PABLO ALFONSO and SONJI JACOBS
 Herald Staff Writers

 Retired Air Force Col. Ed Hubbard, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, on
 Wednesday identified the leader of the Cuban interrogation team that tortured
 him: the country's current minister of higher education.

 ``That's the guy,'' Hubbard said, visibly shaken, as he held a picture of Cuban
 Gen. Fernando Vecino Alegret in his youth. A military specialist in anti-aircraft
 defenses in the 1960s, he is known to have visited North Vietnam around 1967.

 ``Of all the pictures I've seen, this is the one that most clearly and accurately can
 be identified as `Fidel.' I can state with 99 percent certainty that it's him,'' Hubbard
 said during a news conference at the Miami offices of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
 R-Fla.

 ``Fidel'' is the nickname given by American POWs to one of three Cuban
 interrogators at the POW camp known as ``The Zoo,'' a former French movie
 studio on the southwestern edge of Hanoi.

 Documents declassified by the Defense Department's Prisoner of War, Missing
 Personnel Office for a string of congressional hearings in 1996 provided extensive
 and gruesome details of the interrogation program, called the Cuba Program.

 Review of documents

 Ros-Lehtinen said she will meet today in Washington with Defense Department
 officials to review the declassified documents and ask for a congressional
 investigation.

 ``I shall not rest until an investigation is made of the events in Vietnam and
 everything possible is done to identify the men who directed these torture
 sessions,'' the lawmaker said.

 Vecino's picture will be shown to the 16 surviving POWs who underwent the Cuba
 Program for confirmation that he was indeed ``Fidel,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.

 Vecino now is 61. The photo shown to Hubbard was reportedly made in 1958,
 when he was 20, and given to El Nuevo Herald by a Cuban exile after The Herald
 published a report Aug. 22 describing the torture sessions.

 Declassified documents from the Defense Department and the U.S. Air Force
 reveal that from August 1967 until August 1968 a group of 19 American prisoners
 were questioned and tortured by Cuban officers under the Cuba Program. One of
 the prisoners died of his injuries.

 First reports came in 1973

 American intelligence agencies first received reports of the presence of Cuban
 interrogators in 1973, after the release by Hanoi of American POWs. Since then,
 several of those agencies tried to discover the Cubans' identities, but without
 success.

 Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, who attended the press conference, said he
 supports Ros-Lehtinen's campaign.

 ``The photo you have seen -- which Colonel Hubbard identifies with 99 percent
 certainty -- is that of Vecino Alegret,'' he told reporters. ``It shows how the Castro
 regime rewards torturers and their terrorist nature.''

 Members of prominent Cuban-American organizations such as the Bay of Pigs
 Veterans Association (2506 Brigade) and the Cuban American Veterans
 Association also attended the event. Both groups honored Hubbard with pins and
 lauded him for his bravery 30 years ago.

 Cuba stance was stunner

 But a few minutes later, Hubbard gave them all a shock: The best way to topple
 communism in today's Cuba, he said, is by establishing relations with Fidel
 Castro.

 In a calm, clear voice, he acknowledged his words might be ``distasteful'' to many
 of the guests at the news conference, but he did not flinch from saying
 communism would weaken if the Cuban people were more exposed to outside
 influences.

 ``Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because we showed them how we
 live,'' Hubbard said. ``I have to believe the same thing will happen in Cuba.''

 The room went silent. Tension was palpable. The news conference ended in a
 hurry. Hubbard said he knew his comments were not scoring points when he felt
 a nudge from Diaz-Balart.

 ``He was very brusque,'' Hubbard said later, reached by phone at the airport in
 Atlanta. ``He didn't say thank you or goodbye.''

 e-mail: palfonso@herald.com
 

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald