Spilled Beans

By Kenneth M. Pierce

Fidel Castro celebrated his 61st birthday last week, but the public greetings extended by a former comrade-in-arms could not have been welcome. In two programs beamed repeatedly to Cuba on U.S.-sponsored Radio Marti, Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, 40, a soft-spoken and much decorated major in the Cuban intelligence service, told of his defection to the U.S. out of disgust and frustration with the Castro regime. He minced no words in accusing the Cuban leadership of corruption, decadence and abuse of power, and promised to blow the cover off Cuban intelligence operations.

According to U.S. officials, Aspillaga walked off his job as Cuba's intelligence chief in Prague on June 6, drove an embassy car across the border to Austria, and introduced himself to U.S. diplomats in Vienna. His crossover came just nine days after the defection of another high-ranking Cuban official, Air Force Brigadier General Rafael del Pino Diaz, who has also been heard on Radio Marti.

Apparently neither Aspillaga nor Del Pino knew the other planned to defect. Analysts viewed their actions as a sign of growing unease within Cuba, as the economy continues to fizzle and Castro seeks to impose increasingly harsh austerity measures. Persistent but unconfirmed reports circulated last week that the U.S. had granted asylum to a third disgruntled Cuban official. Said a U.S. diplomat: "After 27 years, they have realized that Fidel has ruined Cuba."

In Aspillaga's radio broadcasts from Washington, where he is being debriefed by the CIA, he described Castro's lavish life-style. The Cuban leader, he claims, has a private fleet of yachts and keeps a luxury home in each of Cuba's 14 provinces. While the populace contends with housing shortages, Castro reserves "hundreds of houses" in Havana's Jaimanitas section for the use of his security guards and aides. While the government demands austerity from the populace, Aspillaga said, officials order underlings to send home foreign luxury items and use government satellite dishes to tune in to U.S. televised movies.

The former revolutionary, who joined Castro's movement at the age of 15, claimed that the Cuban leader has a stash of cash totaling several million dollars hidden away in Switzerland. "Who can sanction Castro?" asked the defector. "What parliament or national assembly can ask for an explanation of what is done with that money?"

The most damaging revelations concern the extent and nature of Cuba's intelligence and military operations. According to Aspillaga, Cuba's intelligence service, with a total of 2,086 employees, grew substantially more active after the U.S. invasion of Grenada. He said Cuba has steadily acquired U.S. technology, in violation of the American trade ban, through Panamanian Strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega, who reaped millions from the transactions. Noriega, he said, helped Cuba send arms to Nicaragua and to rebel groups in El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia.

Most important, Aspillaga said he will give U.S. officials the names of 350 Cuban agents who have penetrated foreign governments -- after sufficient time has passed for these compaeros to return safely to Cuba. Intelligence analysts expect that the list will cripple Cuba's covert intelligence-gathering capability for several years.

Cuba's government-controlled newspapers made no mention of Aspillaga's defection, though the broadcasts were the talk of Havana. For the past six weeks, Cuban television has been airing a documentary about CIA activities in Havana in which Cuban double agents step forward to expose alleged U.S. spies. Aspillaga's revelations finally made clear why Castro was willing to unmask so many of his own secret agents for the sake of this broadcast: with Aspillaga talking to the CIA, their cover was already blown.

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN/WASHINGTON