CBS's 60 Minutes tonight on their 56th season finale will air a segment titled "Cuban Spycraft":
"For decades, prolific Cuban spies working in the U.S. government, serving in high-profile positions with top security clearances, have evaded American intelligence officials. This Sunday, Cecilia Vega reports on two undercover agents."
Peter J. Lapp retired as an FBI special agent after 22 years of investigating or leading counterintelligence investigations involving Cuba, Russia, and China. He is the author of Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent's Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years and an excerpt of his interview with 60 Minutes is available on YouTube.
Cecilia Vega: The story of two American citizens with top security clearances, and how they spied on behalf of Cuba which bartered and sold America's secrets to enemies around the world.
Cecilia Vega: Do you think there are other Ana Montes's in the government right now?
Peter Lapp: Oh, absolutely, absolutely
Cecilia Vega: That's chilling
Peter Lapp: There is no doubt that the Cubans are penetrating our government with individuals who are loyal to them, and not to us.
On May 13, 2024 the Miami Herald published my OpEd titled, "History of Cuban spying and the harm done to the U.S." This is an expanded version of that piece. Available exclusively here:
Partial history of Cuban spying and the harm done to the U.S.
by John Suarez
Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha spent over 40 years spying for communist Cuba at the State Department, holding important postings in Latin America, and in the National Security Council. Later, he worked as a private consultant for the US Southern Command, which oversees Cuba.
The government prosecutor from the Biden Administration's Department of Justice in the plea deal with Rocha attempted to strip other potential victims of the right to seek restitution arguing that the only victim was the U.S. government. This argument did not hold up under scrutiny, and Judge Beth Bloom called it out, and had both parties remove it from their agreement.
The Associated Press reported on April 12, 2024 that "Federal authorities have been conducting a confidential damage assessment that could take years to complete," and when discovered, much of the harm done by Ambassador Rocha will remain classified. Rocha was sentenced on April 12th to 15 years in federal prison and fined $500,000.
Others have stolen U.S. intelligence that got Americans killed, and engaged in influence operations to downplay Havana’s threat to the United States.
Spying for Havana were Ana Belen Montes, who spent 17 years at the Pentagon in the Defense Intelligence Agency; Walter Kendall Myers, a high ranking analyst at the State Department who spent 30 years spying with his wife Gwendolyn; and Marta Rita Velazquez, a legal officer at the Agency for International Development, who recruited Ana Belen Montes. Philip Agee who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency defected to Cuba in 1973 and outed 250 CIA officers and agents.
In addition Castro’s spies, who pass themselves off as diplomats, operate in Havana’s embassy in Washington, and at Cuba’s UN Mission in New York City.
They also operate on our college campuses, and the FBI declassified a report in 2014 warning about this practice. Mary O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal made the case in her May 12, 2024 column that the Cuban intelligence services are behind the nationwide pro-Hamas protests.
Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University spent nearly 30 years spying on his community, and organizing trips for students to Cuba. His wife Elsa pleaded guilty to concealing her husband’s actions.
Soviet intelligence files made public in Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew's 2005 book, The World Was Going Our Way show that U.S. travelers to Cuba helped KGB agents obtain identity documents and that Fidel and Raul Castro worked with the spy agency five years before taking power in 1959.
The Cuban dictatorship also sends illegal agents to spy and conduct active measures in America. Havana’s WASP spy network infiltrated the United States to gather information on military installations and personnel, sow division among Cuban exiles, locate places to store weapons and explosives, and terrorize then assassinate a CIA agent living in Florida with a mail bomb. They helped kill four in the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, and the network’s head Gerardo Hernandez was convicted of murder conspiracy.
These practices began in 1959. In 1961, the Soviet Defense Council gave Czechoslovakia orders to use Cuban intelligence to infiltrate existing drug operations in the United States and Latin America and to lay the groundwork for “recruiting” these independent activities. The former high-ranking Czech official Jan Sejna gave a detailed account of his meetings with Raul Castro, which he had on average four times a year between 1961 and 1968, the year Sejna defected to the U.S..
After the State Department determined in January 1982 that Havana had armed the M-19 terrorist group in exchange for drugs smuggling to the U.S., Cuba was added to the state terror sponsors list on March 1, 1982
Four high-ranking Cuban officials were indicted by a US grand jury for narcotics smuggling on November 5, 1982.
Rene Rodriguez-Cruz, Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship With The Peoples.
Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado, a vice admiral in the Cuban navy and Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member.
Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, Cuban ambassador to Colombia..
Gonzalo Bassols-Suarez, former minister-counsel of the Cuban embassy in Bogota and Cuban Communist Party member.
Ana Belen Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence agents in New York City in December 1984, and on September 30, 1985 she reported to work at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon.
Former Army counterintelligence special agent Reg Brown also came to the DIA in 1985. Chris Simmons,a career Counterintelligence Officer, in his 2023 book, Castro’s Nemesis describes how Brown conducted an assessment that revealed the “Castro regime still trafficked drugs” and that this involved the “organized and sustained involvement by many of Fidel’s highest ranking officials.” The assessment was sent to other DIA analysts for a “routine review” in early June 1989. Brown was shocked when CNN reported “Cuba’s arrest of 14 officials for drug trafficking” on June 27th.
Simmons wrote, “Reg was suspicious at the coincidence. The timing of the internal release of his assessment and Havana’s crackdown were eerily close. Additionally, most Cuban officials named in his assessment were among the thirty-three executed, imprisoned, fired, or who committed suicide.”
A Cuban spy in the DIA warned Havana that their role in flooding the U.S. with cocaine would be discovered.
This was not the end of the Havana Cartel. With the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, Havana played a major role in the formation of the Soles Cartel, and the dramatic increase in cocaine entering the U.S. over the next 25 years.
3,186 Americans died of cocaine overdoses in 1999. After over 20 years of cooperation between Cuba and the United States combating drug trafficking 23,513 Americans died from cocaine in 2021.
Rocha and other Cuban spies like him harm the U.S. government and tens of thousands of Americans.
Below is the 2023 short documentary Havana Cartel that explores the Castro regime's extensive involvement in drug trafficking with the objective of causing harm to Americans, and profiting from it to advance communist revolutionary objectives.
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