Tag: cuba

Exit stage left: Biden’s curious Cuba move

President Joe Biden’s January 14 removal of sanctions imposed on Cuba during the first Trump administration could have been a major step toward restarting Barack Obama’s policy of engagement if Biden had done it in his first week as president instead of his last.

But done at the last minute, they are unlikely to have much impact. Two of the three will not even take effect until after Trump’s inauguration.

Senior members of Trump’s incoming foreign policy team, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Special Envoy for Latin America Maurico Claver-Carone, have criticized Biden’s actions, noting that they can be quickly and easily reversed by the incoming administration.

“No one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy,” Waltz said.

Nevertheless, within hours of the White House’s announcement, the Cuban government announced that, in response to appeals from the Vatican, it would gradually release 553 prisoners, many of whom were involved in the nationwide protests on July 11, 2021. The deal was the culmination of three years of Vatican shuttle diplomacy.

Biden’s package includes three measures: (1) It rescinded Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 5, of June 16, 2017, the basic framework for Trump’s policy of regime change; (2) It suspends Title III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which gives U.S. citizens, including naturalized Cuban Americans, whose property was nationalized by Cuba’s revolutionary government the right to sue in U.S. Federal Court anyone making beneficial use of that property; and (3) It initiated removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of International Terrorism.

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Senate Intelligence Report Criticizes CIA’s Mishandling of ‘Havana Syndrome’ Cases

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday sharply criticized the CIA for its mishandling of the mysterious illness known as “Havana syndrome.” The report highlights major failures in the agency’s care for individuals affected by the condition. 

The committee’s findings point to problems like delays in care, unclear policies, and a lack of preparation for future incidents. The report outlines 11 key recommendations aimed at fixing these issues and ensuring better care for CIA employees who report such health concerns.

What Is Havana Syndrome?

Havana syndrome first emerged in late 2016 when U.S. diplomats in Havana, Cuba, began experiencing strange symptoms that seemed similar to brain injuries, like dizziness, headaches, and trouble with memory and concentration. 

Since then, cases have been reported in other parts of the world, including Colombia, Austria, and the U.S., affecting diplomats, spies and soldiers. Last year, around 1,500 cases had been reported across 96 countries. 

While there’s been a lot of speculation that this could be the result of a targeted attack using some new weapon, U.S. intelligence has found no evidence linking it to a deliberate strike. The cause of the illness is still unclear, and researchers are still working to understand both what’s causing the symptoms and how to treat them.

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Communism Fumbles Again: Cuba Importing Resource It Was Once Famed For Producing

It’s undeniably one of economist Milton Friedman’s most famous sayings about the failures of central planning: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

This was, of course, a stroke of hyperbole. Not even a billion Keynesian ditch-diggers could empty the Sahara.

However, we have seen the closest thing to Friedman’s vision coming true: In Cuba, an island practically made of sugarcane, the communist government now needs to import sugar.

It’s bad enough that, according to CiberCuba — an expatriate-run outlet which is critical of the government — a pound of sugar now costs 600 pesos on the island, or about $25 USD.

“Despite efforts to revive the sugar industry, the sector continues to face serious challenges, including failures in the last harvest,” CiberCuba reported earlier this month.

“During the session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz recalled when Raúl Castro remarked that ‘it would be an embarrassment to have to import sugar.’ He then stated, ‘and well, we are experiencing that embarrassment because we are importing sugar.’”

Cruz “emphasized that the crisis in the sector is such that the country has also stopped exporting sugar, which was a key component of the economy,” according to CiberCuba.

And it’s not just dissident outlets like CiberCuba that are reporting on the failures of Cuba’s sugar industry, either. Earlier this year, the BBC’s Cuba correspondent, Will Grant, filed a piece about the failures of the system.

Shocker of shockers, you know what’s to blame? Communism!

“Cutting cane is all Miguel Guzmán has ever known. He comes from a family of farm hands and started the tough, thankless work as a teenager,” the May piece began. “For hundreds of years, sugar was the mainstay of the Cuban economy. It was not just the island’s main export but also the cornerstone of another national industry, rum.”

“Today, though, he readily admits he has never seen the sugar industry as broken and depressed as it is now – not even when the Soviet Union’s lucrative sugar quotas dried up after the Cold War,” Grant noted. “Spiraling inflation, shortages of basic goods and the decades-long US economic embargo have made for a dire economic outlook across the board in Cuba. But things are particularly bleak in the sugar trade.”

“There’s not enough trucks and the fuel shortages mean sometimes several days pass before we can work,” Guzmán said under a “tiny patch of shade” while he waited for Soviet-era trucks to arrive.

