“CHEEKING” THE COLOSSUS OF THE NORTH

By Jorge G. Castaneda; Jorge G. Castaneda is a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Published: Sunday, March 1, 1987

THE CLOSEST OF ENEMIES A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U. S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957. By Wayne S. Smith. Illustrated. 308 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $19.95.

LATIN AMERICAN diplomats, statesmen and intellectuals have often believed that there is more than meets the eye to the unending estrangement between Cuba and the United States. Beyond the specific explanations for each chapter in that divorce's turbulent history, they stress a deeper meaning. In the last analysis, according to this view, the United States, through seven Presidents in 28 years, has made Cuba an example of the cost of revolution in Latin America: a complete and indefinite cutoff of all political, economic and cultural links with Washington. United States administrations may not always impede revolution or radical social change in Latin America, though they often can - as they did in Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Chile in 1970-73, and as they have been doing in El Salvador since 1979 - but they can make the costs seem unbearable to others who may have revolution on their minds.

Wayne S. Smith's memoir of relations between the United States and Cuba since 1957, two years before the Cuban revolution, does not espouse this view, which is what one would expect from a former State Department career officer, regardless of his clearly perceived sympathies for Latin American ways and customs. Nor does this readable, meticulous and well-reasoned account of endlessly missed opportunities for normalization of relations between Fidel Castro and the United States attempt to provide a substantive, all-encompassing explanation for more than a quarter-century of conflict and tensions. The quasi-psychological motivations Mr. Smith resorts to are no substitute - and do not pretend to be - for an abstract analysis of why the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation has not been able to accept and deal with such an obviously permanent fixture of Latin American and international life. The search for the underlying causes of this Caribbean paradox falls outside the scope of ''The Closest of Enemies,'' but the author's narrative, particularly of the Carter Administration and its fleeting detente with Fidel Castro, sheds fascinating light on many episodes that illustrate that paradox. It also lends credence -Mr. Smith's intention notwithstanding - to the Latin American perspective described above.

During the Carter Administration, the author was in charge of the Cuban desk at the State Department; from 1979 to 1982, he headed the United States Interest Section in Havana. He was thus familiar - sometimes intimately, sometimes less so - with the entire process of rapprochement followed by renewed distance that took place at the time. He attributes the failure of the step-by-step, reciprocal process above all to the reluctance of the National Security Council - and its chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski - to pursue normalization of ties with Cuba, and to the unwillingness of the State Department and President Carter to force the issue. Mr. Smith relies heavily on former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, whose memoirs and positions buttress his arguments. He makes his case well. There is some question whether the whole N.S.C. was as opposed to any form of agreement with Cuba - beyond the opening of Interest Sections and the easing of travel restrictions - as he implies, but his examples are nonetheless persuasive.

In November of 1977, after the two Interest Sections had opened, President Carter issued a statement to the effect that increases in the number of Cuban troops in Angola would complicate further progress in talks between Cuba and the United States. According to Mr. Smith, Mr. Brzezinski then told a group of journalists, on background, that ''a new CIA study . . . revealed that there had been a steady military buildup in Angola and Ethiopia during the summer and fall . . . Normalization with Cuba was therefore now 'impossible.' '' But Mr. Smith states in no uncertain terms that ''there had been no buildup'' (author's emphasis) and that the C.I.A. had simply ''revised upward its estimate of how many Cuban troops were in Angola.'' Mr. Smith does not explicitly accuse Mr. Brzezinski of bad faith, but he hardly needs to.

Similarly, Mr. Smith points out that the Carter Administration's claim that Cuba bears responsibility for the freeze in the normalization process in 1978 because it dispatched troops to Ethiopia is not entirely solid. The former diplomat explains in some detail the circumstances under which the Cubans arrived in Ethiopia; he argues that Somalia's switch of alliances in 1977 and subsequent invasion of its Ethiopian neighbor - by then a Cuban ally and ideological soulmate - were both perceived as having been orchestrated from Washington. As Mr. Smith puts it: ''The Soviets and Cubans, of course, thought that the U.S. was behind the Somali invasion. . . . I did not believe there were any such sinister motives behind U.S. actions . . . At the same time, I had to acknowledge to myself that had I been sitting in Castro's chair, I would have been just as convinced as he of Washington's ulterior motives.'' Once again, Mr. Brzezinski's role - as well as Mr. Vance's passive acquiescence and Mr. Carter's waffling - are not too discreetly suggested. Although Mr. Smith may be right or wrong on each detail of the specific examples he provides, it stands to reason that Mr. Brzezinski did place United States-Cuban normalization in the context of United States-Soviet tensions. Likewise, it is probable that he did subordinate the United States-Cuban rapprochement to the need to deter Soviet aggression in the third world by showing firmness. All of which may have made geopolitical sense, but it also meant that any understanding between Cuba and the United States was virtually impossible: Fidel Castro refused to renounce his Soviet alliance and his friends in Africa and Central America for the dubious delights and uncertain stability of potential and conditional normalization with the United States - and will continue to do so.

