Anti-Israel Activists Behind Columbia University Protests Trained in Cuba for Years 2

Cuban intelligence has spent decades inciting radical leftist organizations to spread hatred toward the United States and Israel

By Gelet Martínez Fragela, ADNAmerica.com, May 7, 2024

Activists from the U.S. travelled with the People’s Forum and met with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on May Day, or International Workers’ Day, in May 2023

Some of the anti-Israel protests taking place at U.S. college campuses, including the recent demonstrations at Columbia University, have been supported by organizations that traveled to communist Cuba to receive resistance training, an ADN investigation has uncovered.

ADN’s investigation coincides with a recent Sunday report published by the New York Post that revealed a radical NYC based organization known as The People’s Forum familiarized anti-Israel activists with Black Lives Matter protest techniques just hours before they stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, and that the group was incited by Manolo De Los Santos–a radical activist organizer with deep ties to communist Cuba.

De Los Santos, who has long been the subject of past ADN investigations, has a lengthy, storied history of working with some of Cuba’s top communist party leaders including its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

This past weekend the former seminarian turned radical leftist activist urged pro-Palestinian Columbia student protestors to “give Joe Biden a hot summer” and criticized Columbia’s “Zionist” administration for wanting to “resemble its masters in Israel.” He praised demonstrators for “deciding that resistance is more important than negotiations” and incited protesters to “make business as usual in this country unsustainable.”

Hours after Monday’s meeting was convened, dozens of protesters broke into and illegally stormed into Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, seizing control of the university building in a standoff with education officials–the culmination of decades of Cuba promoting anti-Israel sentiment within U.S. based radical leftist organizations–and De Los Santos was credited for recreating “the summer of 2020,” a reference to the Black Lives Matter violence that besieged northern U.S. cities after the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.

The People’s Forum: Sympathies to Communist China, Cuba and Hamas

The People’s Forum is known for having sympathies to the Chinese and Cuban communist parties, and describes itself as “an incubator of movements for the working class and marginalized communities,” and has been a cornerstone of anti-Israel protests since Hamas’ attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023. 

One day after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel, TPF organized a protest in Times Square where attendees celebrated the terrorist organization and waved signs with anti-Semitic slogans and images.

Article continues here: Cuban-trained “protestors” 

Family of Cuban Dissident Who Died in Mysterious Car Crash Sues Accused American Diplomat-Turned-Spy 1

Ambassador-Spy Manual Rocca

By JOSHUA GOODMAN AND JIM MUSTIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI — The widow of a prominent Cuban dissident killed in a mysterious car crash has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a former U.S. ambassador suspected of working for Cuba, accusing the former diplomat of sharing intelligence that emboldened Cuba’s communist leaders to assassinate a chief opponent.

Oswaldo Payá died in 2012 when his car crashed into a tree in eastern Cuba in what the government deemed an accident caused by driver error. However, a survivor said the vehicle had been rammed from behind by a red Lada with government plates, a claim in line with findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights last year that state security agents likely participated in the activist’s death.

In the state lawsuit filed Thursday in Miami, Ofelia Payá accused Manual Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, of being an “accomplice” to her husband’s “assassination.” Rocha was arrested in December on charges he worked as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.

Rocha “directly aided Cuban officials by providing them with critical intelligence that he obtained through his Top-Secret security clearance and influential roles,” the lawsuit alleges. “Cuba would not have been able to execute Mr. Payá with impunity without Defendant conspiring with and providing intelligence and aid to Cuba’s dictatorship.”

The lawsuit, filed on what would have been Payá’s 72nd birthday, underscores the deep anger and sense of betrayal felt by Miami’s powerful Cuban exile community, which viewed Rocha as a conservative standard bearer and one of their own. Payá is being represented pro bono by attorney Carlos Trujillo, the son of Cuban immigrants who served as Ambassador to the Organization of American State during the Trump administration.

While the lawsuit cites no evidence linking Rocha to the death, it claims Rocha as a diplomat and in business after retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2002 sought ways to secretly strengthen Castro’s revolution.

Those efforts allegedly included securing a position from 2006 to 2012 as a special adviser to the head of U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which has responsibility over Cuba.

“Beneath this veneer of loyalty and service to the United States, Defendant held a clandestine allegiance to the Cuban regime,” the lawsuit alleges.

A review by The Associated Press of secret diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks found that over 20 months between 2006 to 2008, diplomats from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana sent SOUTHCOM’s commander 22 reports about Payá’s activities, his funding from the U.S. government and interactions with American officials.

