Chris Simmons, a career counterintelligence officer for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and expert in Cuban intelligence, wrote and op-ed published in the Miami Herald on the head of Cuba’s Interests Section (photo above), who was a former intelligence officer that might still be active.
Recent media accounts have heralded Havana’s selection of Jorge Bolaños as the incoming head of Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington. The conventional wisdom is that the posting of Bolaños, once the second-highest ranking Cuban diplomat, may indicate that Cuba seeks improved relations with the United States.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The CIA identified Bolaños as a suspected intelligence officer at least 34 years ago. More recently, a former member of Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI), Cuba’s principal espionage agency, confirmed that Bolaños was (or still is) an intelligence officer, although he was unclear whether Bolaños served with the DI or the notorious America Department (DA), the intelligence wing of the Cuban Communist Party. He observed that Bolaños is among a small group of old intelligence officers who at some point began working their cover identity more than their intelligence mission, as evidenced by his five appointments as ambassador.
It may be that Raúl Castro is not taking chances with what he used to call the Pinos Nuevos (New Pines, a reference to the younger generation). Bolaños is clearly part of the Vieja Guardia (Old Guard) and characterized as a very smart man who knows how to keep a low profile in order to avoid getting Fidel upset. The former DI operative suggested that Raúl Castro feels reassured relying on old colleagues like Bolaños.
His assessment of Bolaños’ intelligence ties is based on his close connections with the Superior Institute of Intelligence (ISI) as well as the DI and DA. Bolaños did not avoid such associations and was, in fact, a close friend of ISI Director Nestor Iturbi. Normally, career Cuban diplomats and senior officials stay away from the intelligence services because the association can cripple their careers when other countries’ counterintelligence officials get confused and identify them as intelligence collaborators or undercover DI or DA officers.
This former DI officer personally met Bolaños and spoke with him several times when he was assigned as a senior official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex). More so, Bolaños lived across the street from the ISI’s main entrance and parked one of his cars inside the ISI compound on a daily basis.
In August 2005, Paraguay investigated a large influx of Cuban nationals. At least two foreign governments had warned Asunción that Cuban intelligence officers were believed to be entering the country under tourist or medical cover. Predictably, it was Bolaños who, several years earlier, presided over the restoration of diplomatic relations with Paraguay while serving at Minrex.
In May 2004, the Mexican government ordered Bolaños to leave Mexico within 48 hours as a result of a spy scandal involving three DA officers: Orlando Silva Fors, José Antonio Arbesú and Pedro Miguel Lobaina-Jiménez de Castro. According to Le Monde, Lobaina headed the DA’s Mexico Section. Cuba and Mexico subsequently resolved Bolaños’ expulsion offer, and he remained Havana’s ambassador through September 2007.
It bears mentioning that Cuba’s Embassy in Mexico City hosts one of the two largest and most important DI Centers in the world (New York City is the other). Prior to his Mexico posting, Bolaños served in another assignment that closely tied him with Havana’s intelligence services. In the mid-1990s, he served as a first vice minister in Minrex, where he oversaw Havana’s interactions with Cubans living overseas. His duties there would have made him invaluable to the DI’s Department XIX (Counter-Revolutionary Targets), which pursues operations against the Cuban-American community.
At best, Bolaños is an experienced former intelligence officer with extensive connections throughout Cuban intelligence and the Ministry of Foreign Relations. At worst, he remains an active intelligence officer assigned to the DI, or more likely, the DA. Either way, the posting of this very skilled ambassador-spy is not a signal that Havana wants closer relations. Quite the opposite, the assignment of an Old Guard spy like Bolaños indicates that Havana’s main desire is to continue indefinitely its increased intelligence targeting of the United States.
Bolaños’ biography from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[Photo of Jorge Bolaños from La Jornada]
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