inspiring democracy
in CUBA AND THE AMERICAS
in CUBA AND THE AMERICAS
Geopolitics 101: Location Cuba's proximity to the US makes it by default, the US's #1 National Security threat. Weather its the Soviets in 1962, or the North Koreans, or Iran, Cuba serves as a launching pad for the enemies of the USA. Unfortunately, one of the most damaging foreign espionage cases ever suffered by the US, was that of Ana Belen Montes, who, while working for the Regime, had the specific objective, of using her role as a US senior intelligence analyst for 25 years, to institutionalize the concept that Cuba was not a threat. An objective she apparently accomplished.
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Arms Trafficking Partnership: Castro and Kim Jong UnAs recently as 2013, Panamanian authorities seized a North Korean ship carrying 240 tons of weapons being trafficked between the two countries including Volga and Pechora anti-aircraft missile systems, nine missiles, two Mig-21Bis and 15 engines for those airplanes. Months earlier, military commanders from North Korea visited Cuba for secret talks. Much of this trade center on supplying terrorist organizations and rogue states and provides much needed hard currency for the regimes. A Cuban missile launch base would catapult North Korea (or Iran) from a mid-range missle capability to the equivalent of a long range missle capability.
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Russian Military / Intelligence Operations in CubaIn 2014, after a high profile state visit from Putin, the Castro regime agreed to allow Putin to re-open in Cuba, a military, and intelligence base to cover a 28 square-mile area. Before it was closed at the end of the Cold War, the base, now being re-opened, operates with over 1,500 Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel. Ivan Konovalov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Trends Studies, estimated that the Lourdes base was used to acquire at least 50% of the Soviet Union's radio-intercepted intelligence from the U.S., according to Reuters. Recently, in 2014, the Viktor Leonov CCB-175, an armed intelligence-gathering vessel
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Obtaining and Selling US Top Secret Military Intelligence to US EnemiesJust 10 days after the attacks of 9/11, the FBI arrested a 44-year-old woman named Ana Belen Montes. Montes, it turned out, was spying for the Cubans from inside the U.S. intelligence community itself—as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA. And she was soon to be assigned work related to U.S. war plans with access to classified information about America’s planned invasion of Afghanistan the following month. Montes was actually the DIA’s top Cuban analyst and was known throughout the U.S. intelligence community for her expertise. Little did anyone know how much of an expert she had become…and how much she was leaking classified U.S. military information and deliberately distorting the government’s views on Cuba. Montes, who acknowledged revealing the identities of four American undercover intelligence officers working in Cuba, pled guilty in 2002 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Many of these secrets were of interest to other countries which are hostile to the US.
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FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents: Sexual entrapment a common tacticAccording to an FBI report of September, 2, 2014, Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the Cuban intelligence service the report concludes.One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology. “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs,” the FBI report said.
Others are offered lucrative business deals in Cuba in a future post-U.S. embargo environment, and are treated to extravagant, all-expense paid visits to the island. Coercive tactics used by the Cubans include exploiting personal weaknesses and sexual entrapment, usually during visits to Cuba. The Cubans “will actively exploit visitors to the island” and U.S. academics are targeted by a special department of the spy agency. “This department is supported by all of the counterintelligence resources the government of Cuba can marshal on the island,” the report said. “Intelligence officers will come into contact with the academic travelers. They will stay in the same accommodations and participate in the activities arranged for the travelers. This clearly provides an opportunity to identify targets.” |
Cuban WASP Spy Network, Sent to Spy on US Military Installations; Kill US CitizenIn the 1990s one of the most infamous cases of Cuban espionage was that of the WASP network. Convicted in 2001 of spying and murder, these trained assassins killed a US Citizen and three Cuban exiles, in a covert operation and spied on the US Southern Command and the Key West Naval Air Station. Years later, President Obama would release them to the regime where they were reinserted into the regime's intelligence operations.
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