U.S. Intelligence on Cuba; Consistently Wrong

“Cuba no longer actively supports armed struggle in Latin America and other parts of the world.”  (Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. State Department, April, 2009.)

In fact , a report from Colombia’s military intelligence DAS ( Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad) recently obtained by the Colombian paper, El Espectador, reveals that  the FARC ( Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, the largest, oldest and most murderous terrorist group in our Hemisphere) maintains a major office in Havana. The report also describes a recent visit by FARC officers Hermes Aguilera and Olga Marín to Cuba for some brainstorming with Castro’s DGI. The report mentions that this very Olga Marin “receives a $5,000 monthly stipend through the Cuban bank account of a Venezuelan government office.”

“Thanks to Fidel Castro” boasted the FARC’s late commander Tiro-Fijo in a 2002 interview, “we are now a powerful army, not a hit and run band.”

Alas, penetrating sagacity by U.S.  Intelligence services regarding Castro is an old story. To wit:

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” (Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel 1958.)

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s “Caribbean Desk’s specialist on the Cuban Revolution” from 1957-1960.)

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha.)

In fact, Raul Castro had been supervised by a KGB  handler since 1953 and when arrested  in Mexico in 1956, Ernesto “Che“ Guevara  was found to have, in his very wallet, the calling card of  the KGB’s top Latin American agent, Nikolai Leonov.

“Fidel Castro is not only NOT a communist –he’s a strong ANTI-Communist fighter! He’s ready to help us in the hemisphere’s anti-communist fight and we should share our intelligence with him!” (Gerry Drecher, the CIA’s expert on Latin American Communism after meeting with Fidel Castro in April 1959.)

In fact, for months by the date of Drecher’s insights and policy recommendation Fidel, Raul, and Che had been repairing to their respective (stolen) Havana mansions nightly and conferring with the old guard of Cuba’s Soviet-line Communist party and with Soviet GRU agent Angel Ceutah to plan the Stalinization of Latin America.

Repeated warnings of all the above by Cuban exiles to U.S. officials led only to scoffs against these “embittered exiles with an ax to grind.” So in August 1959 some sought to throttle what they knew was the looming Stalinization of their homeland with a coup. Alas, the liberal U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsal, got wind of the planning and alerted Castro to this threat against his reign by anti-communist Cubans. Thanks in part to Ambassador Bonsal’s solicitude for a regime then insulting his nation as “a vulture preying on humanity!” and poised to steal $2 billion from U.S. stockholders, the anti-Castro plot was foiled, hundreds of the plotters imprisoned or executed, and the regime that three years later came closest to vaporizing many of America’s biggest cities (including Bonsal’s home) with nuclear missiles, survived.

“Nothing but refugee rumors,” was how McGeorge Bundy, JFK’s national security adviser , referred to reports of  those Soviet missiles that those “embittered Cuban exiles with an axe-to-grind”– often  risking their lives to obtain this intelligence — had been  providing  to U.S. officials almost from the moment  the missiles arrived in Cuba. “Nothing in Cuba poses a threat to the U.S.,” continued Bundy, barely masking his scorn at those missile rumor-mongers.” “There’s no likelihood that the Soviets or Cubans would try and install an offensive capability in Cuba.” The cocksure Bundy was a guest on “Face the Nation” while thus assuring the American people. The date was Oct. 14, 1962.

Kennedy himself sounded off the following day: “There’s fifty-odd-thousand Cuban refugees in this country,” he sneered, “all living for the day when we go to war with Cuba. They’re the ones putting out this kind of stuff.”

Exactly 48 hours later U-2 photos sat on JFK’s desk revealing those “refugee rumors,” sitting in Cuba, nuclear armed, and pointed directly at Bundy, JFK and their entire staff of sagacious Ivy League wizards.

“Castro poses no significant threat to the U.S. or any of its hemispheric neighbors. No evidence exists that that Cuba is trying to foment any instability in the Western Hemisphere.” Thus read the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s “National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba,” in 1998. The report had been authored primarily by the agency’s “Cuba Expert,” Ana Belen Montes.

From Havana Castro immediately hailed the DIA report as “an objective report by serious people,” and the Clinton administration agreed, basing its Cuba policy on its recommendations.

Four years after issuing that report, Ana Montes was in U.S. federal prison having been convicted of espionage, (the same charges against the Rosenbergs) and having narrowly dodged their death sentence only with a plea bargain. Ana Belen Montes had been a Castro mole since the mid 80’s.

“Montes passed some of our most sensitive information about Cuba back to Havana” said then Undersecretary for International Security, John Bolton.

“Ana Montes compromised our entire program against Cuba, electronic as well as human” admitted Joel F. Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive.

“We welcome (Raul Castro’s) overture… We are taking a very serious look at it. We are continuing to look for productive ways forward, because we view the present policy as having failed. Engagement (with Castro’s Cuba) is a useful tool to advance our national interests.” (U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, April, 17, 2009.)

And so it goes…….

DIA counter-intelligence officer Scott Carmichael had the key role in uncovering the above-mentioned Ana Belen Montes. Regarding our intelligence services’ “consistency” on Cuba he suggests a factor:

“Cuba’s intelligence service currently has penetrated the U.S. government to a similar extent as the former East German Stasi planted agents inside the West German government.”