Sunday, November 4, 2007

The Miami Herald reports on East Germany’s notorious Stasi security agency and its influence over the tropical version, Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT). Jorge Luís Vázquez, a Cuban exile who was jailed in 1987 in a Stasi cell, has found hundreds of East German government documents on Stasi relations with MININT, and is nearly finished writing what may well be the most thorough report to date on the links between the two security agencies.

The Stasi reconstructed MININT’s telephone and communications system in 1988 to better facilitate eavesdropping. Before that, in 1981, it modernized MININT’s printing press to enable better, faster production of party propaganda — and false passports used for espionage and subversion, Vázquez says.

The Stasi also overhauled the security system at José Martí International Airport in Havana, installing cameras, migration control booths and state-of-the-art X-ray equipment that mirrored identically the security methods in East Germany.

Coordinated espionage efforts between the Stasi and MININT also helped widen the Cuban secret service’s intelligence gathering. Vázquez’s study reveals that in 1985, Operation Palma Real, a cooperative action of ”electronic espionage” by German and Cuban agents, resulted in valuable interceptions of U.S. telephone and telegraph communications from the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo, Cuba.

Furthermore, the Stasi trained Cuban guerrillas who were being sent abroad to subvert other governments, teaching observation, espionage and interrogation techniques that considerably expanded Cuba’s impact on conflicts ranging from Central America to Africa, according to the documents Vázquez has gathered.

”What we see is a copy of the Stasi system that spread across the developing world — from Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador,” as Cubans passed on the methodology and technology to others, he said.

And then there was that intriguing mention of LSD, in a letter from the MININT’s supply department formally requesting from the Stasi some 360 doses of the hallucinogenic. The document does not explain its use.

Share This

The Cuban Government’s infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) is being utilized by Army General Raul Castro to shore up his authority over the country, according to an extensive article from the Washington Post. Castro will employ anew this political tool of control that has served well the regime.

As per the article:

Cuba’s block committees were born in 1960, shortly after Fidel Castro’s revolutionary forces toppled the corrupt, U.S.-friendly government of Fulgencio Batista. Concerned about a U.S. invasion, Castro’s government adopted a motto, still present on Cuban billboards: “In a fortress under siege, all dissent is treason.”

The concept behind the CDRs was to create a citizen force that would reinforce the dictates of Cuba’s government, establishing a kind of omnipresent peer pressure network among next-door neighbors. Leaders of CDRs could put Castro’s every public thought directly and rapidly into the hands of every Cuban, so the government would not have to rely solely on mass media.

As Castro’s brother, interim President Raul Castro, prepares to take full control after his brother’s death, party officials take visiting dignitaries on tours of the committees, and there are signs that the younger Castro is trying to inject new life into a system that could be crucial to solidifying his hold on power.

Police call block leaders more often, pressing aggressively for information, according to interviews with current and former CDR leaders. Earlier this year, Cuba’s state-run television network broadcast an exposé shaming several committees for failing to post obligatory round-the-clock sentries.

Share This