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

China Has Had A Spy Base in Cuba For Decades, Former Intelligence Officer Says 1

Nora Gamez Torres, Miami Herald

China’s espionage efforts in Cuba targeting the United States are not recent and date back at least three decades, a retired army counterintelligence agent has told the Miami Herald. It took U.S. intelligence agencies nine years to figure out who was behind the repair and enhancements spotted during the 1990s at a “signals intelligence facility” — a reference to the interception of electronic communications — in the town of Bejucal, a 45-minute drive from Havana. “We saw the enhancements over a decade, a steady evolution; clearly something was going on, but we didn’t know what,” said Chris Simmons, a former chief of a counterintelligence research branch on the Western Hemisphere at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, which had Cuba as its number one target. “And then, in 2001, we discovered that the Chinese had been there already for nine years. We were told at that time that when the Chinese arrived in 1992, they were embedded in a single building within Bejucal, and they were 50 officers in this facility.”

The revelations of the long-term foothold of Chinese spy agencies in Cuba come after new intelligence reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested Cuban and Chinese officials were discussing building a spy base and a military training facility on the island and paying billions of dollars to Cuba in exchange. White House and Pentagon officials first said the initial report had “inaccuracies” without further elaboration. But later, Biden administration officials confirmed that China had intelligence-collection facilities in Cuba since at least 2019, when they were upgraded. The revelations come amid efforts by the Biden administration to improve communications with Beijing. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit China on Tuesday following a trip by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, in which he said he raised the issue of the Chinese base in Cuba with senior Chinese officials. Following the first media reports about a spy base, members of Congress expressed concern for what seemed like a recent effort by China to establish intelligence facilities in Cuba.

“It comes as no surprise to us that the Cuban regime — which has historically opened its doors to foreign adversaries of the United States — and the [People’s Republic of China] are working together to undermine U.S. national security. However, the establishment of intelligence facilities and expansion of military ties this close to U.S. territory is a significant, escalatory step,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairmen of the Senate and the House committees handling foreign affairs, wrote last week in a letter requesting an intelligence briefing on the matter. But as it turns out, Chinese spies have been in Cuba longer than previously disclosed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China quickly moved to secure a position in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida Keys, though, at the time, the Asian country was not perceived as a U.S. adversary, but just as a regional power, Simmons said. “Washington knew the Chinese were engaged,” Simmons said. “But the conventional wisdom was that China just seized the political opportunity because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was the simplified D.C. logic. We could see the ships going in and the weapons coming off. But for the most part, Washington didn’t want to ask the hard questions.”

Feature Continues Here: China-Cuba SIGINT Cooperation

 

U.S. Tracked Employees of China’s Huawei, ZTE at Suspected Spy Bases in Cuba 2

India Blooms News Service | @indiablooms | 21 Jun 2023

Washington: US intelligence agencies tracked employees of the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE at suspected Chinese spy facilities in Cuba, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, US officials received tracking data of Huawei and ZTE workers entering and leaving sites suspected of conducting Chinese eavesdropping operations from the island, according to the report.

The sources said the intelligence reports strengthened suspicions within the Trump administration that the tech giants can be instrumental in expanding China’s ability to spy on the United States from Cuba. However, it is unknown whether such practice is continued under incumbent US President Joe Biden.

Huawei and ZTE do not necessarily produce devices that can be used for eavesdropping or gathering intelligence, but they both specialize in technologies that can facilitate data transmission to China, according to the sources.

Huawei rejected such accusations in a statement, while ZTE and the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a WSJ’s request for comment, the news outlet noted.

Earlier in June, WSJ reported, citing US officials familiar with classified information, that China had reached a deal with Cuba to establish its spy base in the island nation as a response to US military activities near the Chinese borders, including in Taiwan.

Commenting on the article, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the report “is not accurate.” Cuba’s Embassy in Washington said the article was “totally mendacious and unfounded information,” while the Chinese diplomatic mission had no comment.

(With UNI inputs)

China Has Had A Spy Base In Cuba For Years, U.S. Official Says 4

It was unclear whether the report might complicate Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s rescheduled trip to Beijing for meetings that begin June 18.

By Karoun Demirjian and Edward Wong

New York Times, June 10, 2023

A Chinese spy base in Cuba that could intercept electronic signals from nearby U.S. military and commercial buildings has been up and running since or before 2019, when the Chinese base was upgraded, according to a Biden administration official.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, said the spy base was an issue that the Biden administration had inherited from former President Donald J. Trump. After Mr. Biden took office, his administration was briefed about the base in Cuba as well as plans China was considering to build similar facilities across the globe, the official said.

