HAVANA, Cuba — It seems straight out of a Cold War spy movie. A group of Cuban undercover agents sneak into the U.S. and set up a secret pro-Castro network in south Florida — receiving instructions in code through late night radio transmissions from handlers in Havana. But the FBI gets wind, tails the agents, intercepts their messages and busts them, sending the agents off to federal prison, their ringleader for life.

Today, the story of those spies — called La Red Avispa, or the Wasp Network — rolled up by the feds 14 years ago is barely known in the United States. But its members, now  known as the Cuban Five, are national heroes in Cuba — the subjects of mass demonstrations, their pictures on billboards and  posters – and their petitions for freedom are championed around the world by Nobel Prize winners, celebrities like Danny Glover, even former President Jimmy Carter.

And they may now prove key to the tense impasse between Havana and Washington over the fate of jailed American contractor Alan Gross, arrested three years ago Monday for distributing sophisticated satellite equipment to Cuba’s tiny Jewish community and later sentenced to 15 years in prison for "acts against the independence and/or territorial integrity of the state." (Gross says he was only bringing Internet access to Cuba.)

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While the U.S. is demanding that Cuba release Gross, who visitors say is angry and frail, having lost 110 pounds in prison, Cuban officials say they are willing to do so only if President Barack Obama will  release the Cuban agents.

"I understand what Mr. Gross is going through," Gerardo Hernandez, 47, the Cuban Five ringleader, said in an exclusive interview with NBC News in October at his current home --a federal prison outside Victorville, Calif. "I understand his sufferings and that of his family. … If an agreement can be reached, to stop the sufferings of six families, then I welcome it."

The idea of a swap — the release of Gross for Hernandez and his confederates among the Cuban Five — faces legal and political hurdles.

An Obama administration official told NBC News that the "imprisonment of Alan Gross, an international development worker, is not comparable in any way to that of the five Cuban agents," noting that the Cubans were afforded their "due process rights" and convicted of serious crimes.

Members of Congress have denounced Cuba for holding Gross "hostage" to the release of the Cuban Five. "The Castro regime has no regard for human rights or international law," said Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and frequent critic of the Castro regime. "The Cuba Five should serve their sentences for spying."

And Hernandez, who sports a trim goatee and displays a hearty laugh despite 14 years in prison,  might not make the ideal candidate for a pardon or commutation from Obama — a precondition for a swap to take place. Asked if he regretted any of his actions, he smiled and said,  "I regret that I got caught." In a follow up phone interview, Hernandez readily acknowledged that "we violated some U.S. laws" — mainly failing to register as foreign agents with the U.S. Justice Department. "We came here with fake passports. Fake identities."  But, he added, "We act out of necessity."

As Hernandez and Cuban officials tell it, the Cuban Five was not sent to spy on the U.S. government. In fact, the members weren’t accused of stealing any U.S. secrets (although they were convicted of conducting surveillance of U.S. military bases.) Instead, the mission of the Wasp Network, they say, was to infiltrate  anti-Castro exile groups in South Florida who Havana suspected of plotting terrorist attacks inside Cuba. Among those attacks: the notorious bombing of Cubana Flight 455 over the Caribbean in 1976, killing 73 passengers (including teenage members of a Cuban  national fencing team)  as  well as a string of hotel bombings in Havana in  1997 that killed an Italian businessman and were believed to have been aimed at disrupting Cuba’s nascent tourist industry.   

"Cuba doesn’t have drones to neutralize the terrorists abroad," said Hernandez. "They need to send people to gather information and protect the Cuban people from these terrorist actions. … I think it’s the same feeling that Americans have that defend their country and love their country when they go to infiltrate al-Qaida and send information here to avoid the terrorist acts. And the U.S. has to understand that Cuba has been involved in the war against terrorism for 50 years.”

While admitting his role in spying on anti-Castro exiles — "I would do it again," he said — Hernandez adamantly denies the most serious charge against him: conspiracy to commit murder. His conviction on that count, which has earned him a life sentence, was based on his alleged complicity in the February 1996 shoot-down by a Cuban fighter jet of two Cessna planes flown by members of the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four men.

The anti-Castro group had provoked Cuba by dropping anti-government leaflets over Havana. At the trial of the Cuban Five, prosecutors introduced messages between Hernandez and his controllers in Havana suggesting he had prior knowledge of the shoot-down. But Hernandez insists that prosecutors misinterpreted the messages and he knew nothing that wasn’t already public.

