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- [00:01]
A
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail. Filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail. Filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or. Or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. MSW Media. Spy Talk, a podcast at the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, national security and military operations
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B
Hi there, I'm Jeff Stein.
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C
Michael I'm Michael Isikoff.
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D
And I'm Karen Greenberg.
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B
Welcome to another edition of the Spy Talk podcast. We're going to be talking about Cuba today with Peter Kornbluh, who is as much an expert on CIA covert operations against Cuba as anyone in America. But first, let's talk about that wild and crazy Israeli scheme as reported in the New York Times, to install former hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Medina. John in the first weeks of the bombing campaign against Iran, we ran a piece on it yesterday quoting Hman Maj, an Iranian born American journalist, author and political commentator focused on Iranian affairs and who served as a translator for Ahmadinejan on his trips to the United Nations. He theorized that Israel might have boosted Ahmadinejan's presidency years ago for the very reason that his harsh rhetoric and policies were further isolating Iran on the world stage. We will be writing another piece later today by Yossi Melman, an expert on Israeli intelligence and our correspondent in Israel, confirming details of the plotting and going further into the whole affair. Anybody got? Anyway, please join in on this insane.
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C
I mean, look, the first reaction I had, and I'm sure almost everybody reading it had, is like the sound of
- [02:51]
B
your hand hitting your forehead.
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C
Come on. I mean. But among the crazy things about this is that if the original idea, and certainly Trump's stated motivation at the very outset was that to help the protesters and bring about democratic change in Iran. So the idea, and remember Trump said help is on the way to the protesters.
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D
Right.
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C
So the idea, so long ago, it seems the replacement for the Ayatollah who we killed was going to be this hardliner, like more hardliner than the Ayatollah was. Holocaust denier, you know, death to Israel, death to America. Not exactly the kind of guy those protesters would have been looking for as an alternative to their regime.
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B
And a guy who's been sidelined for a long time under virtual house arrest, very unpopular.
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D
Are you guys saying you don't believe the story or you're saying.
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B
No, I'm just, no, we believe the story.
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C
I'm just baffled by the thinking behind it, that this was somehow to be better for Iran, Israel, the United States, to have somebody like in charge because this isn't a.
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D
But it tells you how just ideologically, you know, vacant, this entire conversation that's going on at the global level is, you might say about, it just shines a light on how this is really about the most. It's about power. And in every moment the, the tools for power are different. So I hate to say it, but it's not okay to just say it defies common sense, because it does. But it shows you just how ugly the kinds of trade offs can be because the goals that we think about, the way we define our world in terms of good and bad and justice are not on the table. That's not what it's about. And so, yeah, I'm just.
- [05:10]
B
Israeli commentators in the wake of the New York Times report said this shows how, you know, the one time vaunted research arm and Iran experts in Israeli intelligence just got totally off the rails here. They, and they showed that they didn't really understand how Iran works, how the leadership works and so on.
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C
Now, to be a little fair, the reporting from the Times is that the Israelis thought, or at least they thought they had some reason to think that Ahmadjad would be more cooperative because he had made this trip to Hungary and met with Orban, who's close to Netanyahu. And were there some signals there that suggested that Ahmadinejad would be willing to do Israel's bidding, as improbable as it seems. But, you know, did they have some reason to think that we don't know. I'd like to know what was really in their minds. But on its face, face, it does
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D
seem it's over now because we don't know really what kind of what Ahmedad is, what his health is like, where he is. We don't, it's, this story doesn't seem to happen.
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C
We don't know where he is.
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B
A former CIA officer who I, it was a comment to me last night on a back channel so I, I, I'm not free to say who it is but we, we all know who he is. He's a long time Iran hand, former Iran hand at the CIA. He said even if it had succeeded in putting a homogeneous bar, this guy is very fragile. He's not mentally stable, he's highly emotional and he's widely, widely mocked even among democracy advocates in Iran. No following whatsoever. And he's not a, he's not a well person. So anyway, we'll be publishing another really interesting piece on this later today over at the Spy Talk. Meanwhile, let's move along. Just, I wanted to just mention in regard to Iran that Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the former CIA operative and daughter in law of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has resigned from ODNI or been pushed out. I don't know. I think the idea that she resigned makes sense because she is said to be, you know, an America firster, a maga, true believer in no forever wars and she, like Tulsi Gabbard used to say, were opposed to getting involved in the Middle East. I don't know if we have anything more to say about that.
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C
No, just that the reporting suggests that, you know, this was as with Joe Kent who had resigned as chief of the National Counterterrorism center. This was in dissent over US Policy in Iran. We don't know. She didn't say that publicly but she was a known opponent of efforts at regime change in Iran.
