In Cuba, harassment of U.S. diplomats even extends to their pets. Will that now change?

In Cuba, harassment of U.S. diplomats even extends to their pets. Will
that now change?

MEXICO CITY — The top American diplomat at the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana lives in high style, in a 32,000-square-foot mansion on five
acres with a swimming pool, tennis courts and its own supply of water
and electricity. The windows provide a view of sun-drenched gardens and
stately imperial palms.

"It is one of the grandest diplomatic residences we have in our
inventory," said John Caulfield, who lived there as chief of mission
from 2011 until last year.

And yet, from the balcony of the World War II-era residence, which also
housed the U.S. ambassador before diplomatic relations with Cuba were
severed in 1961, Vicki Huddleston, another former resident, could see
the telescope in a neighbor's window that tracked her movements. She
assumed that her home was bugged and videotaped — a neighboring house,
after all, was used by Fidel Castro and the Cuban military. James Cason,
who was chief of mission from 2002 to 2005, recalled how the maids and
drivers on his house staff, all Cuban government employees, would tell
him when they had to inform their superiors about him.

"They'd say, 'I've got to go rat you out now,' " he recalled. "I would
say, 'Tell them we're meeting the dissidents!' "

Such are the oddities of daily life as a U.S. diplomat in Cuba, a
tropical paradise that has also been, for the past half-century, enemy
territory. Last month, President Obama announced his intention to
normalize relations with Cuba, replacing the Interests Section with an
embassy and promoting the chief of mission to ambassador. If the
president accomplishes that, it probably wouldn't stop the spying but it
would bring to a close a bizarre chapter in U.S. diplomatic history.

U.S. and Cuba move to end more than five decades of enmity
View Photos The two nations exchange prisoners and begin to overhaul
relations.
"You're clearly the enemy," Huddleston said. "But not really the enemy."

To work in the Interests Section in Havana, a boxy seaside office
building that served as the embassy, then reopened in 1977 during the
Carter administration, is to see geopolitics writ small.

U.S. diplomats must ask for permission and give two weeks' notice if
they want to travel outside Havana, just as Cuban diplomats in
Washington are banned from venturing beyond the Beltway without
approval. Cuban diplomats declined to comment for this story.

The Interests Section in Havana has about 360 staff members, but the
U.S. contingent is limited to 51, including Marine guards. Cubans hired
from a government employment agency make up the rest. Because of
concerns about espionage, those Cuban employees are confined to the
first two floors, where no classified information is discussed.

The building cannot fly the American flag, nor can the chief of mission,
currently Jeffrey DeLaurentis, put one on his car. Arriving mail is
scrutinized; a package sent from Miami can take months to reach
diplomats in Havana, even though the flight takes less than an hour. One
diplomat received a Christmas card last week that was sent Sept. 23.

Exposed to the salty ocean air, the Interests Section building has taken
a beating over time, and it's tough to find people and equipment for
repairs. The building is crowded and short on conference rooms. Staffers
cover the worn spots on their cubicle dividers with posters.

Caulfield took over the mission in 2011, when tensions had easeda bit,
but sometimes fixes required creativity. Once, he needed a crane to
install an air-conditioning unit on the roof and finally had to
buttonhole a senior Cuban official at an event before his request was
approved.

"We spent a long time trying to get permission for that crane," he said.

Occasional flare-ups
Over the years, the background tensions have occasionally flared into
open confrontations. During the saga of Elián González, the Cuban boy
whose mother drowned in 2000 while trying to take him to Miami and whose
father wanted him back in Cuba, Castro led marches in Havana demanding
the boy's return. Castro had an area outside the chancery converted into
an "open court" and amphitheater where the United States could be
publicly condemned.

In a move to "protect" the Interests Section, the Cuban leader sent
schoolchildren to ring the American building, hand in hand, during one
protest. "It was amazing," recalled Huddleston, who arrived in Havana in
1999. "We looked like we were this evil Goliath."

On another occasion, Huddleston raised the ire of the Cubans when her
Afghan hound, Havana, started winning prizes at dog shows in Cuba. She
received a letter from the national Afghan hound kennel club banning her
from participation due to the U.S. "policy of hostility against our
people and our government." Huddleston took to the news media with every
bad pun she could think of.

"I really played it up: 'We're in the doghouse again. We're on a short
leash,' " she recalled.

The most provocative recent chief of mission has been Cason, who
followed Huddleston in the early years of the George W. Bush
administration. Now the mayor of Coral Gables, Fla., Cason said he
traveled 7,000 miles around the island in the first three months he was
there, meeting with dissidents and distributing books and radios until
the Cuban government banned him from traveling outside the capital.

Cason had a giant news-ticker installed on the outside wall of the
Interests Section showing headlines from abroad and criticism of the
Cuban government. The Castro government responded by erecting dozens of
black flags to block the screen. In July 2005, before he departed, Cason
unveiled a three-story-high metal Statue of Liberty with lights that
formed "75" — the number of dissidents rounded up a couple of years earlier.

Cason said he was allowed to meet only one Cuban government official,
the director of North American affairs in the Foreign Ministry.

His successors, including Caulfield, tried to keep a lower profile.

But suspicions about U.S. intentions lingered, decades after the CIA had
tried to kill Castro with exploding cigars or a tuberculosis-laced
wetsuit. The American diplomats believed their homes and cars were all
bugged, as well as restaurants they frequented. Cuban police ringed the
Interests Section.

"There was a lot of harassment," Caulfield said. "We were intensely
followed everywhere, physically, electronically. There's no privacy in
Cuba for U.S. diplomats."

But this scrutiny waxed and waned with shifts in relations. Caulfield
said he noticed the restrictions easing substantially halfway through
his posting there as cooperation between the governments increased on
issues such as immigration, civil aviation, and environmental
protection. The Cubans and Americans have also cooperated on aspects of
drug enforcement and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Planning for the future
When Roberta Jacobson, an assistant secretary of state, visits Havana
this month , she is expected to start discussions on reopening embassies
in both countries, including issues such as caps on diplomats and travel
restrictions. U.S. officials expect that they will use the same
Interests Section building but with a new plaque declaring it an
embassy.Diplomats for both countries will probably continue to be
watched closely, and the economic embargo will remain in place unless
lifted by Congress, but many expect that small changes could go a long way.

"It will be hugely symbolic," Huddleston said — for Americans but also
for the Cuban people. "We're no longer, for lack of a better word, your
enemy. We want to see you progress. We want to see a more normal
relationship."


Joshua Partlow is The Post's bureau chief in Mexico. He has served
previously as the bureau chief in Kabul and as a correspondent in Brazil
and Iraq.

Source: In Cuba, harassment of U.S. diplomats even extends to their
pets. Will that now change? - The Washington Post -
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