Al-Qaeda’s Cuban connection: terrorism with a Latin beat
Al-Qaeda's Cuban connection: terrorism with a Latin beatBy Toby WestermanNovember 1, 2011
Recent news of a Cuban national arrested apparently acting in sympathy with Al-Qaeda and earlier reports of Cubans working with Al-Qaeda operatives in the Western Sahara region of Morocco only hint at an on-going and highly developed link between Havana and fundamentalist Islam, including the terror group responsible for the devastating 9-11 attacks on American soil, Al-Qaeda.
Cuban intelligence, one of the best spy services in the world, appears to have established close contact with Al-Qaeda through Pakistani contacts in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, according to an analysis of a veteran Cuba watcher and former Counterintelligence officer. A working relationship between Havana and fundamentalist Islam in one of the most volatile regions of the world threatens the lives of U.S. service personnel and those who cooperate with them.
In an exclusive interview with International News Analysis Today, Chris Simmons, a retired Counterintelligence Special Agent with 28 years service in the Army/Army Reserve and 25 with the Defense Intelligence Agency, tied the stationing of high-level Cuban intelligence operatives in Pakistan with Al-Qaeda personnel operating in the region. Simmons has briefed members of Congress on the Cuban intelligence threat, including members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"I don't have definitive proof, but abundant circumstantial evidence points to Cuba and Al-Qaeda assisting each other in Islamabad," Simmons stated.
Havana and fundamentalist Islam are no strangers. The terror group Hamas is reported to have a presence in the Cuban capital, and Communist Cuba has close contacts with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The latest, and possibly the most dangerous, point of contact for Cuba and militant Islam, including Al-Qaeda, is the reopened Cuban embassy in Pakistan. The man who established that contact and became Cuba's ambassador to Pakistan is Cuban master spy, Gusatvo Machin Gomez.
Machin came to Pakistan with an impressive pedigree, which made him a key figure for the Cubans and insured a warm welcome in Pakistan.
Machin's father fought and died with Cuban Communist idol Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Simmons told International News Analysis Today that Machin followed his father's political fight in the arena of espionage. Machin became a "U.S. Targets Officer," a member of a select and highly trained group of some 50 individuals who concentrate on understanding, manipulating, and inflicting damage upon critical nodes of the United States government.
"They know us better than we know ourselves," Simmons observed regarding the intense training commitment of U.S. Target Officers.
Unlike Cuba, the United States tends not to provide its intelligence officers with the same concentration on a single target, Simmons said.
Machin rose to the rank of Deputy Chief of the U.S. Department of Cuba's Foreign Affairs Ministry, which is dominated by Cuban intelligence personnel. In 1998, he went undercover as a diplomat in the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., a prime post for Cuban spies targeting the United States.
Cuba and the United States maintain limited diplomatic contact through Interests Sections within the Swiss Embassy in Washington and Havana respectively. Machin held the rank of First Secretary, which is one step below that of ambassador.
Simmons informed International News Analysis Today that Machin's rise through diplomatic channels is a common path taken by particularly skilled Cuban intelligence officers. The object of the intelligence officers is to obtain information, both secret and sensitive but unclassified, which Cuba regards as valuable, as well as exerting influence on U.S. actions in Cuba's favor.
In 2002, Machin, who became well-known in Washington, was expelled from the United States in retaliation for the activities of Ana Belen Montes, the senior Cuban analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency who was convicted of spying for Havana.
The influence Machin exercised within various sectors of U.S. society can be seen in the expression of regret by the president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, John S. Kavulich, following the announcement of Machin's expulsion. Kavulich stated that, "The expulsion of Mr. Machin hits at the epicenter of the Cuban interface with the business community and the U.S. Congress."
Machin's next major overseas role was in Pakistan. In 2005, an earthquake killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis, and Cuba responded by sending some 2,500 medical personnel and 32 field hospitals. Machin directed the operation. Then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf complimented the Cuban government on its aid to his country. The Cuban embassy, which had closed in 1990, was reopened the next year.
An espionage jackpot for Cuba, Pakistan, and militant Islam followed.
Just as he had plied the halls of Congress and the U.S. business community for the benefit of Communist Cuba, now Machin took advantage of the unsettled situation in Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons capability, to advance Cuban interests, which often includes the death and injury of U.S. military personnel.