The high point of Mr. Smith's personal history is his narrative of the Mariel affair. In April 1980, more than 100,000 Cubans fled to Miami in hundreds of small boats. Many left for political reasons; others were expelled from Cuba when Mr. Castro sent thousands of delinquents and criminals from the jails and streets of Havana to the United States, handing Mr. Carter one more problem with no solution. Mr. Smith lived through the crisis in situ, and offers explanations for why it occurred in the first place, and why the Cuban leader lost control of a situation for the first time since the revolution.

As of late 1979, Cuban citizens wishing to leave their country had been hijacking boats and sailing them to Florida. Instead of trying the hijackers and jailing them - as Cuba had done with American hijackers of planes to Cuba - the United States Government set them free. Mr. Smith emphasizes that the Cubans registered several protests, through the Interest Section, and never received a reply, much less satisfaction. According to Mr. Smith, the issue was juggled back and forth by the State Department and the Justice Department - the responsible agency - but nothing was ever done. At the same time, the United States was refusing to grant visas to Cubans who wanted to leave legally. This apparent American hypocrisy eventually led Mr. Castro - distraught and overwhelmed, according to Mr. Smith, by the death of Celia Sanchez, his companion of 25 years - to order the Mariel sealift. It also made him underestimate the number of Cubans who wanted to leave, as well as the political consequences for Mr. Carter's re-election campaign of another instance of his perceived indecisiveness.

MR. SMITH'S version of these and other events in the Cuban-American conflict since 1959 will undoubtedly be disputed. His book's greater interest lies in the vision it gives of the historical process, and its similarities to the present situation in Nicaragua. During the first several years of the Cuban revolution, the United States dealt with the Castro regime as if it were a transitory phenomenon, which would either be done away with - by others, at no cost to the United States - or would go away on its own. Later, when it became clear that neither would occur, the United States attempted to achieve an understanding with Cuba, but on its own terms, essentially demanding that Fidel Castro cease to be Fidel Castro in exchange for normalization. When that failed also, the Reagan Administration simply put the Cuban issue aside.

In the Nicaraguan drama, the United States still finds itself in the first stage: attempting to overthrow the Sandinistas by remote control, or hoping they will just disappear. Once again, neither will happen: the battle between the Sandinistas and the rebels, or contras, is over, lost by President Reagan's ''freedom fighters'' in the halls of Congress and the jungles of Nicaragua. The Sandinistas are more firmly in power today, and more relaxed and adroit in its exercise, than at any time since 1979, and they know it.

In the last analysis, if President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of Nicaragua outlasts Ronald Reagan - as Fidel Castro has outlasted every American President since Eisenhower - the United States will have to negotiate with the Sandinistas from a position of weakness. Because of President Reagan's obsession with getting rid of his Sandinista nemesis, and given his failure so far to attain this goal, the United States will have lost its proxy war, and Nicaragua will have won. The fact that viewing the problem in these terms makes little sense is irrelevant: this is the way the Reagan Administration has framed the debate. Like Cuba, the Sandinistas will have defied the United States and gotten away with it. The cost they both paid has been dear and may deter some in Latin America from following the road of revolution. But for many others, the taste of victory over the ''colossus of the north'' seems priceless. In any case, those who pay it are not disposed to give up at the negotiating table what they won in the mountains, the news media and the international arena. This is the lesson we can draw from Wayne Smith's account, and from the United States' failure to come to terms with revolution in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere in the hemisphere.

SOVIET MONITORING OF PHONES IS CITED

By NEIL A. LEWIS, Special to the New York Times

Published: Sunday, May 3, 1987

The Soviet Union maintains an elaborate system for eavesdropping on sensitive United States Government communications from Soviet-bloc embassies here, according to intelligence authorities.

The authorities, who include both present and former officials, say the Russians are using embassies and residences on high points in and around Washington to intercept communications, particularly those from microwave relay stations. These stations carry long-distance telephone traffic from Government offices. It Works Both Ways

The interception of communications works, of course, both ways. The United States has a secret agency, the National Security Agency, charged with the interception of foreign communications, including those of the Soviet Union. There have been reports that listening equipment on top of the American Embassy in Moscow is being used for that purpose.

Several members of Congress are urging the Reagan Administration to scrap a 1969 agreement that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to build new embassies in each other's capitals.

In Washington, the Soviet Union was given a parcel of land on Mount Alto, one of the highest points in the city. In addition to having a clear view of the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the Mount Alto compound also has a good view of the Naval Security Station in northwest Washington, a center for secret naval communications.

Legislators who want to remove the Russians from Mount Alto also favor razing the new American Embassy building under construction in Moscow, on the ground that it is filled with Soviet listening devices.

Intelligence experts say that even if the Russians were forced to move from Mount Alto, they would still be able to intercept from embassies and residences in the region.

