After spending more than five years in a Cuban jail, former USAID contractor Alan Gross is probably in possession of a lot of information that the United States government would like to know. How did Cuban officials become aware of his work bringing internet access to the island's tiny Jewish community? What were the conditions like inside the Valla Marista prison, where he was held? What were the mannerisms and interests of his interrogators? What was the content of the conversations he had with his fellow prisoners?

Yet according to an authoritative source, no U.S. government official has debriefed Gross since he was released from a Cuban jail last December as part of a broader deal normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. That political thaw reached a symbolic milestone Wednesday when both governments announced they would open embassies in each others' capitals, 54 years after the severing of diplomatic relations.