Mexican Spy Has No Regrets
Thursday April 6, 2000 8:10 pm
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Tall, white-haired
and friendly, Gilberto Lopez y Rivas is a
noted anthropologist and prominent
congressman, a member of a commission
trying to end the Zapatista rebellion in
southern Mexico.
But for the last 22 years he has guarded a
secret: Lopez spied on the United States
for Soviet military intelligence, passing on
secrets for a decade until the FBI caught
up with him and quietly forced him back to
Mexico.
Now that a new book has uncovered that
past, Lopez freely admits he was a spy,
but says that he did it for convictions, not
money.
``We don't regret anything in that
historical moment in which we lived. It
was an option of struggle. We did nothing
of which we would be ashamed,'' Lopez
told The Associated Press.
David Wise, author of the newly published
book ``Cassidy's Run,'' said Lopez was
one of at least 10 Soviet agents exposed
by U.S. Army Sgt. Joseph Cassidy, who
spent more than 20 years as a double
agent for the FBI.
Tipped by Cassidy, FBI agents
photographed Lopez acting as a courier
for miniaturized documents left by the
double agent. They began a close watch
on his life as a graduate student in Utah
and Texas and later as an assistant
professor at the University of Minnesota.
Lopez was fortunate.
When the FBI confronted him in June
1978, he confessed and was left him
alone briefly with his wife and children
after they promised not to commit suicide.
He assumed he would be sent to jail.
``It was a very painful scene,'' Lopez said.
``Only scruples of U.S. democracy, which
are to be admired, blocked our
imprisonment.''
Wise said concern about the legality of
the surveillance used to trap the Lopezes,
which included cameras planted in their
home, led the Justice Department to
decide it could not prosecute them.
``At that moment we thought it was a trap
setting us free,'' Lopez said. ``We thought
what they are going to do is make an
attempt on our lives.''
Lopez, his wife and children fled to
Mexico and began a new, more public life.
In 1997 he was elected to Mexico's
congress for the leftist Democratic
Revolution Party. His term ends this year.
The revelation in Wise's book was
reported Tuesday in the Mexico City
newspaper El Universal - not that it
seemed to bother many in a country
where the United States is an
often-troublesome neighbor and where
many politicians dabbled in the radical
fringes of politics as youths.
Lopez said four or five people
congratulated him after seeing the article.
According to ``Cassidy's Run,'' published
in March, FBI agent Aurelio Flores
befriended Lopez and even baby-sat for
his children. But Lopez denies claims he
tried to recruit Flores for Soviet
intelligence.
Lopez, who declined to speak with Wise
before the book was published, said his
activity included observation and
intelligence tasks. He didn't describe
them in depth.
Lopez complained that the book
exaggerated how much money he
received for his work and that it wrongly
portrays him as having a ``fanatical
hatred'' of Americans. ``That is absolutely
false... We had excellent friends in our
stay in the United States.''
Lopez, born in 1943, came of age as the
Cuban Revolution triumphed. He said he
had ``a very fundamental conviction that
socialism was possible in Latin America.''
As a youth, he joined an abortive armed
group, was stunned by the death of
Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara in a failed Bolivian
revolt and said he was at Tlatelolco plaza
in Mexico City in 1968 when the Mexican
army massacred student demonstrators.
``I think that times have changed, and it is
hard to understand what it was to speak
of anti-imperialism,'' he said. ``It was a
very black-and-white time, really. There
was no room for subtleties. We did not
know all of what was going on in the
Soviet Union.''
Lopez said that in December 1968, he
made the first of several trips to Moscow,
where he was trained by Soviet military
intelligence, the GRU.
He returned to Mexico, where he did a
master's degree thesis on Chicanos and
later earned a doctorate at the University
of Utah. But the principal work, he said,
was always intelligence.
While in Utah he attracted FBI attention
that never flagged. Wise said Flores even
followed him from Utah to the University of
Texas.
After returning for a brief time to Mexico,
he went to Minnesota, where two FBI
agents died in a plane crash trying to
follow his car on a trip to Canada.
After he was caught and forced to return
to Mexico, he was named director of the
National School of Anthropology and
History and spent time in Nicaragua,
becoming an adviser to the leftist
Sandinista government.
He described the Soviet model of
repressive socialism as ``a failure'' and
said he wants peaceful change: ``I think
we should convince, not conquer.'' But he
remains convinced that capitalism creates
``blood, pain, tears.''
As a congressman, Lopez is on a
commission mediating between the
government and the Zapatista rebels, led
by the ski-masked Subcomandante
Marcos.
Now that his past is public, Lopez
laughed about the next conversation he
might have with Marcos.
``I will tell him that I too had a mask,'' he
said.