Feature Continues Here: Cuban Spy Sued

Former US Ambassador Admits to Working for Decades as Cuban Intelligence Agent 2

Former Ambassador and admitted spy, Manuel Rocca

A former career U.S. diplomat says he will plead guilty to charges of serving as a secret agent for communist Cuba going back decades

By JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press and JIM MUSTIAN Associated Press

February 29, 2024, 2:37 PM

MIAMI — A former career U.S. diplomat said in court Thursday that he will plead guilty to charges of serving as a secret agent for communist Cuba going back decades, bringing a lightning fast resolution to a case prosecutors described as one of the most brazen betrayals in the history of the U.S. foreign service.

Manuel Rocha, 73, told a federal judge he would admit to two federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, charges that carry a maximum penalty of between 5 and 10 years in prison each. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop 13 additional counts for crimes including wire fraud and making false statements.

Prosecutors and Rocha’s attorney indicated they have agreed upon a sentence but details were not disclosed in court Thursday. He is due back in court on April 12, when he’s likely to be sentenced.

“I am in agreement,” said Rocha, shackled at the hands and ankles, when asked by U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom if he wished to change his plea to guilty.

Rocha was arrested by the FBI at his Miami home in December on allegations that he engaged in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981 — the year he joined the U.S. foreign service — including by meeting with Cuban intelligence operatives and providing false information to U.S. government officials about his contacts.

Federal authorities have said little about exactly what Rocha did to assist Cuba while working at the State Department for two decades at posts in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. He followed that with a lucrative post-government career that included a stint as a special adviser to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command.

Instead, the case relies largely on what prosecutors say were Rocha’s own admissions, made over the past year to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operative named “Miguel.”

In those recordings, Rocha praised the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante,” branded the U.S. the “enemy” and bragged about his service for more than 40 years as a Cuban mole in the heart of U.S. foreign policy circles, the complaint says.

“What we have done … it’s enormous … more than a Grand Slam,” he was quoted as saying in one of several secretly recorded conversations.

Article continues here: Spy pleads guilty

Cuban Spies Have a Particular Talent for Getting People to Spill Secrets. That’s a Problem for Washington 1

Geoff Nixon – CBC News

Convicted spy Ana Belén Montes — formerly the Defense Intelligence Agency’s lead analyst on Cuban affairs.

Cuba lies more than 100 kilometres from the nearest slice of the continental United States, but it has managed to keep a close eye on what Uncle Sam is up to for a very long time.

That’s because it has repeatedly been able to find high-flying American sources who are willing to spill U.S. secrets to Havana — for years, or even decades.

They include Ana Belén Montes, the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency analyst who passed secret information on to her Cuban handlers from the mid-1980s through to the start of this century. Her spying days ended with an arrest days after the 9/11 attacks.

Then there’s Walter Kendall Myers, the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell and former State Department employee, who spied for Cuba nearly twice that long and was arrested in his retirement years. Now 86 years old, he is serving a life sentence at a Colorado prison.

Most recently, U.S. officials announced charges against Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador and one-time member of the Bill Clinton-era National Security Council, accused of having acted as a covert agent for Cuba since 1981. The 73-year-old Rocha has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Cuba has shown a knack for finding the right people to help advance its interests in the U.S. over the long-term. Yet former spy-catchers say the country remains undervalued in this realm, despite its prowess.

“They’re not as big as the CIA but they’ve done a phenomenal job of punching the U.S. in the nose,” said retired FBI special agent Pete Lapp, who helped investigate the spying activities of Belén Montes early in his career. His recently published book Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years tells that story.

Eric O’Neill, a former FBI counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence operative, offered a similar assessment of Cuba’s record on U.S. soil.

“They have been eating our lunch,” he said in a recent interview.

Article continues here: Cuban targeting

Cuba Interferes With Florida 2022 Elections, Says US Intelligence 1

By Bert Hoover, Latin Post  

The US intelligence community revealed in a report on Monday that the Cuba government engaged in influence operations targeting specific US candidates in Florida during the 2022 midterm elections, according to the Miami Herald.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that Cuban officials built relationships with American media members critical of Havana’s critics in Congress.

Additionally, a network of social media accounts, likely linked to Cuba, was identified as amplifying derogatory content about US politicians deemed hostile to the Cuban state.

