He also oversaw other agents

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Cuban spy Fernando González, whose tasks included shadowing militant Cuban exiles in Miami and targeting Cuban-American politicians for harassment, was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison on Tuesday for acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

 González's fondness for fake identities -- the FBI found 31 death certificates in his apartment when he was arrested, ready sources of new names for Cuban intelligence agents -- also played into his sentence. He went by the name Ruben Campa in South Florida.

 González, 38, a short, stern-faced career intelligence agent, was the fourth of five convicted Cuban spies sentenced recently. The final sentencing, of Miami-born Antonio Guerrero, is scheduled for Dec. 27.

 González also oversaw other agents who tried to infiltrate the Pentagon's U.S. Southern Command and Key West's Boca Chica Naval Air Station, and helped with
 reporting the movement of aircraft at Boca Chica, evidence showed.

 His name was mentioned only a handful of times during the six-month trial that finished in June, and as such, his lawyer, Joaquín Méndez, argued that the evidence
 against him was too skimpy for the nearly 30-year sentence sought by the government. But lead prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller called González the ``fully deliberate and careful embodiment of the Cuban government meddling in U.S. affairs'' and pushed for the maximum punishment.

 DEFIANT DIATRIBE

 Like the other spies, González stood and delivered a lengthy, defiant diatribe heavy on Cuban political dogma and short on repentance. Versions are being quoted in
 Cuba's state-controlled press and on nightly television talk shows.

 González said the island nation ``has no other choice'' but to use spies to thwart violent plots by militant exiles because the FBI is unable or unwilling to act.

 ``During the years I will be incarcerated,'' he concluded, ``I will be accompanied by the dignity that I have gathered from my people and by my allegiance to my country.''

 Such loyalty is misplaced, Heck told the judge: ``Certainly it is clear that this defendant's love of his country necessarily entails harm to our country.''

 In pronouncing sentence, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said she would leave ``the many complexities of the relationship between the United States and Cuba'' as the subject for another day. But, she added, ``Cuba's interests in protecting its national security must be solved in ways other than sending clandestine intelligence officers to the United States.''

 Afterward, González hugged his lawyer Méndez, the only Cuban-American attorney in the case. Then he turned to nod at his mother, Magali Llort, who was flown in from Cuba for the sentencing. Méndez said he will file an appeal.

 When FBI agents busted up the Cuban spy ring in September 1998, González was sharing a small Hollywood apartment with co-defendant Ramón Labañino, a k a Luis Medina, who was sentenced last week to life in prison for espionage conspiracy. González was not charged with espionage.

 The names Campa and Medina were fake, taken from death certificates of babies who died in California in the late 1960s, evidence showed.

 Campa also had a business card identifying him as a desktop publisher.

 ORDERS FROM CUBA

 González's handlers in Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence directed him to follow militant Cuban exiles -- notably one-time accused airplane bomber Orlando Bosch,
 members of Alpha 66 and Roberto Martin Pérez, the former dissident and husband of former Cuban American National Foundation spokeswoman Ninoska Pérez
 Castellón.

 Florida politicians -- ``especially right-wingers of Cuban origin'' -- were high-priority targets for González, who with other agents was part of a plan to cause trouble by ``penetrating'' the offices of U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

 Havana directed González and others to get in the congressional offices to learn about plans involving Cuba and to discover the ``vulnerabilities'' of Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart, both strongly anti-Castro.

                                    © 2001