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Dossier sobre Zunzuneo y subversión contra Cuba


Newsweek revela otros planes de Estados Unidos contra Cuba
Publicado el 10 abril, 2014 de siempreconcuba
Washington, 10 abr.- La revista Newsweek revela hoy otros planes de Estados Unidos para desestabilizar al gobierno de Cuba, que se suman al denunciado programa secreto denominado ZunZuneo, de la Agencia Estadounidense de Desarrollo Internacional (USAID), para crear una red tipo Twitter en la Isla.
En una amplio reportaje del periodista Jeff Stein, titulado “Bahía de Cochinos: Cómo los masones se vieron involucrados en un complot para derrocar a Castro”, se revela la participación de Akram Elías, ex Gran Maestro de la Gran Logia de Washington, en una operación encubierta de la USAID para provocar un cambio de régimen en la Isla.

Newsweek ofrece detalles de la trama que involucró a Elías -a quien llama “espía amateur atrapado en otra trama irresponsable para derrocar al régimen cubano”- no solo con los planes para derrocar el gobierno de la Isla, sino con el gobierno sirio, intentando proveer a ambos países de supuestas capacidades tecnológicas de las redes de infocomunicaciones.
Califica de extraño que Elías, según su sitio web Capital Group Communications, tenía contratos de relaciones públicas con 18 agencias de Seguridad Nacional en el gobierno de Barack Obama, incluyendo el Departamento de Justicia, el Departamento de Estado, la Administración de Control de Drogas y el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional.
También era un jugador clave en una campaña de larga duración de la Agencia de Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional para socavar el régimen de Cuba, sostiene la publicación.
¿Por qué Elías? ¿Por qué Cuba?, se pregunta Newsweek. “Porque, en otro giro extraño aquí, Elías era un alto oficial de la masonería, centenaria organización protestante y con una larga historia en Cuba, oportunidad que aprovecharon los ideólogos derechistas de la USAID para darle otro giro a la carrera en el derrocamiento del régimen comunista, apunta.
Añade que en 2009, Akram Elias estuvo en La Habana para sostener una reunión con Alan Gross, un subcontratista de la USAID, que en diciembre de ese año fue arrestado por introducir ilegalmente equipos de comunicaciones avanzadas de Internet.
De acuerdo con un documento presentado por las autoridades cubanas durante su sentencia en 2011, Gross recibió una llamada en Washington en noviembre de 2009 de Elías, “un ex Gran Oficial de la Washington Masonic Lodge, que se caracteriza por su clara oposición al sistema político cubano”, consiga la fuente.
En esta reunión, según el documento de la sentencia del tribunal cubano, Elías dijo que había pensado en instalar el sistema del acusado en las logias masónicas de Cuba.
Un año después del arresto de Gross, la USAID “decidió clandestinamente lanzar una red al estilo de Twitter cubano supuestamente independiente, llamada ZunZuneo, a través de una red de empresas fantasmas en un programa de acción encubierta”, añade el sitio digital de Newsweek.
Para rematar, Newsweek asegura que tal vez la palabra “estúpido” no es suficiente para describir el proyecto Zunzuneo, teniendo en cuenta la agenda de los planificadores detrás de estos proyectos de la USAID.
“No se trataba de ser eficaz”, explicó a la revista Fulton Armstrong, un alto exfuncionario de la CIA y la Casa Blanca, quien trabajó como Oficial Nacional de Inteligencia para América Latina.
“Ellos saben que no van a derrocar al régimen. Ellos saben que sus agentes en la isla son en su mayoría oportunistas, y que el gobierno cubano ha demostrado que muchos de los opositores que se benefician con nuestra ayuda son en realidad sus agentes.”
Armstrong también declaró que la USAID aplastó una oportunidad para liberar a Alan Gross en 2010. Dijo que esa agencia no le informó a la Casa Blanca sobre las operaciones secretas para provocar un cambio de régimen.


ZunZuneo consagra a los 5
Publicado el 11 de abril por Gustavo Espinoza M
Luego de conocido el denominado “Plan ZunZuneo” impulsado por el gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra Cuba, cualquier persona bien intencionada tendría que justificar plenamente las actividades desarrolladas por René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero Gerardo Hernández y Fernando González Llort en los últimos años del siglo pasado para proteger a su país del accionar terrorista impulsado por el Imperio desde hace más de cincuenta años. El tema, los consagra.
Y es que la denuncia del citado plan muestra a cabalidad no sólo la obscena tenacidad con la que el gobierno de los Estados Unidos se empeña en doblegar la resistencia de Cuba -de su pueblo y de su gobierno-; sino que pone en evidencia, también, el uso que la administración yanqui le da a instituciones formalmente dedicadas a la promoción del Desarrollo, como es el caso de la USAID, que termina actuando como un simple canal de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, la tristemente célebre CIA, tan conocida y vapuleada en el mundo.
Adicionalmente hay que admitir también que la Inteligencia Cubana tuvo el mérito de detectar el nivel y las modalidades de la ofensiva norteamericana contra su país y actuó en consonancia con su responsabilidad. No solamente evitó numerosos actos terroristas, sino que, adicionalmente, vislumbró operativos de alta tecnología, como los que se impulsaran preferentemente en el siglo XXI
La Operación ZunZuneo tuvo un carácter simple: consistió en activar una red destinada a llegar por medios electrónicos, a decenas de miles de receptores en La Habana y otras ciudades de Cuba para alentar la “disidencia” y promover un “alzamiento cívico” contra el gobierno de Raúl Castro. Sólo que se trataba de una “misión discreta”, al decir de Rahij Shad, Administrador de USAID; o más bien secreta como lo señalara en su momento el gobierno de Cuba.
