The Communist Roots of a “Cuba Expert”

This is an extract from Gail Reed’s bio, as posted by Castro apologist Arturo Lopez-Levy on his blog, The Havana Note:

Gail Reed

“Gail Reed, M.S., is a journalist who serves as International Director of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), an Atlanta-based non-profit organization that develops programs bridging the US, Cuban and global medical, nursing and public health communities. She is Executive Editor of MEDICC Review, a quarterly journal on Cuban medicine and public health.

Ms. Reed has written on social and economic issues in Cuba for the last two decades. From 1993 to 1997, Ms. Reed regularly contributed to Business Week magazine, and from 1994 to 1996, was producer in Havana for NBC News.”

Here is the real Gail Reed:

Ms. Reed is a former member of the “Venceremos Brigade,” a collection of American sympathizers of Castro’s revolution.  While with the brigade, she was spotted and assessed by Cuban Intelligence officer Julian Torres Rizo.  In 1977, columnist Jack Anderson identified Torres as the chief of Havana’s US-based intelligence operations.  At the time, he served under diplomatic cover at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations (CMUN).  During Torres’ New York City assignment, the Center for Cuban Studies allowed him to have an office at its facility.   

In testimony to the US Senate in 1982, Cuban Intelligence defector Gerardo Peraza:

• Confirmed Torres was a fellow intelligence officer and that he served as chief of the CMUN Intelligence Center under diplomatic cover as a First Secretary. 
• Confirmed Torres began his intelligence career by recruiting members for the Venceremos Brigade (VB).
• Reported that after the VB’s creation, Cuban intelligence quickly began tasking VB members to collect publicly available information.  This was done to conserve Cuban resources, maximize Havana’s collection of open-source material, and as a test of a VB member’s support.  Cuban Intelligence found telephone books to be an especially useful item, as the books could identify and verify the identity of high-interest personnel.  VB members also provided considerable details on US Congressional members, staff, and their relatives.

In the late 1970s, Torres and Reed married.  Shortly after the end of his CMUN tour, Torres was appointed Ambassador to Grenada.  Reed worked in Press Office at the Cuban Embassy.  After the October 1983 US invasion, Reed and her Ambassador-Spy husband returned to Cuba, where he was reportedly demoted to cane field worker and disappeared from public view.

Additional newsworthy facts on Reed are found here:  Gail Reed Supplemental