Cuban Intelligence Targets Academia

Cuban Intelligence Targets Academia
September 17, 2014 by Humberto Fontova

"Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence
services, including the [Cuban intelligence service]," says an FBI
report from Sept. 2nd.

"One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American
leftists' ideology. "For instance, someone who is allied with communist
or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because
of his/her personal beliefs."

Not that any of the above should come as earth-shaking news to anyone who:

A: Attended a typical college and suffered through typical Liberal Arts
courses.

B. Knows anything at all about the history of Cuban spying in the U.S.

Let's face it: FBI agents tasked with ferreting out Cuban spies in the
U.S face a daunting task. Just think of how many Liberal Arts college
professors match the potential Cuban-spy profile—ideology-wise that is,
competence at sleuth-work is a different matter.) Just how many Liberal
Arts college professors actually eschew "leftist ideology?"

Indeed, of the most recently convicted Cuban spies–Ana Montes, Walter
Kendall Meyers and Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, three were recruited by
Castro's agents from academia– John Hopkins, for Montes and Florida
International University for the Alvarez couple.

Cuba's Intelligence services "will actively exploit visitors to the
island" continues the report. "Intelligence officers will come into
contact with the academic travelers (from the U.S.) They will stay in
the same accommodations and participate in the activities arranged for
the travelers. This clearly provides an opportunity to identify
targets….Castro's intelligence aggressively targets U.S. universities
under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move
on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to
information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service,"] continues the
FBI report.

"A preferred target are 'study abroad' programs (in Cuba,)" adds
America's top Cuban spycatcher Chris Simmons, recently retired from the
Defense Intelligence Agency, "as participating students (from the U.S.)
are assessed as inherently sympathetic to the Cuban revolution."

It's not customary for U.S. administrations to increase the size of an
enemy spy agency's "preferred spy-recruitment target," but we're talking
the Obama Administration here, amigos. To wit: Academic and cultural
exchanges along with various types of legalized "people-to-people
travel" between the U.S. and terror-sponsoring Cuba now allow hundreds
of thousands of people to visit Cuba annually from the U.S. —over half a
million visited just last year.

By the way that's DOUBLE the number who visited Cuba from the U.S. in
1958, when Cuba was a "tourist playground" for Americans. Surely, you
remember that from Godfather II?

Let's stand back for a second and ponder this issue: When Cuba was a
"U.S. tourist playground" 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.

But now that Cuba suffers from a beastly "blockade" or "embargo" (as the
media calls it) by the U.S. 599,426 people visited Cuba from the U.S.
102.396 of these, by the way, went under "educational and cultural
exchanges" approved by the Obama State Department.

In brief, Obama has greatly simplified matters for Castro's
Intelligence. Used to be that for recruiting U.S. spies, Castro relied
on Obama's Chicago 'neighbors, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

You read right. You see during the late 60's and early 70's the
terrorist offshoot from the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)
known as The Weathermen and staffed most famously by Barack Obama's
future "neighbors" Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn served as the Cuban
DGI's (Directorio General de Intelligencia) top U.S. recruitment
officers. They accomplished this recruitment primarily through their
sponsorship of the then famous Venceremos Brigades.

During that heady Age of Aquarius hundreds of starry-eyed college kids
were volunteering to "help build Cuban Socialism" and "fight U.S.
Imperialism," mostly by joining these Venceremos Brigades (many via the
Weathermen,) making their way to Cuba and joyfully cutting Cuban sugar cane.

"The ultimate objective of the DGI's participation in the setting up of
the Venceremos Brigades," says an FBI report declassified in 1976 "was
the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who
someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the
U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban Government with access to
political, economic and military intelligence

Sure sounds like what the very recently de-classified FBI report claims
about current recruitment objectives by Cuba's intelligence, except now
the Cubans have tens of thousands more spy candidates to choose from!

In brief: nowadays instead of relying on terrorist groups as an
employment agency to screen their spy recruits, the Castro regime–thanks
to "People-to-People" "academic exchanges, etc.– relies on the massive
apparatus of academic "Cuban Studies Programs" and their U.S. government
facilitators!

"So what?" some readers might rebut. "So what's the big deal? So what
kind of threat does tiny, impoverished Cuba present to the U.S.?"

"Cuba is intelligence trafficker to the world," reveals U.S. spycatcher
Christopher Simmons. Among many others, the U.S. military secrets stolen
by Castro's spies have been sold to former regimes in Iraq, Panama and
Grenada, alerting these dictatorships to U.S. military plans against
them and costing untold American lives.

Source: Cuban Intelligence Targets Academia | FrontPage Magazine -
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/cuban-intelligence-targets-academia/