Fue, además, una operación clandestina en todas sus formas. No solo porque operó ilegalmente y a la sombra, sino porque, además, tuvo objetivos y propósitos inconfesables, que no habría admitido ante sus usuarios en ningún caso; y un financiamiento que habría negado en todos los idiomas: los cuantiosos recursos indispensables para ejecutarla, provenían de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica.
Ninguna novedad, por cierto. Los latinoamericanos ya sabemos cómo se preparan los operativos destinados a derribar gobiernos opuestos a Washington. Los vimos en toda su dimensión, desde la Guatemala de Arévalo y Arbenz y los seguimos viendo en nuestro tiempo cada día contra Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia y todos los gobiernos que hacen resistencia al Imperio, o que obstaculizan sus planes de dominación.
No olvidamos que precisamente en estos días se cumplen 50 años del Golpe Militar impuesto por la Escuela Superior de Guerra del Brasil, y que marcó la caída del gobierno democrático de Joao Goulart. Los militares brasileños, a su modo, se valieron de todos los ardides de la tecnología de entonces para sorprender a la opinión ciudadana y engañaron a millones.
Hicieron creer -es decir, mintieron a sabiendas- diciendo que el régimen depuesto “se enrumbaba hacia el comunismo”, y lo derrocaron en nombre de Dios, la Familia y la Propiedad, combinando acciones terroristas con gigantescas “passeatas” alentadas por Carlos Lacerda, el gobernador Magallhaes Pinto y la “prensa grande”. Manipulando todo, detrás de las bambalinas estaba, por cierto, la embajada yanqui.
En esta historia, y a lo largo del tiempo, situamos incluso al Perú, porque aquí también, en los años de Velasco Alvarado, hubo atentados y acciones terroristas preparadas por la Inteligencia norteamericana y ejecutadas por Servicios Secretos a su mando. Los explosivos colocados en las viviendas de los vicealmirantes Larco Cox y FauraGaig no hicieron sino mostrar cuál fue la mano que accionó los ataques a los barcos cubanos en la rada del Callao.
Esas mismas acciones se ejecutan hoy en Venezuela, como ha quedado demostrado de manera fehaciente. Y es que en nuestros días, el terrorismo -que nunca fue en ninguna parte un método de acción revolucionario- se integra con todo su contenido de desesperación, al arsenal de los servicios secretos de los Estados Unidos y sus acólitos en todos los confines del planeta.
Los 5, tuvieron la entereza de enfrentarse a ese monstruo y poner en evidencia su capacidad destructiva. Por eso fueron acosados, capturados y finalmente sentenciados a penas inicuas. Dos de ellos recuperaron ya su libertad, pero aun Ramón, Antonio y Gerardo están privados de la suya. Si nos atenemos a los procedimientos seguidos hasta hoy, está claro que la voluntad del Imperio es que, por lo menos, Gerardo Hernández muera en prisión. Eso, no se puede permitir.
La iniciativa del Presidente del Uruguay, José Mujica, plantea una salida razonable al tema. Si la administración Obama quiere -como dice querer- cerrar definitivamente el centro clandestino de reclusión que mantiene ilegalmente en Guantánamo; tiene la posibilidad real de ceder a cinco de los presos que tiene allí, al Estado Uruguayo, que está dispuesto a recibirlos a cambio que el Presidente Norteamericano libere a los tres rehenes del Imperio.
Y es bueno que el señor Obama tome nota de esta propuesta y la lleve a la práctica porque así podrá matar dos pájaros de un tiro: librarse de la deplorable imagen que le genera ante el mundo el tener presos ilegales en Guantánamo, y deshacerse de un asunto que ya le cuesta mucho, porque en el mundo crece día a día la solidaridad con los antiterroristas cubanos injustamente encarcelados.
Pero adicionalmente Estados Unidos debe sopesar lo que le significa para su relación con el mundo el papel que le ha asignado a USAID.
En el Perú, como ocurre con seguridad en otros países, hay instituciones de distinto signo, dedicadas a diversas tareas, que mantienen vínculos con USAID, que alientan proyectos y programas de cooperación y colaboración, en el entendido que, en efecto, USAID es una organización que promueve el desarrollo y asiste a los gobiernos y a las entidades privadas en la lucha por concretar objetivos loables.
¿Cómo actuarán esas personas e instituciones ahora, cuando se sabe de manera confirmada que USAID no es otra cosa que el taparrabo de la CIA, y que sirve para encubrir el ilegal financiamiento de operaciones clandestinas contra pueblos y países?
¿Qué dirán las instituciones educativas, o las ONGs que reciben recursos de USAID para sus planes y proyectos?
¿Cómo reaccionarán todos aquellos que, de buena fe, pensaron siempre que USAID era una entidad honorable en la que podían confiar para financiar iniciativas y proyectos sanamente orientados?
