Serving Two Masters

WITH THE FALL OF COMMUNISM, DOUBLE AGENTS seem more likely to inhabit novels than real life these days. But Cuban exile Francisco Avila Azcuy claims he was just that -- a double agent spying on exile commandos in Miami for Fidel Castro while helping the FBI unravel Cuba's espionage network in the U.S. Not uncoincidentally, a Cuban diplomat at the U.N. was expelled after the Spanish- language Miami TV station WSCV secretly videotaped the official discussing a prospective exile raid on Cuba with Avila.

So was Avila the real thing? Officially, both Washington and Havana are mum, although Avila's involvement with Miami's Alpha 66 paramilitary group was long known to the FBI. He claims Castro covertly funded some exile raids on Cuba to build nationalist fervor at home and embarrass Washington. The red faces were most obvious, however, in Miami, where rabid anti-Castro militants like Alpha 66 and Commandos L denied that they had been infiltrated or financed by the enemy.