The declassified intelligence assessment does not specify targeted individuals or the effectiveness of Cuba’s influence campaign in Florida.

The report acknowledged only a few countries with targeted campaigns against the US democratic system, including Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba.

Foreign Meddling Expands in US 2022 Midterm Elections

Declassified US Intelligence findings on Monday indicated an increase in foreign government efforts to influence the US 2022 midterm elections compared to the 2018 elections, CNN reports.

While no foreign leader ordered a comprehensive influence campaign like Russia’s in 2016, the report highlighted meddling attempts by China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba in the 2022 congressional elections.

The intelligence community, with high confidence, asserts that China implicitly sanctioned efforts to influence selected midterm races involving members of both US political parties.

This aligns with a broader set of directives issued by Chinese Communist Party leaders since 2020, aiming to intensify endeavors to shape US policy and public opinion favorably toward China.

Feature continues here: Cuban Interference

Growing Concerns As Russians Make Big Return To Cuba 1

Headquarters of Cuba’s dreaded Ministry of the Interior (MININT) [Photo — Havana Times

BY HANK TESTER, CBS Miami

MIAMI – “The Cuban government is desperate, they have no money, no gas, they have no food.”

That said by Otto Reich, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and President of The Center for a Free Cuba.

Reich reacting to news that Russia and Cuba are renewing their relationship that all but disappeared after the Soviet Union dissolved in the late 1980’s.

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union was a big Cuba player, propping up the Castro Governments Communist based economy.

The Russians bailed when the Soviet Union fell apart.

Now, they say they are back with big promises and the Cuban’s are sweeting the pie.

Russia is offering Cuba great deals on gasoline, emergency donations of wheat, promises to build hotels, increase Russian tourism flows, and open retail stores stocked with Russian household products.

In return, Cuba will grant Russian entrepreneurs long term property leases.

Russian banks can open up, duty-free import of Russian equipment.

Russian business would be able to take profits out of the country.

“There is the promise to open a Russian vehicle assembly plant,” Reich is quick to mention.

“I am told they are sending personal to revamp the spy station,” he said.

The Russian operated an ease dropping spy station for years, then phased out their facility, but now may bring it back.

Cuba watchers say we should get ready for more Russian Naval Ships docking in the Port of Havana. With Russian long range bombers flying down the East Coast of the United States, landing in Cuba.

Russian Spy ships lingering just off the Atlantic territorial waters of the United States of America.

“They, the Russians, have always seen Cuba as a permeant aircraft carrier off the coast of the United States.”

Feature continues here: Russia’s Return to Cuba

Why Is A Cuban Spy Who Was Nabbed In The U.S. And Freed In A Prisoner Swap Visiting Moscow? 1

BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES, Miami Herald

Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, the convicted Cuban spy who now heads the nationwide neighbor snitch program known as the Committee For the Defense of the Revolution

A Cuban spy who was captureand imprisoned in the U.S., and later released in a prisoner swap with Cuba, has been making official visits overseas, including to Russia, for the island’s government, raising questions about his role, especially after his trip followed visits by the head of Cuba’s intelligence and security services. During a two-week trip that started mid-May, Cuba’s Minister of the Interior, Gen. Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, met with the Vietnamese minister of Public Security, China’s minister of Public Security and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev, whom he had previously met in Havana in March. Closely tracking Álvarez Casas with his own tour to Vietnam, Laos and Russia was Gerardo Hernández, the former spy who currently heads a Cuban organization with no foreign-policy mandate. Media reports and government statements placed Hernández and Gen. Álvarez Casas in Vietnam at the same time, and possibly also in Russia, though their trips have not been officially linked.

Hernández was the leader of a Cuban espionage ring, known as the Wasp Network, dismantled by the FBI in South Florida in 1998. He was convicted of espionage and conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in Cuba’s shoot-down of two planes owned by the Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, in which four people were killed. Hernández was sentenced to life in prison, but was released by President Barack Obama during a prisoner swap in December 2014 after serving 16 years. Welcomed in Cuba as a hero, Hernández was appointed in May 2016 as vice-rector of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs higher education institute, from which he had graduated in 1988. In September 2020, he was named general coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, or CDR, the organization created by Fidel Castro to take state surveillance to every street block on the island. But beyond the cooperation of CDR members with the police, the organization lacks resources and has little power, giving Hernández’s primarily a symbolic role even if, as head of the CDR, he has secured a seat at the National Assembly’s executive arm, the Council of State.