En el Perú, la lucha solidaria con la causa de los 5, cumplirá en el mes de agosto doce años de trabajo ininterrumpido. En ese tiempo -equivalente también a 144 meses o 3,280 días, se han desarrollado eventos, marchas, mítines, exposiciones de pintura, recitales poéticos, plantones, declaraciones públicas, recolección y envío de firmas, asambleas obreras, llamamientos, memoriales, actos solemnes, o movilizaciones callejeras; y muchas otras acciones.
En este esfuerzo se han hecho presentes muchos. Pero sobre todo intelectuales, jóvenes, mujeres y colectivos solidarios para los que el tema de los 5 se ha convertido en una fuente inspiradora de acciones y de luchas.
Para esta tarea, no se ha desestimado nada, a fin de dar cabida a una solidaridad limpia, natural, activa, que responda a la voluntad siempre alta de los peruanos cuando se trata de la causa de Cuba.
Hoy, que la “operación ZunZuneo” ha puesto en evidencia las nuevas modalidades subversivas de los servicios secretos de los Estados Unidos, la solidaridad peruana alcanzará niveles más altos Y es que, en efecto, este curioso “programa” yanqui, no hace otra cosa que consagrar la causa de los 5.
(*) Presidente del Comité Peruano de Solidaridad con los 5.


US secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest
* Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.
McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the U.S. government.
McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.
According to documents obtained by The Associated Press and multiple interviews with people involved in the project, the plan was to develop a bare-bones "Cuban Twitter," using cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba's strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the Internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet.
Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through "non-controversial content": news messages on soccer, music, and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."
At its peak, the project drew in more than 40,000 Cubans to share news and exchange opinions. But its subscribers were never aware it was created by the U.S. government, or that American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes.
"There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement," according to a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord, one of the project's contractors. "This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the Mission."
The program's legality is unclear: U.S. law requires that any covert action by a federal agency must have a presidential authorization. Officials at USAID would not say who had approved the program or whether the White House was aware of it. McSpedon, the most senior official named in the documents obtained by the AP, is a mid-level manager who declined to comment.
USAID spokesman Matt Herrick said the agency is proud of its Cuba programs and noted that congressional investigators reviewed them last year and found them to be consistent with U.S. law.
"USAID is a development agency, not an intelligence agency, and we work all over the world to help people exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms, and give them access to tools to improve their lives and connect with the outside world," he said.
"In the implementation," he added, "has the government taken steps to be discreet in non-permissive environments? Of course. That's how you protect the practitioners and the public. In hostile environments, we often take steps to protect the partners we're working with on the ground. This is not unique to Cuba."
But the ZunZuneo program muddies those claims, a sensitive issue for its mission to promote democracy and deliver aid to the world's poor and vulnerable — which requires the trust of foreign governments.
"On the face of it there are several aspects about this that are troubling," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. and chairman of the Appropriations Committee's State Department and foreign operations subcommittee.
"There is the risk to young, unsuspecting Cuban cellphone users who had no idea this was a U.S. government-funded activity. There is the clandestine nature of the program that was not disclosed to the appropriations subcommittee with oversight responsibility. And there is the disturbing fact that it apparently activated shortly after Alan Gross, a USAID subcontractor who was sent to Cuba to help provide citizens access to the Internet, was arrested."
The Associated Press obtained more than 1,000 pages of documents about the project's development. The AP independently verified the project's scope and details in the documents — such as federal contract numbers and names of job candidates — through publicly available databases, government sources and interviews with those directly involved in ZunZuneo.
Taken together, they tell the story of how agents of the U.S. government, working in deep secrecy, became tech entrepreneurs — in Cuba. And it all began with a half a million cellphone numbers obtained from a communist government.
____
ZunZuneo would seem to be a throwback from the Cold War, and the decades-long struggle between the United States and Cuba. It came at a time when the historically sour relationship between the countries had improved, at least marginally, and Cuba had made tentative steps toward a more market-based economy.
It is unclear whether the plan got its start with USAID or Creative Associates International, a Washington, D.C., for-profit company that has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. contracts. But a "key contact" at Cubacel, the state-owned cellphone provider, slipped the phone numbers to a Cuban engineer living in Spain. The engineer provided the numbers to USAID and Creative Associates "free of charge," documents show.
In mid-2009, Noy Villalobos, a manager with Creative Associates who had worked with USAID in the 1990s on a program to eradicate drug crops, started an IM chat with her little brother in Nicaragua, according to a Creative Associates email that captured the conversation. Mario Bernheim, in his mid-20s, was an up-and-coming techie who had made a name for himself as a computer whiz.
"This is very confidential of course," Villalobos cautioned her brother. But what could you do if you had all the cellphone numbers of a particular country? Could you send bulk text messages without the government knowing?
"Can you encrypt it or something?" she texted.
She was looking for a direct line to regular Cubans through text messaging. Most had precious little access to news from the outside world. The government viewed the Internet as an Achilles' heel and controlled it accordingly. A communications minister had even referred to it as a "wild colt" that "should be tamed."
Yet in the years since Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother Raul, Cuba had sought to jumpstart the long stagnant economy. Raul Castro began encouraging cellphone use, and hundreds of thousands of people were suddenly using mobile phones for the first time, though smartphones with access to the Internet remained restricted.
Cubans could text message, though at a high cost in a country where the average wage was a mere $20 a month.
