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

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

Havana Mobilizes For The Liberation of The Spy Ana Belen Montes 3

Campaign image for the liberation of Ana Belen Montes. “Everyone is one country. In that ‘global country’ the principle of loving thy neighbor as much as thyself turns out top be an essential guide.”

(Courtesy:  Translating Cuba)

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana 27 February 2017 – This Tuesday, a campaign launches in Cuba for the liberation of Ana Belén Montes, a former intelligence analyst for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, condemned for espionage and considered a “prisoner of conscience” by the government of Havana. The initiative includes concerts, conversations, and publications on social networks with the hashtag #FreeAnaBelenMontes.

The governing party seeks to revitalize the case of the spy, who was not included on the list of prisoners pardoned by Barack Obama at the end of his term. Now, efforts are focused on “getting her released through diplomatic negotiations,” according to official sources consulted by this newspaper.

Montes was arrested in September 2001 in Washington and sentenced to 25 years in prison for espionage assisting the Havana government. Currently, after her cancer diagnosis and mastectomy, she remains imprisoned in the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Carswell, located on a U.S. Navy Air Station in Fort Worth, Texas.

For many years, the analyst provided substantial information to the Cuban Intelligence Agency, including military data following a visit to El Salvador, which Havana passed on to the FMLN guerillas (Marabundo Martî Front for National Liberation). That information served to inform an attack on a barracks in 1987 in which 65 soldiers perished, including an American.

Feature continues here:  Havana Demands Montes’ Release

 

The Most Dangerous U.S. Spy You’ve Never Heard Of 4

Ana Montes with then-Deputy DCI George Tenet, after receiving an award.

By Thom Patterson, CNN

Programming note: Explore untold stories of American spies: CNN Original Series “Declassified” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT only on CNN.

(CNN) — She put American combat troops in harm’s way, betrayed her own people and handed over so many secrets that experts say the U.S. may never know the full extent of the damage.

Ana Montes was the Queen of Cuba, an American who from 1985 to the September 11, 2001 attacks handed over U.S. military secrets to Havana while working as a top analyst for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

But despite her crimes, Montes remains largely unknown.

You might not think Cuba could do much harm to a superpower like the U.S., said retired DIA official Chris Simmons, appearing on CNN’s “Declassified.”

But you’d be wrong.

The threat increases, he said, when Havana goes on to sell those U.S. military secrets to nations like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Montes’ anger about U.S. foreign policy complicated her relationships and drew the attention of Cubans who enticed her to turn her back on friends, family and her own country.

The fascinating spycraft that surfaced from her case offers a rare glimpse into the invisible world of espionage, where some experts believe there could be as many as 100,000 foreign agents working inside the U.S.

The two Anas

Montes grew up like millions of other girls during the Cold War, in a large, middle-class family, the oldest of four children.

Born to Puerto Rican parents on a U.S. Army base in Germany in 1957, Montes‘ father served his country as an Army doctor. By the time Montes entered high school, her father had left the military and settled the family about an hour north of Washington, D.C., in Towson, Maryland.

She attended the University of Virginia, and in 1977 and 1978, she spent a liberating year studying in Spain. There, she met a Puerto Rican student named Ana Colon.

The two Anas quickly became friends — bonding through their Puerto Rican roots — not politics. “I had no political awareness whatsoever,” said Colon, now a Washington-area elementary school teacher.

Feature continues here:  Ana Montes

 

 

U.S. Academics Honor Expelled Spy With Award 1

Cuban Diplomat Josefina Vidal Presented with LASA Award

Radio Rebelde, web@radiorebelde.icrt.cu

The 34th Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) granted Josefina Vidal, director general of the United States Department of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the prize given by the organization.

Vidal received in New York the LASA Award for her contribution to the new scenario of relations between Cuba and the U.S., reported the Cuban television newscast.

Upon receiving the acknowledgement, she said she extended it to the Cuban people and the leaders of the Revolution who have managed to lead, with intelligence and in an accurate way, the process of dialogue with the northern country.

The Cuban diplomat, while speaking at the second session of the Congress of LASA, reiterated the willingness of the island to promote better relations with the United States, a scenario that she said goes through changes to leave behind the traditional hostility of Washington, translated into policies such as the blockade and subversive programs.

In the four-day forum that started on Friday, the top official reviewed the achievements and challenges of relationships since December 17, 2014, when presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama announced the decision to seek the normalization of ties, Prensa Latina reported.

In the presence of dozens of academicians, intellectuals and scholars of Latin America and the Cuban-American scenario, she recalled the full validity of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington on Cuba for over half a century now and the occupation of territory at the Naval Base of Guantanamo.

She also mentioned the preferential immigration policy for Cuban citizens, programs aimed at promoting internal changes and the illegal radio and television broadcasts.

Vidal highlighted the removal of Cuba from the unilateral list of countries sponsoring terrorism, the resumption of diplomatic relations, the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington DC, the high-level visits and the signing of cooperation agreements in areas of mutual interest.

Likewise, she also highlighted the three meetings held between Raul Castro and Obama, and the U.S. president’s trip to the island in March, which she considered a boost to the process of rapprochement.

Feature continues here:  LASA Awards Cuban Spy

Editor’s Note:  Spy-Diplomat Josefina Vidal was expelled in May 2003 in retaliation for Cuba’s collection against U.S. operations in Iraq. A career Directorate of Intelligence (DI), Vidal is believed to be assigned to Department M-I (U.S. Targets). Long considered the most dangerous element in the DI, M-I focuses on manipulating academia (to include recruiting professors as “talent spotters”) and penetrating the U.S. Intelligence Community and Congress.

