Posted on 02/06/2003 3:42:20 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Cuban agents have left human waste in the Havana homes of American diplomats, disturbed their sleep and tempted married envoys with sexual affairs in a harassment campaign aimed at exhausting the U.S. officials, according to an internal State Department document obtained by The Herald.
Originally classified, the cable was written by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in December and outlines complaints that while not new, are exceptional in their details. It was declassified this week.
Diplomats and opponents of the Fidel Castro government have complained for years about harassment of U.S. government employees by Cuban agents and the so-called Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), Communist party loyalists who stage protests outside Castro opponents' homes.
The cable went further, detailing these allegations:
o U.S. diplomats and their families ``are denied rest or relaxation by house alarms triggered in the middle of the night . . . phones that ring at all hours, and by cellphones that ring every half hour for no apparent reason.''
o Cars belonging to U.S. diplomats who talk regularly with Cuban dissidents on the island are particular targets, their tires slashed, windows smashed and insides ''pilfered.'' Sometimes, as evidence of an intrusion, they find their car radios re-tuned to pro-Castro stations.
o The Cubans search and wiretap the Americans' Havana residences, including tapping into their home computers, leaving open doors and windows behind and 'leaving not-so-subtle `messages' . . . including unwelcome calling cards like urine and feces.''
''In one example that demonstrates how regime officials actually listen to the daily activities of the [U.S. diplomatic] staff, presumably through electronic bugs, shortly after one family discussed the susceptibility of their daughter to mosquito bites, they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes,'' the report said.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said Cuban agents monitoring U.S. diplomats in Cuba have ''gotten more aggressive'' in recent months. ''They're engaged in active psychological operations against U.S. personnel. Spouses are not immune. Children are not immune,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Using language reminiscent of Cold War conditions for Americans operating behind the Iron Curtain, the nearly three-page cable also said that the diplomats ``are treated to a steady diet of officially sanctioned provocations, surveillance, recruitment attempts and harassment.''
For example, it alleged, the Cuban government 'has even run campaigns of `sexual advances' against USINT personnel (Interests Section employees) when their spouses are out of the country.''
It also said that Cuban government officials ``routinely dangle false opportunities for contacts and information on issues of interest to the U.S., like refugee smuggling and dissident activities.''
U.S. and Cuban relations are carried out through an Interests Section, a diplomatic mission that is of lesser stature than a formal embassy. Washington severed ties with Havana in 1961 and resumed partial relations in 1977 during the Carter administration.
The cable said the goal of harassment was to ''take a psychological and physical toll'' on the American envoys. Sometimes, the U.S. diplomats and their staff return home simply to find their doors and windows open, and air conditioners left running. Others are sometimes filmed in and around their homes by Cuban CDR members.
Dennis K. Hays, a retired U.S. diplomat who worked on U.S.-Cuban issues and is now the chief Washington lobbyist for the Cuban American National Foundation, said the experiences outlined in the report are not new.
''What's unusual,'' he said, ``is that it's been compilated.''
He dismissed a suggestion that the memo may have become public to underscore some Cuban exiles' wish to remind the Bush administration of Castro at a time when it is campaigning to topple Saddam Hussein.
''I think it just came out, without any connection,'' he said.
The State Department official, who spoke to The Herald on condition of anonymity, said there's been consistent harassment of United States employees in Havana for many years. More recently, diplomats detected an increase, perhaps related to a more active outreach by U.S. Interests Section personnel to dissidents and human rights activists on the island.
''This has really unnerved them. So this is how they've reacted,'' the official said.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not return repeated phone messages seeking a comment.
Vicki Huddleston Q&A: Veteran leader speaks about dissidents, Castro and the U.S. role***
Q: How can the U.S. help? And should it?
A: Certainly we should play a role. Any kind of role we play is going to be opposed by the Cuban government.
They are going to say we are interfering with a domestic issue. But of course we should play a role. All over the world, the United States defends and supports human rights and developing democracies. . . That is why using the [Agency for International Development] money is very useful. Because it's going to help the Cuban people prepare for the future.
There can't be a think tank in Cuba to explore these questions: How are we going to move in this direction? How are we going to have elections? But if people outside of Cuba can do it, particularly if it includes contributions from people inside Cuba to legitimize it, it can be a very good thing. We can be a signpost: The way to a democracy is through human rights and freedom.
The American government can't do much more. But the American people can do two things. Number one, they can participate in outreach, by sending books, subscribing to The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald and sending newspapers. If they are confiscated, good. Then the Customs person can read it. They can send money to buy computers and illegal satellite dishes. They can send medicine to start independent clinics. So that you can empower the Cuban people enough so that they have a certain protection from their own government. So they don't have to rely on the government for everything. By sending medicines to independent doctors, for example, their community starts to protect them because they can get medicine from them and they can't get them anywhere else. If you have them and share them, you gain a certain leadership position.