Bernheim told his sister that he could figure out a way to send instant texts to hundreds of thousands of Cubans— for cheap. It could not be encrypted though, because that would be too complicated. They wouldn't be able to hide the messages from the Cuban government, which owned Cubacel. But they could disguise who was sending the texts by constantly switching the countries the messages came from.
"We could rotate it from different countries?" Villalobos asked. "Say one message from Nica, another from Spain, another from Mexico"?
Bernheim could do that. "But I would need mirrors set up around the world, mirrors, meaning the same computer, running with the same platform, with the same phone."
"No hay problema," he signed off. No problem.
___
After the chat, Creative hired Bernheim as a subcontractor, reporting to his sister. (Villalobos and Bernheim would later confirm their involvement with the ZunZuneo project to AP, but decline further comment.) Bernheim, in turn, signed up the Cuban engineer who had gotten the phone list. The team figured out how to message the masses without detection, but their ambitions were bigger.
Creative Associates envisioned using the list to create a social networking system that would be called "Proyecto ZZ," or "Project ZZ." The service would start cautiously and be marketed chiefly to young Cubans, who USAID saw as the most open to political change.
"We should gradually increase the risk," USAID proposed in a document. It advocated using "smart mobs" only in "critical/opportunistic situations and not at the detriment of our core platform-based network."
USAID's team of contractors and subcontractors built a companion website to its text service so Cubans could subscribe, give feedback and send their own text messages for free. They talked about how to make the website look like a real business. "Mock ad banners will give it the appearance of a commercial enterprise," a proposal suggested.
In multiple documents, USAID staff pointed out that text messaging had mobilized smart mobs and political uprisings in Moldova and the Philippines, among others. In Iran, the USAID noted social media's role following the disputed election of then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009 — and saw it as an important foreign policy tool.
USAID documents say their strategic objective in Cuba was to "push it out of a stalemate through tactical and temporary initiatives, and get the transition process going again towards democratic change." Democratic change in authoritarian Cuba meant breaking the Castros' grip on power.
USAID divided Cuban society into five segments depending on loyalty to the government. On one side sat the "democratic movement," called "still (largely) irrelevant," and at the other end were the "hard-core system supporters," dubbed "Talibanes" in a derogatory comparison to Afghan and Pakistani extremists.
A key question was how to move more people toward the democratic activist camp without detection. Bernheim assured the team that wouldn't be a problem.
"The Cuban government, like other regimes committed to information control, currently lacks the capacity to effectively monitor and control such a service," Bernheim wrote in a proposal for USAID marked "Sensitive Information."
ZunZuneo would use the list of phone numbers to break Cuba's Internet embargo and not only deliver information to Cubans but also let them interact with each other in a way the government could not control. Eventually it would build a system that would let Cubans send messages anonymously among themselves.
At a strategy meeting, the company discussed building "user volume as a cover ... for organization," according to meeting notes. It also suggested that the "Landscape needs to be large enough to hide full opposition members who may sign up for service."
In a play on the telecommunication minister's quote, the team dubbed their network the "untamed colt."
___
At first, the ZunZuneo team operated out of Central America. Bernheim, the techie brother, worked from Nicaragua's capital, Managua, while McSpedon supervised Creative's work on ZunZuneo from an office in San Jose, Costa Rica, though separate from the U.S. embassy. It was an unusual arrangement that raised eyebrows in Washington, according to U.S. officials.
McSpedon worked for USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a division that was created after the fall of the Soviet Union to promote U.S. interests in quickly changing political environments — without the usual red tape.
In 2009, a report by congressional researchers warned that OTI's work "often lends itself to political entanglements that may have diplomatic implications." Staffers on oversight committees complained that USAID was running secret programs and would not provide details.
"We were told we couldn't even be told in broad terms what was happening because 'people will die,'" said Fulton Armstrong, who worked for the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Before that, he was the US intelligence community's most senior analyst on Latin America, advising the Clinton White House.
The money that Creative Associates spent on ZunZuneo was publicly earmarked for an unspecified project in Pakistan, government data show. But there is no indication of where the funds were actually spent.
Tensions with Congress spiked just as the ZunZuneo project was gearing up in December 2009, when another USAID program ended in the arrest of the U.S. contractor, Alan Gross. Gross had traveled repeatedly to Cuba on a secret mission to expand Internet access using sensitive technology typically available only to governments, a mission first revealed in February 2012 by AP.
At some point, Armstrong says, the foreign relations committee became aware of OTI's secret operations in Costa Rica. U.S. government officials acknowledged them privately to Armstrong, but USAID refused to provide operational details.
At an event in Washington, Armstrong says he confronted McSpedon, asking him if he was aware that by operating secret programs from a third country, it might appear like he worked for an intelligence agency.
McSpedon, through USAID, said the story is not true. He declined to comment otherwise.
___
On Sept. 20, 2009, thousands of Cubans gathered at Revolution Plaza in Havana for Colombian rocker Juanes' "Peace without Borders" concert. It was the largest public gathering in Cuba since the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998. Under the watchful gaze of a giant sculpture of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Miami-based Juanes promised music aimed at "turning hate into love."
But for the ZunZuneo team, the concert was a perfect opportunity to test the political power of their budding social network. In the weeks before, Bernheim's firm, using the phone list, sent out a half a million text messages in what it called "blasts," to test what the Cuban government would do.
