Cuba’s Spying on U. S.

“Assume everybody is a spy,” a mentor told me when I reported a contact by a Soviet Naval officer many years ago. “Everybody spies on everybody else, friend sand foes,” he told me.

As further evicence comes news of ongoing Cuban intelligence program has been sending agents to U.S. Embassies around the world to provide misinformation and identify Americans spies, according to two former U.S. government experts on Cuba.

In an average year, Cuba sends about a dozen “walk-in” agents to U.S. Embassies, where they claim to be defectors with important information and ask to speak with U.S. officials, the experts told the Miami Herald’s Spanish language edition.

But the number spiked immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were followed 10 days later by the arrest of the Pentagon’s top Cuba analyst, Ana Belen Montes, on charges of spying for Cuba.

In the next six months, up to 20 Cuban walk-in agents entered U.S. diplomatic missions — mostly in Europe, Latin America, and Asia — and claimed to have information on terrorist threats.

The CIA and FBI agencies suspected that many of the Cubans were trying to penetrate American intelligence in order to learn how Montes was discovered, the Herald reported. All were eventually discredited.

Dan Fisk, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, said in September 2002 that the walk-ins constituted “a dangerous and unjustifiable action that damages our ability to assess real threats.”

But for the most part, walk-ins are part of a broader campaign to pass on misinformation that predates 9/11 and continues today, the Cuban experts reveal.

The walk-ins may claim to have information on Cuba’s electronic eavesdropping capabilities or biological warfare research, but they usually provide no significant details.

“Another part of a successful walk-in is that they are a major resource drain, also known as a ‘time suck,’ because it takes time and effort by the U.S. intelligence community to spot them as fakes and cut them loose,” said one of the Cuban experts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A Cuban with just 20 hours of training can compel U.S. officials to spend 100 hours investigating before concluding that the walk-in is a fraud.

Obviously the Communist Dictatorship of Fidel and Raul Castro sponsors this spying, and has for a long time. About the only question is how much help the Castri boys are getting ffrom the newly resurrected friendship with Russia and others, and how deep and widespread these joint efforts are now.