Number two I think is in some ways harder for Cuban Americans -- and as a non-Cuban American, I should tread lightly because I haven't had their experiences and history. But Cubans on the island are afraid of the future, of what that future holds. And Cuban Americans can explain to their friends and family that it's a brighter future. A future in which they can earn a fair wage for their work, where they can travel freely, where their children will have an opportunity for a better job or house so they don't have to move back in with Mom and Dad. It's important that Cuban Americans in the United States be seen by Cuban people as their friends and supporters. . . The exile community has become the enemy or has been made into the enemy, and the Cuban American people have to overcome that image . . . There is a special effort by the Cuban government to make them the enemy.***
Bush Pushes Scholarships for Cubans***WASHINGTON, Jun 26, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The Bush administration is planning to offer scholarships to Cuban students and professionals, hoping the skills they acquire will be useful if and when the island embarks on a democratic path. When the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba passed word of the plan recently, long lines formed outside the building, causing traffic problems. The Cuban Foreign Ministry held the mission responsible and lodged a diplomatic rebuke. President Bush mentioned the plan in a speech last month, indicating some scholarships would go to relatives of Cuban political prisoners. Adolfo Franco, a top official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the initiative is a "wonderful vehicle for introducing young Cuban people to the United States and to give them a taste for academic freedom."***
Castro warns that Cuba-US ties could be cut even further *** HAVANA - Fidel Castro has warned that limited Cuba-U.S. relations could be cut further and the American mission here could be closed if U.S. diplomats persist in "violations of our sovereignty." Migration agreements between the two countries also were being put at risk by American diplomats "who go around the country as they like, organizing networks and conspiracies," the Cuban president said Wednesday.
Castro's warning comes as Washington steps up programs it says are aimed at bringing democracy to the communist island, such as distributing radios here so Cubans can tune in to U.S. government programming and increasing funding for dissident support groups in the United States. "We are not willing to permit violations of our sovereignty, nor the humiliating disregard of norms ruling the conduct of diplomats," Castro told lawmakers gathered for a special session examining a constitutional change declaring Cuba's economic, political and social systems "untouchable."***
U.S. works to promotes democracy and end Castro's 43-year rule *** But, much to the annoyance of Cuban leaders, U.S. officials have been working inside Cuba to promote democracy and end Castro's 43-year rule. Their efforts have irritated U.S.-Cuban relations just as Castro is engaged in what has been called a ''charm offensive'' aimed at getting the United States to drop its four-decade ban on tourism and trade. The U.S. diplomats' activities, which have increased during the Bush administration, include:
* Encouraging dissidents. Oswaldo Paya, among those who met with the editors, is an unassuming medical equipment technician who's pushing for a referendum on freedom of speech, creation of small businesses and amnesty for political prisoners. Paya's petition drive, known as the Varela Project, has attracted international attention and more than 11,000 signatures in Cuba. It has rattled Cuban leaders, who have called the proposed referendum unconstitutional. The constitution belongs to all the people, not to one man,'' Paya says. That man, Castro, was scheduled to meet with the editors but canceled at the last minute because, an aide said, he had too much other work.
* Distributing radios and books. Officials at the U.S. Interests Section, as the 51-person diplomatic mission here is called, have handed out more than 1,000 short-wave radios to Cubans. The radios, paid for by American taxpayers, allow listeners to pick up signals around the world, particularly Radio Marti, the anti-Castro station financed by the U.S. government.
The $10 kits contain a receiver made in China, batteries, a charger, earphones and a pamphlet of sayings by Jose Marti, the 19th-century Cuban national hero. The diplomats also give away books in Spanish about democracy.
* Supporting anti-government journalists. Cuban reporters who don't work for the state-controlled press are being allowed to use computers at the Interests Section to access the Internet and e-mail dispatches to publications outside Cuba. Claudia Marquez Linares, 25, says she and other independent journalists are permitted to use the computers once a week for an hour.
''People are hungry for the opportunity to read'' information that goes beyond the government line, she says.
The U.S. personnel here acknowledge that, especially since the end of the Cold War, it's unusual for U.S. diplomats to try to undermine the government in the country where they're posted. Cuba, Cason explains, is ''a different place.'' U.S. policy, he says, is to help the Cuban people make a rapid, peaceful transition to democracy.
Not surprisingly, Cuban government officials are agitated about what they regard as the U.S. officials' improper intervention in their internal affairs. ''Have they contributed to democracy in Cuba? No. It's not their task,'' snaps Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. It's not Cuba's job, Roque adds wryly, to ensure clean elections in Florida.***
Another swell idea from Jimmah: He decided it was necessary.
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