MIAMI -- (AP) -- A Cuban secret agent who infiltrated six exile groups was sentenced Friday to the maximum 15-year prison term as an unregistered foreign agent.

 Rene Gonzalez was the latest member of the 14-agent Wasp Network to be sentenced this week. Two Cuban intelligence officers who led the Miami-based ring received life sentences for espionage conspiracy. Appeals are planned in all of the cases.

 Gonzalez, 45, justified his work in the United States as an attack on terrorism plotted by Cuban exiles in Miami. He espoused anti-Castro sentiments as he worked his way into Brothers to the Rescue and five other exile groups.

 But U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard told him, "The terrorist acts by others cannot excuse the wrongful or illegal acts by this defendant or any other.''

 In a rambling 30-minute speech, Gonzalez said he worked against exiles intent on waging terrorism in Cuba and attacked prosecutors as hypocrites for going after Cuban agents but not militant exiles.

 "I would take the risks that I took for any country in the world, including the United States,'' said Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen who grew up in Cuba. ``I have no reason to be remorseful.''

 ``We have just heard the words of a dangerous man,'' chief prosecutor Caroline Miller said. ``The man was a menace in this community.''

 After hearing his sentence, Gonzalez patted his attorney's back, gave a thumbs-up sign to his mother, 17-year-old daughter and brother in the audience and shook hands with two other Cuban agents who still have to be sentenced.

 The judge had the power to sentence Gonzalez to any term up to 15 years. Defense attorney Phil Horowitz said the maximum sentence ``was undeserved.''

 Based on the time served since the agents were rounded up in 1998, Gonzalez would go free in about 10 years under federal sentencing policy.

 He asked for help from Cuban-born Republican House members from Miami, Ileana Ros-Lehtenin and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, to get his wife Olga Salanueva-Arango into the United States from Cuba.

 Salanueva-Arango was trained as a spy but was not indicted. She was deported last year after Gonzalez rejected a plea bargain.

 Gonzalez was among five Cuban agents convicted in June after a six-month trial of trying to penetrate U.S. military bases and exile groups.

 The agents are a cause celebre in Cuba. Their letters home are published, and their case is widely reported on Cuban television and radio. The Cuban government has organized marches in their honor and denounced the sentences as an injustice.

 Ringleader Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, who substituted for Hernandez when he was on leave in Cuba, were sentenced to life terms for espionage
 conspiracy.

 Hernandez received a concurrent life term for playing a role in a MiG attack that killed four Miami men flying with Brothers to the Rescue in international airspace in 1996.

 Gonzalez was a pilot who flew with the exile group until 1993 and befriended founder Jose Basulto, who was in court for the sentencing.

 ``Even though they're confronted with different ideas, a normal way of life, they still don't change,'' Basulto said of the Cuban agents. ``Minds like Rene's, there are many in Cuba.''

 Two other agents, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, are scheduled for sentencing later this month. Guerrero faces life in prison after working for six years as a manual laborer at the Key West Naval Air Station. Gonzalez, no relation to Rene Gonzalez, faces a 15-year term.

                                    © 2001