The team hired AlenLauzan Falcon, a Havana-born satirical artist based in Chile, to write Cuban-style messages. Some were mildly political and comical, others more pointed. One asked respondents whether they thought two popular local music acts out of favor with the government should join the stage with Juanes. Some 100,000 people responded — not realizing the poll was used to gather critical intelligence.
Paula Cambronero, a researcher for Mobile Accord, began building a vast database about the Cuban subscribers, including gender, age, "receptiveness" and "political tendencies." USAID believed the demographics on dissent could help it target its other Cuba programs and "maximize our possibilities to extend our reach."
Cambronero concluded that the team had to be careful. "Messages with a humorous connotation should not contain a strong political tendency, so as not to create animosity in the recipients," she wrote in a report.
Falcon, in an interview, said he was never told that he was composing messages for a U.S. government program, but he had no regrets about his involvement.
"They didn't tell me anything, and if they had, I would have done it anyway," he said. "In Cuba they don't have freedom. While a government forces me to pay in order to visit my country, makes me ask permission, and limits my communications, I will be against it, whether it's Fidel Castro, (Cuban exile leader) Jorge Mas Canosa or Gloria Estefan," the Cuban American singer.
Carlos Sanchez Almeida, a lawyer specializing in European data protection law, said it appeared that the U.S. program violated Spanish privacy laws because the ZunZuneo team had illegally gathered personal data from the phone list and sent unsolicited emails using a Spanish platform. "The illegal release of information is a crime, and using information to create a list of people by political affiliation is totally prohibited by Spanish law," Almeida said. It would violate a U.S-European data protection agreement, he said.
USAID saw evidence from server records that Havana had tried to trace the texts, to break into ZunZuneo's servers, and had occasionally blocked messages. But USAID called the response "timid" and concluded that ZunZuneo would be viable — if its origins stayed secret.
Even though Cuba has one of the most sophisticated counter-intelligence operations in the world, the ZunZuneo team thought that as long as the message service looked benign, Cubacel would leave it alone.
Once the network had critical mass, Creative and USAID documents argued, it would be harder for the Cuban government to shut it down, both because of popular demand and because Cubacel would be addicted to the revenues from the text messages.
In February 2010, the company introduced Cubans to ZunZuneo and began marketing. Within six months, it had almost 25,000 subscribers, growing faster and drawing more attention than the USAID team could control.
___
Saimi Reyes Carmona was a journalism student at the University of Havana when she stumbled onto ZunZuneo. She was intrigued by the service's novelty, and the price. The advertisement said "free messages" so she signed up using her nickname, Saimita.
At first, ZunZuneo was a very tiny platform, Reyes said during a recent interview in Havana, but one day she went to its website and saw its services had expanded.
"I began sending one message every day," she said, the maximum allowed at the start. "I didn't have practically any followers." She was thrilled every time she got a new one.
And then ZunZuneo exploded in popularity.
"The whole world wanted in, and in a question of months I had 2,000 followers who I have no idea who they are, nor where they came from."
She let her followers know the day of her birthday, and was surprised when she got some 15 personal messages. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!" she told her boyfriend, Ernesto Guerra Valdes, also a journalism student.
Before long, Reyes learned she had the second highest number of followers on the island, after a user called UCI, which the students figured was Havana's University of Computer Sciences. Her boyfriend had 1,000. The two were amazed at the reach it gave them.
"It was such a marvelous thing," Guerra said. "So noble." He and Reyes tried to figure out who was behind ZunZuneo, since the technology to run it had to be expensive, but they found nothing. They were grateful though.
"We always found it strange, that generosity and kindness," he said. ZunZuneo was "the fairy godmother of cellphones."
___
By early 2010, Creative decided that ZunZuneo was so popular Bernheim's company wasn't sophisticated enough to build, in effect, "a scaled down version of Twitter."
It turned to another young techie, James Eberhard, CEO of Denver-based Mobile Accord Inc. Eberhard had pioneered the use of text messaging for donations during disasters and had raised tens of millions of dollars after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Eberhard earned millions in his mid-20s when he sold a company that developed cellphone ring tones and games. His company's website describes him as "a visionary within the global mobile community."
In July, he flew to Barcelona to join McSpedon, Bernheim, and others to work out what they called a "below the radar strategy."
"If it is discovered that the platform is, or ever was, backed by the United States government, not only do we risk the channel being shut down by Cubacel, but we risk the credibility of the platform as a source of reliable information, education, and empowerment in the eyes of the Cuban people," Mobile Accord noted in a memo.
To cover their tracks, they decided to have a company based in the United Kingdom set up a corporation in Spain to run ZunZuneo. A separate company called MovilChat was created in the Cayman Islands, a well-known offshore tax haven, with an account at the island's Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Ltd. to pay the bills.
A memo of the meeting in Barcelona says that the front companies would distance ZunZuneo from any U.S. ownership so that the "money trail will not trace back to America."
But it wasn't just the money they were worried about. They had to hide the origins of the texts, according to documents and interviews with team members.
Brad Blanken, the former chief operating officer of Mobile Accord, left the project early on, but noted that there were two main criteria for success.
"The biggest challenge with creating something like this is getting the phone numbers," Blanken said. "And then the ability to spoof the network."
The team of contractors set up servers in Spain and Ireland to process texts, contracting an independent Spanish company called Lleida.net to send the text messages back to Cuba, while stripping off identifying data.
