Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 5:14:52 PM
Subject: Our Cuban “friends” out and about on the Hill
The Chief of the Cuban Interests Section,
Ambassador Jorge A Bolaños Suarez,
Would like to invite you to an informal get-together
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
12:00-5:00 pm
A wonderful occasion to chat, dance or simply listen to Cuban music and taste the Cuban cuisine and drinks.
Ambassador’s Residence
7105 Millwood Road
Bethesda, Maryland 20817
RSVP
(202) 588 1330
Mrs. Yaima Briñis
In 1982, Cuban Intelligence defector Gerardo Peraza told the US Senate that Cuban Intelligence viewed the US as very strong economically with a very dangerous ability for a wide range of technical intelligence collection. Havana’s analysis also led them to conclude that US Intelligence was unable to effectively use its vast human resources. More specifically, the regime leadership believed that the US’s understanding of foreign threats and ideas was weak, as was America’s will to confront such concerns. Since at least the 1970s, Cuba knew that the US consistently relied and trusted its technical intelligence more than it did its HUMINT (i.e. human spies). There is no indication that Havana’s assessment of these core beliefs has changed.
Havana has successfully used the “innocent victim” message in its “information operations” for some time. This politically powerful premise has allowed Cuba to portray itself as “weak little country” economically crippled by the US embargo, frequently close to being attacked by the US or anti-Castro forces, and constantly engaged in a “David versus Goliath” battle with the United States. Aiding Havana in this never-ending information operation is its exceptional skills at overstating its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses.
Overall departmental structure and missions of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), Cuba’s primary foreign intelligence service:
MX: DI Headquarters
M-I: US Targets
M-II: Latin America
M-III: Analysis
M-IV: Logistics
M-V: Illegal operations
M-VI: Science & Technology (S&T)
M-VII: Unknown
M-VIII: Foreigners in Cuba
M-IX: Active Measures
M-XI: Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)
M-XV: Agent Communications
M-XVI: Guerrilla Support
M-XIX: Counterrevolutionary Targets (i.e., anti-Castro groups).
M-XX: Security Guards
M-XXI: Diplomatic Couriers (uncertain: couriers could potentially be M-VII)
M-XXV: Europe
M-XXX: Africa
CII: Internal Counterintellignece
This reporter has been told that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive cancer that has “entered the end stage”. The information and the quote come from a highly respected source close to Chavez and who is in a position to know his medical condition and history. This source says the prognosis is dire and that Chavez is now not expected to live “more than a couple of months at most.” Chavez is running for re-elec tion in Venezuela but several sources–including the one who revealed the exact kind of cancer– have told me that they believe it is doubtful the dictator will live to see the results.
Voting is scheduled for October 7th. Chavez has been treated three times in Cuba but the exact kind of cancer has been a closely guarded state secret.
Reporter’s note: There is only one source for identifying the cancer and for the prognosis quoted in the first part of the above story. This is a person whom your reporter has very good reason to trust, but you should know that there is only one source so far; no other immediate confirmation. All sources asked for and were granted anonymity because to reveal their names could place them in danger or, at the very least cost them their positions.
Courtesy: HDNet
Whereas prior to his arrest Alan dedicated his life to improving the lives of others, especially the less fortunate, by working in more than 50 countries, where he never experienced any legal trouble and where he resided lawfully; and
Whereas he is in ill health and is suffering from various ailments while in prison, his 89 year-old mother is dying of lung cancer and his 26 year-old daughter is recovering from breast cancer.
Therefore be it resolved that the Rabbinical Assembly call upon the Government of Cuba to commute his sentence on humanitarian grounds and to provide for his immediate release.
Passed by the Rabbinical Assembly Plenum, May, 2012
https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/resolution-support-release-alan-gross?tp=378
WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the wife of Alan Gross, an American aid contractor jailed in Cuba on espionage charges, and pledged to keep up efforts to secure his freedom.
“We have used, and continue to use, every appropriate diplomatic channel, publicly and privately, to press for Mr Gross’s release,” said State Department spokesman William Ostick in a statement after Clinton’s talks with Judy Gross.
Describing Gross’s incarceration as “unjust,” it said the United States had urged governments around the world, prominent figures traveling to Cuba, and religious leaders to press for Gross’s release.
“We call on people around the world to raise this issue with the Cuban government, because Mr Gross deserves to come home to be with his family,” the statement added, without giving any further detail about Tuesday’s meeting.
Gross, who is 63, was arrested in December 2009 for distributing laptops and communications equipment to members of Cuba’s small Jewish community under a US State Department contract.
He was found guilty in March 2011 of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity” of Cuba and sentenced to 15 years prison.
Gross has always denied the charges against him and said earlier this month that he had lost about 100 pounds in weight since his arrest.
