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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

U.S. spy identified

 HAVANA – A former intelligence official in the United States on Thursday publicly identified Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, who U.S. President Barack Obama hailed as one of Washington’s most valuable assets, as the unnamed spy traded for three Cuban intelligence agents jailed in the United States.

 But neither Cuban nor American officials have confirmed that Trujillo was spirited off the island and his parents have not heard from their son since he supposedly was freed.

 “They are saying his name out there,” his mother, Odesa Trujillo, told the Associated Press on Thursday at her home in Havana. “I don’t care where he is, just that he’s in good health.”

 Chris Simmons, the former chief of a Cuban counterintelligence unit for the U.S Defense Intelligence Agency, identified Trujillo as a cryptologist in Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence working on “agent communications,” the codes used by Cuban spies abroad to communicate with their handlers in Havana.

 Before his downfall, Trujillo helped the U.S. crack the “Wasp Network” in Florida, a Cuban spy ring that included members of the Cuban Five, the last three of whom were released in exchange for the Cuban spy. Cuba also released 53 other prisoners as well as American Alan Gross.

 The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 of being unregistered foreign agents, and three also were found guilty of espionage conspiracy for failed efforts to obtain military secrets from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters.

Associated Press