Detainee was helping Cuban Jewish groups involved in U.S. democracy project

[Judi Lynn]

Detainee was helping Cuban Jewish groups involved in U.S. democracy project
By Mary Beth Sheridan and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

An American who has been jailed in Cuba and denounced as a spy is a 60-year-old international development expert from Potomac who was working on a U.S. government project to help the island's Jewish community access the Internet, according to former colleagues and other sources.

The arrest of Alan P. Gross was the clearest sign yet of a chill between Washington and Havana, after an initial warming under the Obama administration. The Cuban government has not charged Gross. But it has kept him in prison since his Dec. 4 arrest and has portrayed his activities as part of a long-running U.S. campaign for regime change in the island nation.

Gross was working for a controversial democracy-promotion program -- which had ballooned under the Bush administration -- to provide communications equipment to break the Cuban government's "information blockade."

Friends said Gross was excited about the program and did not seem to realize the danger he faced.

"It was probably pure naiveness, innocence -- not seeing anything wrong with what he was doing," said Bob Rourke, a development consultant who has known Gross for 20 years. "He's definitely not a shrewd, calculating person. He's someone who genuinely gets into situations because he thinks he can help."

The U.S. government and Gross's employer, Bethesda-based Development Alternatives Inc., had declined to identify him until now, apparently hoping that the case would be resolved quietly. But last week, the Cuban National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcón, accused Gross of being "contracted to work for American intelligence services."

The U.S. government has denied that, describing Development Alternatives as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011203213.html