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Brief history of Cuban espionage and related extraterritorial activity

Cuba has for long been a place where spies are active, this is celebrated in Cuba and after 1960 in the US by Antonio Prohias’ comic strip Spy vs Spy http://www.angelfire.com/hi/SpyVsSpy/. By their very nature such secret activities often only come to light when the agents are caught, defect or die; thus any historic vision of their actions is usually kaleidoscope of apparently discontinuous events, reported differently by the different antagonists involved.


During the US Civil war the Confederacy employed a Cuban woman, Loreta Janeta Velazquez (aka Lieutenant Harry T. Buford) to spy on Union forces [ISBN 0299194248]. Thomas Jordan, a former U.S. Army officer who became a Confederate colonel, started an embryonic spy network in Washington, D.C. as early as 1860, American Civil War spies. Thomas Jordan later became general in the Cuban forces in the Ten Year War. In subsequent Cuban independence struggles, the Spanish Colonial government employed spies and informers inside and out side of Cuba, notable the Pinkertons http://www.irishabroad.com/irishworld/irishamericamag/decjan03/hibernia/dynamitejohnnydecjan03.asp, to try to control pro-independence activity. During the Cuban Republic In 1925, at the beginning of Machado’s legal term, Abraham Semjovitch, code name Fabio Grobart http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2005/08/31/nacional/articulo01.html, http://www.cartadecuba.org/castro_el_infiel.htm a Kremlin Agent helped make formal links between the Cuban Communist Party and the Communist International [1150] PCC. Walker Evans has an amazing photograph of a 1930s Machado informer of ‘’la Porra,’’ standing in his most elegant white suit watching for the resistance [ISBN 0892366176].


In the 1940’s Rogelio Recio Ramírez, leader of the ephemeral 1933 Mabay Workers Soviet develops the first secret cells of what will become the Sierra Maestra covert communist party. These cells engage in agi-prop in these mountains among the Guajiros and Montunos. When Castro takes to the mountains in 1956-1958 these super-secret cells, do very little fighting, but provide logistic support and information to the pro-Communist factions especially to Ernesto Che Guevara. These cells also work to oppose the non-Communist rebel factions of Frank País http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/SWEINS_excerpt.pd and Huber Matos http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y04/mar04/30o5.htm. All this in some obscure way relates to weapon supply in the Sierra, via Frank Sturgis (putative agent of the CIA and "burgler" in Watergate); to José Figueres (past President of Costa Rica) and the Caribbean Legion and thus to the Cayo Confites matter (see below) and to Alfonso Manuel Rojo (“the Che supposedly who spied on the “Che” Guevara), pilot Pedro Díaz Lanz and a number of others http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/zona/2000/02/13/i-00601e.htm who appear and disappear as Cuba’s spy dramas fold and unfold.


Cuba was also scene of German spying intended to locate ships as target for that country's submarine warfare in WW II. The book Voyage of the Damned
describes Otto Ott a dwarf spy who, it seems, was surprisingly effective. Others describe Heinz Lüning http://www.il.proquest.com/proquest/newsletters/04/historyjan04.shtml as a tall handsome, but not very effective, German spy who was captured, tried and shot by the Batista government on November 10th 1942.


Then there is the 1940 Leon Trotsky assassination in Mexico which is reported very differently by the numerous sides involved http://www.marxist.com/mexico-trotsky-museum240603.htm, http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/assassins/ramon-mercader/. Trotsky’s assassin, Jaime Ramón Mercader,), was the son of Eustacia María Caridad del Río Hernández said to be Cuban http://firmaspress.com/454.htm, not as commonly thought, Spanish. Jaime Ramón Mercader after release from prison lived and died in Cuba and was buried in Russia as Ramón Ivanovich López.


And of course this circumstance is reflected in the literature, for instance “Our Man in Havana” by Graham Greene http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/havana.htm. Greene apparently anticipated the Cuba Missile Crisis and used Batista’s elegant goon Esteban Ventura Nova as his model for Capitan Segura. However, it is wise to recall that Graham Greene, who had worked under the direction of double agent Kim Phillby, was both experienced in real spy games and sympathized with Fidel Castro.