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B
Speaking of regime change, let's talk a little bit about this investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan. Oh my God, what a show. Mike, what do you have to say?
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C
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean some pretty good reporting by CBS this week, Excell, about who was being assembled in South Florida to conduct this investigation of John Brennan and others who were deemed to be part of the grand conspiracy to deprive Donald Trump of his civil rights by going after him starting in 2016. And we know that Joe diGenova, the former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia who turned full MAGA when Donald Trump came on the scene has been in charge of that investigation. He's assembled the team that now includes his wife, Vicki Tunsing, former Justice Department lawyer.
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B
Double trouble.
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C
Yeah. Who went full MAGA with her husband back in, in 2016 and others who have had seem to have similar perspectives, including some FBI. One FBI person who wanted to investigate this CR easy theory out of the 2020 election Italy Gate that somehow there were Italian satellites that were manipulating vote totals in Georgia to flip votes from Trump to Biden. All pretty crazy stuff. Look, at the end of the day, you know, let's see what they got. Supposedly the Brennan charge is going to revolve around false statements to Congress in 2023.
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B
Well, the previous prosecutor resigned because didn't think it was a prosecutable case.
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E
Right.
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C
Yeah.
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D
So that's the whole point. There's so many dire takeaways from the story you just told. One of them is the way in which the larger and larger role that Florida is playing and we can talk about what that means in the context America's political conversation. But you have the Cuba story going on at the same time that you have the story about Brennan and others going on, you know, Rubio all being conducted by the.
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C
By the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.
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D
Exactly. And so I think we really have to, you know, just. That's one thing. The second thing is the degree to which every day there's a new distraction, whether it's something at home that's going awry or something internationally that's going awry and something that, you know, we may talk about later in today's show, but this constant. There has to be some new alarm every single day. And so the question is, is it really about the merits which. Or is it really just about the fact that we know we can distract. We're going to distract, and this is the way we're going to create a kind of chaos that will serve the interests of those in power. And I think that just larger picture is important to keep in mind, because the whole idea is that we'll go down all these rabbit holes and look for all these things when the general thing is we're just going to disrupt, dismantle and create disarray in a way that people won't be able to cope with it.
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C
Agreed. But the other larger narrative which we should never lose sight of, is the complete weaponization of the Justice Department, which has accelerated under Acting Attorney General Blanche. Right. And you know, this week we Learned about this $1.7 billion fund to compensate January 6th. Yeah, January 6th. People including, and Blanche hasn't ruled out, including people who had assaulted. Assaulted police officers that day. This is all part of the larger scheme of first Blanche trying to secure his position and become lose the acting part and become Attorney General. But also just turning the Justice Department into an arm of. A political arm of Donald Trump and pretty dangerous.
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D
Yes.
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B
There was a nugget in that New York Times story about Brennan, I don't know if you noticed it, about Cash Patel. Some unit around him, a director's group that seems to have been formed just to defend his policies, to push his policies to, you know, a group of loyalists around him. I'd like to know a lot more about that.
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C
Are they, are they policies or just trying to defend him against his own personal indiscretions?
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B
Well, I guess they're both.
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C
I mean, I think that seems to be the big problem with Patel right
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B
now, rather than any policies and that whole. You know, I'm so tired about writing about Cash Patel. I'm saying, in our weekly roundup, the Spy Week that I do every weekend, I just touched on the latest thing about Cash Patel and his snorkeling and Pearl Harbor.
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C
Pearl Harbor? Yeah.
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B
Really? You know, really. You know, then there's the Cash Patel bourbon and it's just lights with the girlfriend. You gotta wonder how much Trump can take of this constant, you know, headline day, week after week about Cash Patel. None of it good, none of.
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D
Well, if he was a girl, he'd be gone. All I have to say.
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B
Yeah, well, there. Are there any girls left in the administration behind Tulsi, who's just become a non entity. Not in the national security sphere, that's for sure. Anyway, let's. Let's move on to our topic of the day. Cuba. Our guest, Peter Kornblue. He is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a private research organization at George Washington University here in the district where he heads the Archives documentation projects on Cuba and Chile. Most relevant to our discussion today, Peter's most recent book is Back Channel to the Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington, Havana. He's also the author of Bay of Pigs Declassified the Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. We conducted our interview with Peter on Thursday afternoon, May 21, and God only knows what can or did happen between then and when. The Spy Talk podcast normally post a Friday afternoon, but I think we're pretty up to date as of today. So here he is.
