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TERRORISM
The Castroite Cuban Threat Against the US.
Cuba as a Threat to the
United States. I. Narcotics and Electromagnetic Threat, USSR/CIS--ChiCom
Base Threat
(Wkly 8.6, 5 Aug 99)
"As always, the official (US) tendency exists to minimize the
importance of the affair and, even more, refuse assistance in arriving
at the conclusion that the Cuban tyranny could convert itself into a
dangerous terrorist agent."
Ariel Remos (Diario las Américas 16 July 1999)
It has been Politically Correct (PC) since about 1991 to believe that
the ML (Marxist Leninists) of the Soviet Union have been transmogrified
into Free Enterprise Democrats (FEDs) and "friends" of the US. LANS has
avoided taking any position on whether or not this is reality, although
certain of the information which questions this viewpoint has been
touched upon. Of recent months, however, certain reports - increased
level of "Russian" espionage in the US, etc. - should have stimulated a
certain amount of doubt as to the credibility of the FED concept of
Russia. But when our scope is lowered to matters hemispheric, Castro's
HL (Hemispheric Left) is of considerable interest whether the USSR/CIS
remains under ML control or not.
The question of US security vis à vis Cuba involves the examination of a
rather broad spectrum of threats which that island nation poses against
the mainland. Unfortunately, the "mainstream" of American thinking
appears only to have been slightly concerned with the nuclear power
plant which Russia continues to build at Juraguá and which will be
touched upon - again - below. And even this concern is restricted to the
possibility of a Chernobyl-type "accident." In reality, there are a
number of threats, most of which are publicly treated in the US as if
"they could not happen here." There is a vulnerability to attack with
conventional, nuclear, biological, chemical and electromagnetic weapons.
These will be discussed based on certain data that has been brought out
of the Castro dictatorship in recent years.
Somewhat more arcane, however, is the vulnerability to attack by
narcotics, a subject which has been carefully swept under the PC rug by
a series of US administrations. The instigator of this narcotics attack,
Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev,32 considered it to be an important
tool for the destruction of the US, and it has indeed proven to be such.
A. The Narcotics Attack
Brian Crozier (L'Express 26 Dec 86) demonstrated that Khrushchev
recruited Castro into narco-trafficking, Douglass33 that "Cuba and
Czechoslovakia first established drug operations in the early 1960s."
This vital information has been carefully kept from the American people
for decades; the most important source for the information has been the
ranking Soviet Bloc defector, General Jan Sejna, whom the US Government
muzzled until his recent death.34 Sejna was in the witness protection
program, the threat from the FEDs' predecessors quite real. Crozier's
interviews with him, however, led to an article (The Sunday Times 28
January 1990) which revealed the threats to eject him from the program
if he provided the details of Soviet-Cuban narcotrafficking.
If nothing else, Khrushchev's drug war against the US has proven to be a
most useful economic tool for his ML terrorists in LA, the Colombian
terrorists particularly noted for the magnitude of their narco
operations (pp.163 ff, YRBK97 et seq). For years the US Government has
allegedly been involved in a "war on drugs," a war which, according to
various specific reports that LANS has received, is being fought with an
infiltrated army.35 But, most importantly, it is being fought against a
hemispheric drug operation commanded by Fidel Castro. Which renders the
behavior by the Clinton Government (CG) inconsistent if not
inexplicable.
On 18 June 1999 the CG announced that two members of the US State
Department and two members of the US Coast Guard were leaving that
evening for Cuba. The stated purpose of their trip was a meeting with
Castro's personnel on 21 June in order "to improve the coordination
between the US and Cuba" on detecting drug trafficking in the Caribbean.
"The news does not surprise me," said US Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart
(R, FL), "since it was the State Department that leaked to the
Washington Post a series of lies (to the effect) that Castro was
cooperating in the battle against drugs when it knows that he is a
narcotrafficker."
Díaz-Balart added that there were "people from Cuba trafficking, and a
formal action in the South of Florida against functionaries of the
regime. What they should have done instead of 'cooperating' is to free
up that prosecution and process the Cuba functionaries and their chief.
