Charging development workers with espionage is a common enough practice in authoritarian states. Aside from the classic suspicion of Peace Corps Volunteers as spies, Iran, Sudan, and Nigeria have made waves for recent accusations of espionage against development workers. Generally the arrest causes a diplomatic spat and then, after receiving some concessions, the arresting country releases the "spy" to relieved family members.
With dialogue between the US and Cuba at its most active in years, Cuba may be looking for some additional leverage. The New York Times reported Saturday on the arrest of a subcontractor to a USAID-funded civil society project who was supposedly handing out computers and communications equipment "on behalf of the Obama administration." It added that it was "unclear exactly what the [man] was doing at the time he was detained."
Generally speaking, it's not a great idea to go around handing out computers and phones in a country that keeps a fairly tight lid on information going in and coming out. Still, it remains to be seen if the contractor is an innocent victim who was working within the guidelines of the program or if he was involved in illegal activity. It is interesting that this arrest comes a month after two Americans admitted to having spied for Cuba over the course of three decades.
Of course, there are no small coincidences and big coincidences; only coincidences...
Online Sources: NY Times, Miami Herald, AP, US News, BBC, Washington Post, Seinfeldscripts.com
Even here in Mexico, distributing wholesale foreign electronics without an import certificate will get you arrested and deported.
ReplyDeleteDAI is hardly a organization like the Peace Corps (which U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg tried to subvert for spying activities in Bolivia, leading to his -- and the Peace Corps' expulsion from that country) -- they are an "outside contractor" which received several billion dollars specifically to "promote democracy" in Cuba last year.
And, as it is, conservative, liberal, socialist, Bolivarian or Communist, all Latin American governments assume USAID contractors are fronts from CIA activity.
Richard, I'm not sure I understand your comment. I would be interested in hearing your views on contractors, democracy-promotion efforts in Latin America, and the Peace Corps if you're willing to state them more frankly.
ReplyDeleteIn any country in the world it is against the law to work as an agent of a foreign country whose official policy is to overthrow the local country's government.
ReplyDeleteThe US has such laws.
Cuba has such laws.
Is there any reason NOT to assume the agent detained by the Cubans was NOT working for the CIA, even if "one step removed"?
Read the comments of Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger posted today:
http://tinyurl.com/ycy62ry
Then read Philip Agee's 2003
essay TERRORISM AND CIVIL SOCIETY:
http://tinyurl.com/y9y4d4z
It's already pretty obvious what this individual was up to in Cuba.
Anyone who gives any credibility to what Eva states is ignorant. I consistently find it amusing when people give the CIA more credit than is due... This guy is an aid worker, innocent, naive, and blinded by the possibility that a few laptops and cell phones can bring change to Cuba.
ReplyDeletethatz right Richard
ReplyDeleteand
Walter
I know, from experience
35 years down south
USAID always has been in latinolandia CIA
cut off their heads