- [15:18]
A
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- [16:22]
B
Peter Kornblu, welcome to Spy Talk. You are as much an expert on US Covert action against Cuba as anybody in America, I would say. So what's the latest in the scene of U. S. Interaction with Cuba right now?
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E
Well, it's the day after, Jeff. It's the day after the indictment of Raul Castro, the former president of Cuba and still the historical leader of the Cuban revolution. There's lots of fallout, lots of commentary. Basically the focus is does this portend special forces military operation to take out Raul Castro to seize kidnapped, abduct, abscond with him? That is what Trump did in Venezuela. He indicted Nicolas Maduro. Then he told Congress that this was a law enforcement operation rather than an act of war to circumvent the War Powers Act. Then he spent the dealt, sent the Delta Force in, in the middle of the night to seize Maduro and his wife. And they are now in jail in New York City. And so the indictment yesterday, based on an incident that happened 30 years ago, which we can talk about, but you know, reminded the Cubans that, that the United States could do this again. And of course, we all have to remember that The Cubans lost 32 of their security personnel trying to defend Maduro against the Delta Force team. So Cuba has, you know, literally an investment of the lives of its own people already in that operation. And they have to take seriously what might happen now that this indictment has been announced. The latest thing just coming in 10 minutes ago is that Donald Trump, who just yesterday said he wasn't going to escalate against Cuba, has today said that after 50, 60 years of his predecessors trying to do it, meaning trying to intervene and overthrow the Cuban government, he's going to be the president to do it.
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B
I'm curious about something else has developed in recent days, this odd Axios story quoting an intelligence report or assessment saying that Cuba has obtained some 300 drones with plans to attack Key west and other American targets. What do you make of that?
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E
Well, I make of that that that was a strategic leak to try and turn public opinion in favor of some type of US action that would be based on a fabricated threat from Cuba that, you know, the idea that Cuba has 300 drones, wow, that sounds like a lot. The idea that Cuba might use them offensively against the United States is completely false. If Cuba has drones, it's going to use them for defensive purposes. And in fact, the Cuban ambassador to Washington took that report very seriously. And she came out and she said, you know, Cuba has a right to self defense. And that right is enshrined in international treaties, international law and the UN Charter and of any country in the world. Cuba has faced a credible threat from the United States going all the way back to the Bay of Pigs operation led by the CIA.
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B
About 75 years.
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E
Yeah, so. But. And they certainly face a credible threat right now where the USS Nimitz has just sailed into the Caribbean with a whole battle group force at the very moment that Trump is once again shooting off his mouth about how he's going to intervene in Cuba and overthrow the Cuban government.
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C
Let's talk a bit about the indictment that just came up against Raul Castro and several others. I guess they were pilots who were involved in the shoot down of Brothers to the Rescue flights over international waters back in 1996. Now, brothers to the Rescue was headed by a guy named Jose Basulto who did have a history of, I think he was involved in the Bay of Pigs and other terrorist acts against the Cuban government back in his youth. But by the time of Brothers to the Rescue was formed, it was a, according to them, a nonviolent organization. They were helping rafters who were fleeing the Cuban regime. That's correct. And dropping leaflets, including leaflets that quoted from the United Nations. International rights, human rights. Not exactly anything that we would consider subversive by our standards. So walk us through. And Raul Castro was the Defense minister at the time. And I should add one other thing. This is not the first time this has come up in criminal prosecutions by the United States Justice Department back in the 90s or later. I guess it was around 2000, 2003, 2003 criminal charges were brought against the Cuban Five, including its ringleader, Gerardo Hernandez, somebody I've interviewed a number of times. And part of the charges were that he tipped the Cubans off to when these Brothers to the Rescue flights were going to happen. They made sure none of their people, the Cuban spies were on those flights, even though they had infiltrated the group and the Cubans shot them down and American citizens were killed. Why is that not grounds for a criminal indictment?
