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Cubas security officials also continue to deny the holding of political prisoners, while saying that Cuban dissidents are tools of the United States. Do not underestimate Cubas vast intelligence and espionage network. Their security and intelligence apparatus are on a scale perceived to be many times larger than that of the United States. And even with Cubas poverty, depressed economic situation and weak prognosis for future windfalls, their clandestine operational acts continue and extend throughout the Americas and the world. The Cuban espionage budget is not generally known outside of most major competent intelligence services globally. However, much of their modus operandi is. Essentially the DI (Direccin de Inteligencia) never had to be reinvented, other than by moniker, from the former DGI (Direccin General de Inteligencia) with original training by the former Soviet KGB. Cuba maintains one of its largest intelligence networks within Venezuela, with President Hugo Chavez preferring direct access to the service, as indicated by cables unscrupulously released and sent from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to the State Department. This cozy relationship, between Cuba and Venezuela, reeks of potential massive funding hidden by obscure secret decrees. Cubas intelligence network has long been focused on the U.S. as its primary adversary. As the U.S. is perceived to be the number one threat to the Castro and Chavez regimes, intelligence acquisition is a high priority to the dictatorial-like leftist regimes throughout Latin America. It seems as though every calamity from weather, cancer or related maladies are blamed on the U.S. and the CIA. Hugo Chavez has used this hysteria of convenience in his attempt to justify to a savvy Venezuelan people the need for the massive purchasing of military armaments, and to amass Cuban intelligence experts on Venezuelan soil thought to be in excess of 3,000 people. Chavez has been accused by neighboring nations officials of spreading instability within the region. In a memo released from the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, in February 2008, Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim all but acknowledged the presence of the FARC guerrillas in Venezuela. Other released U.S. intelligence documents also cited leftist rebels in Cuba belonging to the FARC. Using diplomatic cover to disguise intelligence operational acts in Panama, Peru, Mexico City, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and other Central American areas, Cuba has historically spread insurgence. Operatives supervised the airlift of an estimated 30 planeloads of Cuban arms to Nicaraguas Sandinistas during their revolution in 1978-79. Former Cuban official Pedro Riera Escalante, who was summarily deported by Mexico and who served undercover as a Cuban consul in Mexico City from 1986 through 1991, has described Cuban espionage operations against the CIA station in Mexico City and other operations he ran in Europe and Africa.
Cuba has reluctantly acknowledged that in the case of the infamous Cuban Five spies, from 1998, that the five men were intelligence agents, but says they were spying on Miamis Cuban exile community, not the U.S. government. In the case of Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes (a former senior analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency), she was arrested on September 21, 2001, pleaded guilty to spying, and was eventually sentenced to a 25-year prison term. Cuba continues to maintain a large intelligence-gathering hub in Mexico City. With Castro and Chavezs close relationship to Iran, and the history of hostile Cuban espionage throughout the hemisphere, it is important not to assume that poverty-driven Cuba is sleeping. -Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global threat mitigation firm headquartered in northern Virginia. His website is located at http://www.cjiausa.org/. TWITTER: cjiausa