The existence of an agreement to build a Chinese spy facility in Cuba, first reported on Thursday by The Wall Street Journal and also reported by The New York Times and other news outlets, prompted a forceful response from Capitol Hill. In a joint statement, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the panel’s top Republican, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said they were “deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people.”

John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, denied the reports at the time, saying they were “not accurate.” He added that “we have had real concerns about China’s relationship with Cuba, and we have been concerned since Day 1 of the administration about China’s activities in our hemisphere and around the world.”

But a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence cited in Thursday’s reports insisted that China and Cuba had struck an accord to enhance existing spy capabilities.

While Beijing’s global efforts to build military bases and listening outposts have been documented previously, the reports detailed the extent to which China is bringing its intelligence-gathering operations into ever-closer proximity with the United States. Cuba’s coastline is less than 100 miles from the nearest part of Florida, a close enough distance to enhance China’s technological ability to conduct signals intelligence, by monitoring the electronic communications across the U.S. southeast, which is home to several military bases.

China and the United States routinely spy on one another’s activities, and Cuba proximity has long made it a strategically valuable foothold for U.S. adversaries, perhaps most famously during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union attempted to store nuclear missiles on the island nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Feature continues here: China-Cuba Dangerous Liaisons

Editor’s Note: Chinese military intelligence personnel arrived at Bejucal, Cuba’s counterpart to America’s NSA, more than 30 years ago, as revealed in my book, CASTRO’S NEMESIS: True Stories of a Master Spycatcher: 

“…we just debriefed a former Cuban spy who detailed Havana’s intelligence sharing with Beijing and the presence – since 1992 – of Chinese Military Intelligence personnel at Beijucal.”  This information was so sensitive in 2001 that we [DIA’s Office of Counterintelligence] used it as “bait” to prompt DIA traitor Ana Belen Montes to conduct an emergency contact with the massive intelligence base hidden within the Cuban Mission to the United Nations.

New Enhancements at Cuba’s Primary Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Base Suggests Improved Targeting of United States 1

Image Credit: Victor Robert Lee & Digital Globe

Satellite Images: A (Worrying) Cuban Mystery

The new radome in Cuba is unprecedented. Who is behind it?

By Victor Robert Lee, The Diplomat.com

Satellite images from February and May 2018 show a newly constructed radome on the signals intelligence base near Bejucal, Cuba. Its protective dome and elevated mounting make it the first of its kind among the numerous long-standing SIGINT antennas at Bejucal, which have been used to intercept electronic communications from the United States.

The new steerable parabolic antenna and its spherical enclosure (together called a radome) were erected on a site adjacent to other known Cuban surveillance antennas south of Havana near the town of Bejucal between March 2017 and February 2018. The functions of the new antenna are not discernible from the current satellite images, but similar antennas have been employed for signals interception, missile tracking, satellite uplinks and downlinks, radio communications, tracking of objects in space, and in some cases to disrupt satellite communications. The radome, approximately 6-7 meters in diameter, sits atop a square building approximately 11-12 meters wide. If the antenna can be tilted to horizontal – a common capability – its elevated position could also enable direct communications with vessels at sea or other signal sources on the horizon.

The Bejucal signals intelligence site had a relatively static number of parabolic antennas –approximately two dozen– from 2010 until 2016, and only one of them, considerably smaller than the new radome, was covered, although such coverings are common in many other nations, particularly at facilities with military or intelligence functions. Such specialized coverings can protect from weather and wear, but another advantage is that they conceal the orientation, and thus the possible purposes, of the antenna within.

Satellite images of the signals intelligence base near Bejucal also show that two smaller steerable parabolic antennas were installed in April-May 2017, the same period as the beginning of construction of the new radome. These antennas, located 460 meters south of the newly constructed radome, are linked by above-ground conduits to two other antennas installed as recently as May 2016.

Feature continues here: Cuban SIGINT

 

Moscow Building Spy Site in Nicaragua 1

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, attend a welcome ceremony at an airport in Managua, Nicaragua, Friday, July 11, 2014. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Presidential Press Service)

Signals intelligence facility part of deal for 50 Russian tanks

By Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon        

The Russian government is building an electronic intelligence-gathering facility in Nicaragua as part of Moscow’s efforts to increase military and intelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere.

