Analyst: Terry McAuliffe Likely Spied Upon During Cuban Visit
VA Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Traveled to Cuba in 2010
By Lachian Markay, Washington Free Beacon
A former U.S. counterintelligence officer claims Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, was likely spied on by Cuban intelligence services during a 2010 visit to Havana.
McAuliffe visited Cuba to promote Virginia’s agricultural exports. He convinced the regime to allow imports of Virginia apples, poultry, soybeans, and wine, the Washington Post reported.
McAuliffe met with Jorge Bolaños, a retired Cuban spy who now heads the Cuban Interests Section in the United States, ahead of the trip. The bureau is the communist nation’s diplomatic outpost in Washington, D.C. and experts believe it houses members of the nation’s clandestine services.
McAuliffe would later attend a party hosted by Bolaños at the Cuban Interests Section.
His meeting with Bolaños prior to the Havana junket likely triggered increased attention from the Directorate of Intelligence, Cuba’s spy agency, during the trip, according to Chris Simmons, a former top U.S. Army counterintelligence official specializing in Cuba.
“Given the Directorate’s intimate understanding of the American political arena, it undoubtedly awarded McAuliffe a level of attention fair beyond normal business travelers since his return to politics was virtually assured,” Simmons wrote last week.
Bolaños is officially “retired,” Simmons noted, but he reportedly “maintained close ties with staff members of two of Cuba’s five spy services as well as the Superior Institute of Intelligence (ISI), where the regime’s civilian intelligence officers are trained.”
Simmons boasts in his online bio that he was “deeply involved with the majority of U.S. Counterintelligence successes against Cuba” from 1996 to 2004.
“You can take what he says to the bank,” Humberto Fontova, a Cuban-American author who is critical of the Castro regime, said of Simmons’ analysis.
“This is old hat,” Fontova told the Washington Free Beacon in an email, noting that he documented instances of Cuban espionage involving high-profile American officials in his book, The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro.
Fontova pointed specifically to quotes from Cuban intelligence officers who say they were tasked with eavesdropping on famous Americans.
“My job was to bug visiting American’s hotel rooms […] with both cameras and listening devices. And famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence,” Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez told Fontova.
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