Officially, Hernández was invited by Russia’s Public Chamber, an organization created by Putin to bring civil society under state control, critics say. During his tour, the former spy has met with Laos Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Gen. Chansamone Chanyalath and a powerful Russian senator, Dmitry Kuzmin, and performed ceremonial activities usually carried out by high-ranking government officials, like laying wreaths at monuments. Past CDR presidents rarely had contact with foreign officials, much less embark on an international tour. And the fact that Hernandez’s trip included a Moscow stop when Cuban and Russian intelligence services are getting closer has raised questions about the purpose of the visit.

Feature continues Here: Failed Spy Visits Moscow 

Biden Should Keep Cuba On State Sponsors of Terrorism List 3

Photo courtesy of cigaraficionado.com

“The list is a unilateral designation by the United States government towards countries that the State Department deems to be supporting international terrorism.”

By Rolf Niederstrasser, Political analyst  – Havana Times

HAVANA TIMES – In late January, the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE) urged President Biden in a letter to remove Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism after a U.S. delegation met with Cuban officials to resume talks on law enforcement issues. The organization stated that the Caribbean nation was placed on the list for political reasons rather than pose a real threat to national security.

While Cuba, an impoverished nation with a fleeing population, can appear harmless to an economic and military superpower like the United States, looks can deceive. Havana’s real threat is unconventional: Cuba continues to recruit students and professors in American universities as spies, urging them to obtain government positions, steal, and resell state secrets to US enemies, while actively sponsoring terrorism around the world. In addition to behaving as an information broker, they subvert democratic institutions in Latin America through cultural populism, polarizing societies, bringing authoritarian left-wing governments to power, and destabilizing relations with the United States.

Once a Soviet vessel that waged proxy wars and covert operations aiding leftist movements in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the inevitable economic collapse of Cuba due to its reliance on Soviet imports and the mismanagement of the economy. The Intelligence Directorate agents, or DI in its Spanish initials, were once Soviet KGB-trained officials and enforced many of their operations in Latin America, becoming an effective ideological and economic tool for Cuba after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Unlike the CIA or European agencies that operate with big budgets and technological capabilities, Cuban spy networks have instead relied on forging alliances throughout the world to advance the goal of what they call their “struggle against US imperialism.” It includes recruiting people in academia, the arts, religious leaders, celebrities, armed rebels and extremist organizations, and politicians.

The creation of the São Paulo Forum in 1990 by Fidel Castro, together with a young Lula Da Silva, attracted radical left-wing parties, aspirants, and leaders, taught them how to subvert their population, create social polarization, and rise to power. Still today, with recurring Pink Tides in the region, the Cuban regime has regained a lifeline of influence and economic aid from sympathizing governments. At the same time, they have continuously pushed the failed agenda of “Socialism of the 21st Century,” a Marxist revisionist ideology that intends to solve structural issues in Latin America like poverty, inequality, and gender issues, but finalized in the crackdown of democratic institutions all over Latin America and compromised US relationships with governments and interests in the hemisphere.

Additionally, the São Paulo Forum has not only maintained ties with terrorist and drug trafficking groups. Cuba also harbors rogue factions of FARC, which walked out of the peace negotiations with the Colombian government, two members of the armed Basque terrorist group ETA of Spain, ELN leaders responsible for the 2019 bombings in Colombia’s capital that killed two dozen people and injured many more, and US fugitives of the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorists List that have escaped prosecution for murder and terrorist attacks like Assata Shakur and Víctor Manuel Gerena.

Article continues here: State Sponsors of Terrorism

 

Ana Belen Montes: Anachronistic Spy For Cuba 1

Austrian actress Lotte Lenya, playing Soviet Colonel Rosa Klebb in the film “From Russia with Love” (1963), one of the most remembered villains of the Bond saga. (Screen capture

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 15 January 2023 –The spy is defined by an ability to keep a secret. The secret configures everything else — temperament, friendships, love, fear, sex and loyalty. The accumulation of confidential information makes the spy a danger to both sides. The expiration date depends on how quickly the secret changes hands. The vertigo of such a life has to be addictive.

For several weeks I was obsessed with the way in which the spy Ana Belén Montes had been shaped by the secret. It was, above all, a communication problem. Montes started from resentment against her country and a bulletproof loyalty for Castro. We know that she had been transmitting data to Havana since the eighties and that she met every day with her contact, like a disciplined reporting machine.