Castro himself was a player in these activities long before reaching power. He was active in the 1948 Bogotazo in Colombia and some how involved in the killing of Liberal Party Cacique and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/gaitan/gaitancastro.htm. There Castro’s ally was Rafael del Pino Siero, a naturalized US citizen who would be jailed and apparently strangled by his former ally. Rafael del Pino Siero should not be confused with the Rafael del Pino Díaz, a pilot at the “Bay of Pigs;” to complicate matters further each Rafael del Pino had a son with the same name. Castro was involved, apparently as a minor player, in part of the aborted “Cayo Confites” 1947 and 1949 affairs http://www.angelfire.com/ga/garnata/Trujillo.html, which involved a massive Caribbean Legion plot to overthrow General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, Dictator of the Dominican Republic, and which involved much equipment, including about 20, light, transport and attack aircraft http://www.nocastro.com/documents/aviacion/aviacion5.htm.


In the Castro era this matter has elicited an enormous amount of often conflicting published and web material. What is certain is that Castro cast a big shadow in the Cold War. Castro’s enemies or rivals honorable [1151] and dishonorable often died mysterious violent deaths. Honey traps are considered a standard technique on the island. Cuban operatives and Cuban regulars did battle against US allies and US interests especially in Latin America. Aside from the well known interventions in Nicaragua [1152] and El Salvador [1153] there were a myriad of other operations. For instance Castro's bodyguard Antonio Briones Montoto was killed during a landing at Machurucuto Venezuela on May 8th 1967 [1154].


Elsewhere similar actions were undertaken. In Angola, Africa [1155] and Ethiopia [1156] there were tank battles. In Grenada, in the Caribbean, Cuban and US forces actually entered into combat [1157]. In Vietnam Cuban engineers help build the Ho Chi Min trail [1158], and Cuban intelligence harshly interrogated US prisoners [1159]. When the Soviet Union stopped supplying funding much of this ceased for a while, and the recently concluded Filiberto Ojeda Rios affair http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802077.html?nav=rss_nation/special relates to this time frame However, more recently Cuban intelligence is once more active in the US as agents such as Ana Belen Montes [1160] penetrated US intelligence services and the Red Avispa Network are spied on US Armed Forces personnel and bases [1161]. Cuban spy ring in Mexico is revealed and officially denied http://www.nocastro.com/archives/spymex1.htm. At present Castro and his ally Hugo Chavez have been busy through out Latin America [1162].


It is noted that the companion Foreign relations of Cuba article does not mention: the training in Cuba of the Polisario front, the intervention in Eritrea, in the Congo, and in Bolivia. The Chile intervention when Castro had a Cuban bodyguard, Patricio de la Guardia, kill Allende to make him a martyr [1163] is not mentioned and neither is the old and new Venezuelan adventures, the support for the Macheteros in Puerto Rico, for the Montoneros in Argentina [1164], the Tupamaros in Uruguay Secretas/Tupamaros y Montoneros.htm, the disastrous landing in the Dominican Republic, apparently successful weapon supply to the rebels in Sri Lanka [1165], the material and engineering and interrogation manpower support to North Vietnam (also see references above).


Given Castro’s involvement the recent anti-democratic events in Bolivia, Venezuela and Colombia [1166] and the above 47 or more year history promoting overseas violence it seems delusional to believe as some do Cuban intervention under Castro that there is hope that Castro has reformed and seeks peace.


As useful beginner reference for those who do not read Spanish is the index in: Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky 1990 KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. HarperCollins, New York, ISBN 0-06-016605-3
. And of course Hugh Thomas Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (Paperback) Da Capo Press; Updated edition (April, 1998) ISBN: 0306808277 is essential reading although it has a few serious errors. For instance, readers are led to believe that the land measure caballeria is 330 acres (about 4,300 hectares) instead of the real 33 acres (about 430 hectares), thus grossly overstating the size of land holdings, with consequential political distortion. Numbers of violent deaths are extremely conservative.