The signals intelligence site is part of a recent deal between Moscow and Managua involving the sale of 50 T-72 Russian tanks, said defense officials familiar with reports of the arrangement.

The tank deal and spy base have raised concerns among some officials in the Pentagon and nations in the region about a military buildup under leftist Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega.

Disclosure of the Russia-Nicaraguan spy base comes as three U.S. officials were expelled from Nicaragua last week. The three Department of Homeland Security officials were picked up by Nicaraguan authorities, driven to the airport, and sent to the United States without any belongings.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the expulsion took place June 14 and was “unwarranted and inconsistent with the positive and constructive agenda that we seek with the government of Nicaragua.”

“Such treatment has the potential to negatively impact U.S. and Nicaraguan bilateral relations, particularly trade,” he said.

The action is an indication that President Obama’s recent diplomatic overture to Cuba has not led to better U.S. ties to leftist governments in the region.

State Department officials had no immediate comment on the expulsion.

The action is an indication that President Obama’s recent diplomatic overture to Cuba has not led to better U.S. ties to leftist governments in the region.

Nicaragua’s Ortega has remained close to the communist Castro regime in Cuba and the leftist regime in Venezuela. He was once part of the communist Sandinista dictatorship, and after winning election as president in 2006 has shifted Nicaragua towards socialism.

No details of the intelligence site, such as its location and when it will be completed, could be learned.

However, the site could be disguised as a Russian GLONASS satellite navigation tracking station that is said to be nearing completion. GLONASS is the Russian version of the Global Positioning System network of satellites used for precision navigation and guidance.

Article continues here:  Russian SIGINT

Editor’s Note:  While the Russians and Cubans maintain an intelligence sharing agreement, it seems Moscow isn’t satisfied with what they are receiving from the Cuban SIGINT system headquartered at Bejucal. Or perhaps Chinese Intelligence, which has had personnel embedded at Bejucal for at least 15 years, isn’t interested in seeing an expanded Havana-Moscow relationship.  

 

 

Havana’s Spies Seen as Big Winner in New US-Cuban Relations 12

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

By Chris Simmons

Havana long ago earned the nickname “Intelligence Trafficker to the World” for its sale and barter of stolen US secrets. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the loss of Moscow’s $3 billion annual subsidy, Cuba’s auctioning of US classified information skyrocketed. Defectors and émigrés report the island’s leadership sees America’s secrets as a commodity to be sold or traded to the highest bidder. These sources say Cuba’s intelligence brokering is now a key revenue stream, earning hundreds of millions of dollars annually in cash, goods, and services for the regime.

Cuba’s intelligence and security services are undoubtedly celebrating the legacy-making breakthrough in US-Cuban relations ordered by President Obama. The US leader’s intentions – while noble – will be undercut by five apparently unanticipated consequences that will trigger an increase in Havana’s targeting of the United States.

First, opening Cuba to American travelers will bring a huge influx of desperately needed cash to Cuban coffers – more specifically, the intelligence and security services that – along with their military brethren – run every major component of the tourism industry as profit-making enterprises.

Second, an estimated million Americans are expected to visit Cuba yearly, as compared to the 60,000 US tourists it currently enjoys. This endless parade of Americans will provide Cuban spies unprecedented opportunities to assess and recruit new American traitors.

Third, unrestricted access to US technology will allow Havana significant upgrades in the technical aspects of espionage and internal repression. While it may seem counterintuitive, Fidel and Raul Castro have long viewed the Cuban people as the greatest threat to regime survival. This explains why their two counterintelligence entities remain Cuba’s largest spy services. Conversely, the island’s three “foreign intelligence” services are directed against a single target – the United States.

The fourth benefit Cuba receives is a huge enhancement in the long-cultivated notion that it poses “no threat” to the US. Spying against an unsuspecting enemy is infinitely easier than operating against a suspicious one. That’s the reason this well-choreographed myth has been aggressively promoted by major Cuban spies like Ana Montes and the husband-wife team of Kendall and Gwen Myers, as well as countless Castro apologists. The boost President Obama gave Havana with his new initiative elevates this myth to heights Havana could not have achieved by itself.

