Obama Administration Hosts Cuban Border Guard Visits

Obama Administration Hosts Cuban Border Guard Visits
Trips to Coast Guard facilities raise security concerns
BY: Bill Gertz
June 3, 2016 4:59 am

The Obama administration is hosting visits to U.S. Coast Guard
facilities by Cuban Border Guard officials as part of its policy of
seeking closer ties with the communist government in Havana.

The visits are raising concerns among officials and security analysts
that closer ties with Cuba will benefit aggressive Cuban intelligence
operations in the United States that have been underway for decades.

A delegation of Cuban officials arrives this week for visits to Coast
Guard bases in Florida and Alabama following an earlier visit two months
ago.

The Department of Homeland Security, which arranged the visits, refused
to provide details of the Cuban delegation. But a spokeswoman said they
are part of an exchange program.

"These visits represent professional exchanges between the U.S. Coast
Guard and the Cuban Border Guard to discuss issues of mutual interest
such as at-sea rescue operations," DHS spokeswoman Gillian Christensen
told the Washington Free Beacon, without elaborating.

Cuban officials on March 18 visited three Coast Guard port facilities in
the south, including one near Mobile, Alabama. The group also toured an
oil refinery in Alabama, according to a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

A State Department official said the Cuban Border Guard tours of Coast
Guard bases are an outgrowth of the president's pro-Havana tilt. "‎The
administration's new policy of engagement has enabled U.S. agencies to
discuss and coordinate on topics of mutual interest as we work to
normalize relations."

The official referred further questions to the Cuban government. A Cuban
Embassy official did not respond to email requests for comment.

President Obama traveled to Cuba in March as part of what the White
House has called his rejection of "the failed, Cold War-era policy" of
isolating the communist regime in Havana.

Alexandria Preston, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, said the March visit was
arranged by Coast Guard headquarters as part of the International Port
Security program.

The Cubans were given public information briefings and presentations
about Coast Guard operations in Mobile followed by a question and answer
session on the Maritime Transportation Security Act, she said. At the
refinery, the Cubans were given a briefing and tour by the refinery's
security officer.

Cuba's Border Guard troops are part of the Cuban Interior Ministry that
directs the Intelligence Directorate, the political police, and an
intelligence service modeled after the Soviet-era KGB intelligence
service. The Border Guard in the past has been involved in liaisons with
the U.S. Coast Guard.

Cuba's intelligence services also cooperate with Russian intelligence
services.

International drug traffickers are known to use Cuban waters and
airspace to evade U.S. drug interdiction efforts.

The visits have raised concerns among security officials about Cuba's
role in conducting aggressive intelligence activities in the United States.

"Cuba—with historic, deeply held KGB connections—continues to command an
enormous intelligence capacity and network to spy on America," said Rep.
Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence.

"Hosting Cuban government officials and delivering them to 'tour'
American national security facilities—as well as critical infrastructure
sites in the United States—proves that this administration naively
believes that Cuba has changed," Pompeo said. "It has not. And its
espionage against the United States continues."

Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, made no
mention of the Border Guard-Coast Guard program during a Wednesday
meeting with reporters at the Pentagon.

Tidd said a Cuban military medical team toured the Navy hospital ship
USNS Comfort during a port visit to Haiti in September. In January,
Southcom co-hosted a Caribbean Nations Security Conference with 18
nations represented, including Cuba for the first time.

"The island of Cuba sits directly astride principal north-south trading
routes. Those trading routes also happen to be smuggling routes and Cuba
has concerns about illicit trafficking," Tidd said.

Engagement with Cuba will take time and the pace likely will be driven
by the Cuban regime "because they're not prepared for that degree of
openness, frankly, and I think it will take [time] to get to that point."
An FBI report two years ago warned that Cuban intelligence agents are
targeting American academics for recruitment as spies.

"The Cuban intelligence services (CuIS) are known to actively target the
U.S. academic world for the purposes of recruiting agents, in order to
both obtain useful information and conduct influence activities," the
Sept. 2, 2014 report says.

Cuban intelligence seeks out academics as agents because the Havana
government lacks the funds to provide cash to recruits. "Therefore, the
CuIS have perfected the work of placing agents that includes
aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a
percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the
[U.S. government] that can provide access to information of use to the
CuIS," the report said.

A key objective is "influencing American and Cuban-American academics,
to recruiting them if possible, and to converting them into Cuban
intelligence agents," the FBI said, adding that students also face
recruitment.

"Unfortunately, part of what makes academic environments ideal for
enhancing and sharing knowledge also can assist the efforts of foreign
intelligence services to accomplish their objectives," the FBI said.
"This situation is unlikely to change, but awareness of the methods used
to target academia can greatly assist in neutralizing the efforts of
these foreign intelligence services."

Fred Burton, a Stratfor analyst, stated in a recent report that CIA and
FBI agents will be closely monitoring Cuban intelligence activities
following the resumption of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic ties.

"U.S. intelligence agencies are well aware of the Cuban threat," Burton
stated, adding that "the threat is real … and in a world full of hidden
threats, there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service."

U.S. intelligence agencies also were fooled for years by a long-term
Cuban spy in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Montes, who supplied
U.S. intelligence secrets to Cuba, including the identities of four
American spies. Montes, who spied for Cuba from 1984 until her arrest in
2001, also was blamed for disclosing to Cuba the location of a
clandestine U.S. Army base in El Salvador. The disclosure led to the
1987 death of Army Green Beret Sgt. Gregory Fronius, who was killed in
El Salvador during an attack by pro-Cuban insurgents.

Cuba also has close ties to North Korea, as disclosed by the seizure in
July 2013 of a North Korean ship found to be illegally carrying Cuban
military jets and missile guidance components. North Korea was hit with
Treasury Department sanctions but Cuba was not sanctioned as part of the
Obama administration's policy of seeking closer ties.

Disclosure of the Cuban visits to the United States comes as a leading
Cuban dissident, José Daniel Ferrer García, said political repression on
the island located 90 miles from Florida is increasing as opposition to
the regime is growing.

"We make advances, then the regime represses us and we have to take
steps back," Ferrer told reporters in Washington this week.

"But the best thing we see is the change in the mentality of the
people," he added.

Ferrer said he expects "periods of more repression" and that dissidents
could take to the streets in pro-democracy protests like those in Poland
in the 1980s.

Ferrer cautioned American businesses to be wary of setting up
subsidiaries in Cuba.

"The Castros never negotiate for a win-win," he said. "They have a sick
need to win and for the rest to lose."

Source: Obama Administration Hosts Cuban Border Guard Visits -
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