Cuba has indicated that they would consider releasing Gross if the United States frees members of the Cuban Five espionage ring.
Those five men were found guilty in 2001 of trying to infiltrate US military installations in southern Florida and were given long prison terms, ranging from 15 years to life.
Cuba has acknowledged the five were intelligence agents, but says they were gathering information on “terrorist” plots by Cuban expatriates in Florida, not spying on the US government.
A Short History of 35 Years of Espionage
State Department Belatedly Burns Seven Cuban Spies
Since the US and Cuba do not have diplomatic relations, this facility is the conduit for contact with the Cuban government. Politically, an “Interests Section” ranks one step below an Embassy. The Cuban Interests Section is hosted by Switzerland, which also hosts the US Interests Section in Havana. One of only two Cuban diplomatic facilities in the US, it is the base for a considerable number of intelligence personnel and missions.
by Carlos Alberto Montaner
Once again, a connection between Fidel Castro and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is on the table.
It’s something that has been said and written endlessly. Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, lived and died convinced that Fidel’s beard was behind the trigger pulled by Lee Harvey Oswald. He did not say so after the crime, so as not to be forced to invade Cuba and provoke another face-off with the Soviet Union.
Remember that Kennedy’s assassination occurred a scant 13 months after the Missile Crisis, when the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of World War III.
The latest author to examine that theory is Brian Latell, a historian, Georgetown University professor and former chief of analysts for Latin America at the CIA, who is now retired.
Latell, who makes his assertions in the book Castro’s Secrets, recently published by Macmillan, does not assure us that the Comandante gave the order to assassinate Kennedy but says Castro knew perfectly well that that was about to happen because his spies had told him.
Latell’s main source for this conclusion — though not the only one — is a defector from the Cuban counterintelligence service, Maj. Florentino Azpillaga, the man who led the fight against the CIA from Castro’s DGI.
Castro had good reason to kill Kennedy. The U.S. president was trying to exterminate him, using the American Mafia. Fidel had received all available information about those plans, not only from his agents and double agents but also by the mafiosi themselves, who were captured by the Cuban police.
Cuba’s very efficient intelligence services, set up by the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi but a lot more flexible and ingenious, knew exactly what the White House was planning, under the almost obsessive leadership of Bobby Kennedy, the president’s brother and the nation’s attorney general.
In fact, the Cuban dictatorship managed to penetrate the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and even co-opted agents of influence in the U.S. House and Senate.
At the time Azpillaga defected, the CIA believed it had recruited 42 Cuban functionaries. Azpillaga explained to the agency that all of them, without exception, were double agents who for years had pulled the wool over U.S. intelligence’s eyes and fooled the polygraphs the CIA used to find if the Cubans lied.
Why did Oswald kill Kennedy? That’s very clear. Because of his devotion to the Cuban revolution and because he believed that, by liquidating the president of the United States, he would save his beloved Fidel Castro’s life. To Oswald, Kennedy’s death was an act of legitimate defense.
Who told Oswald that Kennedy wanted to assassinate Fidel Castro? The Cuban secret services that were in touch with him. It seems that Oswald even had intimate relations with a Cuban agent based in Mexico as a Cuban embassy official. The Mexicans even recorded a jubilant outburst from that lady when she was notified that the president had been assassinated.
For the sake of history, because by now it matters little, the next investigation — Latell does not go into details — has to do with Oswald’s death at the hands of Jack Ruby, a minor hoodlum with links to the Mafia. Why did Ruby kill Oswald and sacrifice himself? Judging from his background, a good theory is that he did so to silence Oswald, because he was ordered to do so by the organization to which he was linked.
What did the Mafia want to hide? It wanted to keep the U.S. authorities, especially powerful Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, from discovering that the American gangsters had made a deal with Havana because the Cuban intelligence services had imprisoned some of them and could do what the FBI was forbidden to do: to exterminate mafiosi anywhere in the world.
Furthermore, by killing Oswald, the Mafia served two opposite masters simultaneously. On one hand, it helped Cuba to eliminate a troublesome Castro sympathizer who had just assassinated the president of the United States at Havana’s coaxing, and on the other it saved Bobby Kennedy from the supreme scandal of finding himself involved in a conspiracy with the Mafia to kill a foreign chief of state, a crime that could have sent him to prison.
Still unwritten is a major book about Ruby and his connections. Let’s hope Latell takes on the job.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/27/2820258/some-of-cubas-secrets-are-not.html
A very interesting article by Cuba watcher Juan Tamayo, “connecting the dots” between the Ministry of the Interior, Havana’s intelligence services, its use of “front companies” to conceal operations, prison labor, and internationally known furniture maker IKEA.
Cuba Confidential 