The recent swap of 10 Russian spies for four men held by the Kremlin on spying charges sounds like a fair deal, given that the Russians seem to have gathered no important secrets. But there's one footnote that doesn't sit right.
That's the case of Vicky Peláez, a naturalized American from Peru who was busted for allegedly delivering information to Russian agents in South America in exchange for cash. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and was allowed to leave the country. Peláez's husband was one of the 10 but he is Russian—though he masqueraded as Uruguayan—and his motives could be chalked up to patriotism.
But how to explain Peláez? And how to explain that she got off so easily? Until her arrest two weeks ago Peláez was a columnist for El Diario-La Prensa, the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily in New York. We still don't know the nature of the information she transported for Russia, but she certainly seemed to hate the America that took her in and let her make a good living attacking its interests.
Even by the standards of much of the Latin press, Peláez was hard left. Two of her former colleagues at the paper say she had photos of Shining Path terrorist Abimael Guzman and Che Guevara hanging in her cubicle. They also say she referred to the Cuban-Americans who worked in her office as "gusanos" (maggots), the term Fidel Castro uses for Cuban exiles.
Peláez published regular anti-U.S. diatribes and routinely praised Castro, and the paper adopted her politics in its news coverage. Sometime in the late 1990s Peláez was made Latin American desk editor. Her work, as well as that of former El Diario editor-in-chief Gerson Borrero, was reprinted in Granma, Cuba's state newspaper. Justo Sánchez, who was once the paper's editor for arts and culture, described her articles as "poorly disguised agit-prop." Mr. Sánchez adds that it was common knowledge around the newsroom that the Cuban government paid for Peláez's trip to the island in 2006.
We asked El Diario publisher Rosanna Rosado for comment on Mr. Sánchez's claim, but she referred us to Impremedia, which now owns El Diario. An Impremedia spokeswoman told us, "we have no knowledge of that. It would be against our ethics manual and cause for dismissal."
El Diario readers deserve an apology, and it's too bad Peláez was deported without serving time in prison for betraying her adopted country.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A16 
No comments:
Post a Comment