''One should not think that just by depriving the Soviets of Mount Alto they would not be able to intercept our communications,'' a Government authority on security said. East European Activity Noted

Another official, referring to the other Soviet-bloc missions, said, ''They are surrogates of the Soviets in intelligence gathering.''

Several officials mentioned as prime listening posts an East German residence on a ridge in Arlington, Va., overlooking Washington, and the Cuban interest section in the Czechoslovak Embassy, two miles from the White House.

The East German residence is one-third of a mile from the Pentagon. the Polish Embassy, like the Czechoslovak Embassy, is on a hill known as Mount Pleasant overlooking the White House. Moreover, the two diplomatic missions are between the White House and a microwave relay point in northwest Washington near Tenley Circle.

The Russians use diplomatic compounds elsewhere in the United States to collect intelligence in a similar fashion, the officials said. Microwave traffic along the East Coast is reportedly collected by listening stations at Soviet residential compounds in Glen Cove, L.I., and on the Maryland shore. The officials said a Soviet residence in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco were ideal for microwave interception because of their elevation. Issue of Microwave Interception

Telephone transmissions travel by microwave or by satellite, as well as by land lines. The Russians are able to intercept much of that, officials say, from an electronic complex at Lourdes, Cuba.
But the Cuban installation cannot intercept microwave transmissions that travel close to the earth. An expert on intelligence, James Bamford, said the interception of microwave beams required receivers near the relay or repeater stations, which are placed every 30 miles or so to account for the curvature of the earth.

''Microwaves travel mostly in a straight line between the stations,'' he said. Mr. Bamford and other experts said interception devices did not have to be within a direct line of sight of a relay tower. The beams have side lobes that extend a half a mile or more outside of the direct beam and can be detected.

A former American official said the present Soviet Embassy in Washington was surrounded by taller buildings that made eavesdropping difficult.

''Mount Alto lets them do a large volume uninterrupted by lots of interference,'' he said. Reagan Pledge Held Meaningless

An American University professor who has written on electronic intelligence, Jeffrey T. Richelson, said of the 350-foot Mount Alto, ''It is electronically quieter up there.'

Because of the reports that the new American Embassy being built in Moscow is riddled with bugging devices, President Reagan has pledged that the Russians will not be allowed to move into the new embassy on Mount Alto until the United States is satisfied it has a secure embassy in Moscow. But State Department officials say this is meaningless since the Russians already occupy residences on the Mount Alto site, as do the Americans on the Moscow site.

The National Security Agency, which is also responsible for protecting American communications, has been trying to foil Soviet eavesdropping. Among plans being considered are encoding the signals that travel through the atmosphere or using telephone cables or fiber optics.

''The way it works now,'' a former official said, ''is that when you pick up a telephone in the Pentagon to make a call, you have no idea how it is going to be transmitted.'' Calls Switched Automatically

Automatic switching equipment routes the call by land line, satellite or microwave, depending on which method is most efficient at the time.

Even if a call is sent by land line, it may eventually be transferred to a microwave relay tower at either Tenley Circle or Waldorf, Md., another center for microwave transmission.

To counter this problem, the National Security Agency has developed a secure telephone that it hopes to place in Government offices and those of military contractors. The device, which encodes a conversation at the sending end and decodes it at the receiving end, is said to be cheaper and less unwieldy than its predecessors. The National Security Agency would like the Government to buy 500,000 such phones.

But for now, the growing sentiment on Capitol Hill is merely to expel the Russians from Mount Alto. Representative Richard Armey, Republican of Texas, who is sponsoring legislation to scrap the 1969 agreement that designated Mount Alto as the site, has distributed more than 500 lapel buttons saying, ''Reclaim Mt. Alto.''

Some security officials said it would be better to allow the Russians to remain at Mount Alto and use the money to protect sensitive communications.

Cuba Charges U.S. Espionage Article from: The Washington Post Article date: July 8, 1987 More results for: american interest section cuba

Cuba has denounced what it claims is U.S. espionage on the island and broadcast a television film that it said showed Americans engaged in spying.

The half-hour film, broadcast Monday night during a peak viewing period on Cuban television, was called "The CIA War Against Cuba" and reportedly is to be followed by six more segments. It showed diplomats, or their wives, hiding or collecting-in public parks, bushes by the roadside, under bridges-what were identified as sophisticated communications equipment and parcels containing large sums of Cuban money.

The Cuban presentation followed broadcast by the U.S. government's Radio Marti of an interview with a Cuban Air Force defector, Gen. Rafael del Pino Diaz, who alleged low morale in the Cuban military because of losses in Africa.

Narration accompanying the film said all the Americans shown belonged to the U.S. interest section here and identified them as CIA agents who were clandestinely filmed between 1981 and February of this year by what the Cuban commentator said were infiltrated Cuban secret service agents.

