BY RUI FERREIRA
 El Nuevo Herald

 Attorneys for two alleged Cuban spies were unsuccessful in a bid to bring a
 Cuban military officer to Florida to testify as a defense witness at their clients'
 trial.

 Jack R. Blumenfeld and William Norris, who represent defendants Luis Medina
 and Antonio Guerrero, visited Havana Aug. 6 to 11 to try to persuade Interior
 Ministry authorities to let the officer -- identified only as ``Col. Escalante'' -- appear
 live at the trial, which is expected to begin Nov. 6.

 The lawyers came back empty-handed and now hope that Escalante will submit a
 written deposition to U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard, who is hearing the case.

 ``On Tuesday, Aug. 8, I interviewed Colonel Escalante, a really extraordinary man
 with great experience as a leader and deep understanding in matters of
 intelligence,'' Norris wrote in a memorandum to Lenard.

 The lawyer described the officer as ``a fantastic witness for the defense.''

 Cuba refused to allow Escalante to travel to the United States ``for reasons of
 security,'' Norris wrote, so ``we initiated the process to obtain his sworn
 statement.''

 The officer is believed to be Gen. Fabián Escalante Font, former deputy minister
 of the interior and one of the judges in the trial of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who was
 executed in 1989 for allegedly endangering the security of the nation.

 An expert on intelligence, Escalante wrote The Secret War, a book about the
 activities of the CIA against the government of President Fidel Castro.

 Blumenfeld and Norris, as well as other defense lawyers in the case, are trying to
 show that their clients -- arrested in 1998 and charged with spying for the Cuban
 government as the ``Wasp Network'' -- were only keeping Havana informed about
 the activities of anti-Castro Miamians.

 Cuba has blamed Miami Cubans for a wave of bombings in 1997 that left one
 person dead and 11 injured.

 Norris told Lenard that he showed Escalante declassified documents that
 revealed ``everything the [U.S.] government appears to have about the defendants,
 the Wasp Network, and what they did at the Boca Chica naval base and the
 Southern Command in Miami.''

 According to the indictments, the defendants tracked the activities of U.S. Navy
 and Air Force units in South Florida and conveyed that information to the Cuban
 military.

 But Escalante told the lawyers that the intelligence allegedly collected by the
 defendants ``simply has no usefulness in the modern world. And surely it is not
 useful at all for Cuban military readiness.''

 Norris paraphrased Escalante as saying that ``in today's global village . . . [Cuban
 intelligence] can obtain that kind of detailed information through CNN or its own
 devices.''