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E
Well, there's a lot of things that you've said, and they're components of a large picture, but we should break them down a bit. Brothers to the Rescue was led by Jose Basulto, hardcore anti Castro exile activist in the early 60s. He got on a speedboat and took it all the way to offshore of Havana and fired a bazooka at a hotel that he thought Fidel Castro was eating in in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. By the time of the late 1990s, the early 1990s, 1992, 1993, when there was this rafters crisis, the Soviet Union had collapsed, Cuba was in a dire economic crisis. A lot of people were leaving. Over 30,000 people tried to get away from the island on small boats and rafts. Basuto did something quite humanitarian. He established an organization of pilots, bought from the US Government some small Cessna planes and did spotting missions over the Florida Straits. They would spot a raft, they would call the U.S. coast Guard and say, you got to go rescue these people because this raft is not going to make it all the way. But then in 1993, early 1994, mid-1994, when the rafters crisis was resolved between Cuba and the Clinton administration and there were no more rafters, Lesotho kept flying, but he changed his humanitarian mission into missions of provocation. He illegally and unauthorizedly entered Cuban airspace, overflew the Cuban countryside, Havana, dropping leaflets and medallions. Some of those leaflets had, you know, innocuous statements on them from the United Nations. Others were more, you know, insurrectionist in nature. It wasn't really the issue of what the leaflets said. It was the fact that hostile planes were again and again intruding on Cuban airspace. If they could drop leaflets, they could also drop grenades, bombs, knives, you name it. The Cubans were completely up in arms about these violations of their airspace. And they spent an entire year, I kid you not, an entire year lodging diplomatic protests, getting on the phone with U.S. officials and the White House and the State Department. Fidel Castro got involved, bartered a secret deal with then Congressman Bill Richardson. Fidel would release three political prisoners, and Richardson would get Clinton to give an ironclad promise that Clinton would shut down these flights. And Fidel thought he had gotten that agreement. And then this flight came again on February 24th. We have posted just recently, two days ago, declassified FAA documents, Federal Aviation Administration documents that I obtained through the Freedom of Information act, you know, which chart which literally recorded minute by minute, hour by hour, week by week, month by month, this whole kind of 15 month period between the first time Basulto overflew Cuban territory and the fatal flight that took place in February of 1996. And you know what you see is a lot of efforts by key U.S. officials to get the FAA to shut Basulto down. You see FAA meetings with Basulto and warnings to Basulto not to fly over Cuban territory. And then you see a bureaucracy simply unwilling to put the kibosh clip Basalto's wings and continuing to let him fly until this horrific.
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C
Let me just play devil's advocate here on a bit. First of all, it's the United States government foreign policy for decades to oppose authoritarian regimes and promote democracy. We have all sorts of institutions that do that. We fund that. It's been U.S. policy consistently to oppose regimes like the Cuban government that is an authoritarian government, that is a non anti democratic government that imprisons political dissidents, all the things we oppose around the world. So why do you call Basulto trying to further those goals, which are the goals of US foreign policy in Cuba as as elsewhere around the world as provocations as opposed to democracy promotions?
- [27:10]
E
Oh my God. We can argue about this all you want, but they were explicit provocations. He would penetrate Cuban airspace and then he would land in Miami and hold a press conference and say we want confrontation with Cuba. My flights over Havana show that Castro is vulnerable.
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C
Wouldn't he say he wants democracy in Cuba and he wants an end to the Castro regime?
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E
Well, that's not what he said. But. But he wanted confrontation and he wanted to push this.
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B
But for what goal?
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E
You can say it's. You can say it was US Foreign policy, but in fact, US foreign policymakers, the top US foreign policymakers in the US Government wanted these flights stopped because the issue of violating Cuban airspace and creating a situation in which these planes could be shot down would create such a crisis in US foreign policy for Washington as it did, that they just foresaw that it would better. It was just more in the US interest that these flights did not continue. They made every effort with the FAA to stop the flights, including a call on the very last night before the final flight went and the FAA refused to shut.
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C
But once they shot them down, the President Bill Clinton explicitly said if this happened, he was being pushed to respond militarily. He said if it happens again we will respond.
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E
Yeah, he threatened to attack the bases where these MiG aircraft were stationed and he considered an attack on those bases and was talked out of it. And you know, the issue was, though, that these had been explicit provocations and, but, you know, Clinton instituted new sanctions against Cuba. He gave away the Helms Burton bill. He signed the Helms Burton Bill with further sanctions on Cuba and restrictions on U.S. foreign policy.
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C
Members of the, of the killed pilots right behind him and he gave them the pen after he signed.
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E
That's right, he did.
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C
Right?
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E
That's right.
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C
So this was consistent with the US Completely understandable.
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E
Politically speaking. Sure.
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B
Well, well, it was consistent and a long history of provocations against Cuba and attempts to assassinate Castro, etc. I spent some time with Alpha 66, one of the anti Castro groups down in Everglades, and they put on a dog and pony show for me, you know, crawling through trenches and jumping over fences and, you know, firing their weapons and so on. But there were, you know, that was a kind of a clown show. But they, they, they did carry out attacks in Cuba and their whole point was to create provocations that would lead toward an armed confrontation between the United States and Cuba. That was the point. So I think you have to look at the Brothers to Rescue operations as part of a long history of provocations by these Cuban exiles in Miami to, to force the US Government into an armed conflict of Russia, notwithstanding our, let's just say, our expressed interest in bringing democracy to Havana, which would have been a breaking of a chain of US Covert action in Latin America which was designed to benefit US Corporations.
