The Cuban spy cell targeted the U.S. Southern Command, which runs U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West, the FBI said.
Surveillance dating back to 1995 indicates all 10 members operated with code names and had escape plans and arrest alibis, according to an FBI affidavit filed as eight men and two women made their initial court appearances.
Congressional sources said the arrests made without incident Saturday were timed to avert an operation planned by the suspects, but provided no details.
Among those accused is Rene Gonzalez, formerly affiliated with the Miami-based Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which flies mercy flights in the 90 miles of open water between Florida and Cuba. The group uses small U.S. registered aircraft in its search for rafters fleeing the communist island nation.
Gonzalez has been linked more recently to Ramon Saul Sanchez's Democracy Movement, which sails flotillas in the Florida Straits to protest Cuba government actions.
According to Jose Cardenas, spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation in Washington, the accused spies had infiltrated Cuban exile groups, including Brothers.
The 10 were to make their first court appearances later in the afternoon, facing charges of espionage conspiracy and acting as unregistered agents of the Cuban government.
It was not immediately clear whether they were Cuban exiles, agents who slipped into the United States from Cuba, or some of each.
CANF, an exile group based in Miami, did not immediately return two calls seeking comment. Brothers founder Jose Basulto had left for court and could not be reached.
Four men, including three Americans, were killed in February 1996 when they were shot down by a Cuban MiG fighter jet over international waters. The men were aboard two Brothers planes, and soon afterward federal officials looked into whether spies played any part in the shooting.
Juan Pablo Roque, a former Cuban air force pilot and double agent, infiltrated the Brothers group before returning to Cuba. He said he passed information about Brothers to the Cuban government.
FBI director Louis Freeh called U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at her home on Saturday to inform her of the arrests, said her spokesman Juan Cortinas.
Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-born Miami Republican, wrote the FBI in June requesting a briefing by the agency's counterintelligence section on two types of activities by Cuban officials in the United States.
She said she was concerned about ``a significant increase'' in travel by Cuban officials to Florida and New York for private meetings and an ``inordinate number of meetings that Cuban government officials have been holding with major U.S. corporations and industry giants.''
EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press Writer George Gedda in Washington contributed to this report.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press