By 2008, Machin not only established technical, scientific, and agricultural interchanges, but the chairman of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Tariq Majid, began talks on military cooperation.
Machin continually has emphasized Cuba's success in withstanding American power, a message well received by Pakistanis seeking ways to assist brother fundamentalist Muslims, including the Al-Qaeda network.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is also well known to be sympathetic to fundamentalist Islam, and Cuba is able to provide important information on U.S. military movements to the Pakistan government and its militant Islamic friends.
Within the pro-Cuba environment of Pakistan, Simmons sees cooperation between the ISI and Cuba, established and nurtured by espionage expert Machin.
Simmons observed that, since the beginning of the Communist Cuban revolution, Cuba has been watching and carefully noting patterns of U.S. military logistics and communications activities. Cuba monitors U.S. communications both from the island and a base of operations within the U.S., probably from the Interests Section in Washington, D.C.
Any deviation in that pattern alerts the Cubans to possible U.S. actions, and then "their spies can fill in the blanks," Simmons stated.
Cuba's espionage techniques have been mostly successful in anticipating U.S. actions from the invasion of Grenada to the American-led invasion of Iraq. Pakistani intelligence and its fundamentalist allies, including Al-Qaeda, value highly any information on U.S. actions in Afghanistan and the region.
An intelligence advantage of the kind Cuba can offer would easily translate into an increased number of American military deaths in the plains, valleys and mountains of the region.
The Cuban information is not complete. While Cuba can provide information regarding anomalies in White House, Pentagon, Special Mission, and intelligence communications, the precise meaning or the target intended would be left to the best speculation of ISI and Havana, a sometimes difficult situation as the killing of Osama bin Laden demonstrated.
Machin left his post in Pakistan in February 2011, but remained in the country for another two months for reasons that remain unclear. His replacement, Jesus Zenen Buerga Concepcion, is from the Cuban Mission to the United Nations (CMUN), a diplomatic center in New York historically known as the hub for Havana's U.S.-based espionage operations.
Cuban defector Alcibiades Hidalgo, who served at CMUN, stated that most of Cuba's diplomats to the UN were committed to intelligence activities, Simmons informed INA Today.
Machin's present position is chief of Cuba's International Press Center, the office which grants credentials to all entities wanting to station reporters in Cuba, a post traditionally held by Cuban intelligence personnel, Simmons noted.
The American public is not being informed of the dangers that Cuban intelligence presents to the United States. International News Analysis Today is working to fill this dangerous gap. The public should demand to know why the media, even the "conservative" media, almost never addresses this pressing and growing threat.
© Toby Westerman
U.S. presidential candidate says Cuba sponsoring Hezbollah
U.S. presidential candidate says Cuba sponsoring HezbollahSeptember 28, 2011 12:53 PMBy Dana KhraicheThe Daily Star
BEIRUT: Republican Party presidential candidate Michele Bachmann warned against the U.S. normalizing trade relations with Cuba, citing reports that the Latin American country is working with Hezbollah.
"There are reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah," Bachmann said during a speech to supporters in Iowa in the U.S. Monday.
"When you are 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don't want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps, or perhaps have missile or weapons sites in Cuba. This would be foolish," the U.S. Representative can be seen saying in a YouTube video of the event.
Bachmann,a prominent member of the conservative Tea Party Movement and a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, was referring to an unsourced report published last month by the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera regarding Hezbollah's presence in Cuba. The party and the country are both on the U.S. terror list.
The Italian daily said Hezbollah is currently preparing to establish a base in Cuba with a budget of more than half a million dollars.
The paper alleged that Hezbollah members have long been active in Latin American countries, where it said the "lawless" atmosphere and lax security provides the ideal environment for its activities.
Bachmann said during her speech that the U.S. is in need of a president that "understands problems that are going on internationally," as the country faces a decline in its global economic power.
Reported Hezbollah base in Cuba ‘unsurprising’
Foreign affairs committee chair:Reported Hezbollah base in Cuba 'unsurprising'The Daily Caller
The Republican chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs said she would not be surprised if reports that Hezbollah has established a base in Cuba are true.
"The Castro regime has long been designated by the State Department as a State Sponsor of Terrorism," Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement Wednesday. (RELATED: America safer 10 years after 9/11, but new terrorism threats have emerged, experts say)
"Given Cuba's close relationship with Iran and Syria, Hezbollah's primary benefactors, it would not surprise me if Cuba is providing a safe haven for Hezbollah to expand its operations in the Western Hemisphere," she explained.
The Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera reported Wednesday that three Hezbollah members had left their base in Mexico to establish a permanent operation on the Communist-ruled island.
"Reports of a Hezbollah base in Cuba are dangerous yet unsurprising, if true," Ros-Lehtinen wrote. "They remind us not only of the threat posed by Islamist extremists in the Western Hemisphere, but that those extremists enjoy the active support of America's enemies in the region, including the likes of Chavez, the Castros, and others."
Ros-Lehtinen also urged Americans not to forget the threat of terrorism sponsored by states in the Western Hemisphere. She promised to use the committee she chairs to seek answers from State Department officials and push legislation to strengthen counterrorism efforts in the Western Hemisphere.
"U.S. policy must not have any blind spot when it comes to Islamist extremist groups expanding their activities in our Hemisphere, and anti-American despots helping them out," she urged.
Hezbollah terrorists reportedly setting up operations base in Cuba
Hezbollah terrorists reportedly setting up operations base in CubaThu, 09/01/2011 – 13:55 — AmericasForum.com
HAVANA – The Italian daily Corriere della Sera is reporting that Hezbollah is setting up a base of operations in Cuba in order to extend its ability to reach Israeli targets in Latin America, ostensibly to avenge the death of terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyah.
Mugniyah, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah terrorist leader, was killed in February 2008 by a car bomb. Though it has not been proven who was responsible, it has been reported that several Arab states aided the Israeli Mossad in carrying out the killing.
Mugniyah was believed to have been involved in planning the 1983 Beirut bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, as well as two attacks on a Jewish synagogue and a community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994.
The U.S. State Department said upon his death: "The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a coldblooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost. One way or another he was brought to justice."
Hezbollah has sought new alliances in Latin America since attention was brought to the terrorist group's redoubt in the Tri-border area at the intersection of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, as well as numerous reports of training camps in Venezuela.
According to the Tel Aviv daily Yedioth Ahronoth, three members of Hezbollah have already arrived in Cuba to set up the cell, which will allegedly "include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member tasked with heading the covert operation."
The information about the terrorist cell is quite detailed, and includes information that would normally be contained in a high-level intelligence brief. The clandestine terror operation is reportedly called "The Caribbean Case," and is said to operate on a budget of $1.5 million. The report also detailed that the base in Cuba would be used initially for logistics, intelligence collection and document and id forgery – a scenario given more credence since Cuba took over the agencies that issue identification and immigration documents in Venezuela.
It has long been speculated that there was a strong connection between the Castro regime and Hezbollah terrorists. In July of 2008, Samir Qantar, a Lebanese terrorist that was serving a life sentence for murdering a Jewish family, a crime that included smashing the skull of a 4-year-old female child with a rifle butt, made his first private visit after being freed in a prisoner swap to the Cuban Embassy in Beirut.
Upon his release, Qantar told Maria Isabel Velasquez, Cuba's top diplomat in Beirut, "I am at the disposition of the Cuban government for any work to liberate the five Cuban prisoners being held by the United States."
A week later, the Cuban Embassy in Lebanon congratulated the terrorist, saying, "We appreciate his struggle for the release of our five compatriots," and Velásquez also noted that the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. had also campaigned for Qantar's release. Velásquez added, "We believe Samir Qantar to be a fighter in the Arab cause to put an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and Lebanon."
Cuba has been a center of terrorist operations and training since shortly after Fidel Castro usurped the sitting government in 1959. Reuters reported as early as May 30, 1978, that Palestinian terrorists of the PLO had been trained in Cuba, and on September 13, 1978, the Egyptian daily Ahar Sa'ah reported that as many as 500 Palestinians were on their way to Cuba to receive terrorist training.
The Subcommittee on Counterterrorism in the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings in July, entitled "Hezbollah in Latin America – Implications for U.S. Homeland Security," which detailed the terror group's ties to left-wing regimes in the region. And the U.S. Military's Southern Command reported recently on the terror group's activities on Venezuela's Margarita Island, where Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists are alleged to have held planning meetings, as well as a number of money laundering operations.
http://www.americasforum.com/content/hezbollah-terrorists-reportedly-setting-operations-base-cuba
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