Cuba spent decades recruiting American spies. Now Washington is turning the tables on Havana

Fox News ^ | 10/25/26 | Rick de la Torre

[Libloather]

Cuba’s government has spent decades recruiting Americans to betray their country. It objects to Secretary of State Marco Rubio inviting Cubans to cooperate with the CIA. Havana apparently believes espionage should remain a privilege of the dictatorship. The Trump administration is right to disagree.

Rubio is challenging a comfortable assumption in Washington: that Cuba is too broke to matter. A regime unable to keep the lights on can still penetrate a government, compromise an intelligence officer, and help America’s adversaries. Poverty has never disqualified a country from espionage. It can make espionage one of its more valuable exports.

I am an American of Cuban descent who spent more than two decades as a CIA operations officer, including service as chief of station in Latin America. That background leaves me with little patience for the assumption that a failing economy must produce an incompetent security apparatus. Dictatorships allocate resources according to what keeps them in power. Feeding the population and protecting the regime are different priorities. Havana has made its choice repeatedly.

The record requires little elaboration. Ana Belén Montes became the Pentagon’s leading Cuba analyst while working for Cuban intelligence. She exposed American intelligence officers and distorted Washington’s understanding of the country she was supposed to assess. Victor Manuel Rocha served as a U.S. ambassador and on the National Security Council while secretly serving Havana. Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers sustained an espionage conspiracy for 30 years.

These were patient investments in access. Cuban intelligence cultivated ideological commitment, steered recruits toward useful positions, and allowed American institutions to supply salaries, credentials, and trust. Montes needed no fortune deposited offshore. Conviction was enough. The most damaging agent may be the respected expert whose colleagues cannot imagine that his judgment belongs to someone else.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Conspiracy; Society; Travel
KEYWORDS: cuba; havana; spies; washington

[Libloather]

Best healthcare in the Milky Way.

[JeemBeau]

Ana Belén Montes has completed her sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Myers

[Lurker]

He should have been publicly executed.

L

[lee martell]

There has still been no Cuban held accountable for effects of The Havana Syndrome. Many reporter and investigator careers were ended, due to the subject becoming permanently disabled because of migraines, vertigo, diffuse pain on one side of the head, tinnitus, drowsiness, all where none of these symptoms existed before.

[Dr. Sivana]

If their spies successfully get information, it can be sold to Red China, Russia, or any other third party who will pay for that information.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Now is the time to recruit them openly. Our SOS is the guy to do it. When the regime falls and the lieutenants scramble for countries to flee to there won’t be many left other than Nicaragua and perhaps Mexico. They need to feel like the defendants at Nuremberg. Those 2 countries will feel the heat.