Mobile Accord also sought intelligence from engineers at the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, which organizers said would "have knowledge of Cubacel's network."
"Understanding the security and monitoring protocols of Cubacel will be an invaluable asset to avoid unnecessary detection by the carrier," one Mobile Accord memo read.
Officials at USAID realized however, that they could not conceal their involvement forever — unless they left the stage. The predicament was summarized bluntly when Eberhard was in Washington for a strategy session in early February 2011, where his company noted the "inherent contradiction" of giving Cubans a platform for communications uninfluenced by their government that was in fact financed by the U.S. government and influenced by its agenda.
They turned to Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, to seek funding for the project. Documents show Dorsey met with Suzanne Hall, a State Department officer who worked on social media projects, and others. Dorsey declined to comment.
The State Department under then-Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton thought social media was an important tool in diplomacy. At a 2011 speech at George Washington University, Clinton said the U.S. helped people in "oppressive Internet environments get around filters." In Tunisia, she said people used technology to "organize and share grievances, which, as we know, helped fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change."
Ultimately, the solution was new management that could separate ZunZuneo from its U.S. origins and raise enough revenue for it to go "independent," even as it kept its long-term strategy to bring about "democratic change."
Eberhard led the recruitment efforts, a sensitive operation because he intended to keep the management of the Spanish company in the dark.
"The ZZ management team will have no knowledge of the true origin of the operation; as far as they know, the platform was established by Mobile Accord," the memo said. "There should be zero doubt in management's mind and no insecurities or concerns about United States Government involvement."
The memo went on to say that the CEO's clean conscience would be "particularly critical when dealing with Cubacel." Sensitive to the high cost of text messages for average Cubans, ZunZuneo negotiated a bulk rate for texts at 4 cents a pop through a Spanish intermediary. Documents show there was hope that an earnest, clueless CEO might be able to persuade Cubacel to back the project.
Mobile Accord considered a dozen candidates from five countries to head the Spanish front company. One of them was Francoise de Valera, a CEO who was vacationing in Dubai when she was approached for an interview. She flew to Barcelona. At the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, she met with Nim Patel, who at the time was Mobile Accord's president. Eberhard had also flown in for the interviews. But she said she couldn't get a straight answer about what they were looking for.
"They talked to me about instant messaging but nothing about Cuba, or the United States," she told the AP in an interview from London.
"If I had been offered and accepted the role, I believe that sooner or later it would have become apparent to me that something wasn't right," she said.
___
By early 2011, Creative Associates grew exasperated with Mobile Accord's failure to make ZunZuneo self-sustaining and independent of the U.S. government. The operation had run into an unsolvable problem. USAID was paying tens of thousands of dollars in text messaging fees to Cuba's communist telecommunications monopoly routed through a secret bank account and front companies. It was not a situation that it could either afford or justify — and if exposed it would be embarrassing, or worse.
In a searing evaluation, Creative Associates said Mobile Accord had ignored sustainability because "it has felt comfortable receiving USG financing to move the venture forward."
Out of 60 points awarded for performance, Mobile Accord scored 34 points. Creative Associates complained that Mobile Accord's understanding of the social mission of the project was weak, and gave it 3 out of 10 points for "commitment to our Program goals."
Mobile Accord declined to comment on the program.
In increasingly impatient tones, Creative Associates pressed Mobile Accord to find new revenue that would pay the bills. Mobile Accord suggested selling targeted advertisements in Cuba, but even with projections of up to a million ZunZuneo subscribers, advertising in a state-run economy would amount to a pittance.
By March 2011, ZunZuneo had about 40,000 subscribers. To keep a lower profile, it abandoned previous hopes of reaching 200,000 and instead capped the number of subscribers at a lower number. It limited ZunZuneo's text messages to less than one percent of the total in Cuba, so as to avoid the notice of Cuban authorities. Though one former ZunZuneo worker — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about his work — said the Cubans were catching on and had tried to block the site.
___
Toward the middle of 2012, Cuban users began to complain that the service worked only sporadically. Then not at all.
ZunZuneo vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.
By June 2012, users who had access to Facebook and Twitter were wondering what had happened.
"Where can you pick up messages from ZunZuneo?" one woman asked on Facebook in November 2012. "Why aren't I receiving them anymore?"
Users who went to ZunZuneo's website were sent to a children's website with a similar name.
ReynerAguero, a 25-year-old blogger, said he and fellow students at Havana's University of Computer Sciences tried to track it down. Someone had rerouted the website through DNS blocking, a censorship technique initially developed back in the 1990s. Intelligence officers later told the students that ZunZuneo was blacklisted, he said.
"ZunZuneo, like everything else they did not control, was a threat," Aguero said. "Period."
In incorrect Spanish, ZunZuneo posted a note on its Facebook page saying it was aware of problems accessing the website and that it was trying to resolve them.
" ¡Que viva el ZunZuneo!" the message said. Long live ZunZuneo!
In February, when Saimi Reyes, and her boyfriend, Ernesto Guerra, learned the origins of ZunZuneo, they were stunned.
"How was I supposed to realize that?" Guerra asked. "It's not like there was a sign saying 'Welcome to ZunZuneo, brought to you by USAID."
"Besides, there was nothing wrong. If I had started getting subversive messages or death threats or 'Everyone into the streets,'" he laughed, "I would have said, 'OK,' there's something fishy about this. But nothing like that happened."