"No, sir, absolutely not," Hernandez replied when asked if he knew in advance about the incident. "All I knew was what everybody knew: that Brothers to the Rescue through the years has violated many times Cuban air space, that there have been 16 diplomatic notes from Cuba complaining over that situation."

Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly (the Parliament) and a longtime Castro confidante, said this week in Havana that "the Cuban government publicly, front page in our papers, months before that incident had warned that we are not going to allow any more intrusions into our air space. … The order, the decision (to shoot down the planes) came from the highest level. Fidel Castro himself had said that publicly, that he was responsible for that decision."

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Phyllis Kravitch of Atlanta concluded in 2008 that prosecutors never proved their case tying Hernandez to a plot to shoot down the planes, but she was outvoted two to one and his conviction on the murder conspiracy charge was upheld. Now Hernandez and his lawyers are appealing on another ground: that hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret  U.S. government payments to anti-Castro journalists in Miami — newly discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests — inflamed the Miami community against the Cuban Five and made it impossible for them for them to get a fair trial. The payments were mostly made for appearances on Radio Marti, a TV and radio operation funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent agency that oversees international broadcasting sponsored by the U.S. government.

Slideshow: Castro through the years

In court papers, lawyers for the Cuban Five have cited articles by some of the journalists, including one that denounced the "genocidal character" of Castro’s regime and another that speculated that the real purpose of the Wasp Network was to introduce "chemical or bacteriological weapons" into south Florida. “"his information was spread throughout the Miami area and helped inflame the community against these guys," said Martin Garbus, Hernandez’ lawyer. "It was total madness. … When the case was brought, the anti-Castro feeling in the Miami area was at a fevered pitch."

U.S. prosecutors dismiss as “implausible” and "unfounded" the idea that the Radio Marti payments were part of a U.S. government effort to influence the jury in the Cuban Five case.

 "The jury (in the case) was carefully selected, following a searching voir dire (jury selection process) that the appellate court deemed a high model for a high-profile case, and that the trial comported with the highest standards for fairness and professionalism,” wrote Caroline Heck Miller, an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami, in a court filing in July asking a judge to reject Hernandez’ motion for a hearing into the payments to the journalists. She also noted, as federal prosecutors have repeatedly done when the issue has come up, that “no Cuban-Americans – the audience (Hernandez) hypothesizes as the target of the government campaign he imagines — served on the jury."

Unless Hernandez can somehow persuade a court to reopen his case  – or barring a prisoner swap with Gross — he would seem to have few options.

American imprisoned in Cuba may have cancer, doctor says

Rene Gonzalez, another member of the Cuban Five who was not convicted of the conspiracy-to-commit-murder charge, was released from federal prison on probation late last year, but has not yet been allowed to return home to Cuba to live.

The Cubans are doing their best to ratchet up the pressure. Just as Judy Gross has launched a public relations campaign in the United States to free her husband, appearing at a National Press Club press conference on Friday, this week the Cubans made Hernandez wife, Adriana, available for an interview with NBC News. A chemist in the food industry in Havana, she wept as she described the pain of separation from her husband — and how it has left her unable to bear children. "Every detail, every single moment reminds me of him," she said. "I believe there are many people in the U.S. and the American people as a whole, who could convey to President Obama that there is a woman here suffering."

Hernandez, too, says missing his wife is the hardest part of his life in prison. And he has few illusions about his prospects of being freed. "The only thing I know for sure with me is that I have two life sentences and live with that every day," he said. "And to keep your sanity and your mind, you have to be realistic. But I would be dishonest to say that I don’t have hope."

Michael Isikoff is NBC News' national investigative correspondent; NBC News Producer Mary Murray also contributed to this report.

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Alan Gross, a 63-year-old U.S. citizen imprisoned in Cuba for nearly three years, may be suffering from untreated cancer, according to a U.S. doctor who has reviewed Gross’ medical records — a conclusion that is at odds with the government in Havana, which has maintained that the American is in normal health.

Gross, a contractor for the United States government, was arrested as for subversion of the state in late 2009, and his case is a sticking point in U.S.-Cuban relations. The latest questions about his health have pushed his case to the forefront again.