Her appearance couldn’t be more mediocre: short hair, office worker’s dark circles and cheap suits. It’s revealing that Havana has celebrated her release with such reluctance after twenty years in prison. Only the back benches of the regime showed some enthusiasm in their propaganda.

The release of Ana Belén Montes reminds the world of things that Havana would prefer not to reveal. For example, the fact that Cuba’s espionage network is still in action, although its scope is modest and its methods are outdated. One sees Montes and knows that at the end of the line Castro is waiting, in suspense, holding the phone. Both figures — Mata Hari and the Kaiser — are dinosaurs, parodies, relics of the Cold War.

If Montes were a villain in a James Bond movie, she would not be the blonde Tatiana Romanova but the repulsive Rosa Klebb. Unappetizing, Sean Connery would have avoided seducing her. I find it easier to see her behind an old Macintosh, downloading the Pentagon files on a floppy disk, while nervously drinking coffee.

Feature continues here: Anachronistic Ana

Ana Belen Montes Frustro Intercambio de Información Sobre Cuba Entre el Pentágono y Espana 1

diciembre 28, 2022

Ricardo Quintana, Marti

Ana Belén Montes, presa en Estados Unidos por espiar para el régimen cubano.

Durante casi una década, Ana Belén Montes, analista de la Agencia de Inteligencia de Defensa de Estados Unidos (DIA) y reclutada en 1984 por los servicios cubanos de espionaje, suministró a La Habana información clave sobre un intercambio de larga data entre la DIA y su par española, entonces conocida como el Centro Superior de Información de la Defensa (CESID).

Es solo una de las revelaciones que contiene el libro, “Castro’s Nemesis: True Stories of a Master Spy-Catcher,” de Chris Simmons, el interrogador principal de Montes, quien se refiere al particular en un comunicado de prensa.

Recuerda el oficial del Ejército jubilado haber propuesto a la contrainteligencia española la oportunidad sin precedentes de interrogar a Montes sobre el tema, pero los europeos la rechazaron después de que Simmons sugirió que el intercambio sería una pérdida total.

“Prácticamente toda la información que Madrid compartió con Estados Unidos respecto a Cuba llegó a La Habana”, escribió Simmons, un experto en espiar a espías que inició su carrera militar como paracaidista.

Montes, arrestada en 2001 y condenada a 25 años de privación de libertad en 2002, podría atribuir a su excepcional memoria haber destruido la relación entre la CESID y la DIA.

“Al verse a sí misma como una heroína de la Revolución Cubana, dedicaba una o dos horas diarias a confeccionar un resumen de los secretos más importantes de las entonces 16 agencias de espionaje de Estados Unidos. Como verdadera creyente, Montes repitió esta práctica todos los días a lo largo de dieciséis años de trabajo como espía”, escribió Simmons.

Dada “su arrogancia” y “el desdén” de Cuba hacia los servicios de inteligencia de EEUU, Simmons no descarta que Montes probablemente se reuniera con los oficiales de la inteligencia cubana que la atendían en Madrid mientras asistía a estos intercambios.

Al repasar la historia del exilio cubano, Simmons destaca el hecho de que tras la llegada al poder de Fidel Castro en 1959, más de 120.000 cubanos huyeron a España, lo que ubica a ese país como el segundo después de Estados Unidos con el mayor número de exiliados de la isla.

“La presencia de esta importante comunidad de exiliados, junto con los estrechos lazos económicos, políticos y culturales que unen a las dos naciones, llevó a España a convertirse en sede de uno de los tres centros de operaciones más grandes e importantes de la inteligencia cubana en el mundo, junto a con EEUU y México”, escribió

Simmons es de la opinión de que la Dirección de Inteligencia de Cuba está entre las diez mejores del mundo y sus bases de operaciones conocidas como “Centros” generalmente se ocultan en las sedes diplomáticas.

Desde 1959, argumenta Simmons, los servicios de inteligencia de Cuba se han centrado en dos objetivos. El pueblo cubano, a nivel nacional y extraterritorial, sigue siendo su principal diana ya que La Habana ve a su población como la mayor amenaza para la supervivencia del régimen.

“El otro gran objetivo sigue siendo Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, su enfoque es puramente económico, ya que ahora se cree que la venta o el trueque de secretos estadounidenses constituye una de las mayores fuentes de ingresos que sustentan al gobierno cubano,” dijo.

En cuanto a Montes, recuerda el exmilitar que saldrá en libertad próximo 8 de enero.