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D
Peter, let me just try to, I want to get you to talk about this longer arc that Mike and Jeff are referring to, a period of the longer arc of America Cuba relations. And can you just kind of contextualize what's happening now? Is this a repeat, do you think? When you look at it, we've sort of seen this before. This reminds me of X. Do you see this as the final. We saw this coming because of the revocation of the Obama outreach to Cuba. How do you see the current moment in terms of the larger historical narrative?
- [31:20]
E
You know, the current moment in the United States of America, domestically and internationally is one that we've never witnessed before. I think it's almost a daily shock to not only many of us, if I can speak for all of us, but also many people around the world. And the fact is that Donald Trump, I think, is a wannabe emperor and emperors need empires and he has kind of flirted around, flitted around with building his empire, expanding US Territorially, and his control of the world territorially by targeting Canada, targeting Greenland, targeting Panama, targeting Venezuela, which you may remember after we attacked Venezuela, Trump declared himself acting president of Venezuela. And now he's focused on Cuba, a country that has been in the sights, the gun sights, of US Presidents, you know, going all the way back to Eisenhower, who authorized the covert operations that became the Bay of Pigs invasion. And, you know, a lot of people are making comparisons between the Bay of Pigs invasion, then in 1961, and some type of pending invasion now, as if somehow the Cubans will be victorious again. But the world has changed, not just 100%, but 1,000% since then. And Trump has gotten rid of all kind of decorum of international regulations and international law. He's not using the CIA covertly so that he can plausibly deny some type of operation. He's using the CIA overtly sending the director of the Central Intelligence Agency just last week to Havana to basically bring an ultimatum from Trump, do or die. You know, do what I want you to do, or we're coming after you. That was the general summary of John Ratcliffe's message to the Cuban intelligence officials he met with last a week ago Friday.
- [33:31]
B
Peter, can you give us some insight into the thinking of Cuban leadership right now, given their dire situation on the island? No energy, no lights, no electricity, people getting really hungry. Do you think that Cubans are going to go to the anywhere near the objective that the Trump administration seems to be demanding, which is like, get rid of all your leaders and change your entire system? I mean, that system has not worked well for Cuba, let's say.
- [34:09]
E
Look, there's a lot of systems around the world that don't work well. I agree with that. Whether we agree that the United States should be entitled to then go in and change every single government that doesn't work well is another thing. Or do we agree that some other government should look at our country right now and say, wow, that's an authoritarian system that's being built world. Let's intervene there and keep that from happening? So, you know, it's a complicated world, but, you know, you have a situation in Latin America where US presidents going back to the turn of the 20th century, when the US empire was being built after the Spanish American War, you know, have seen Cuba, the Caribbean, Latin America is not just a sphere of influence, but a sphere of intimidation. And Trump, if anything, is in that tradition.
- [34:58]
B
I'm interested to know whether you think the Cubans have a card to play in this dire situation.
- [35:04]
E
The Cubans have a variant of one card to play. Capitulating. And the question for them is to what degree do they capitulate? Just yesterday, their ambassador to the United nations gave a very rare interview with the New York Times in which he said, look, we, you know, we would like to be respected as a sovereign country. We're independent, we are ready to negotiate. We're ready to negotiate, you know, the economic issues the United States is concerned about and the political issues they're concerned about. Which he added kind of an inference to changes in the government. But he also said, nobody's listening. The United States is not negotiating in good faith. I think he's basically, if you read between the lines of what he said, saying the United States is not really negotiating, they're just simply telling us what to do. And that's hard for the Cubans. I would say the Cuban revolution is over. The last vestige of the Cuban revolution is the dignity with which its Communist party leadership wants to feel that Cuba is a sovereign state and independent because that's what the revolution was intended for it to be.
- [36:14]
C
Can I take things back to 2015 when I believe it was? That was when Obama up, opened up, reversed U.S. long standing U.S. policy, opened up relations.
- [36:24]
E
December 17, not 2014, 2014, in December.
- [36:29]
C
Okay. And you know, as part of that, those, the Cuban five spies, including Gerardo Hernandez, who I referred to earlier, were released. And you know, Gerardo Hernandez at the time was serving a double life sentence without parole for his role in the shoot down or his alleged role in the shootdown of those brothers to the rescue flights. The hope was at the time that this would lead to reform among the Cubans. We would bring in US investors, it would open up relations and the Cubans would introduce economic reforms, political reforms, and we would have a more stable relationship with a country that we had not for many years.
