How Cuban spies infiltrating the United States government remain a real and present danger to America, and the role they played in helping flood the U.S. with cocaine.

 

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. 

The Brothers to the Rescue shootdown 28 years later: Continuing the struggle for truth, justice, and memory

 #TruthJusticeMemory

On February 24, 1996, at 3:21 and 3:27 PM, heat-seeking air-to-air missiles fired from a MiG-29 UB piloted by Lorenzo Alberto Peréz Peréz that destroyed the two planes the men were onboard, and killed Mario de la Peña, age 24; Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, both 30, and Armando Alejandre Jr., 45. Mario, Carlos,Pablo and Armando were members of the humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue.

This was a premeditated act of state terrorism carried out by Mr. Peréz Peréz on the orders of both Fidel and Raul Castro and through the chain of command issuing the unlawful order that murdered these four men.

Cuban spies learned the flight schedules and were instructed not to fly on February 24 and, if they had to, to alert the MiGs with a motion while in flight to save them from suffering the same fate as the other planes.

Ana Belen Montes, a Cuban spy working in the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, carried out an influence operation to shift responsibility from the Cuban dictatorship, to its victims in Brothers the Rescue. 

Twenty eight years later, and we are just learning that Ambassador Manuel Roche, a high level spy for Havana, who in 1996 was the principal deputy of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and may have played a role in assisting the Cuban dictatorship minimize its accountability in this act of terrorism it committed against U.S. civilians in international airspace.

This was a premeditated killing over international airspace. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) concluded that the two planes "were shot down miles away from Cuba’s boundary having never entered or touched it on that day and the planes had been in contact with the Cuban tower throughout the flight."

They failed to destroy a third plane with Sylvia Iriondo, Andrés Iriondo, Jose Basulto, and Arnaldo Iglesias on board. 

There is no statue of limitations on murder and state terrorism.  There is much more in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.

Over the past 28 years friends, and family have continued to demand truth, respect memory and demand justice through protests, petitions, and law suits. 

Family members held a silent vigil for their loved ones on February 23rd, gathering at 3:15 pm at Florida International University, with the vigil starting at 3:21pm and ending at 3:27pm. On February 22nd a vigil was held in Washington DC outside of the Embassy of Cuba.

Today at 10:30am at Opa-locka airport, where Brothers to the Rescue had their hangar, Jose Basulto, and other survivors of the February 24, 1996 shoot down will gather together to hold a vigil.

Cuba’s WASP spy and terrorist network, dismantled by the FBI 25 years ago this week

25 years after their capture: Setting the record straight on the Castro regime's WASP spy network

Adapted from CubaBrief

On Saturday,  September 12, 1998, the FBI dismantled the largest Cuban spy ring ever discovered in the United States. Ten Cubans were charged with spying for the Cuban regime. Cuba’s government has spent 25 years airbrushing and distorting what they did.

South African Bishop and theologian Desmond Tutu understood that covering up past crimes would not lead to authentic reconciliation or lasting peace. In that spirit we review the record of the WASP network.

According to the Defense Human Resources Activity at the U.S. Department of Defense, the ten members of the WASP network captured were: "GERARDO HERNANDEZ, 31 (alias Manuel Viramontes), the spymaster; FERNANDO GONZALEZ, 33 (alias Ruben Campa), and RAMON LABANINO, 30 (alias Luis Medina), Cuban intelligence officers.  The remaining seven were mid-level or junior agents who reported to the three senior agents. Included were ANTONIO GUERRERO, 39, who observed aircraft landings at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station from his job as a sheet-metal worker there; ALEJANDRO ALONSO, 39, a boat pilot; and RENE GONZALEZ, 42, a skilled aircraft pilot and the only Cuban national among these seven. Both joined the exile group Movimiento Democracia to report on its activities -all non-violent- against the Castro regime. Also, two married couples, Americans, worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, 44 and 41 respectively, and JOSEPH and AMARYLIS SANTOS, both 39."

Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque escaped.

 

JUAN PABLO ROQUE, an eleventh spy also charged and linked to the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, had fled to Cuba one day before Cuban MiGs launched missiles destroying two Brothers to the Rescue planes, and killing four pilots. Three others, identified as John Does, were also charged.

Five defendants -Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez, Joseph and Amarylis Santos- accepted plea bargains and cooperated with prosecutors. These five Cuban spies provided information about the other five. These five eventually went on trial, where it was revealed that the Cuban spy ring was engaged in both espionage and terrorism.

The Wasp Network engaged in espionage: it infiltrated two non-violent exile groups; provided information that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996; targeted U.S. military facilities; planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the United States, and carried out other active measures to sow division, shape public opinion, and meddle in U.S. elections. 

Hernandez guilty of murder conspiracy in 2/24/96 shoot down.

