U.S. INTELLIGENCE
Experts: U.S. spies are often in the dark on Cuba
For the U.S. intelligence community, obtaining reliable information on
Cuba is a hard slog -- as shown by earlier reports that Fidel Castro was
near death.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
As Fidel Castro appears to be growing more active, and U.S. reports that
he has cancer increasingly seem off the mark, Cuba watchers are
questioning just how much American spies know about what's happening on
the island.
The U.S. intelligence community -- despite having spy satellites and
ships -- is now too shellshocked from past intelligence setbacks on Cuba
and the Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle to aggressively spy on
the island, some Cuba observers say.
Washington, as a result, is now largely ignorant of what is happening
within the inner circles in Havana as Cuba undergoes a transfer of power
from Castro to his brother Raúl, according to several people familiar
with U.S. intelligence on the island.
The U.S. intelligence community's current assessment is that Castro is
more ill than Havana is admitting, and that change in Cuba is unlikely
in the near term, though a power struggle is possible further down the road.
But nearly a dozen people knowledgeable about U.S. intelligence on Cuba
-- who all spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss classified
materials -- painted a mixed picture of the capability to spy on Cuba.
U.S. spy satellites and ships can monitor such things as troop movements
and some, mostly civilian, telephone conversations in Cuba, said one
retired intelligence official. Occasional senior defectors can provide
some insight into Cuba's inner workings.
Washington's spies also have good relations with friendly nations that
operate in Cuba. One former U.S. government official said that Spanish
intelligence agencies have obtained good information in Cuba, especially
under conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, who left office in
2004. The Canadians are also viewed as capable.
One person with access to U.S. intelligence materials on Cuba said
Washington has a ''pretty good'' understanding of public sentiment in
Cuba, thanks to interviews with arriving migrants and contacts with
nongovernment groups in Cuba.
NOT MUCH AT THE TOP
But there is little credible information on events at the top levels of
the government, the armed forces and security services, the person added.
And Cuban counterintelligence's tight monitoring of U.S. diplomats in
Havana makes it difficult for them to meet privately with top Cuban
officials.
The Bush administration's policy is to curtail all contacts with the
Cuban government to a minimum, further isolating U.S. diplomats in Cuba.
''They are on the outside,'' said Phil Peters, a Cuba watcher at the
conservative Lexington Institute in Virginia.
It is impossible to know the extent of U.S. intelligence capabilities on
Cuba. Even senior government officials may not know such details as
whether U.S. spies are operating in Havana or if Washington is listening
to Fidel Castro's telephone chatter.
LESS THAN PRECISE
But some previous U.S. assessments on Cuba seem likely to have been off
the mark.
After Castro underwent surgery in July for a still officially secret
intestinal ailment, some U.S. intelligence officials looked at his
dramatic weight loss and concluded he had cancer. But in December, a
Spanish doctor who saw the Cuban leader flatly denied he had cancer.
In 2002, a top State Department official said Cuba ''has at least a
limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.''
But last year, a State Department report acknowledged that analysts were
divided on the issue.
There has been no evidence to contradict a 2005 CIA assessment -- based
largely on Castro's muffled speech, apparent stiffness and trouble with
balance -- that he has Parkinson's disease. Neither Castro nor the Cuban
government have denied that report.
Since Castro fell ill, the U.S. intelligence community has been trying
to bolster its capabilities in Cuba.
Last year, President Bush instructed the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence to appoint a new ''mission manager'' for Cuba and
Venezuela to oversee all U.S. spy agencies' efforts on the two
countries. Norman Bailey, a former Reagan administration official, was
named to the post but was later dismissed. No replacement has been named.
''There's no rigor, no drive. There's no motivation behind our
collection,'' said Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state
for the Western Hemisphere under President Bush.
John Sullivan, who spent 31 years with the CIA giving polygraph tests,
including to many Cubans who were supposed to be spying for the United
States, considers Havana's main spy agency, the Intelligence
Directorate, as the most formidable U.S. foe after the former East
German Stasi.
For instance, he said, the Cuban intelligence service would allow its
double agents to give information to Washington ''that actually hurt
them'' to bolster the agents' credibility.
U.S. spying on Cuba suffered a serious setback in 1987, when Florentino
Aspillaga, a top Cuban intelligence officer, defected in Europe and
revealed the names of hundreds of Cuban agents worldwide.
Castro retaliated by airing videos of CIA agents communicating with
about 20 ''U.S. agents'' in Cuba who, in fact, were double agents
working for Havana.
The CIA decided to wind down human espionage efforts in Havana after
that, and has since relied more on information provided by defectors,
according to one former U.S. intelligence community official.
But that is also problematic.
''Castro has planted a lot of phony defectors,'' said Otto Reich, a
former special envoy to Latin America for the Bush White House who
believes that Washington should step up its intelligence efforts against
Cuba.
In the case of the five Wasp Network Cuban spies rounded up in Miami in
1998, Cuban officials have said that their spying was merely defensive,
aimed at averting any attacks on the island by Cuban exiles in the
United States.
CONVICTED SPY
But the biggest blow to U.S. intelligence capabilities against Cuba came
from Ana Belen Montes, a former Cuba analyst with the Defense
Intelligence Agency, or DIA, convicted of spying for Havana in 2001.
During her 17-year career at the DIA, U.S. officials believe, Montes
revealed the identity of numerous U.S. agents in Cuba, accessed hundreds
of thousands of secret documents and provided Havana with highly
valuable information on the United States' ability to intercept internal
Cuban communications.
Scott W. Carmichael, a DIA counterintelligence agent who helped hunt
down Montes and wrote a book on the case, says she used her position to
produce reports that played down Cuba's threats to the United States and
intimidated more junior analysts who did not agree with her conclusions.
Asked how deeply Montes' spying could have influenced U.S. intelligence
thinking on today's Cuba situation, Carmichael referred back to the
United States' ''damage assessment'' carried out after her arrest.
''We had to go back,'' he said, ``and reevaluate every single collection
effort the U.S. had against Cuba.''
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