Alan Gross thought after the first few weeks of being imprisoned in Cuba that he may never be released.
“They threatened to hang me,” Gross said. “They threatened to pull out my fingernails. They said I’d never see the light of day.”
Gross shared details of his five-year imprisonment in an interview that aired Sunday evening on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
The 66-year-old Potomac resident was arrested at the Havana airport in December of 2009 while working on a contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). A communications specialist, Gross was transporting and installing internet equipment at synagogues in Cuba for USAID. Doing so violated Cuban law.
Gross said in the interview he was easily able to smuggle the equipment in during his first trip and concluded it wasn’t difficult to do.
“They had every opportunity to stop me from bringing the equipment in, they knew what the equipment was and if they didn’t, you know shame on them,” Gross said.
However, on his third trip, he was arrested at the airport and brought to a military hospital where he spent most of the next five years. He described it as rat- and roach-infested.
“I had to do three things in order to survive, three things every day,” Gross said. “I thought about my family that survived the Holocaust. I exercised religiously every day. And I found something every day to laugh at.”
Over four years, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont helped negotiate Gross’ release. Eventually the U.S. agreed to release five Cuban prisoners in exchange for Gross and another unidentified American intelligence official.
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