In Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton expressed regret for not freeing Alan Gross

(Image credit: Chip Somodevill/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

In her recent autobiography Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton listed the failure to free Alan Gross from prison as one of her biggest regrets. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced that Gross, a USAID contractor convicted of bringing satellite equipment to Cuba, will return to the U.S.

The former secretary of state called the Cuban government's refusal to release Gross and the U.S. refusal to release five Cuban spies a "double tragedy" for both countries:

It is possible that hard liners within the regime exploited the Gross case as an opportunity to put the brakes on any possible rapprochement with the United States and the domestic reforms that would require. If so, it is a double tragedy, cosigning millions of Cubans to a kind of continued imprisonment as well. [Hard Choices, via Time]

Clinton also wrote that the U.S.-Cuban embargo was a failure that "wasn't achieving its goals."