The program said that since September 1977, 38 of the 69 diplomats permanently accredited to the U.S. mission have been CIA agents. It gave the names of four of them. A State Department spokeswoman refused to comment, as is routine in cases that involve intelligence matters. @Slug: A24CUB

Cuba Charges U.S. Espionage." The Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 1987. Retrieved April 27, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1331633.html

U.S. Expelling Two Cuban Diplomats Article from: The Washington Post Article date: July 16, 1987 Author: David B. Ottaway

The United States has ordered two Cuban diplomats here to leave the country by July 25 in retaliation for an extensive media campaign alleging that American diplomats serving in Havana have been engaged in espionage activities, the State Department announced yesterday.

The two Cubans being expelled are Virgilio Lora amd Bienvenido Abierno, both third secretaries in the Cuban “interests section” here, according to department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley.

The hostile Cuban media campaign, which began July 6, has led to “significant harassment” and “intolerable conditions” for U.S. personnel at the U.S. interests section in Havana, a department statement said.

The campaign had also caused “irreparable damage” to the individuals named in the Cuban media as allegedly involved in espionage activities there and made it impossible for those still there to carry out their jobs, it said.

Despite the allegations, the Cuban government so far has not demanded that any of the American diplomats leave the country.

The Cubans also have been restricting U.S. flights carrying supplies and diplomatic pouches to U.S. diplomats in Havana, further complicating life for American diplomats there, the statement added.

The U.S. government has refused to comment on the espionage allegations disseminated in Cuba “because the United States does not respond to such allegations,” Oakley said.

The Cuban denunciations appear to have been touched off by the defection in late May of a Cuban air force general, Rafael del Pino Diaz. He subsequently attacked the regime of President Fidel Castro in a five-hour interview with Radio Marti, the U.S. government-operated radio station broadcasting to Cuba in Spanish.

Extracts of the interview were made available to various U.S. newspapers, radio and television stations last month. @Slug: A10USE
David B. Ottaway. "U.S. Expelling Two Cuban Diplomats." The Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 1987. Retrieved April 27, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1332950.html

CUBA ISSUES DETAILED REPORT ON ARRESTED CZECHS – NY Transfer, All the News That Doesn’t Fit
 
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
 
The following report was issued by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the arrest of Czechs working for "Freedom House"
 
January 25, 2001
 
INFORMATION ON THE CAUSES FOR THE ARREST OF CZECH CITIZENS IVAN PILIP AND JAN BUBENIK, AND THE EXTENSIVE HISTORY OF CONSPIRACY AND INTERFERENCE ON THE
PART OF THE CZECH GOVERNMENT AND ITS DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVES IN CUBA, WHICH DEMONSTRATE THE CLOSE AND DIRECT CONNECTION BETWEEN THIS POLICY AND
THE LATEST INCIDENT.




The investigations into the Czech citizens' stay in Cuba reveal that upon arriving in Cuba, they rented a car from a tourist car rental agency, with the license plate number T-005267. Then they drove through the
 provinces of Matanzas, Cienfuegos and Sancti Spíritus, like regular tourists visiting the country's central region, continuing on January 11 to the province of Ciego de Ávila, the place of their first rendezvous
 according to the list of individuals given to them in the United States, all of whom live in the central and eastern regions of the country.




 
Once in this province, they visited two known counterrevolutionaries, with whom they discussed the issues indicated by Robert Pontichera and attempted to obtain information to pass on to Freedom House.
 The list of names and addresses was protected by electronic means.
 
The work assigned to Pilip and Bubenik is nothing new to our country. This is simply the latest in a long list of interfering and destabilizing actions conducted by the Czech Republic against the Cuban
 revolutionary process.
 
For more than a decade, there has been close and systematic monitoring in Cuba of the subversive activities of Czech diplomats in step with instructions from intelligence agencies and other institutions in the 
United States passed on through the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
 
These conspiracies began in 1989. In 1987, an extensive espionage network handled by officials in the above-mentioned U.S. Interests Section in Cuba had been dismantled. As the Interests Section restructured
 its forces, means and methods, it called on the diplomats of other countries for assistance, and it was precisely at this point that the Embassy of what was then Czechoslovakia became an instrument of the U.S.
 Interests Section and its main center of subversion.
 

Cuba Exults That CIA's Men in Havana Were Double Agents;In a Television Series, Alleged Spies-Turned-Heroes Tell How They Duped American Agency Article from: The Washington Post Article date: July 27, 1987 Author: Lewis H. Diuguid More results for: Cuba Exults That CIA

Cuba's intensely publicized charges of CIA spying here have created a new category of revolutionary hero-the double agent.

Cuban national television last week launched a series on alleged activities of the U.S. interest section here with film of supposedly clandestine drops of bulk packages said to contain radio equipment and currency.

In the succeeding five parts, however, any new evidence against the CIA has consisted solely of testimony by Cubans identified as having duped the agency into thinking that they were willing to subvert their country for the Yankee dollar.