Five months ago, Gross developed a mass behind his right shoulder blade, which doctors in Cuba diagnosed as a hematoma that would be reabsorbed within a few months, according to Reuters.

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But an American radiologist consulted by Gross' wife to review his CT and ultrasound scans said the mass had not been properly evaluated, according to a doctor's statement released by Gross’ attorney Jared Genser.

Maryland-based radiologist Alan Cohen said the scans, combined with news that Gross has lost 105 pounds since his December 2009 arrest — suggest to him that Gross needs urgent evaluation — and very likely a biopsy of the mass — preferably at a facility in the United States.

A "soft tissue mass in an adult who has lost considerable weight must be assumed to represent a malignant tumor unless proven to be benign," said Cohen in a letter obtained by NBC News.

"If the mass is a soft tissue sarcoma and treated aggressively there is a good chance of cure; if on the other hand it is not treated aggressively and early and it spreads to lung and liver, his life expectancy would be about three months. Several months have already been wasted and the clock is ticking," Cohen wrote in the letter.

Attorney Genser said he hopes the doctor's evaluation, will raise the stakes enough for Cuba to take action.

"It is critically important that Alan Gross get competent medical care as quickly as possible," he said. "We hope this independent medical review demonstrates the need for that to happen immediately. I would urge the government of Cuba to allow Alan to be receive a doctor of his choosing to do a medical examination to evaluate his tumor."

Gross was arrested for "crimes against the state" and sentenced to 15 years for providing satellite equipment and service to Cuban Jewish groups.

At the time of his arrest, the Baltimore native was working for Development Alternatives, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up an intranet system, which his attorneys say was for sharing information such as recipes and prayers among the Jewish community in Cuba.

USAID’s Cuba program focuses its efforts on "increasing the ability of Cubans to participate in civic affairs and improve human rights conditions on the island," according to the federal agency's website. It had funding of $20 million for fiscal 2012.

Gross' arrest put an end to a brief period of warming in U.S.-Cuban relations, which had been chilly since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro that established a communist state.

So far, there's no sign that either the U.S. or Cuba has budged on the issue.

Josefina Vidal, head of the North American Division at Cuba's Foreign Ministry, told NBC News that her government has offered to "have a dialogue with the US government to solve all our problems and that would include trying to find a humanitarian solution to Mr. Gross on a reciprocal basis. The U.S. government is responsible for the situation Mr. Gross finds himself in."

Vidal said there is no active negotiation currently underway between the two governments with the aim to free Gross. She asserted that "while we have conveyed our willingness to sit down and talk, to initiate a negotiation, we are still waiting for a response to our offer."

She did not specify what was entailed in that offer. Cuba has suggested in the past that Gross could be released in exchange release by the United States of four Cubans nationals held on espionage and murder conspiracy charges.

The idea been firmly rejected by the U.S. government, most recently by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in March, who said that Gross should be released unconditionally. The cases are not comparable, Nuland said, because "Gross is not a spy."

On Sept. 25, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators sent a letter to Cuban President Raul Castro calling for Gross’ release, calling his detention "a major obstacle" to improving relations.  The letter, signed by 44 senators was U.S. legislators’ most strident effort on Gross’s behalf to date.

Judy Gross, has repeatedly appealed to government officials on both sides to negotiate her husband's release. On Tuesday, in a letter released by Genser, she appealed to Cuban President Raul Castro to allow her husband to be examined by a doctor chosen by the family.

"President Castro, I beg you not to let my husband die on your watch," Judy Gross said. "Your country claims to have such a wonderful health care system — yet why have your doctors misdiagnosed him and failed to order the right tests to determine what is actually happening?"

This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.

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Updated at 6 p.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac was hugging the northern coastline of eastern Cuba on Saturday after claiming at least four lives in Haiti. Isaac should become a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday just as it nears the Florida Keys, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and then grow into an even stronger Category 2 storm with 100 mph winds.

Isaac "could be significantly stronger than currently forecast" once it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the center said in an advisory.

It will first sweep past southwest Florida and the Florida Keys, where "hurricane conditions are expected ... Sunday," it said in a separate update.

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Republicans effectively cancel first day of convention

Isaac is a massive storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending 230 miles from the center. Key West International Airport was halting all flights at 7 p.m. Saturday until the storm had passed.