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Operation Northwoods

Operation Northwoods was a covert plan proposed in 1962 by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The operation was intended to create a series of false-flag events to justify military intervention in Cuba. It was conceived during a period of heightened tension between the United States and Cuba, following the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s rise to power. The primary goal of Operation Northwoods was to fabricate acts of terrorism and aggression that could be attributed to the Cuban government, thereby providing the U.S. government with a pretext for invading the island and ousting Castro.

The plan included various possible scenarios, such as staging attacks on American military installations in Guantanamo Bay, sinking boats carrying Cuban refugees, and orchestrating fake hijackings of civilian airliners. These incidents were to be designed in such a way that they would appear to be carried out by Cuban operatives. The hope was that these provocations would lead the American public and international community to support military action against Cuba. The operation’s proposals went as far as considering the possible loss of American lives, which would have been falsely blamed on the Cuban government to rally support for intervention.

Operation Northwoods was never approved, and President John F. Kennedy ultimately rejected the plan. The proposal was part of a broader effort by the U.S. government during the Cold War to contain the spread of communism, particularly in Latin America. This rejection is often viewed as a critical moment in Kennedy’s presidency, demonstrating his reluctance to escalate military conflict in Cuba, especially in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion the previous year.

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Ex-diplomat’s Cuban Espionage Case Isn’t the Biggest U.S. “Spyfail”

Mainstream media outlets reacted with astonishment when they reported earlier this year that a former American diplomat had confessed to being a Cuban spy for more than four decades.

It was indeed shocking when Victor Manuel Rocha, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, suddenly came clean to FBI investigators that he had been covertly gathering intelligence for the island since the early 1980s.

Fewer than six months after his arrest in December, Rocha was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison following a plea deal where he admitted to conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent to defraud the United States.

According to court documents, the Bogotá-born envoy was first recruited by Cuba’s main state intelligence agency, the Intelligence Directorate or Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI), as a student at Yale University in 1973.

Shortly after graduating, Rocha reportedly traveled to Chile around the time the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ousted the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and was radicalized by the experience.

Cuba’s KGB-trained intelligence service has long enjoyed an esteemed reputation as one of the best in the world, famously having thwarted hundreds of attempts on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA. The DGI has also become known for its effective operations abroad, such as the case of double agent Ana Montes who penetrated the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as an analyst for 17 years.

With the Rocha case closed within a few short months, it is unclear precisely what actions he took while in diplomatic service that could have benefited Havana. If true, not only did he have privileged access to classified information but the ability to directly impact U.S. diplomacy with tradecraft. However, many have noted that, while serving as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Rocha made a name for himself during the Andean nation’s 2002 election when he publicly threatened the withdrawal of U.S. aid if then-underdog candidate Evo Morales were to win the presidency.

In hindsight, what was perceived as a controversial gaffe at the time, which inadvertently increased support for Morales, could have been deliberate if Rocha was truly an infiltrator

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Gitmo and Politics

It is always dangerous to human freedom and due process when politics interferes with criminal prosecutions. Yet, present-day America is replete with tawdry examples of this.

The recent exposures of the political machinations of the Chief Justice of the United States in the presidential immunity case is just one sad example of the highest judge in the land determined to change the law, even at the cost of sacrificing good jurisprudence; and this from a jurist who once promised the Senate that he envisioned himself as a mere baseball umpire – just calling balls and strikes. Now, he is a historical revisionist, ruling that the Framers actually wanted an imperial presidency.

His rationale was his understanding of history – not the laws, not precedent, not the Constitution, not morality; a first in modern Supreme Court history.

But this awkward behavior, in which he also engaged when he changed his mind at the last minute and saved Obamacare from constitutional extinction because he was convinced that Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama in 2012, sends messages to those who enforce the law and those who interpret it that due process can take a back seat to politics.

That is happening at the prosecution of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here is the backstory.

After the dust settled from the attacks on 9/11 and the federal government responded by assaulting the Bill of Rights at home and innocent Afghani peasants abroad, it declared that the mastermind of the attacks was Osama bin Laden. It never charged bin Laden with any crime, but it dispatched a team of killers to assassinate him in his home, which they did. Then the feds decided that bin Laden was not the mastermind; Mohammed was.

By the time of bin Laden’s death, Mohammed had been captured and had undergone years of torture at the hands of the CIA, and he was incarcerated at the prison camp at Gitmo. He was eventually charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder and was put into the hands of a military tribunal, which Congress had established at the insistence of the George W. Bush administration believing that military men on a military court would administer swift and rough justice.

Then, his lawyers argued successfully to the Supreme Court that conspiracy is not a war crime and thus not triable before a military tribunal. In so ruling, the Court overruled an appellate court decision written by the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice back when he was an appellate judge – another Supreme Court first.

Then Congress changed the format of the tribunals so that they’d follow the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and effectively turned them into federal courts in Cuba with military trappings.