President Fidel Castro, speaking tonight on the 34th anniversary of the start of his revolution, did not mention the CIA issue. He denounced as "repugnant calumnies" statements by defected Air Force Gen. Ramon del Pino Diaz that have been beamed here by U.S. Radio Marti. The broadcasts are believed to be a factor in Cuba's launching of the anti-CIA campaign. Otherwise, Castro devoted his 135-minute speech to domestic issues.

In one of last week's revelations by alleged double agents, ship captain Antonio Garcia Urquiola said the CIA paid him $120,000 for part-time spy work since 1978.

Garcia explained that his salary for subversion was $1,500 monthly of late. But he failed to collect since the money was deposited in banks abroad.

The ship captain's account paralleled those divulged by several alleged double agents in the series-which is known among several members of the diplomatic corps here as "the tele-novel," or soap opera.

Garcia said he joined Cuba's "security forces," meaning secret police, in 1966 and was trained to infiltrate foreign spy networks that might recruit him as he made his way from port to port.

After 12 years, Garcia said, the CIA took him on-and he took it in. As have other alleged double agents, he said he was subjected often to lie detector tests, which he passed easily with the training he had received.

Garcia described dealing with a case officer in Panama named Roberto.

Granma, the official daily newspaper of the Communist Party, put it this way in an account headlined, "Our Man in the CIA": "Roberto had retired from the CIA, but after Ronald Reagan's election victory he was recalled with other former officers to revive certain plans against Cuba." Garcia went on:

"Roberto was very careful about everything. He checked everything I did. He'd monitor my calls to headquarters and how I made them. He checked the hotels where he stayed and where we met . . . whether there were several entrances and exits, whether I was being followed. He spoke Spanish well.

"I would sometimes call him at a number assigned to me in the Virginia headquarters where a woman, always the same one, would answer and put me through to him."

More recently, with Garcia based in Cuba, he said he was told to buy a speedboat. He also suggested that he was told to do some footwork for the U.S. Radio Marti broadcasts. Cuba's press avoids publicizing Radio Marti by using its name. Garcia offered this account:

The case officer "asked about the reaction of the people to the rectification process"-a crackdown on lax economic practices and corruption. "They think this process will increase the problems in Cuba and are organizing campaigns around this. It's what Washington calls providing the Cuban people with information."

The account by Garcia culminated with a rerun of one of the film clips that show suspicious activities of interest section officials.

Garcia said a drop shown being carried out by second secretary Duane Evans contained funds for the speedboat. Evans left Havana early last week. Garcia said his instruction for a pickup of the funds was transmitted from CIA headquarters. Granma noted, "Cuban agents in Havana are never contacted personally by officers from the interest section."

Other supposed double agents, now celebrities on Cuban television, include:

- Ignacio Rodriguez-Mena Castrillon, 52, who trains pilots for Cuba's civil aviation and was identified as also having worked within the CIA for 21 years.

Engineer Orlando Argudin, who said that in the 1970s a CIA officer affirmed introduction by the agency of diseases in Cuba affecting people and animals. The United States has denied this recurrent charge.

Angel Lopez Nunez, who alleged more recent efforts to wage agricultural warfare and who speculated that he was recruited because of his "character," described by Granma as "quiet, modest, one of those men whose humble appearance obscures his true qualities."

In several instances, the television interviewers described neighbors' spontaneous celebrations of the unmasking of the double agents. Neighbors said they had been puzzled, until now, by the agents' disinclination to take part in voluntary labor frequently organized in the country, but now all was forgiven.

The television also offered demonstrations of exotic paraphernalia allegedly provided the agents by the CIA, from hollowed-out teddy bears and photo albums padded with $100 bills to fake rocks with secret compartments and hi-tech radio transmitters.

For the most part the money was alleged to have been carried into Cuba by double agents who traveled abroad-and who promptly turned the funds over to the state.

One agent showed how dollars were layered inside a wall clock that easily passed through customs. It took a long time to figure out how to extract the dollars, he said, handling the clock fondly and noting that "it still runs."

Speculation continues on why Cuba chose to expose its alleged infiltration of U.S. intelligence efforts here. Non-U.S. diplomats here have cited a report that a second Cuban defected, this one in Czechoslovakia, and that he had blown the covers of the double agents. The diplomats said the U.S. interest section was the source of the report, but U.S. officials here would not confirm the report or their role in it. @Slug: A15CUB

Lewis H. Diuguid. "Cuba Exults That CIA's Men in Havana Were Double Agents;In a Television Series, Alleged Spies-Turned-Heroes Tell How They Duped American Agency." The Washington Post. Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Co. 1987. Retrieved April 27, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1334827.html

Spy Charges Strain U.S.-Cuban Ties; Televised Film Shows U.S. Envoys Allegedly Engaged in Espionage Article from: The Washington Post Article date: July 25, 1987 Author: Lewis H. Diuguid More results for: american interest section cuba

U.S.-Cuban relations, strained throughout the years of the Reagan administration, have deteriorated further this month with intensely publicized charges of CIA spying here and a retaliatory expulsion by Washington of two Cuban diplomats.

