Garcia Hernandez compiled “economic, military and political information and was working in such activity until the moment that both were arrested,” the ministry said.

The statement criticized the Reagan Administration for using the family visits “to promote espionage and other criminal activities against our country.”