Keeping an Eye on Cuban Spies

Keeping an Eye on Cuban Spies
America's new relationship with Cuba will likely mean an influx of Cuban
spies.
They're spying on us.
By Daniel J. Gallington Dec. 30, 2014 | 10:20 a.m. EST

On balance, it was probably a good idea to move forward with a new
relationship with Cuba. The Castros are old, getting older and will soon
be gone – and it's doubtful that the Cuban people will choose,
voluntarily of course, to succeed them with another such family dynasty.
When the Castros are finally gone, there likely will be a muffled
internal insurrection or two, as the competing factions for power seek
to kill each other off – and there is likely to be a period of
uncertainty before the emergence of a new personality that can coalesce
a central government. The most likely successor will probably come from
the military. No real surprises here.

During the coming next few years, we really don't have to actually do
much to influence the people of Cuba except inundate them with our
media, social or otherwise, movies, TV, investments, business, travel,
sports teams, tourism and the Internet. They continue to be huge
consumers of American culture and capitalism will creep into their lives
whether they want it or not, and no matter what the Castro government
says or does to keep it out. In short, President Raul Castro can say
that they will remain Communist all he wants, but that system will not
be able to sustain itself in the face of the onslaught of American
commercialism. Like the old Soviet Union, Cuba will soon implode from
American and Western cultural influence – especially as they realize how
poor they have become compared to their neighbors from

What do we want from them? Cigars and resorts for our tourists? Not a
whole lot really, nor do we need much of anything to let the natural
symbiosis of the new relationship work out in our favor. In short, it
will happen, and it will be to our advantage – especially after Raul is
gone, just as Fidel is already mostly out of the picture.

So is that the end of the story with Cuba?

Not by a long shot, because we must now prepare ourselves for an
onslaught of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Cuban spies. And I have bad
news for you – they are very, very good at it, probably the best in our
hemisphere, including us, who look like amateurs compared to them,
especially when it comes to the long-term penetration of high-value
intelligence targets and getting critical information therefrom. In my
day, the Cubans were thought to be every bit as good as the East
Germans, who were probably the best in the world, next to the Israelis,
of course.

It is not surprising, therefore, that part of the deal we made to
establish the new relationship was to release three members of the
notorious "Cuban Five" from federal prison, one of them serving multiple
life sentences for espionage and murder.

The Cuban Five, if you may remember, were a group of spies who
successfully penetrated the Brothers to the Rescue and other
Cuban-American groups in the U.S. that advocated overthrow of the Castro
regime. The FBI broke them up in the late 90's and they were all
sentenced to prison. While there is lots of controversy surrounding
them, the Cuban government later acknowledged that the five were
intelligence agents.

The record of Cuban spies in our country is long and of major concern to
our counterintelligence services and agencies. While the Chinese, just
for example, are probably the largest and most prolific spies in our
country, the Cubans make up for it with their specialized skills and
knowledge of American social structures.

So one can only hope that an essential part of the new relationship with
Cuba will also be an aggressive counterintelligence program on our part
to protect ourselves from Cuban spies. And Cuba's spying program will no
doubt also be enhanced by the Castro government as it expands its
ability to gather national security information against us, both in Cuba
and in the United States.

I say "only hope" because counterintelligence has long remained the
unwanted step-child of our intelligence community, despite some new
attention to its organization and structure. It remains to be seen,
however, whether we have really improved our ability to actually catch
spies, both outside and inside our government. And the Cubans, because
of their consummate skills and abilities to penetrate our most sensitive
targets, will no doubt be able to decide this for themselves – and
probably before we realize it.

In short, I'm not optimistic. The Cubans are good, real good!

Source: America Will Have to Keep an Eye on Influx of Cuban Spies - US
News -
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2014/12/30/america-will-have-to-keep-an-eye-on-influx-of-cuban-spies