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Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba Have Undergone Expansion: Report

Cuba has upgraded and expanded four electronic surveillance facilities, including one near the Guantanamo Bay naval base, amid growing concern about China’s spying efforts in the United States’ backyard, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“While China’s activities on the island remain shrouded in secrecy, satellite imagery analyzed by CSIS provides the latest and most comprehensive assessment of where China is most likely operating,” the report reads.

The report pointed to four active sites at Bejucal, El Salao, Wajay, and Calabazar. It added that the four locations are “strategically located” and are “among the most likely locations supporting China’s efforts to spy on the United States.”

In June 2023, the White House confirmed that China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019. In the same month, the State Department warned that the Chinese regime will “keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba,” and the United States “will keep working to disrupt it.”

China’s surveillance activities in Cuba are a grave national security concern for the United States, given that Florida is home to numerous U.S. military bases, including the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. Southern Command, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and Eglin Air Force Base.

“Collecting data on activities like military exercises, missile tests, rocket launches, and submarine maneuvers would allow China to develop a more sophisticated picture of U.S. military practices,” the report reads.

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Why Putin Sent Russian Ships to Cuba

On June 17, Russian naval vessels left Cuba without incident, concluding a five-day visit. The visit may have been without incident, but it wasn’t without meaning. Frustrated that their diplomatic messages were not being heard, Russia sent a louder message. But that message may not have simply been about projecting power as the West has presented it.

On June 12, four Russian naval vessels docked at Havana Bay in Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. The vessels included the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Kazan submarine. Though they can both carry advanced weapons, neither were carrying nuclear weapons.

The two vessels make a strong statement. The Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov, “one of the Russian Navy’s most modern ships,” is capable of being armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles. The Kazan submarine is a nuclear-powered submarine that is one of the Yasen-class submarines “that has worried the US and Western militaries for years due to its stealth and strike capabilities.” It is quiet and tough to track and can carry cruise missiles.

Though the Pentagon has said that the Russian fleet does not pose a threat to the United States, the U.S. has deployed ships, reconnaissance planes and sea drones to monitor and track the vessels. The U.S. also sent a fast-attack submarine to Guantanamo Bay and their Canadian ally sent a navy patrol ship into Havana.

Though saying they do not pose an actual threat, the mainstream media has portrayed the arrival of the ships as a Russian demonstration of its ability to project power into America’s hemisphere and backyard.

It is not possible to divine Russia’s intention. The official Russian statement is that “Naval exercises are standard practice in very varied parts of the world, and are standard practice for states – in particular those that are major naval powers like the Russian Federation. The carrying out of such visits is also a widespread practice.”

But, though it is impossible to read Russia’s intention in sending the ships, it is not difficult to see the effect. There are two significant messages to be read in the arrival of the Russian fleet.

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Russia’s Advanced Yasen-M Class Nuclear Submarine Is Headed For Cuba

ARussian flotilla — including a modern nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine — is bound for Cuba for a rare deployment. Cuban officials state that none of the Russian Navy vessels headed toward the Caribbean will be carrying nuclear weapons, in an apparent effort to reduce tensions between Moscow and Washington, but the development once again reinforces renewed Russian interest in the operations in the wider region.

In a statement yesterday, Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces confirmed that the advanced Yasen-M class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine Kazan and three other Russian naval vessels, including the Project 22350 frigate Admiral Gorshkov, the oil tanker Pashin, and the salvage tug Nikolai Chiker will dock in the Cuban capital from June 12-17.

“None of the vessels is carrying nuclear weapons, so their stopover in our country does not represent a threat to the region,” the ministry said.

“Visits by naval units from other countries are a historical practice of the revolutionary government with nations that maintain relations of friendship and collaboration,” the statement added.

The day before, U.S. officials said that they expected Russian warships and aircraft to arrive in the Caribbean for a military exercise that they said would be part of a Moscow’s broader response to American support for Ukraine. In particular, President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia has angered the Kremlin.

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FOIA Request Sheds Light on DIA’s Records Pertaining to ‘Havana Syndrome’

On February 22, 2024, The Black Vault received a long-awaited response from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on August 25, 2021. The request sought all records related to the “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious condition that has affected U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers since 2016.

Havana Syndrome first came to light when U.S. Embassy staff in Havana, Cuba, reported experiencing unexplained health issues, including headaches, dizziness, and hearing loss. Similar incidents have since been reported by American personnel in various countries, leading to speculation about the cause, ranging from sonic attacks to microwave weapons.

The Black Vault’s request aimed to uncover DIA reports, memos, assessments, and intelligence records pertaining to Havana Syndrome from 2016 to the date of processing. After a lengthy delay, the DIA located one document, consisting of six pages, responsive to the request. However, portions of the document were withheld under FOIA Exemptions 1, 3, and 6, citing reasons related to national security, protection of intelligence sources and methods, and privacy concerns.

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