Havana, Cuba – U.S. Officials: American Arrested as Spy Helped Jewish Groups

Havana, Cuba – The United States contractor detained in Cuba last month and accused of being a spy is a 60-year-old social worker from the Washington suburbs who had gone to Cuba to provide communications equipment to Jewish nonprofit organizations, according to American officials.

In postings on the Internet, the contractor, Alan P. Gross – whose identify had not previously been made public – said he had more than 20 years’ experience in development work around the world. One of his Internet networking sites said he had been a volunteer field organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

American officials say that Mr. Gross had gone to Cuba as part of a United States government program and was providing encouragement and financial assistance to religious nonprofit groups. The officials acknowledge that Mr. Gross entered Cuba without the proper visa, though they contend that he was not involved in any activities that posed a violent threat to the Cuban government. And they flatly dispute any allegations that he is a spy.

The Cuban government, however, has characterized his work as a threat to national security.

In the United States, where Cuba continues to fire political passions, Mr. Gross’s detention has become the source of new tensions between Washington and Havana, and it threatens to ignite more debate on Capitol Hill about how the Obama administration ought to proceed in its Cuba policy.

Specifically, the case has raised questions about whether the administration should continue a Bush administration practice of sending development workers to conduct the kind of semicovert operations that landed Mr. Gross in jail.

Mr. Gross has visited Cuba several times, delivering computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups, according to people with knowledge of his work.

In December, they said, he was on a follow-up trip for Development Alternatives Inc., a contractor working with the United States Agency for International Development. The people who know about his work, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the matter, said Mr. Gross was sent to research how the groups were making use of the equipment he had previously distributed to them.

“His work in Cuba was focused on facilitating communications among people in a nonviolent, nondissident religious organization,” DAI said in a statement.

Details about Mr. Gross and his work in Cuba slowly began to emerge this week. Mr. Gross studied social work at the University of Maryland and the Virginia Commonwealth University, and he had a long career as an international development worker that took him to at least 50 countries.

In 2001, he started a company called Joint Business Development Center, whose Web site says it has “supported Internet connectivity in locations where there was little or no access,” including Iraq, Afghanistan, Armenia and Kuwait. Records show his company earned less than $70,000 last year.

One friend, Howard Feinberg, said, “The Alan I know is someone who is concerned only about helping improve the human condition, not meddling in people’s politics.”

President Obama came to office promising a new era of engagement with Cuba. But after lifting some restrictions on travel and remittances, he has been reluctant to take further steps, citing continuing reports of human rights abuses in Cuba. Some Cuba experts have said that Mr. Gross’s arrest may harden Mr. Obama’s stance.

Cuba, meanwhile, said the episode signaled that Mr. Obama was just as committed to overthrowing the government as his predecessor was.

Havana has used Mr. Gross’s arrest as an opportunity to raise an old grievance: America’s long prison terms for five Cuban agents convicted of spying on Cuban exile organizations. Havana maintains that the agents were in the United States to prevent terrorist acts against Cuba and has called on the Obama administration to release them.

As for Mr. Gross, Cuba has said little. The government has not formally charged him with a crime. Cuban authorities have provided the United States almost no information, nor have they made any demands.

As a result, Washington and many American experts on Cuba have been left speculating about Havana’s intentions.

“The Cuban regime is obviously looking for some kind of U.S. concession, callously using the contractor as a bargaining chip,” said Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Some American officials said they suspected that Cuba aimed to shine light on A.I.D.’s undercover Cuba programs, whose financing has grown in the past decade from about $5 million to over $45 million a year and have a history of mismanagement.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, has called for a comprehensive review of the A.I.D. programs.

Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, meanwhile, asked whether there might be other ways to provide information to nongovernmental groups. “If we want to have influence on the island, what makes sense?” he said.

Others say that sometimes covert actions are necessary.

“This is the kind of thing we do all over the world when we are trying to reach people their governments don’t want us to reach,” said an aide to a Democratic senator. “It’s naïve to think that if we asked Cuba for permission, we’d get it.”