The fifth and final gain will be the end of travel restrictions on Cuba’s US-based diplomat-spies, whose unrestricted travel is currently limited to a 25 miles radius from Washington DC and New York City. Open travel throughout the nation will be a godsend to Cuba’s espionage operations. This new advantage will eventually be enhanced even further by the opening of Cuban diplomatic consulates and Prensa Latina news agencies from coast to coast.

The combination of cash, US tourists, American technology, new diplomatic facilities and unrestricted freedom to travel will markedly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Havana’s intelligence trafficking. In turn, this further incentivizes the regime to use this opportunity to drive up the profit margins and sales of US government and corporate secrets.

A crown jewel in Havana’s intelligence arsenal is its network of communications intercept sites headquartered at Bejucal. This facility — Cuba’s equivalent to NSA — is the only “signals intelligence” site in the downlink of almost every US satellite. This gives Havana a unique competitive advantage the intelligence services of China, Russia, and Iran can only dream about. Several well-placed defectors said the volume of Pentagon, White House, NASA, and other US communications collected by Bejucal is so vast Cuba only had staffing to process the crème de la crème of stolen secrets. When the Castro brother’s pair this daily flood of material with the information and insights contributed by hundreds of human spies serving covertly throughout the US, the result is a terrifyingly real danger to the United States.

Cuba is not a benign nation, but rather a hostile dictatorship that poses a significant, albeit one-dimensional threat to the United States. For example, the Castro regime has warned America’s enemies of every major military operation from the 1983 Grenada invasion through the most recent intervention in Iraq. Its spying has also resulted in the deaths of America citizens.

Cuba is a police state and its apparatchiks respect one thing:  power. As such, its spy services will see Washington’s olive branch as a sign of weakness. They will declare “open season” on the American government, its businesses, and Americans themselves to enrich and maintain the regime to which they have sworn their lives, loyalties, and families’ futures.

Everything We Know About The Huge Spy Base In Cuba That Russia Is Reopening 4

By Corey Adwar & Michael B. Kelley, Business Insider

Moscow and Havana have agreed to reopen a Cold War-era signals intelligence (SIGINT) base in Lourdes, Cuba.

An agreement was reached during Putin’s visit to Cuba last week to reopen the base, Russia business daily Kommersant reported last week. That was confirmed by a Russian security source who told Reuters: ”A framework agreement has been agreed.”

The base was set up in 1964 after the Cuban missile crisis had brought the U.S. and Soviet Union close to confrontation over Moscow’s proposal to place nuclear weapons on Cuban soil.

Havana shut it down in 2001 because of financial issues and American pressure. (Editor’s Note: This statement is incorrect. Russia’s shut down of Lourdes infuriated Fidel Castro).

Located south of Cuba’s capital Havana and just 150 miles from the U.S. coast, the base left many parts of the U.S. vulnerable to Soviet communication intercepts, including exchanges between Florida space centers and U.S. spacecraft. (Editor’s Note: The first statement is partially incorrect — Lourdes is roughly 100 miles from the U.S. coast).

Here’s what a Congressional report from 2000 said about the facility:

• The Secretary of Defense formally expressed concerns to Congress regarding the espionage complex at Lourdes, Cuba, and its use as a base for intelligence directed against the United States.

• The Secretary of Defense, referring to a 1998 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, reported that the Russian Federation leased the Lourdes facility for an estimated $100 million to $300 million a year.

• It has been reported that the Lourdes facility was the largest such complex operated by the Russian Federation and its intelligence service outside the region of the former Soviet Union.

• The Lourdes facility was reported to cover a 28 square-mile area with over 1,500 Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base.

• Experts familiar with the Lourdes facility have reportedly confirmed that the base had multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications, in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices.

• News sources have reported that the Lourdes facility obtained sensitive information about United States military operations during Operation Desert Storm.

• Academic studies cite official U.S. sources affirming that the Lourdes facility was used to collect personal information about United States citizens in the private and government sectors, and offered the means to engage in cyberwarfare against the U.S.

• The operational significance of the Lourdes facility reportedly grew dramatically after Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a 1996 order demanding the Russian intelligence community increase its gathering of U.S. and other Western economic and trade secrets.

Read more here:  The Lourdes SIGINT Base  

Editor’s Note:  The caption under the lead photo in the Business Insider posting of this article is highly misleading. During the Cold War, Moscow provided Havana with subsidies exceeding three billion dollars annually. Given this massive foreign aid influx, it is grossly disingenuous to claim that Cuba allowed the Russians to stay there “rent-free” through 1992.