Both sides appear to have taken steps to avoid a complete rupture of already limited relations, however, and Cuban officials say they anticipate no major new move by President Fidel Castro in his annual state-of-the-revolution address on Sunday.

Cuba underlined in diplomatic notes on July 6 and 16 that it had warned the U.S. government repeatedly in private of unacceptable activity by the alleged CIA agents. But according to West European and Latin American diplomats here, the timing of Castro's decision to go public with his evidence suggests that one of his motives was to distract Cubans from economic and political difficulties at home.

Broadcasts by the U.S. government's Radio Marti of material embarrassing to Castro clearly played a role as well.

The downward spiral of relations apparently began with the defection two months ago of Cuban Air Force Gen. Rafael del Pino, a hero of the 1961 battle at the Bay of Pigs, where Cuban forces defeated an invasion by U.S.-backed exiles.

On June 24 Castro denounced del Pino during a four-hour speech that also minutely detailed the corruption of a young man whom Castro once had held up as a model of Cuba's new communist youth.

The target of Castro's wrath, Luis Orlando, was head of Cuban civil aviation. The president accused, and virtually convicted, him of diverting state funds to build a luxurious residence.

Del Pino's defection called into question one of Castro's most persistent claims: the loyalty of his armed forces.

The Orlando corruption case touched another nerve-the issue of private ownership. Almost 30 years after Castro led Cuba into the communist camp, he has yet to resolve whether Cubans should be allowed to own or improve their own homes.

Two days after Castro's denunciation of del Pino, Radio Marti began beaming to Cuba an exhaustive interview with the defector. He charged widespread discontent in the Cuban armed forces, particularly among those serving in Angola, as del Pino had done.

Radio Marti has broadcast persistently that Cubans returning from Angola have brought home acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), an issue that the government until recently has avoided. By July 1, Radio Marti had broadcast four installments of the interview with del Pino.

On July 6, Cuban television began the first of six programs entitled "The CIA War Against Cuba," in which it offered dramatic footage of U.S. diplomats, including four accredited to the U.S. interests section here, making furtive drops of bulky packages, allegedly containing cash and communications equipment.

Cuba sent a message informing the U.S mission earlier that day of its plan to air the program, and it later published the note.

Film from cameras hidden at what were described as isolated drop sites and subsequent testimony of Cuban double agents added credence to reports here that the U.S. clandestine operations had been thoroughly compromised during the 10 years since the two countries established interest sections in each other's capitals.

Granma, the official daily newspaper of the Communist Party Central Committee, published names and photos of 83 persons it alleged were agents either stationed or in transit here during the past decade.

While the televised film appeared to catch U.S. envoys in suspicious activities, no evidence has yet been offered to substantiate an accompanying allegation that the CIA recently has resumed efforts to assassinate Castro. Congress has previously reported such efforts by the CIA in the early years of Castro's rule.

On July 14, the U.S. mission protested the broadcasts, charging that they had endangered the lives of those "catalogued as agents of the intelligence services of the United States" and had made them a "target of terrorists everywhere."

The note did not address the specific activities of the filmed envoys. It charged that all functionaries, "without exception," in the Cuban interest section in Washington were members of the Cuban intelligence service. It ordered two of them to leave by today or be declared persona non grata.

The U.S. mission's public information officer, Donald Sheehan, was among those accused by Cuba of being a CIA agent. His post would be an unusual cover for an agent, and he denies being one. Sheehan has served here two years and is expected to leave shortly, two weeks ahead of schedule. Another accused U.S. envoy left on Wednesday, a third is about to leave as scheduled and the fourth is expected to serve here another year, according to mission sources.

U.S. officials acknowledge that their effectiveness here has been curtailed. Two ambassadors of countries friendly with the United States expressed dismay at what they described as obvious misdirection of U.S. activity here. @Slug: A17SPY

Cuba: the diplomacy; accommodation is in the U.S. interest. Article from: The Nation Article date: October 24, 1988 Author: Smith, Wayne S.

The normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, when it comes, is likely to be a far less dramatic event than most Americans expect. Objectively, there is no reason why we could not re-establish relations right now -or not have done so years ago. Recognition is not even an issue. We extended that to the government of Fidel Castro in January 1959, and through the ensuing years have continued to deal with it as the legitimate government of Cuba. In January 1961, under the tense circumstances of the moment, we suspended diplomatic relations. But the failure to resume them has more to do with the peculiarly emotional content of the U.S.-Cuban relationship than with any concrete impediment. The United States does, after all, maintain full diplomatic relations with a whole range of governments which it dislikes and with which it has serious disagreements. If we can have embassies in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Chile, South Africa, Afghanistan and even Nicaragua, why not in Cuba?