USAID says the program ended when the money ran out. The Cuban government declined to comment.
The former web domain is now a placeholder, for sale for $299. The registration for MovilChat, the Cayman Islands front company, was set to expire on March 31.
In Cuba, nothing has come close to replacing it. Internet service still is restricted.
"The moment when ZunZuneo disappeared was like a vacuum," Guerra said. "People texted my phone, 'What is happening with ZunZuneo?'
"In the end, we never learned what happened," he said. "We never learned where it came from."
Contributing to this report were Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur in Washington, and AP writers Andrea Rodriguez and Peter Orsi in Havana. Arce reported from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
When Is Covert Action Not Covert? When It's 'Discreet.' USAID's Indiscreet Twitter Program in Cuba
04/11/14 - Huff Post - William Leo Grande
Ever since the Associated Press revealed that USAID created a short-lived, free text message app for Cuban cell-phone users called ZunZuneo, Obama administration officials have been indignantly denying that the program was covert.
"Discreet does not equal covert," agency spokesman Matt Herrick wrote on the USAID website, defending the operation. "The [Cuba] programs have longbeen the subject of Congressional notifications, unclassified briefings, public budget requests, and public hearings." In a testy hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on foreign operations, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah argued that because ZunZuneo was being discussed in an open forum, it was not covert.
USAID officials need to review the statutory definition of covert action. In 1991, Congress tightened that definition in reaction to the Reagan administration's claims that its Iran-contra operation was not a covert action under the law and therefore did not require a presidential finding or Congressional notification. The relevant passage of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991 (50 U.S. Code § 3093) reads: (e) "Covert action" defined As used in this subchapter, the term "covert action" means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.... The record is indisputable that the U.S. government's role in ZunZuneo was kept secret (not classified Secret, just kept secret) from the Cuban government, Cuban users of the service, some of the subcontractors working on the project, relevant members of U.S. Congress, and the U.S. public. That certainly sounds like an operation that fits the definition of covert action pretty snugly. The claim that ZunZuneo was not covert, just "discreet," doesn't pass the duck test.
There is no category of "discreet" actions that the intelligence law excludes from the requirements of intelligence oversight even though they fit the statutory definition of covert action.
Nor does the fact that USAID publicly acknowledges it has a program to promote democracy on the island exempt specific operations from oversight if they fit the definition of covert action. The Reagan administrationpublicly requested funds to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s,but the contra program was still subject to intelligence oversight.
USAID initially denied that ZunZuneo was intended to influence Cubanpolitics and claimed that nothing political was ever tweeted out to Cuban subscribers. In the Senate hearing, USAID Director Shah insisted that ZunZuneo was intended solely "to support access to information and to allowpeople to communicate with each other," not to influence Cuban politics orfoment unrest. But based on program documents and interviews with programparticipants, the Associated Press has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubtthat these claims of innocence are simply false.
In summary, USAID's ZunZuneo program meets the two key definitional attributes of a covert action: it was intended to influence Cuban politics, and the U.S. government's role was intentionally hidden. Therefore, under the law (50 U.S. Code § 3093 (a)), it required a presidential finding and notification of the Congressional intelligence committees. Thoseobligations do not appear to have been met.
Why is an agency committed to social and economic development running covert operations in the first place? USAID officials don't have therequisite tradecraft to run them successfully (as Alan Gross, the victim ofanother "discreet" USAID operation, can testify). Apparently, they don'tunderstand the relevant oversight laws, either. If the Obama administrationreally wants to make it possible for Cubans to communicate with one anothervia social media, the president could relax the embargo, allowing Cuba toexpand its internet bandwidth by hooking up to one of the undersea fiberoptic cables that crisscross the Caribbean, but bypass Cuba. He could allowU.S. social media firms to do business in Cuba. He could lift the remainingrestrictions on travel to Cuba so more Cubans and Americans could friendeach other. And once and for all, he and Congress could zero outappropriations for the hair-brained schemes that have characterized USAID'sCuba program since its inception.


Alan Gross, U.S. contractor held in Cuba, goes on hunger strike
By Karen DeYoung, Updated: Tuesday, April 8, 6:00 AM – The Washington Post
Alan Gross, the U.S. government contractor who has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years, began a hunger strike last week to protest his treatment by both the Cuban and U.S. governments, his lawyer said Tuesday. “I am fasting to object to mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments, not only regarding their shared responsibility for my arbitrary detention, but also because of the lack of any reasonable or valid effort to resolve this shameful ordeal,” Gross said in a telephoned statement to his legal team.
As he has many times before, Gross called on President Obama to become personally involved in efforts to free him from “inhumane treatment” in a Cuban prison.
Gross was arrested in 2009 for distributing Internet and other communications materials in Cuba under a program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was sentenced to 15 years for crimes against the Cuban state and is said to be in poor health.
His case moved back into the limelight last week following revelations about a separate USAID program to undermine Cuba’s communist government with a Twitter-like network designed to build an audience among Cuban youth and push them toward anti-government dissent. While unclassified, administration officials have described the program as “discreet.”
The “Cuban Twitter” program, discontinued in 2012, caused an uproar among U.S. lawmakers who charged they had never approved spending for it. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who heads the appropriations subcommittee in charge of the USAID budget, called the program “dumb, dumb, dumb.”
