Mas Canosa notes read at pair's trial

BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Cuba apparently learned that exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa was dying of cancer
 when activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez told a select group of people -- including a
 trusted associate who is now on trial accused of being a Cuban spy.

 ``A bit of news was given which Saúl asked be kept secret. It is about Mas
 Canosa, who has terminal cancer and, according to Saúl, they don't think he will
 make it to the end of the year,'' accused spy René González wrote in a March
 1997 note to codefendant Gerardo Hernández, his alleged spy ``handler.''

 Mas Canosa died Nov. 23, 1997, after months of denying reports that he had
 terminal cancer. Associates said he tried to keep the seriousness of his illness
 private because he did not want to show any sign of weakness to his greatest foe:
 Fidel Castro.

 The writer of the note, González, was a pilot who infiltrated Sánchez's Democracy
 Movement and the pilots' group Brothers to the Rescue on orders from Havana's
 intelligence directorate, according to encrypted communications seized by the
 FBI and read to jurors at the trial Friday.

 Word of Mas Canosa's illness brought great cheer to the accused spies, who
 spoke of him and other well-known Cuban exiles with irreverence and sometimes
 blasphemy.

 During an April 1997 meeting, González, his wife, Ida, and Hernández mocked
 news accounts of Mas Canosa's grandson being ``miraculously'' saved from a
 life-threatening illness thanks to the ``power of prayer.'' They then offered a
 sarcastic petition for Mas Canosa to die.

 ``We united our `faith' in a brief mental `prayer' that the news about the cancer is
 true, and we hope it cuts him in four pieces as soon as possible. Amen,''
 Hernández reported to Havana.

 In other decoded communications read aloud by FBI Agent Richard Giannotti,
 jurors learned that Ida González also was a Cuban intelligence agent who was
 sent to Miami in December 1996 to join the alleged spy ring known as La Red
 Avispa, the Wasp Network.

 At René González's request, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, wrote a
 routine letter to facilitate his wife's entry into the United States, the
 communications showed.

 Ida González reported having a hard time adjusting to her new life in Miami,
 accused spy Hernández reported to Havana. It was recommended that she get
 close to Ana Margarita Martinez, the former wife of Cuban double-defector Juan
 Pablo Roque, who vanished from Miami the day before the February 1996
 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down that killed four Miami men.

 Wrote Hernández: ``We asked about Ana Margarita (the merry `widow') because
 we had suggested to Ida that she cultivate the relationship with this one and to
 keep up with any detail which might be of interest. Ida told us that Ana Margarita
 is such a jerk . . . ''

 In other decoded reports read by the FBI's Giannotti, René González bragged
 about his fall 1996 meetings with FBI Agent Albert Alonso of Miami, who tried to
 recruit González as an informant against the Democracy Movement and Brothers
 to the Rescue.

 González was noncommittal, telling Alonso that he supported the anti-Castro
 groups but still might feed the FBI some information occasionally.

 ``I thwarted him diplomatically, but I left the door open a crack. I think that I was
 very convincing and my `sincerity' impressed him,'' wrote González, who played
 the role of an exile with conflicting loyalties during his meetings with FBI agents.

 But Alonso might have known at the time that he was dealing with a Cuban
 intelligence agent. Prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller brought out during direct
 examination that the FBI had already started decrypting the Wasp Network's
 communications by the time Alonso met with González.