They would have to ask also if they are directing assistance to the Cali
and Medellín cartels."
B. Continued US Support of Narcobase Cuba
To this complaint State parroted the reply, routine for many years, to
the effect that it had no credible information that "the Government of
Cuba is involved in narcotrafficking." One of the most interesting
examples of such State stonewalling was provided by US Under Secretary
of State Laurence Eagleburger in 1983. In May of that year Mr.
Eagleburger commented that "it is difficult to believe that the Cuban
Government is not involved (in narcotrafficking)," then lapsed into
silence as though instructed to do so (p.166, YRBK97). The "lack of
credible information" claim on this occasion, while demonstrating that
the ranking members of that department had been prepared against such
heresies, was particularly weak in the light of the efforts which had
been underway for some time by Congressmen Burton and Gilman.
In May 1999 Congressman Dan Burton (R, IN), chairman of the Government
Reform Committee, and Congressman Ben Gilman (R, NY), chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee, asked State to put Cuba on the list of
"principal" countries involved in narcotrafficking. There was apparently
no noticeable effect of this request on the US-Cuba Drug Conference of
latter June. In early July, Burton and Gilman sponsored a bill before
the House declaring Cuba a "principal narcotrafficker." It will probably
be necessary, should it pass the Congress, for the bill to override the
veto of Mr. W. J. Clinton, an ambitious undertaking, if it is to become
law.
Should it become law, however, it would require Mr. Clinton to include
Cuba in the annual certification of governments that "cooperate fully"
or not in the battle against narcotics. Since the US president has
carried out what appears to be a pro-Cuba policy during most of his
occupancy of the Presidential Palace, it would appear unlikely that he
will comply with this law. In Chapter 3, "United States Diplomacy in
Latin America" (YRBK98), The U.S. Cuba Gambit (pp.118ff, ibid), has been
discussed. This treatment begins with the tête à tête dinner of the
Clintons in 1994 with Castro's good friend and supporter, Gabriel García
Márquez, more or less ending with the 1997 New York Post report of
Clinton's determination to recognize the Cuban tyranny before he leaves
office. The pace of this recognition effort appears to be picking up
this summer with the visit of US Chamber of Commerce President Thomas
Donohue to the Castroite dictatorship. Said pace is retaining its
earlier level with the US president's suspension of Title III of the
Helms Burton (HB) Law on 14 July 1999.
Title III establishes the right of enterprises with legal status in this
country to sue in US courts those foreign enterprises which in some way
are benefiting from US properties seized by the Castro dictatorship. The
opinion has frequently been expressed that Title III contains the real
teeth of HB without which the law is a sham embargo
Mr. Clinton has hobbled HB since it came into effect with his continuous
suspensions of Title III which began on 1 August 1996. On 1 August 1999
he did it again. Smiling Stuart Eizenstat, Under Secretary of State for
Agricultural and Economic Affairs and point man on what appears to be
the Cuba Recognition Project, was quick to defend the action. The
arguments used are routine ones with which the reader must assuredly be
familiar.
C. USSR/CIS Base Cuba
Russian Base Cuba has been described (YRBK97), the entirety of the
description not necessary of repetition here. Perhaps most astonishing
about what could be a serious threat to US security is the almost
complete absence of interest in the matter for reasons on which the
reader should feel free to speculate. In any event, LANS originally
compiled a list of five principal characteristics of USSR/CIS Base Cuba.
Here these will be synopsized and modified with more recently acquired
information.
1. In a 1996 interview Cuban Revolutionary Air Forces (FARC) General
Rafael del Pino, a 1987 defector, told the LANS Editor that there were
"more than 300"36 Soviet fighter aircraft based on Cuba. Most of these
were then moth-balled, a half-dozen (or so) operating out of La Cayuba
Air Base at San Antonio de los Baños, another half dozen out of Holguin,
Oriente Province.