In Haiti, a woman and a child in the town of Souvenance were killed in the storm, a local official reported. A woman in the southern coastal city of Jacmel was crushed to death when a tree fell on her house, government officials said.

In the capital Port-au-Prince -- where some 350,000 people are still living in tents or shelters after the 2010 Haiti earthquake -- a girl, 10, was killed when a wall fell on her.

Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.

"There's a lot of rain, a lot of wind," said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. "We haven't had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep." 

In neighboring Dominican Republic, Isaac felled power and phone lines and left at least a dozen towns cut off by flood waters. The most severe damage was reported along the south coast, including the capital Santo Domingo, where more than half the city was without power.

Cuba prepared by closing beaches and evacuating tourists in vulnerable areas, NBC's Mary Murray and The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel reported from Havana. Flights across Cuba were also suspended. 

In Baracoa, a city on Cuba's eastern side, high seas began topping the seawall Friday night, Radio Baracoa reported. 

Now with 60-mph winds, Isaac should exit Cuba on Sunday and then move south of the Florida Keys and into the Gulf.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Saturday declared a state of emergency to make sure local and state agencies would be ready. Republicans effectively canceled the first day of their national convention in Tampa, on Florida's central Gulf Coast, deciding to gavel it open on Monday, then immediately recess to some time on Tuesday.

Gulf of Mexico operators began shutting down offshore oil and gas rigs on Friday ahead of the storm. 

Follow Isaac's path with our storm tracker
Live updates and analysis from weather.com

Tampa's weather forecast includes rain and high winds Sunday night and into Monday, The Weather Channel reported. The winds could gust up to 60 mph.

Monday and Tuesday include a risk of tornadoes across south Florida. 

Officials were handing out sandbags to residents in the Tampa area, which often floods when heavy rainstorms hit. Sandbags also were being handed out in Homestead, 20 years after Hurricane Andrew devastated the community there. Otherwise, however, convention preparations were moving ahead as usual.

Isaac's exact path is still unclear, but the hurricane center said models suggest it will make landfall somewhere between the Florida Panhandle and New Orleans on Tuesday night.

The storm's anticipated path did shift closer to the Keys than previously forecast and emergency managers urged tourists to leave the islands if they could do so safely. A single road links the chain of islands to the Florida Peninsula. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad abandoned her latest attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida early Tuesday, after being hampered by more jellyfish stings and strong overnight storms.

Angie Sollinger, a senior member of Nyad’s support team, told NBC producer Matt German that Nyad has been pulled out of the water suffering from extreme exhaustion.

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The team made a collective decision to pull her out. "It was time,” Sollinger said.

She had planned to land somewhere in the Florida Keys on Tuesday, a day ahead of her 63rd birthday on Wednesday, Reuters said. But it would have taken her another 28 to 40 hours to complete the crossing at the time she finally gave up, Sollinger said.

After leaving the Havana shore on Sunday morning, Nyad dealt with jellyfish stings on her neck, lips, hand and forehead as well as a nasty storm that rolled in Sunday night.

Earlier, Sollinger told TODAY host Matt Lauer that the 62-year-old was deciding whether to continue her fourth attempt at crossing the Straits of Florida.

Nyad back in water in Cuba-Florida record swim try

“She’s not on the move. She’s in a holding pattern while she’s checked out.  She is under care. She experienced some jellyfish stings."

Asked who would decide whether the attempt would be abandoned altogether, Sollinger said: “That is her call, unless there is some huge challenge. Unless she’s incoherent, that’s her call.”

Nyad wanted to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. The swim has been completed once, in 1997, by Australian Susan Maroney, who was 22 and used a shark cage.

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WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden's death sent al-Qaida into a decline that will be hard to reverse, the United States said on Tuesday in a report that found terrorist attacks last year fell to their lowest level since 2005.

Describing 2011 as a "landmark year," the United States said other top al-Qaida members killed last year included Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, reportedly the militant organization's No. 2 figure after bin Laden's death, and Anwar al-Awlaki, who led its lethal affiliate in Yemen.

"The loss of bin Laden and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse," the State Department said in its annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" document, which covers calendar year 2011.

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The report attributed the killings, which included the May 2011 raid in which U.S. commandos shot bin Laden in Pakistan, to improved cooperation on counterterrorism. But it also said al-Qaida is adaptable and poses "an enduring and serious threat."

