Professor Who Spied For Cuba Gets Prison

A public university professor who spent decades spying for a terrorist nation while collecting his state paycheck was sentenced to five years in prison for passing on illicit intelligence to an enemy nation.

The teacher often conducted his espionage for the Republic of Cuba, which has long appeared on the State Department’s list of terrorist nations, during regular taxpayer-funded work hours. His wife, a counselor at the same university, assisted him and was sentenced to three years in prison.

The Florida International University professor, Carlos Alvarez, essentially led a double life and used his job to meet people that Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro wanted watched. He would pass the information to Cuban Intelligence Service agents in person, via encrypted electronic or coded pager messages.

During the sentencing hearing in a Miami federal court this week, the judge chastised the couple and said their behavior undermined U.S. foreign policy. He also condemned them for breaking federal law with their personal foreign policy.

Not surprisingly, many of Castro’s leftwing advocates have been outraged by the sentences and have dismissed the passing of intelligence to a terrorist nation as mere gossip. One local newspaper columnist defended the spies’ actions as simply a case of misguided pride because the information they passed along was harmless.

Castro Death Watch writes that the “commie spies” got what they deserved and points out that if the shoe were on the other foot and our spies had been caught in Cuba, they would have been summarily executed without even the benefit of a sham trial.