Alan Gross

Gross was born in Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York state into a Jewish family to Fred Gross (1921–2006) and Evelyn H. Gross (née Kessel; 1922–2014).

He was raised at his hometown and in Baltimore.

He studied sociology at the University of Maryland and social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, before moving to Potomac, Maryland.

He had a long career as an international development worker who had been active in some 50 countries and territories across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, including Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was setting up satellite communications systems to NGOs.

Alan Phillip Gross (born May 2, 1949) is a former United States government contractor employed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In 2001, he founded JBDC LLC, a small company that earned less than $70,000 in 2009, which supported "Internet connectivity in locations where there [is] little or no access," according to The New York Times.

Gross and his wife Judy lived in Potomac, Maryland, a Washington, D.C. suburb.

The couple have two daughters, Shira and Nina.

Gross was working as a subcontractor to Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), the prime contractor working with USAID, which had won a $6 million U.S. government contract for the program in which Gross was involved, a controversial "democracy-promotion program" that ballooned under the George W. Bush administration, to provide communications equipment to break the Cuban government's 'information blockade.' Gross received less than $300,000.

He spoke little Spanish and had not worked in Cuba before.

USAID's $20 million Cuba program, authorized by a law calling for regime change in Cuba, has been criticized in congressional reports, which called it wasteful and ineffective and accused it of putting people in danger.

In December 2009 he was arrested in Cuba while working on a program funded under the 1996 Helms–Burton Act, which explicitly called for overthrow of Castro's government.

According to American officials, Gross visited Cuba four times in five months in 2009 on a tourist visa before his arrest to deliver computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups.

In December 2009, according to DAI, he was on a follow-up trip researching how the groups were making use of the equipment he had previously distributed to them.

As reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, Cuba's small Jewish community, numbering fewer than 2,000 people who mainly live in Havana, enjoys full religious freedom, the possibility to emigrate to Israel and fairly good relations with the government under Raúl Castro, but has little influence, making observers wonder why the United States provides material to them under a USAID program that usually targets dissidents.

According to a Latin America specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, it is possible that Gross's mission was useful only inasmuch as it satisfied Congressional demands to take action in Cuba.

Gross filed reports for DAI of his four visits to Cuba in 2009.

The report of the fifth and final trip was written by DAI.

However, he went to Cuba for a fifth time in late November 2009 and was arrested 11 days later.

When he was arrested, he was carrying a high-tech chip, intended to keep satellite phone transmissions from being located within 250 mi. The chip is not available on the open market.

It is provided most frequently to the CIA and the United States Department of Defense, but can also be obtained by the United States Department of State, which oversees USAID.

Asked how Gross obtained the card, a USAID spokesman said that the agency played no role in helping Gross acquire equipment.

Gross was arrested on December 3, 2009, at the El Presidente Hotel, where he was staying.

After being accused of working for American intelligence services in January 2010, he was convicted of spying and for "acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state" in March 2011.

US sources widely rejected the idea that Gross was a spy, though some noted the "covert" nature of Gross's work.

Gross noted in his field reports his awareness of the risks he was taking in his mission.

Funding was held up briefly in 2010 over concerns following Gross's arrest.

He was prosecuted in 2011 after being accused of crimes against the Cuban state for furtively bringing military-grade communication equipment designed to evade detection to members of Cuba's Jewish community.

In January 2012, it was reported that Cuban authorities claimed that Gross has visited Cuba as early as 2004, delivering a video camera to a leading Freemason who later declared that he had been a Cuban intelligence agent since 2000.

A review of the reports was revealed on February 12, 2012, by the Associated Press (AP).

According to the reports, Gross was aware of the risks he was taking.

AP reports that Gross did not identify himself as a representative of the U.S. government, but claimed to be a member of a Jewish humanitarian group.

To escape Cuban authorities' detection, he enlisted the help of American Jews to transport electronic equipment, instructing them to pack items a piece at a time in carry-on luggage, and also traveled with American Jewish humanitarian groups undertaking missions on the island so he could intercede with Cuban authorities if questions arose.

Gross declared that he was thoroughly inspected by the customs officials at Jose Marti International Airport when entering the country and that he declared all of the items in his possession.

The equipment he brought to Cuba on his fourth trip, most but not all of which is legal in Cuba, included 12 iPods, 11 BlackBerry Curve smartphones, three MacBooks, six 500-gigabyte external drives, three satellite modems known as BGANs, three routers, three controllers, 18 wireless access points, 13 memory sticks, three VoIP phones, and networking switches.

In his report on this trip, marked as final, he summarized: "Wireless networks established in three communities; about 325 users".

He was released from Cuban prison on December 17, 2014, and returned to the US in exchange for the release and return of three Cubans convicted of espionage.

While serving his prison sentence, his wife Judy Gross, sued Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) and USAID for $60 million in federal court.

The company settled for an undisclosed sum.

The amount is in addition to the $3.2 million that USAID agreed to pay Gross and DAI in the November before his release.