- [37:21]
E
I know what you're going to say, and I just want to say. And that mostly happened.
- [37:24]
C
Well, I would say, but it didn't happen. The economic reforms did not take place. Political reforms. Some years later, when there were the economic protests in 2021, they rounded up hundreds of political dissidents and threw them into prison. And I've talked to some of those who were affected by that. So the point is that that which we would hope the Cubans would do to reverse the course of their authoritarian regime didn't happen. And as a result, here we are today. And Cuba today is a failed state. What, a million? Yeah.
- [38:04]
E
I don't agree with that at all.
- [38:07]
C
When one tenth of your country flees, over a million people have fled Cuba in recent years. That's astonishing number, and that's people voting with their feet saying, we don't want to live here anymore.
- [38:19]
E
Well, you're skipping. You're skipping the. The biggest parts of that history, you know, which are omissions that are of great consequences.
- [38:28]
C
There was one thing.
- [38:30]
E
For one thing, that period of time with that agreement only lasted two years before Donald Trump abrogated it for no reason other than that Obama had made it. He actually asked his national security staff to do an evaluation of whether the Obama agreement had been in U.S. interest. And the answer came back, yes, it was. And he abrogated it anyway because he abrogated everything that Obama did, irregardless of whether it was positive or not. So only two years had actually gone by. And in those two years, all of the indicators that you would hope to see for an evolution, an evolution, not a revolution, but an evolution, and reforms in Cuba, economic reforms in particularly, were taking place. The normalization process was the great benefit of US Interests.
- [39:18]
C
Why didn't they continue?
- [39:19]
E
Security, collaboration, economic, positive economic development, et cetera. You can focus on the issue of the change of government, but, you know, if that process had continued for the idea that Obama had is if that economic process continued for half a generation, for a decade, it would lead to eventual significant changes on the island. But it was only allowed to continue for two short years.
- [39:49]
C
Hold on a second. Hold on a second. You say it was only allowed to continue.
- [39:53]
E
Yeah, Trump.
- [39:56]
C
Trump abrogated that. But the Cubans had total control of their country. They could have continued these economic reforms. They could have continued political reforms.
- [40:07]
E
Well, you're forgetting that the oppos. Yeah, you're just omitting so many key elements. New sanctions from Donald Trump, the pandemic which closed down the Cuban economy for over two years and led to that. The desperation of those street protests, which were repressed in a way they shouldn't have been repressed. You're absolutely right. But at no time was the actual explicit agreement with Cubans was that that they were going to become a democracy out of the normalization process. The expectation was that the normalization process itself would have a great influence and a positive influence on the evolution of Cuban society, Cuban economics, and Cuban politics, eventually.
- [40:49]
B
Karen, I know you want to jump in here, but we have to step away for just a second. Okay, we're back. Karen, what's your question?
- [41:00]
D
Well, I have a bunch, but. But just in the Context of this last part of the conversation. I'm curious how you assess the Marco Rubio statement that he made to the Cuban people, which I found actually rather fascinating. And I'm just curious how you place that in terms of what's actually going on in Cuba, what to expect from Cuba, et cetera.
- [41:29]
E
Well, Marco Rubio, of course, is a descendant of Cuban immigrants. He ran for the Senate in Florida, telling Floridian voters that his parents were refugees from Castro's communism, which was a bald faced lie. They had come as economic immigrants in 1956, I believe, three years before the Cuban revolution, and weren't fleeing anything at all. They were seeking a better life like so many other immigrants who have come from Cuba and elsewhere. But he spoke in Cuban Spanish to the Cuban people yesterday morning. This is part of a hearts and minds campaign. Essentially, the United States is trying to convince the Cuban people who are suffering greatly right now, deprived of fuel and electricity because Trump and Rubio have cut off fuel and electricity to Cuba. But he's trying to convince them that in fact, it's their own leaders that are responsible for that, not the United States, and that the United States is their savior. This is kind of humanitarian hypocrisy, I call it. You help create a horrible humanitarian crisis to immiserate the entire population and then you send them a video message saying, hey, we're willing to donate $100 million to help you and you should turn on your own government because they're really the ones that are responsible for your plight. But we'll save you. All you have to do is turn on your own government and we'll be there and things will get a lot better.
- [43:09]
D
And do you have a sense of how that was received, including the part about the business that the business enterprise that Raul Castro is associated with and how that's really what's controlling the economy and causing the deprivations. How do you think that was received?