The Wasp Network gathered personal information on American military personnel, "compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the top officers of the United States Southern Command as well as hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West."

The spies had received orders from Havana to burn down an airport hangar; sabotage planes; and to terrorize a CIA operative identified as Jesus Cruza Flor, with warnings that he was "nearing execution,'' and then to send a mail bomb to murder him at his Bal Harbour residence.

Cuban spies targeted military personnel at the Boca Chica Naval Station.

On June 8, 2001, the five Wasp defendants who had not entered into plea bargains were found guilty on all counts. In December 2001, three of the spies were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage. Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, both Cuban nationals, and Antonio Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, were sentenced to life in prison. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, both Cuban nationals, were sentenced to 19 and 10 years in prison, respectively, for conspiracy and operating as unregistered agents of a foreign power.

The five who pleaded guilty to one count of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power and cooperated received lesser sentences: Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez were sentenced to seven years in prison; Joseph Santos was sentenced to four years, and Amarylis Santos was sentenced to three and a half years. Gerardo Hernandez, the head of the network, was convicted of murder conspiracy and espionage and condemned to a double life sentence.

President Obama commuted Hernandez's double life sentences on December 17, 2014, as part of the concessions made in the effort to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States. Once back in Cuba, Hernandez was promoted to Deputy National Coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in April 2020, tasked with monitoring neighborhood committees to spy on all Cubans on the island. He was also appointed to the Castro dictatorship's Council of State, the 31-member body that oversees day-to-day life on the island, on December 17, 2020. Gerardo Hernández visited Moscow on May 31, 2023, and laid a wreath on a monument to Fidel Castro.

Cuban spy convicted in 2000 of murder conspiracy in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, Gerardo Hernández, is visiting Russia. On 5/31/23 he placed a wreath at a monument erected by Putin to Fidel Castro in Moscow. Mr. Obama commuted his life sentence in 2014. #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/llSlABVT0X

— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) May 31, 2023

 The 2009 book Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five, by Matt Lawrence and Thomas Van Hare provides a compendium of the evidence. It exposes the facts about what happened and who knew prior to the murder of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots -three Americans and one legal resident- who were volunteers out to save the lives of fleeing refugees what would transpire. Lawrence, one of the authors had volunteered his time, and flown search and rescue missions for Brothers to the Rescue.

 The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation conducted by Ana Belen Montes to direct blame away from the Castro regime, and onto the victims, drew the attention of investigators, and in September 2001 led to the arrest of Montes, a spy for Havana who worked in a sensitive position at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon. This is also explored in the book by Lawrence and Van Hare.

On May 17, 2012 the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. Congress's Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on "Cuba’s Global Network of Terrorism, Intelligence, and Warfare." Among the experts who spoke at the hearing was Mr. Christopher Simmons, founding editor of Cuba Confidential, an online blog and source for news on Cuban espionage worldwide. He is an international authority on the Cuban Intelligence Service and retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency with over 23 years of experience as a counterintelligence officer, and played an important role in the capture of Ana Belen Montes.

Simmons ended his presentation outlining and summarizing the high profile act of state terrorism that killed four Cuban Americans in an operation conducted on orders from highest levels of the Castro regime.

"Last, but not least, of the highlighted issues, I'd like to address Operation Scorpion which was addressed earlier as a shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue. While this mission on February 24, 1996 predates the other information I discussed, it is important because this act of terrorism involves highest levels of the Castro regime. On February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two U.S. search and rescue aircraft in international waters. Code named Operation Scorpion, it was led by General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, the current head of Cuban intelligence. It was personally approved by Fidel Castro and supported by Raul Castro, the current President of Cuba. Four Americans were murdered in this act of terrorism."

  The case of the Cuban WASP Network and its involvement in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down conspiracy, and plotting to terrorize and murder a retired U.S. intelligence agent underscores once again the terrorist nature of the Cuban dictatorship. 

In order to achieve true reconciliation and peace, the regime in Havana would have to recognize its past crimes, repent, and stop sponsoring and engaging in terrorism.  Its continuing repressive actions in Venezuela, and Nicaragua; its ongoing support for the war in Ukraine, and its murder of non-violent dissidents in Cuba demonstrate that the Cuban dictatorship presently is not interested in reforming its behavior, or in true reconciliation, but rather in continuing its international outlaw status that is on a par with North Korea.

Twenty seven years ago the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act was signed into law

Twenty seven years ago, on March 12, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which codified sanctions on Cuba, in response to the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.

The shoot down was a premeditated act of state terrorism carried out by agents of the Castro dictatorship in international airspace against two civilian aircraft.

The Wasp spy network, led by Gerardo Hernandez, provided information to Havana that contributed to the murders of Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996 when their two planes were shot down by two air to air missiles fired by a MiG-29 on Fidel and Raul Castro's orders. 

