Agent had job at Key West naval station

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Convicted Cuban spy Antonio Guerrero, the only intelligence agent in the now-dismantled ``Wasp Network'' actually to land a job at a U.S. military installation -- Key West's Boca Chica Naval Air Station -- was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for espionage conspiracy.

 Of the five Cuban spies who were convicted by a Miami jury in June, the acts of Miami-born Guerrero, 43, were ``the most palpable and transparent,'' said U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, adding: ``His illegal actions were for the sole purpose of obtaining national security information.''

 Guerrero was the last of the five spies to be sentenced. All maintain that they are innocent and say they will appeal.

 Working first as a ditch digger and later as a sheet metal worker, Guerrero, using his code name ``Lorient,'' reported extensively to Cuba on the numbers and types of military airplanes using Boca Chica. He also reported on the renovation of a building that he believed was going to house ``top secret'' activity, trial evidence showed.

 Such evidence belied Guerrero's defense that he infiltrated the base as part of a strategy to defend his homeland from terrorist attacks by militant exiles, the judge said.

 ``The lawful acts of the military at Boca Chica are not terrorism,'' Lenard said. Guerrero also was tasked with watching for signs of a possible U.S. invasion of Cuba. Prosecutors acknowledge Guerrero never obtained classified information but say it was not for a lack of trying.

 Guerrero, a thin and pale man who writes poetry behind bars and whose works were quoted throughout the proceeding, stood before the judge and compared Cuba's struggle against terrorism to the U.S. fight against Osama bin Laden.

 ``I love my homeland, and I love this country,'' Guerrero said.

 But he called the verdict against him wrong and ``sacrilege,'' adding, ``If I were asked to do something like this again, I would do it with honor.''

 Lead prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller argued for the maximum sentence, life, saying: ``This defendant claims to love two countries, Cuba and the United States.

 But it was this defendant's choice to serve one country and to betray the other'' -- a choice he said he would repeat ``in a heartbeat.''

 `MISPLACED' DEFENSE

 Lenard said the antiterrorism defense, unfairly ``wrapped in the tragedy of Sept. 11th,'' was ``misplaced.''

 Because the federal prison system does not grant gain time, the life term means that Guerrero could die in prison.

 Lenard also sentenced him to five years each for acting as an unregistered foreign agent and conspiring to defraud the United States. All the sentences are concurrent.

 ``Nothing was unexpected,'' Guerrero's attorney, Jack Blumenfeld, said of the sentence. ``I shall be filing a notice of appeal in the next day or so.''

 Guerrero holds a civil engineering degree from the University of Kiev with a specialty in airport design.

 FAREWELL

 He turned and blew a kiss to his mother, Mirta Rodriguez, 69, before he was led from the courtroom.

 Sentenced to life previously were codefendants Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino. Spy René González got 15 years and Fernando González, no relation, got a 19-year sentence.

 ``The U.S. rule of law has been enforced and the national security has been protected,'' said Heck Miller, who prosecuted the case since 1998 with John Kastrenakes and David Buckner.

                                    © 2001