Supporters and foes of USAID’s Cuba programs continued in January debating the efficiency of the agency’s democracy-promotion efforts. On Jan. 16, CaféFuerte published a sentencing document that has new details of Cuba’s case against American subcontractor Alan Gross. (Download 15 MB document here). The document shows that Cuban spies began tracking Gross in mid-2004 when [...]
Agent: U.S. funds diverted
Raúl Capote had a secret mission: To create a foundation made up of young leaders who would take charge when Cuba’s socialist government collapsed. The existence of the foundation, called Genesis, was to be revealed only after the Cuban revolution fell. Said Capote: It was a project of the CIA. Capote, a university professor, said [...]
Interview with José M. Collera Vento
While George W. Bush was president, U.S. officials began trying to establish a national network of religious and fraternal groups in Cuba that they hoped would help speed Cuba’s transition to democracy, said a Cuban known as Agent Gerardo. José Manuel Collera Vento, former head of the Freemasons fraternal organization in Cuba, assisted with the [...]
USAID: “We are a development agency, not an intelligence agency”
The Obama administration has ordered private contractors to stop sending satellite communication gear into Cuba, the Miami Herald reported today. The paper added: “The government also prohibits contractors from traveling to Cuba more than twice a year, and the trips are now vetted by top administrators. The U.S. Agency for International Development began changing its [...]
{think} Cuba summit underway?
April 28 update: Employees at the hotel where the event was supposed to take place told me they knew nothing of it. Cuba’s ambassador to Panama called it a “clandestine event.” April 19 update: I haven’t seen any confirmation that the summit took place. Some of the material on the {think} Cuba website is password [...]