In Shift, U.S. Indicts Crew of Leaky Boat for Castro Plot

La Esperanza was leaking and battered when the U.S. Coast Guard spotted the 46-foot pleasure craft off Puerto Rico last October--its portholes shattered, its rudder twisted and its aging crew exhausted by rough seas.

Its 64-year-old captain had a heart condition. The average age of the four Cuban Americans on board: 58. The boat itself was almost a quarter of a century old.

Hardly the image of a commando team on a mission to assassinate Fidel Castro.

But when U.S. Customs agents boarded and searched La Esperanza several hours later, they found a secret compartment containing two high-powered rifles, seven boxes of ammunition capable of stopping an airplane or tank and sophisticated navigational and communications gear. U.S. prosecutors now say the arms cache and other evidence prove that this group of veteran Cold Warriors was part of a broader conspiracy to kill the Cuban president.

What began 10 months ago as an almost innocuous case of aging businessmen in a leaky boat that actually was traveling in the opposite direction from their alleged target when they were stopped has now mushroomed into a major cause celebre in the Cuban American community.

Last week, the boat’s 67-year-old owner, Jose Antonio Llama, appeared in U.S. District Court here and pleaded not guilty to charges that he, the crew and two other Cuban American businessmen had conspired to kill the Cuban leader “with malice aforethought.” Llama, a respected businessman in Miami, once fought against Castro for the CIA and later contributed thousands of dollars to U.S. political campaigns.

The case reflects an important new twist in U.S. policy toward its Communist neighbor to the south, according to defense lawyers and analysts familiar with the case: It marks the first time Washington has targeted a senior leader of Miami’s powerful anti-Castro lobby.

In the 1960s, the U.S. government itself was trying to assassinate Castro through a labyrinth of CIA plots now documented in declassified reports.

U.S. Versus Castro

During the Kennedy administration, the CIA operated a 400-agent station in Miami with the sole mission of ridding Cuba of Castro. Among the covert plots proposed by the CIA’s “Operation Mongoose”: providing a disaffected Cuban official with a ballpoint pen containing a poison-filled hypodermic needle, and staging phony “Cuban” attacks on U.S. planes and ships that would provoke massive American retaliation.

Although U.S.-sponsored provocations may have tailed off by the late 1960s, anti-Castro guerrilla actions by Florida-based Cuban exile groups such as Alpha 66 and Commandos L have been unofficially tolerated for years.

Citing that historical backdrop, lawyers for La Esperanza’s crew and owner say they view the current prosecution with bitter irony; one said he plans to use those same declassified documents to put the United States’ Cuba policy itself on trial.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman denied that the recent indictment signals a change in administration policy.

“In this case, the facts are different,” the spokesman, John Russell, said. But he added that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was apprised of the indictment before it was returned.

Yet the decision to prosecute came after decades in which the U.S. government routinely declined to pursue or dropped similar charges against anti-Castro plotters.

Sea Change in Policy

The recent indictment, however, reflects “a more pragmatic, less ideological” administration policy consistent with a fear “that one of these fringe groups could get us in trouble with Havana,” said Damian Fernandez, foreign relations professor at Florida International University.

The case, he added, is a blow to the clout and image of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, one of the most powerful political lobbies in the U.S.

The foundation and its members--who assert that they are committed to nonviolent change in Cuba--have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions through the decades to help ensure a tough Washington line against Havana, and members have been welcomed and honored as heroes in the White House by a succession of U.S. presidents.

Juan Masini-Soler, one of the more than half a dozen defense lawyers in the case, put it this way outside the courtroom last week: “It’s a very strong irony. If it was Ronald Reagan or George Bush in the White House, they’d be giving these people the medal of freedom. And here, now, they’re indicting them.”

Llama, a veteran of the CIA’s 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion who appeared strong and forceful in pleading his innocence in court here last week, is a member of the foundation’s executive board. Federal Election Commission records culled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that he and his company have contributed about $17,000 during this decade to an array of U.S. congressional and senatorial candidates who support anti-Castro causes.

Castro himself singled out the case in a long and angry diatribe against the foundation in July. During a speech in the Cuban city of Santiago, Castro used the alleged plot to assert from the podium that the group is “a terrorist foundation” that has “miserably deceived” President Clinton and other administration officials.