Formal relations or not, we have never been without diplomatic channels through which we could communicate with the Cubans. From 1961 until 1977, the Swiss looked after U.S. interests in Cuba and kept the channels open. In 1977, with the establishment of a U.S. interests section in Havana, those functions were once again taken over by the United States itself. Indeed, since that time we have had diplomatic relations in all but name. The interests section does everything an embassy would do except fly the flag and call its chief "ambassador." (Instead, he is a "chief of mission])

Making those symbolic changes would not be meaningless, but unless accompanied by a more fundamental change of attitude on the part of the U.S. government, it would not necessarily bring any substantive improvement in relations. The United States has full diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, but that has not kept it from mining Nicaraguan harbors, bombing airfields and, for almost eight years, carrying on a surrogate war against that country.

Rather than worrying about the symbols, then, we would be better advised to concentrate on the substance. Or, put another way, the crux of the matter lies not in formalizing the channels of communication but in what we communicate. There are a whole series of disagreements between the United States and Cuba, and what is needed is a coherent negotiating process to address them. The Cubans have for many years indicated their willingness to sit down at the negotiating table. Strangely, the United States has until now shown little interest in testing Cuba's seriousness of purpose. And yet, resolution of most of the problems would benefit the United States as much as Cuba - in some instances even more. For example, Cuba says it is prepared to negotiate a compensation agreement for U.S. citizens whose properties were confiscated in the 1960s. The United States has not responded. Also, Washington complains of Cuban involvement in Central America, yet refuses to discuss with Cuba either the overall problem or those aspects of Cuba's role it finds most troublesome. That makes little sense.

Not all disagreements can be resolved readily, and the United States and Cuba are unlikely to develop warm, cordial relations. Their two political systems and world views are too different for that. Cuba is a Marxist-Leninist state and is likely to remain one; it is the ally of our principal global rival, the Soviet Union, and is likely to remain one. But even adversaries frequently find that accommodation serves their respective interests more than does confrontation.

Whatever the logic of the initial U.S.-Cuban disengagement, none of the arguments against re-engagement any longer hold water. For most of the 1960s, the United States believed (or hoped) that the Castro government would prove transitory, and did nothing that might dilute that prospect, such as entering into negotiations with Cuba -which would have eased Cuba's isolation and conferred new legitimacy on the Cuban government. But almost thirty years have now gone by. Clearly, Castro's revolution is here to stay, and it is high time we acknowledged that fact.

Likewise, while efforts to isolate Cuba may have made sense in 1962 or 1967, today they are absurd. Cuba is not isolated. It maintains diplomatic and trade relations with over 110 countries, including all our NATO allies, and now with the majority of Latin American states as well.

That fact also explodes the argument frequently advanced by right-wing Cuban exiles that Castro is so fanatical, so irrational, that it would be impossible to conduct business with him in a sensible, productive way. The reality is that over a hundred other governments are conducting such business with him. Are the right-wing exiles suggesting that Americans are less competent than other nationalities, that U.S. diplomacy is less effective?

Another frequently heard argument is that U.S. public opinion is so strongly opposed to negotiations with Castro that re-engagement would be political suicide for any President. But this is a misperception. If it was ever true, it certainly has not been for at least a decade. Polls taken in 1977, before the Carter Administration began its opening to Cuba, indicated that while the majority of Americans had a low opinion of the Castro government, they had no objections to negotiating with it. A poll taken earlier this year reflected essentially the same picture.

One of the most arguments against re-engagement and negotiation is that President Carter tried such an approach and it failed. While Carter talked, the argument runs, Castro increased Cuban troop strength in Angola and went into Ethiopia; Carter offered negotiations and Castro responded with the Mariel boatlift.

In fact, the failure of the Carter opening resulted not from our willingness to negotiate but precisely from our failure to do so. The Carter Administration's style, for example, was simply to demand that, irrespective of anything the South Africans might do, Castro remove his troops from Angola. At no time did the Administration make any effort to launch the kind of multilateral negotiating process that has been undertaken recently by Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker. Nor did the United States ever discuss the situation in Ethiopia with Cuba. Rather, it let the Cubans and Russians think that the United States had decided to back Somalia in its quest to retake the Ogaden desert from Ethiopia. When Somalia invaded, Moscow and Havana, thinking the United States was behind it, were quicker than they might otherwise have been to come to Ethiopia?s assistance. The United States then condemned not the aggressor-Somalia-but Cuba and the Soviet Union, for aiding the victim!

Mariel is another case in point. In the preceding months, the Cubans had on several occasions urged talks on migration matters. The United States did not respond. And between October 1979 and April 1980, when the Mariel exodus got started, there had been a spate of boat hijackings ftom Cuba. The Cuban government protested and asked Washington to define its position. Cuba, after all, was cooperating in efforts against aerial hijackings, arresting and trying hijackers and immediately returning the planes and passengers. The United States, on the other hand, neither arrested nor tried maritime hijackers. Did that mean the United States condoned such terrorist acts on the high seas, the Cubans wanted to know.