Russia Rejoins Cuba’s Espionage Apparatchik in the Americas 1

The former Russian listening station at Lourdes some 20 miles south of Havana is seen in this December 2000. It was mothballed a year later but could reopen, it is reported. [Courtesy: The (London) Daily Mail]

By Jerry Brewer, in Mexidata-Info

In order to effectively monitor aggression, hostile intelligence acts, interference, and other forms of insurgency within their homelands, democracies throughout the Americas must immediately address their governments’ counterintelligence missions against those rogue and dictatorial style regimes that pose obvious threats.

Russia’s recent decision to reopen its electronic spying center in Cuba is once again an obvious act that aggressively demonstrates support for the Cuban Castro regime, and a shared dispute versus the United States.

The Lourdes base closed 13 years ago, having been built in 1962. The closing was reportedly due to the economic crisis in Russia, along with repeated requests from the United States.

Lourdes served as a signals’ intelligence (SIGINT) facility, among other applications, located just 100 miles from the United States at Key West, Florida. During what has been described as the Cold War, the Lourdes facility was believed to be staffed “by over 1,500 KGB, GRU, Cuban DGI, and Eastern Bloc technicians, engineers and intelligence operatives.”

In 2000, it was reported that China signed an agreement with the Cuban government to share use of the facility for its own intelligence agency.

Despite pro-Cuba chants for economic aid and the lifting of the 50 year old Cuban Embargo, placed via President John F. Kennedy’s Proclamation 3447, there appears to be no shortage of funding by Cuba for that nation’s energetic spy apparatchik.

The original U.S. manifesto regarding Cuba, in 1962, expressed the necessity for the embargo until such time that Cuba would demonstrate respect for human rights and liberty.  And today, there certainly cannot be much of an argument that the continuing Castro regime has ever complied with any aspect of that mandate.  In fact, Castro’s revolution has arrogantly continued to force horrific sacrifices on Cubans in their homeland, as well as suffering by those that fled the murderous regime over the decades and left families behind.

Neither of the Castro brothers has ever, even remotely, disguised their venomous hatred for the U.S., democracy, or the U.S. way of life – even prior to the embargo.  Their anti-U.S. rhetoric continues, along with Russia and Venezuela, and they continue to extol radical leftist and communist governments throughout the world.

The Russian parliament recently pardoned 90% of Cuba’s US$38.5 billion debt dating back to the now defunct Soviet Union.

Feature continues here:  Russia Rejoins Cuba 

Russia Plans to Reopen Post in Cuba for Spying 1

Lourdes Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) base in Cuba (Courtesy – Federation of American Scientists)

By ANDREW E. KRAMER, New York Times

MOSCOW — Russia has decided to reopen an electronic eavesdropping post in Cuba that it closed more than a decade ago, reaching out for a onetime symbol of its global superpower status, Russian officials and newspaper reports said on Wednesday.

President Vladimir V. Putin agreed with Cuba’s leader, Raúl Castro, during a visit to Cuba last week to reopen the post. In exchange, Mr. Putin agreed to forgive about 90 percent of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt to Russia, or about $32 billion. News of the debt relief emerged last week, but the agreement to reopen the listening post was first reported Wednesday by the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Members of the Russian Parliament appeared to confirm the report in public statements praising what seemed to be a step by Russia toward re-establishing a military presence in Cuba, at a time when the conflict in Ukraine has sent Russian-American relations spiraling to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

Russia vacated the listening post site at Lourdes, outside Havana, in 2001. At the time, Mr. Putin cited the strapped finances of the post-Soviet Russian government and said the war in Chechnya was a higher priority than maintaining a Cold War relic half a world away.

The United States Congress had also pressed Russia to move out of Lourdes, linking the abandonment of the site with deals to restructure Russia’s heavy foreign debt.

Russia closed a listening post at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, at that time as well. There were no indications on Wednesday that the Kremlin intended to revive that post.

In its heyday, the Soviet signals intelligence base at Lourdes enabled Moscow to listen in on microwave transmissions of telephone conversations in the southeastern United States, keep an eye on the United States Navy in the Atlantic, monitor the space program at Cape Canaveral and communicate with its spies on American soil. In 1993, when Mr. Castro was chief of the Cuban armed forces, he boasted that Russia obtained 75 percent of its strategic intelligence on the United States through Lourdes.

Article continues here: Russia to Reopen Spy Base