- [43:29]
E
I'll tell you the truth, Karen. The lights have gone out in Cuba and that means that there's no fuel because Trump has blocked all the oil tankers from coming except one Russian tanker in the last four months. You need fuel to run the electrical grid. Without fuel, the electrical grid is shut down and there's no electricity. That means that Cubans can't turn on their radios, can't turn on their television sets, can't charge their cell phones. So it's not clear at all how many people actually heard that or saw that video, although some people assuredly did, and many people didn't even hear about the indictment of Raul Castro yesterday in Cuba because there's just so such limited electrical kind of connection at this point. So it's impossible to say what Cuba's reaction to that was. I would say, though, that, you know, the Cuban people, the majority of the Cuban people are suffering so much, are so focused on surviving, you know, through the next few hours, getting food, somehow using that food, cooking that food without any electricity, somehow keeping that food fresh without any refrigeration, that, you know, the majority of them will be happy with any kind of change, even US Intervention to bring about that kind of change. Nationalism does not trump starvation and hunger, frankly. And the Cubans aren't going to rise up as nationalists against the invading United States. Many people will thank the fact that there's a change coming to Cuba. There's no, there's no doubt about that. Well, that does not make it in our interest, however, to take that step, because normalization of relations through diplomatic dialogue could achieve the same goal.
- [45:18]
D
My question is also about other countries. I mean, do you see any other countries getting involved or just sort of stepping back and watching this play out?
- [45:27]
E
Well, because we're on spy talk, and we want to talk about spies. One of the things that the CIA Director, John Radcliffe said to the Cuban intelligence officials last week when he made this extraordinary diplomatic mission to Cuba was that the United States wants the Cubans to eject the Chinese and the Russians who are conducting espionage kind of operations directed at the United States from various installations in Cuba.
- [46:01]
B
Cuba.
- [46:02]
E
The degree that, you know, how, how significant those operations are, I don't know. But that was the demand of, Of. Of the United States. That's Trump's demand. He doesn't want any other foreign influence that he considers hostile. Foreign influence on the, on the island.
- [46:21]
B
It would seem that the Cubans would. Could give that up because they're not getting anything from the Russians and the Chinese anyway. Right?
- [46:27]
C
Right.
- [46:28]
E
Am I wrong or wrong? You know, you know, as, as a, as a kind of armchair liberals, we can sit in Washington and say that, but if you're in Cuba, you've had a situation where both the Chinese and the Russians have been needed allies in many respects against, you know, a situation in which Cuba has faced a hostile colossus of the north.
- [46:51]
B
But they can't help the Cubans now, can they? I mean, what can they bring to the.
- [46:56]
E
I mean, maybe I agree with you on that, that they can't help the Cubans sufficiently. Significantly, Russia has just announced, Russian officials just announced this morning that they were going to step up their support for the Cubans, denounced what Trump was doing. The Russians have sent one tanker and then. And that's it. So there are issues there. If you're a Cuban, though, what do you think? Between Iraq and a hard place here, I have allies who have treated us respectfully, and now our biggest enemy and our existential threat wants me to get rid of those allies just so I can come to an agreement with him which, who knows, is trustworthy or will last. So that's where the situation is. Are there discussions going on with Chinese and Russian officials about this? I'm sure there are, and maybe there will be some offer that's made quietly, I would guess, at this point, to change the intelligence relationship that Cuba has with the Russians and the Chinese as part of a broader deal. But time is running out. That's the problem here.
- [48:17]
C
So the Cuban president, Miguel Canal, seems like a hardliner, unwilling to compromise and just making threats against the US yet you cited the interview that the Cuban ambassador given. Ambassador to the UN Gave to the New York Times the other day in which he sings, suggested that his government is open to a dialogue with the United States. That could lead to reforms that would probably lead to people like Canal having to step down. That could be interpreted as a sign that Trump's pressure campaign is actually working, that the Cubans, given their dire plight, are in fact open to some form of negotiation that would.
- [49:13]
E
They've always been open. Some form of negotiation.
- [49:16]
C
Well, but they never.
- [49:17]
E
I wrote a whole history book about that called Back Channel to Cuba, which we've talked about on your show.
- [49:21]
C
I think I have it right. I think I have it right here. There you go. Back Channel to Cuba.
- [49:26]
B
Good plug.
- [49:26]
C
But, but. So my point is that if. If the Cuban ambassador can be taken at his word, isn't that a sign of perhaps some progress here and that the Trump pressure campaign actually might yield something positive out of all this?
- [49:45]
E
You know, I know you don't want to, because I don't share the vocabulary that it's progress. When the United States starves a country to death and then cites the success of doing that by. Because. Because that pressure leads to some degree of flexibility on the other side. I just don't see that progress.
