The Wall Street Journal has a feature news story in today’s edition detailing a fact long known about the success Cuban intelligence has enjoyed penetrating American government over the years, in particular their sophisticated and widespread recruitment efforts. “Cuba has ‘the best damn intelligence service in the world’ for cultivating agents, said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who led the agency’s Latin America division,” the story notes.
There is one new detail in the story, however, worth dwelling on:
Cuba recruited Americans, in part, by looking for potential sympathizers. Cuban intelligence officers routinely target young people, often in academia, with an ideological pitch about Cuba suffering under the U.S. economic embargo and other policies, current and former officials say.
“The Cubans didn’t pay big and didn’t need to pay big,” said Stuart Hoyt Jr., a former FBI agent who worked Cuban counterintelligence cases. “Because they could find people that sympathize.” . .
Ana Belén Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst considered Havana’s most damaging spy in the U.S. government, was recruited by Cuban intelligence while a student.
Yet another reason to view large portions of our universities as enemies of our country.—full stop. This is a clear case of double intelligence failure.
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