The United States never even responded to Cuban inquiries on the subject. In February 1980, and again that March, Cuban officials warned that unless the United States defined its position, Cuba might take retaliatory measures, which could include allowing large numbers of Cubans to go by small boat to Florida. As one senior Cuban official put it: "If your government wants people in small boats, we can give you more than you bargained for." The Carter Administration simply ignored the warnings -yet was surprised when the Cubans carried out their threat and opened Mariel.

No omission on our part justified Mariel. Whatever we had done-or not done -dumping 125,000 undocumented aliens on U.S.. shores was an inhumane and politically unwise overreaction. But it illustrates that, rather than examples of the failure of diplomacy, Mariel, Angola and Ethiopia were all prime cases of what happens when diplomacy is eschewed. In those few instances in which the Carter Administration agreed to negotiate with the Cuban government (on such issues as cooperation between the two Coast Guards, the establishment of maritime boundaries and the release of political prisoners), it found Havana ready to negotiate seriously and to live up to commitments thereby entered into. The tragedy was that the Carter Administration's agenda was so limited.

The Reagan Administration took office hurling threats at Cuba and refusing to negotiate anything. This accomplished nothing. Finally, in late 1984, the Administration agreed to explore various issues having to do with the movement of people between the two countries. As part of the resulting agreement, Cuba committed itself to taking back a number of criminals and other excludables who had arrived in Florida during the Mariel sealift, and also to respect U.S. immigration laws. The United States, in turn, agreed to establish a normal flow of immigration from Cuba.

Unfortunately, only five months after the agreement was signed, the Administration chose to put Radio Marti on the air, Castro viewed this as a provocative act inconsistent with the spirit of the migration accord, and therefore suspended the agreement. Only in 1987 did he offer to resume it, provided the United States would discuss with Cuba the whole question of radio broadcasting-most specifically, the possibility of making a channel, or channels, available to Cuba so that it could broadcast to the United States.

The Reagan Administration accepted Castro's offer, The migration agreement was resumed and the talks on radio broadcasting got under way. This seemed to produce a subtle change in the U.S. approach to Cuba. The Administration's rhetoric remained as uncompromising as ever (President Reagan recently declared, for example, that the gulf between Cuba and the United States is "unbridgeable"), but in addition to the radio talks it went on to discuss a number of consular matters with the Cubans, and in February brought about the ongoing negotiations among Cuba, Angola and South Africa. Those talks show some promise of bringing about a comprehensive settlement in southern Africaj.

Thus, the Reagan Administration winds up its eight years doing what it said it would never do: negotiate with Havana. The number of issues under discussion remains small, but the change in approach is significant. And what the change suggests, more than anything else, is that the logic for negotiations and re-engagement is so compelling that not even the Reagan Administration has been able to resist it. Moreover, whatever may be said during the current election campaign, the trend toward negotiations will probably be continued or even expanded by the next President, whether that turns out to be Michael Dukakis or George Bush.

What might the agenda look like? Probably it would be best to begin by discussing several relatively noncontroversial issues of a strictly bilateral nature, such as the reestablishment of normal air service between the two countries, measures to avoid interference in one another's radio channels and cooperation between the two Coast Guards.

Having thus broken the ice, the two governments could go on to negotiate an agreement to cooperate in interdicting narcotics trafficking and exchange views on the situation in Central America. Ideally, the latter would result in a joint statement in which both commit themselves fully to respect the provisions of the Arias peace plan or any other arrangement worked out by the Central Americans themselves to halt armed conflicts in the area.

In this improved atmosphere, the two might then sit down to forge an accord on compensation for former U.S. property owners in Cuba and a timetable for lifting the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. These two issues are so closely related that it would be advisable-even necessary-to negotiate them and announce agreement simultaneously. Indeed, Cuba is not likely to be in a position to pay compensation without the establishment of some kind of escrow account related to its exports to the United States.

As this negotiating process unfolded, the two sides would gain more confidence in each other, and public opinion would be prepared for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations -which, as suggested in the opening sentence, is likely to come as something of an anticlimax. In time, Cuba and the United States could grapple with the more sensitive issues, such as the deployment of Soviet Bear reconnaissance aircraft in Cuba and the continued presence of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

Clearly, one objective the United States would have in reengaging with Cuba would be to bring about the reduction of Soviet influence and presence. This, however, could be accomplished only in increments and over a long period of time. It is not something that could be demanded as a precondition -which is the way the United States has too often approached the matter in the past. In fact, we have tended to approach the whole Cuban equation in that way, suggesting that Cuba must make sweeping adjustments as a precondition to negotiations. But any Cuban concessions would have to come as the result of negotiations and doubtless would be accompanied by some of our own. Indeed, after thirty years it ought now to be clear that it is only through negotiations that the United States can achieve its objectives in Cuba. It is long past time to begin the process

Smith, Wayne S.. "Cuba: the diplomacy; accommodation is in the U.S. interest." The Nation. The Nation Company L.P. 1988. Retrieved April 27, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-6760424.html

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