Cuba’s spy program deeply rooted in U.S.

By Carlos Alberto Montaner

From The Miami Herald

Chris Simmons, a former lieutenant colonel in U.S. counterintelligence, insists that there are dozens of spies in the service of Cuba within the government of the United States and in the nation’s universities.

He made that assertion in connection with the recent arrest of Walter Kendall Myers, a former high-ranking State Department official, and his wife, Gwendolyn. Myers spied for Cuba for three decades, and his motivation (like his wife’s) was of an ideological nature. He sympathized with the Cuban dictatorship and felt an enormous contempt for his country’s economic system and political conduct.

Finest spy services

Simmons’ observations must be taken into account. He is the most knowledgeable expert there is about the activities of Cuban intelligence in the United States. He often states that Cuba has one of the world’s finest espionage and counterespionage services and deserves credibility.

There is not a single important U.S. institution that has not somehow been infiltrated, directly or indirectly, by the Cuban G-2. It was Simmons who dug up ”mole” Ana Belén Montes, a high-ranking Pentagon official who later was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for spying for Havana.

The interesting thing about the Myers case is not that he was a spy for Cuba recruited in the State Department but that the Cubans ”planted” him in that agency.

Three decades ago, they asked him to return to State, from which he had separated, for the purpose of passing to Cuba secret information about any topic that might have strategic value and could be utilized by, sold to or swapped with countries such as the Soviet Union or Iran.

What the Cubans did at the State Department and the Pentagon they have no doubt replicated or attempted to replicate at the CIA, the FBI, the Army, the Department of Justice or any other administrative, political or media organization where it is convenient to have a good ear capable of collecting sensitive information or lips capable of subtly defending the interests of the Castro brothers’ government.

Moreover, I do not doubt — and surely Simmons doesn’t, either — that the Cuban services, directly or indirectly, have made efforts to ”plant” or ”cultivate” someone like Myers inside the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

Why not? To facilitate the election of an American congressman and to keep him on Capitol Hill is not a very complicated task. It’s just a question of finding the right candidate and providing — discreetly — the resources. Penetrating the top levels at the Pentagon was a lot harder, yet the Cubans managed it.

The United States is not the only objective of the Cuban G-2. In the 1990s, the Cuban services ”turned around” the then-chief of Spanish intelligence for Latin America, a pleasant lieutenant colonel in the army. He was found out and separated discreetly from his agency.

Then the Cubans scored an even more valuable coup. They wooed a Spanish deputy to the European Community, a socialist, and turned him into a docile and efficient agent of influence, utilizing the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, one of the most effective branches of Cuban intelligence.

Not even the Catholic Church has escaped the skill of the Cuban spies. In the 1960s, they dropped into it the Rev. Manolo Ortega, an educated and charismatic man in whom ”the apparatus” saw a future bishop ”and, who knows, maybe a pope,” as the agents fantasized when they spoke of the priest they had implanted in the bosom of the religious organization.

Ortega may not have been the only robed ”plant” but he seemed to have a good future ahead, until a crisis of conscience led him to quit his task of infiltration and retire discreetly after a trip abroad. The sad story became known when his former lover revealed it, for who-knows-what mysterious reasons. She also was a member of the Cuban services.

Trained by KGB

After the inevitable disappearance of the communist dictatorship in Cuba, when the intelligence archives are opened, we shall see how the Ministry of the Interior — trained by the KGB and the Stasi but with a lot more imagination, with its thousands of agents and collaborators, its dozens of satellite organizations and its huge resources devoted to collecting information, releasing disinformation, disseminating propaganda — or even killing, if necessary — achieved such amazing successes.

Of course, the Interior Ministry will be unable to prevent the end of the system, because it is much too unproductive and contra natura, but the future generations at least will understand how and why that absurd and cruel way to enslave a society was sustained in the face of the indifference of half the planet and the applause of the other half. Everything will come to light.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1109349.html

©2009 Firmas Press