While saying there were no terrorist attacks in the United States last year, the report asserted that the U.S. government remains concerned about "threats to the homeland," citing the foiled 2009 Christmas Day attempt by the Nigerian "underwear bomber" who sought to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft.

The report included a statistical annex prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that showed the overall number of terrorist attacks worldwide fell to 10,283 last year from 11,641 in 2010.

Panetta: Only a 'small handful' of top al-Qaida targets left

The number of worldwide fatalities fell to 12,533 last year from 13,193 the year before, according to the statistics, which NCTC issued in a report published on June 1.

That was the lowest level since 2005, when there were more than 11,000 attacks and more than 14,000 fatalities. The general decline in terrorism-related fatalities -- which peaked at more than 22,000 in 2007 -- reflects, in part, less violence in Iraq.

The report added: 

Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year. More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities ... Secular, political, and anarchist groups were the next largest category of perpetrators, conducting 2,283 attacks with 1,926 fatalities, a drop of 5 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from 2010.

The State Department report said that as al-Qaida's "core has gotten weaker," affiliated groups have gained ground, citing al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula as a particular threat and voicing concern about al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

It also reported an increase in terrorist attacks in Africa, due largely to Nigeria's Boko Haram militant group, as well as in the Western Hemisphere, which it attributed chiefly to FARC insurgents in Colombia.

Daniel Benjamin, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, said last year was also significant for the "Arab Spring" of popular protests and what he described as its rebuff to al-Qaida's ideology.

"We saw millions of citizens throughout the Middle East advance peaceful public demands for change without any reference to al-Qaida's incendiary world view," he said, adding that upheavals also present risks.

"Revolutionary transformations have many bumps in the road," he added. "Inspiring as the moment may be, we are not blind to the attendant perils."

The report cites Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism.

It added: 

Al-Qaida and its affiliates and adherents are far from the only terrorist threat the United States faces. Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, continues to undermine international efforts to promote peace and democracy and threatens stability, especially in the Middle East and South Asia. Its use of terrorism as an instrument of policy was exemplified by the involvement of elements of the Iranian regime in the plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, a conspiracy that the international community strongly condemned through a UN General Assembly resolution in November.

It highlighted that Syria was "mired in significant civil unrest for most of 2011" but "continued its strong partnership" with Iran.

The report added:

Syria has laws on the books pertaining to counterterrorism and terrorist financing, but it largely used these legal instruments against opponents of the regime, including political protesters and other members of the growing oppositionist movement.

The State Department also highlighted other forms of violent extremism around the world -- including attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that killed at least 88 people; anarchists in Greece and Italy targeting government offices, foreign missions and symbols of the state; as well as dissident Republican groups in Northern Ireland.

The National Counterterrorism Center's annex also highlighted:

• Attacks on government facilities decreased by about 43 percent from 2010, from 796 attacks to 453 attacks in 2011.
• There was a sharp increase in the number of attacks directed at energy infrastructure, including fuel tankers, fuel pipelines and electrical networks, rising from 299 attacks in 2010 to 438 attacks in 2011.
• The number of attacks directed at public places declined in each of the past five years, from a high of 4,121 attacks in 2007 to 2,186 attacks in 2011.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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A U.S. government contractor sentenced to 15 years prison reached out from prison in Havana to plead for help on Friday.

"Get me the hell out of here," Brian Gross said, using his one phone call for the week to reach out to a reporter rather than his family.

The Maryland native, who has served two and a half years, was convicted of crimes against the state for bringing satellite and other communications equipment onto the island as part of a USAID-funded democracy-building program. Cuba considers such programs an attempt to destabilize the government.

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Gross has been pleading for parole to visit his 90-year-old mother before she dies of lung cancer.

"It is no longer about Cuban-U.S. relations," Gross said. "It's about my family and me."

Gross gets one call a week, and usually he reserves that for his wife, Judy, but this week he called a reporter instead because he wanted to get the word out about his plight.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was allowed to visit Gross at the prison on Feb. 24, and he later met with Cuban President Raul Castro to seek his release.

Leahy said Castro agreed that Gross "was no spy" The Associated Press reported.

Gross spoke virtually no Spanish and traveled to Cuba five times under his own name before his arrest in December 2009, according to AP.

But Leahy came home with little optimism for Gross' release.

The Gross affair has chilled relations between the U.S. and Cuba, diminishing chances for near-term rapprochement.

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