- [50:03]
C
If Canal was forced to step down and political reforms that released political prisoners, which was one of Radcliffe's demands of the cub, actually took place, wouldn't that be a good thing?
- [50:14]
E
I would like to see the Cubans release all their political prisoners.
- [50:18]
C
So it would be a good thing they're not doing it on their own.
- [50:21]
E
No, I don't believe the United States should be starving other, other societies, literally. Not just figuratively, but literally, in order to, to advance democratic. And I find it, I find it difficult for a, the political system that we have right now, the key actors that are making it what we have, somehow presenting themselves as promoters of democracy in other countries.
- [50:46]
B
All this begs the question to me of whether you see any schisms in the leadership.
- [50:54]
C
No.
- [50:55]
E
But I think what you will see, Java, is if the United States decides to do a surgical strike against Cuba, a drone attack that directed at the compound where they think Raul Castro and his family are staying, or dropping a bomb on the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Revolution Square, some type of attack like that. I do think at that point you'll see divisions in the Cuban leadership about how to respond to that. And, but I fear that the compromises, as I said, the variants of capitulation are just not in the revolutionary vocabulary of the Cuban leadership at this point. And so we may well end up with a point where Trump does decide to launch an attack, even a limited attack on Cuba.
- [51:56]
B
I must say, I can't resist saying that this smacks a more attention shifting away from, you know, Epstein, Where he's got a stalemate on his hands, no allies or very few allies. Change the subject. Let's talk about Cuba because I think that, you know, the United States could just do nothing except continue this, essentially a blockade with Cuba having run out of oil, gas and, you know, it would fall like a rotten apple over time.
- [52:35]
E
That time is coming.
- [52:36]
B
Yeah.
- [52:37]
E
It could be a matter of weeks.
- [52:39]
C
I gotta say though, Peter, your suggestion that Trump might order taking out Raul Castro or a Maduro like seizure of Raul Castro. Raul Castro is like 94 years old and he's not in the government. That's a big difference than Maduro, who was the sitting leader of a hostile country, who was under indictment in the United States. I think the optics of any operation to seize or kill a 94 year old man, I think that would be a bridge too far.
- [53:17]
E
I do think you underestimate Donald Trump and the things that he truly cares about. And he's not worried about the optics of seizing a 94 year old guy. What he wants is to be declared the president that did it. And he just said this as you were coming on the air with me, said I'm going to be the president that finally does it after 60 years of previous presidents not being able to do it, referring to intervening in Cuba and rolling back and ending the Cuban Revolution. I do think, and this is a question that was asked before Karen asked it. You know, I do think we're, and we're arriving at the end game of, of a historic situation. There's been decades and decades of US Efforts, overt and covert, to terminate the Cuban Revolution. The irony of the CIA director going on a diplomatic overt mission after all the decades that the CIA has been trying to covertly overthrow the Cuban government. But an overt mission now to read the riot act to the Cubans and a mission that might actually be the final major historical act of the CIA against the Cuban revolution. I find that an extraordinary history, but I do believe that we are in a zone of time now where this is a true escalation of US Efforts to arrive at the end of a long standing effort to, to sabotage, undermine and end the Cuban Revolution.
- [54:54]
B
Well, I think this brings us to the end of yet another uplifting and inspiring discussion about world events in the Trump era. Anybody else want to chime in with anything? Otherwise, we just want to thank Peter bringing his expertise to us again. You really are in a unique position to do that and we really, really appreciate it. So thanks for coming.
- [55:18]
E
It's always a, it's always a joy to argue with you.
- [55:23]
C
That's what we like to do.
- [55:26]
B
Okay, thanks a lot.
- [55:28]
E
All right, take care, everybody.
- [55:30]
B
And that's it for this week's Spy Talk. Be sure to check out our complete podcast archive on Apple or wherever you get your podcast. And if you haven't already, do check out the Spy Talk Co news site on Substack where we offer steady diet of scoops and original analyses from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy and military operations. Just Google Spy Talk and you'll quickly find your way there. This edition of the Spy Talk podcast was smoothly produced as always by Kanai and expertly edited by Molly Hawkey for MSW Media. That's it. See you around. I'm Jeff Stein.
- [56:09]
C
I'm Mike Lisigoff.
- [56:11]
D
I'm Karen Greenberg.
- [56:12]
B
Thanks for listening.
- [56:14]
A
For more original reporting and insights like this, subscribe to SpyTalk Co on Substack and follow us on Twitter TalkSpy. If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Msw media. Grainger knows. When you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering, and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights up, about to fail filters ready to clog Hvac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.