Miami Herald
September 4, 1980. p. 30
By Dan Williams
Herald Staff Writer
State and Miami police have arrested a man accused of making threatening phone calls to a bodyguard of Manuel Espinosa, a controversial exile leader.
Espinosa was once a leader in talks with the Castro government but last spring reversed himself and began naming people ha accused of being Castro agents in South Florida. The man arrested was one of those he named.
Rafael Contreras was arrested at his television repair shop in Hialeah for allegedly calling the home of Johnny Becerra, a bodyguard of Espinosa, Aug. 16. “This guy said he was going to kill Becerra,” said Sergio Pinon, intelligence officer in the Miami Special Investigations Section.
Pinon and Danny Benitez, an intelligence agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, are investigating activities of alleged Castro agents in South Florida.
It was the first arrest of a person named during Espinosa’s marathon denunciations of alleged Castro “agents, collaborators and sympathizers” broadcast on Spanish-speaking radio early this year.
In February, Espinosa released a recording he said was a phone call Contreras made to Becerra threatening harm to Becerra’s father, who lives in Cuba. The alleged threat was meant as a warning to stop Espinosa’s denunciations.
If convicted of making the telephone threat, Contreras could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $500. Contreras was free on $1,000 bond, a spokesman at Dade County Jail said.
Becerra and Espinosa said they had asked police to investigate threats on their lives. “I told the phone company and the police about the threatening phone calls,” said Becerra.
“It was one of the hundreds I have received. I’ve changed my number four or five times,” he added.
The phone company and police traced the call to Contreras’ shop, Hialeah TV on Palm Avenue. Police obtained a warrant for Contreras’ arrest on Aug. 27.
Pinon and Benitez made the arrest Tuesday afternoon at 5:30 p.m.
“I am very content to see him under arrest,” said Espinosa. Espinosa listed dozens of Cuban residents of South Florida whom he accused of being agents of Fidel Castro. Espinosa claimed to have gathered his information while “walking among the communists” in his role as promoter of exile talks with the Castro government.
Federal authorities declined to either confirm or deny the accuracy of Espinosa’s lists. But Miami chief Arthur Nehrbass commented at the time that, in general, “premature disclosure of intelligence information . . . could jeopardize intelligence operations.”
State Department officials called Espinosa’s charges “dangerous and irresponsible.”
Espinosa went on live radio Wednesday night to announce the arrest of Contreras.