Leftist Attorney and “Journalist” Eva Golinger Interviews Cuban Spies 1

The Ministry of the Interior — home to Cuba’s security and intelligence services

My Country, My Love: a Conversation with Gerardo and Adriana of the Cuban Five

by Eva Golinger, Counterpunch

It was nearly nine o’clock that Wednesday December 17, 2014 when I saw a tweet by Rene Gonzalez, one of the five Cuban spies who had been imprisoned in the United States for over a decade. THEY RETURNED! I had to look twice. Could it be true? I quickly started searching in newspapers and digital media for any news about the Five, as they were known in Cuba, but all pointed to Rene’s tweet. Minutes later, in three consecutive tweets Rene presented concrete evidence to allay any doubts. The papers for the release from prison of Gerardo, Ramon and Antonio were signed. They were free.

Previously, on December 4, Gerardo was abruptly transported from the maximum security prison in Victorville, California where he had spent most of his 16 year prison term and taken to a penitentiary center in Oklahoma City. Without knowing why he was there he was put in the “hole”, another term for solitary confinement in a cell with no window or contact with other prisoners, subjected to brutal and inhumane treatment by the guards. He was left there for eleven days. On December 15, he was suddenly transferred to a prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina. He was not even given time to gather and bring the few personal possessions he had accumulated over the last 16 years in prison.

Across the country in Florida, Antonio was awoken at five o’clock in the morning on Monday December 15, in his prison cell in Marianna, a medium security penitentiary. He was only told to pack his personal items, nothing more. He complied, not knowing where he was being taken or why. He was then transported in a private jet to the prison hospital in Butner. There, he thought he’d have to adapt again to a new surrounding and make his life in that prison.

That same day, Ramon, still registered under the false name he used during his intelligence mission in the United States, Luis Medina, was also taken from his cell in Georgia to the prison hospital in Butner. He wasn’t given any instructions or information about the reason for his transfer. It was not until the next day, on December 16, that all three – Gerardo, Ramon and Antonio – met face to face in the same place, and they knew from that moment on they were going home.

They found it impossible to contain their happiness. Between smiles, jokes and hugs, US officials got so nervous that when they brought the three of them to the plane on the early morning of December 17, they forced them to speak English. Perhaps the feared Castro-spies would still be conspiring against the country that had deprived them of their freedom for the past 16 years. In a final blow, as the plane approached their homeland, the authorities covered the windows of the plane. They couldn’t even see the arrival into Cuba.

Feature continues here:  Counterpunch

 

 

Arrogance Unbridled: Canadian Academic Claims Credit In Release of Cuban 5 Reply

The Five with the Kimbers: From left, Antonio, Fernando, Gerardo, Stephen, Jeanie, René and Ramon.

How I Helped the Cuban Five Escape from a Cold War Prison 

Behind the Unlikely Havana-Washington-Halifax Connection

By Stephen Kimber, The Coast (Halifax)

Halifax: December 17, 2014 Inside the second-floor King’s College boardroom, close to a dozen of us huddled around a meeting table, wake-up coffees in hand, listening while our university’s director of finance walked us through her PowerPoint presentation of bad news we already knew, but in far more excruciating detail than any of us wanted to know.

We were in the trough of an existential crisis, struggling with a North America-wide decline in enrolments in liberal arts and journalism, programs we specialized in. I’d spent the last year on a succession of sub-committees, ad hoc working groups and now this College Task Force “to ensure… the institution is financially sustainable on an ongoing basis.” The projections on the screen starkly showcased the crisis. “Given our expected beginning cash balance at the end of 2014-15 and those assumptions,” the school’s finance director explained, “our deficit by the end of 2015-16 will rise to—”

Hi Hey Hello…

My iPhone was ringing! Worse, the phone was in my backpack. Worst, my backpack was on a chair on the other side of the room. Embarrassed, I scrambled to find it. My ringtone was the chorus from one of my hip-hop-musician son’s songs. Why not? Samsung thought the song’s lyrics so phone-perfect they’d built a slick, Hollywood-style video around them to advertise their Galaxy 4 phone. Normally, I found a way to work that father-brag into any conversation when my phone rang. But this did not seem the time or place.

I just want to say hello.

And hear your voice. And watch you talk.

And smell the breeze as you come across.

Hi Hey Hello.

I found the phone, stole a quick glance at the screen. The call was from Alicia Jrapko, the American head of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5. I quickly pressed “Decline.”

Feature Continues Here: Kimber Claims Credit

 

Dropping The Mask: Castro Spy Writes Foreword to Canadian Academic’s “Impartial” Book on the Cuban Five 8

By Chris Simmons

‘What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five’ is a fascinating piece of fiction by Castro apologist Stephen Kimber. Despite objective reviews which found his research unencumbered by facts, the Canadian writer has long sworn his manifesto is accurate and balanced. At long last, the charade is over. Comrade Kimber is currently in Havana celebrating the Spanish-language release of his work, with a new foreword by convicted spy René González, who described the novel as “the best written treatise on the case.”  The Castro regime’s enduring love for Kimber was further demonstrated during Wednesday’s presentation at the University of Havana, when Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada – who served as Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations for nearly three decades – served as the keynote speaker.