2. At Lourdes Russia maintains and operates one of the world's largest
electronic espionage bases outside the USSR/CIS. What US Under Secretary
of State Watson defended before the US Congress (AFP 18 March 1995) has
recently been described as follows:37
The Lourdes electronic espionage base is 28 square miles in extent and
employs about 1,500 Russian personnel. A satellite view of Lourdes has
been provided by Professor Manuel Cereijo of Florida International
University. There are two satellite dish arrays on the base. The first
of these, "Space Associated Electronic Area North," specifically
monitors general US communications, the second, "Space Associated Area
South," targets telephones, facsimiles and computer transmissions, inter
alia. The Russian MLs, now allegedly FEDs, have spent over $3 billion on
Lourdes. In 1996, they began upgrading this facility.
The $250 million so far expended has provided Lourdes with
state-of-the-art electronics. LANS has previously mentioned their
computer capability to pick up targeted telephone numbers, then record
the conversations. The upgrade has introduced voice-recognition
capability to carry this surveillance to a higher level. By virtue of
its activity in collection and correlation of data from "spy"
satellites, ships and planes in the Atlantic region, Cereijo has aptly
classified Lourdes as a "full-fledged regional command and control
center."
Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
Director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in August 1996,
"Lourdes is being used to collect personal information about US citizens
in the private and government sectors." Has such information been used
to blackmail members of the US Government into, say, supporting IMF
"loans" for the USSR/CIS?38
Two additional categories have arisen in the domain of electromagnetic
warfare, space requiring their detailed treatment in a later report. (1)
In 1995 the USSR/CIS began construction of such a base at Bejucal (south
of Havana) to be operated by Cubans, this in response to Cuban
complaints over lack of access to Lourdes. (2) The Peoples Republic of
China (ChiCom) began beefing up its relations with ML Cuba in 1993 (AFP
24 Nov 93) with the visit of President Jiang Zemin to the island. This
was followed up by the 1995 visit of Castro to Beijing (p.92, YRBK97).
In February 1999 a delegation led by ChiCom Defense Minister Chi Haotian
arrived in Cuba (Xinhua News Agency 25 Feb 99).39 The ChiCom Peoples
Liberation Army (PLA) is using and improving Cuban electronic espionage
capabilities.
3. Russia is reported continuing to operate the ballistic missile
submarine base at Cienfuegos Bay which was established in 1971. Various
sightings of Polaris-type subs were reported in 1995. LANS has received
no more recent reports, although various sources have stated that, at
most, these facilities have been mothballed.
4. The so-called "missile crisis" of 1962 has been generally touted as
some sort of US victory. The evidence which has accumulated since then
has supported the conclusion that these missiles were not removed,40
arguments in favor of removal verging on the ludicrous.41 That these
delivery vehicles were not removed was inferable from the fact that no
inspections were made in Cuba, no Soviet vessels boarded for inspection
of canvas-covered deck cargo.
A treaty was signed on 28 September 1995 in Switzerland between the
United States and Russia. The key paragraph is: "The parties understand
that the treaty does not prohibit them from translating the ICBM
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) and SLBM (Submarine Launched
Ballistic Missile) outside their national territories."
LANS interviewed Lester T. Carbonell as this was being prepared. He
stated that he had no recent information on siloed missiles but that he
had encountered information on Chicom mobile Intermediate Range
Ballistic Missiles (IRBM). Eduardo Prida (Spcl 8.6) has mentioned
reports of emplaced IRBMs in central Cuba, and Congressman Díaz-Balart
maintains that SS-22s could readily be obtained on the international
black market.
5. On 14 May 1999, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that Cuba
and Russia have agreed to a "joint venture" to complete the reactor for
a nuclear power plant at Comunidad Juraguá (Cienfuegos), perhaps with
funds from US economic aid. The CG is concerned, not because the plant
could provide a source of weapons-grade fissionable material, but
because there might be some sort of "accident" (AFP 30 Jan 99). From the
PC treatment which the subject has received in most of the press, it can
be predicted that even this relatively minor concern is to be ignored.
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