Defense intelligence analyst Ana Belen Montes, who spied for Castro in the Pentagon, conducted an influence operation prior to and during the  February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. This influence operation sought to direct blame away from the Castro regime, and onto the victims, drew the attention of investigators, and led to her arrest in September 2001.

Ana Belen Montes was released from federal prison Friday night after serving over 21 years. A partial summary of the harm she did.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.-George Santayana

 

Earlier version taken from CubaBrief.

Ana Belen Montes, the Pentagon's top analyst for Cuba who was arrested on September 21, 2001 for spying for the Castro regime for 17 years was released Friday night (January 6, 2023) from the Federal Medical Center (FMC) - Carswell, in Forth Worth, Texas where she was being held. Montes was in federal prison for over 21 years. 

It is important to set the record straight, and revisit the damage that she did to U.S. national security, and her successful campaign as an agent of influence to downplay the threat Cuba poses to the United States, and other democracies in the region.

For example the information she passed to Havana, in 1987 it is believed got 65 U.S. allied Salvadoran soldiers in Central America killed, and at least one American.

Montes regularly briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the State Department downplaying Cuban military capabilities, and providing their feedback to the Castro regime's Intelligence Directorate (DI). 

Her actions during the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation she conducted to direct blame away from Castro, and onto the victims, first drew the attention of investigators.

Ten years after joining the DIA, Ana Belen Montes received the National Intelligence Certificate of Distinction from Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet on February 21, 1997. 

Another example, a few months after being recognized by the CIA director, she drafted a Pentagon report in 1997 stating Cuba had a “limited capacity” to harm the United States that Fidel Castro described as “an objective report by serious people.”

Montes managed to be selected as a team leader to analyze the effectiveness of U.S. air force bombing in Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Officials, rightly feared, that with Havana's long history of selling secrets to enemies of the United States that if Montes obtained the Pentagon’s war plans for Afghanistan, that the Castro regime would pass it on to the Taliban, and this sped up her arrest.

The full extent of the damage that she did to the United States remains mostly classified as can be seen in the highly redacted damage assessment prepared by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense published on June 16, 2005.

At a congressional hearing in 2012, the woman charged with the damage assessment testified Montes was "one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history." "Former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave told Congress that Montes 'compromised all Cuban-focused collection programs' used to eavesdrop on high-ranking Cubans, and it 'is also likely that the information she passed contributed to the death and injury of American and pro-American forces in Latin America,'” reported Jim Popkin in The Washington Post in 2013.

One of the most damaging spies in US history, Ana Montes was released from prison on Friday. For 17 years, she quietly shared intel w Cuba, who very likely shared it w Russia. Insights from retired FBI agent @petelapp, who led operations to break into her home to gather evidence. pic.twitter.com/HkwFJOqE4X

— Sasha Ingber (@SashaIngber) January 7, 2023

Retired FBI agent Peter Lapp, who led the covert operation against Montes, found the "most damaging non-human intelligence she provided to the Cubans"  was information about "a U.S. secret satellite program" that was so sensitive "that prosecutors were banned from using it had the case gone to trial."  Information was not related to Cuba, but investigators believe that Fidel Castro passed it on to other regime's hostile to the United States.

Montes with her Cuban handlers conducted an influence operation so effective that even after her arrest, the misleading analysis she provided continued to be repeated by policymakers. Her claim that Cuba posed no threat to the United States continued to circulate in government a decade after her arrest, and was used as the basis to request that President Obama remove Cuba from the list of state terror sponsors in 2013. 

"The damage done by Ana Belen Montes to both U.S. National Security and in the formulation of U.S. Foreign policy cannot be underestimated, nor the reality that she was not alone in infiltrating the U.S. government to work for a foreign power. American allies and friends and at least one American soldier were killed by the treachery committed by this foreign agent. Furthermore, the disinformation provided by her DI handlers that she inserted in U.S. government reports continued to have an impact on policy long after she went to prison," observed Ambassador Otto J. Reich, currently president of the Center for a Free Cuba and former Assistant Secretary of State and member of the National Security Council staff.

The belief that the Castro regime is harmless does not make it true.  Montes whitewashed the dictatorship's six decade record of terrorism and sponsoring terrorism (including on U.S. soil), the brutality visited upon Cubans, the role in spreading repression in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the Castro brothers role in carrying out genocide in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, this and much more points to the ongoing threat of the Castro regime that Montes minimized.

Yes, Ana Belen Montes did great harm and we should be vigilant to the ongoing threat by the Castro regime's spies, but the priority of free Cubans remains the freedom of Cuba, more immediately the freeing of over 1,000 Cuban prisoners of conscience, like Maykel Castillo Perez, so that they can be reunited with their families.