Foundation officials, voicing confidence in Llama’s innocence, have blasted “the political overtones of the matter” and have suggested that his indictment resulted from pro-Castro lobbying that has bullied “weak-kneed career bureaucrats in Washington . . . cowed by [Castro’s] incessant and incendiary rhetoric.”

“We believe--as does the vast majority of the Cuban exile community--that violence is not the answer to the Cuban crisis,” the foundation said in a statement. “That is what distinguishes us from Castro and his ruthless dictatorship. He is the terrorist.”

After posting $100,000 bond here Wednesday, Llama said that the exile group “had nothing to do with this case.”

Llama, who was jailed in Cuba for more than 20 months after being captured in the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, later lived in Puerto Rico. He joined the foundation soon after moving to Miami about seven years ago.

Conspiracy Described

Although Llama was not arrested aboard the vessel, the indictment returned by a federal grand jury accuses him of plotting murder: by procuring the boat and the weapons that were stashed aboard it specifically to kill Castro during his scheduled Nov. 8-9, 1997, state visit to Venezuela’s Margarita Island.

The Justice Department, which has been handling the prosecution since the crew’s arrest, has made it clear that the charges may not end with Llama and the six others.

And lawyers for the foundation’s president, Francisco “Pepe” Hernandez, called a news conference the week before the indictment was returned and told reporters that Hernandez expected to be charged. Hernandez has denied any involvement in the alleged plot.

The 12-page indictment makes no mention of Hernandez. It alleges that the group’s conspiracy dated to “sometime prior to Feb. 14, 1995,” when its members agreed “with each other and with other persons known and unknown to the grand jury, to kill, with malice aforethought, Fidel Castro.”

The indictment states that Llama obtained one of the .50-caliber rifles on Feb. 14, 1995, and that he bought La Esperanza the following month. Later that year, the indictment says, the group added two internal fuel tanks to the boat, “thereby permitting the co-conspirators to sail virtually anywhere in the waters in and around the Caribbean without having to refuel.”

Two years later--and less than a month before Castro’s scheduled visit to Margarita Island for a Latin American summit--the group visited the island, selected “a precise geographical location of a hilltop overlooking the airport” and entered the coordinates in a Global Positioning Unit later found on La Esperanza, the indictment asserts.

And on Oct. 19, 1997, the indictment states, the four crew members boarded La Esperanza and headed in the direction of Margarita Island.

Eight days later, documents on file at the U.S. District Court in San Juan show, the Coast Guard intercepted the yacht and persuaded its crew to put into port for repairs in Puerto Rico, where Customs agents later discovered the arms cache and an array of military equipment.

During a preliminary hearing for the group on Oct. 30, 1997, Customs agent Ismael Padilla stated that crew member Angel Manuel Alfonso, a 57-year-old Cuban American clothing salesman from New Jersey, proudly blurted out a confession while agents were reading him his Miranda rights.

An official magistrate’s report later stated, in summarizing Padilla’s testimony: “Once under arrest, [Alfonso] protested in a loud and angry voice and said that the weapons were his, that the others had nothing to do with this, that his sole mission was to assassinate Fidel Castro, that he had traveled to Venezuela and to look at his passport and that he had been in the White House. Then he said his lawyer would take care of the rest.”

But other testimony at that hearing raised such serious questions about whether the group actually intended to go through with the mission that even the judge questioned the charges.

After agent Padilla testified that the crippled yacht was actually traveling north toward Miami when the Coast Guard met it, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jesus Castellanos interrupted:

“So Venezuela is south, and they were heading north?”

“Yes,” Padilla replied.

“And how can you explain that?” the judge asked. “To go out and kill somebody heading north when this Mr. Castro was supposed to be in Margarita, which is heading south?”

Later in the hearing, the judge said: “I’m not totally convinced about this. I cannot believe that you are going to kill Fidel Castro, who is supposed to appear in the south, and the boat is going to the north.”

Prosecutors then explained that there was additional evidence in the case: the Global Positioning Unit and navigational charts on board plotting a course toward Margarita Island. And, in the end, the judge did find probable cause.

A federal grand jury then began hearing additional evidence in the case, and, eight months later, it added the indictment of Llama and two other Miami-based Cuban American businessmen.

“We have always said that this was a political move,” said Manuel Vasquez, a member of Llama’s defense team. “But we will defend this case on solid legal ground, and keep politics out of a court of law. And we will win.”

Fineman reported from San Juan and Clary from Miami.