Others praised the program, which they called laudable effort to circumvent Cuban restrictions on Internet freedom. Such efforts help “provide uncensored access to information and communications for the Cuban people and others struggling around the globe against repression, censorship and the denial of basic human rights,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Since 1996, Congress has appropriated more than $200 million for “democracy assistance” programs in Cuba. USAID has been given wide discretion in deciding what the money is used for. Most of the programs are subcontracted to firms like Development Alternatives, Inc., which received a $6 million contract, under which Gross was working.
USAID Administration Rajiv Shah is scheduled to testify before Leahy’s subcommittee Tuesday morning.
In a statement, Gross’s lawyer, Scott Gilbert, said the Cuban Twitter program had put Gross’s life in greater jeopardy. “Once Alan was arrested, it is shocking that USAID would imperil his safety even further by running a covert operation in Cuba,” Gilbert said. “USAID has made one absurdly bad decision after another. Running this program is contrary to everything we have been told by high-level representative of the Obama administration about USAID’s activities in Cuba.”
Gilbert said that Gross, a 64-year-old Maryland resident, has lost more than 110 pounds since his arrest and is held in a small cell with two other prisoners for 23 hours a day.
Even as he has criticized the program that landed Gross in prison, Leahy has criticized what he and others have called the administration’s inattention to the case. In a November letter to Obama, Leahy spearheaded a letter signed by a bipartisan group of 66 senators urging the president to “act expeditiously to take whatever steps are in the national interest to obtain [Gross’s] release.”
A separate letter, signed by 14 lawmakers led by Cuban-American Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Menendez, exhorted Obama to continue his policy of demanding Gross’s “immediate and unconditional release.”


Is This the Moment to Normalize US Relations With Cuba?
With Senator Foreign Relations chairman and Cuba hawk Robert Menendez mired in scandal, the embargo could finally be lifted.
Tom Hayden | April 16, 2014 – The Nation
Until last week, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was relatively untouchable among Democrats, while holding virtual veto power over US Cuba policy and being a military hawk on US policies towards Syria, Iran and Venezuela.
Not any more.
Now Menendez’s grip is weakened by revelations that his very close friend, Miami opthalmologistSalomanMelgen, topped the country in Medicare fraud, and funneled $700,000 in campaign contributions through a Democratic super-PAC, nearly all of which were channeled right back to the Menendez re-election campaign in 2012. Melgen ripped off $21 million in Medicare reimbursements that year alone by over-prescribing a medication for vision loss among seniors.
A key question is whether Senate leader Harry Reid, whose close former aides run the Majority PAC for Senate Democrats, will aggressively investigate ethics violations, diminish Menendez’s Senate standing, or risk his party‘s association with the scandal by circling the wagons.
Federal investigations, including two raids on Dr. Melgen’s clinics, already have revealed that Menendez interceded with Medicare officials on his friend's behalf in 2009 and 2011. Menendez is still under scrutiny by the Obama Justice Department. Menendez acknowledges traveling several times on Melgen’s private jet and staying at the eye doctor’s posh estate in the Dominican Republic. Menendez was forced to reimburse $58,500 for the costs of those trips when the information was disclosed in 2010.
The important back story in the Menendez-Melger case is that US Cuba policy is at stake.
The Cuban-born Menendez is a fierce lifetime opponent of any easing of tensions with Havana. As a top fund-raiser and the Democratic chairman of the key foreign relations committee, Menendez is an obstacle to Obama and Senate liberals on a range of national security policies. He favors regime change through military or covert means in Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and of course Cuba. He has the power to set bills, hold hearings, and approve or deny administration nominations. Menendez is becoming Obama’s chief domestic obstacle in normalizing relations with Cuba. Even on an administration priority like immigration reform, Menendez (and Senator Marco Rubio) have pledged their votes only on the condition that their hardline position on Cuba is heeded.
Now that Menendez’s grip on power is weakened, the only question is by how much.
Only a few years ago Menendez, chairing the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee, raised hell when one of the party's biggest fund-raisers, Hollywood’s Andy Spahn, tried raising funds for candidates who supported a new Cuba policy. Spahn, who travels often to Cuba with American politicians and Hollywood producers like Steven Spielberg, was demonized by Menendez and shut down. But Spahn today remains as one of Obama's top fund-raisers, and actively supports lifting the embargo.
This year an even sharper split erupted in the Senate between Menendez and Senator Patrick Leahy who is making a top priority of achieving a new Cuban policy. Leahy, who engages in steady, behind-the-scenes dialogue with Cuban officials, obtained sixty-six Senate signatures on a December 2013 letter to Obama calling on the president to "act expeditiously to take whatever steps are in the national interest" to obtain the release of American citizen Alan Gross [1]. Gross is a contractor for the US Agency for International Development serving a fifteen-year sentence in Cuba for covertly smuggling high-tech communications equipment into the island. A rival letter sent by Menendez and Rubio calling for Gross' "immediate and unconditional release" garnered only fourteen votes, an embarrassing setback for Menendez. In the opaque culture of Washington, the Leahy letter was interpreted as political cover for Obama to negotiate diplomatically for Gross’ release, whereas the Menendez letter was a dud.
The Leahy-Menendez feud has deepened further with recent revelations that the AID has operated a secret Twitter program to stir protests in Cuba. Leahy denounces the project as "dumb, dumb, dumb" while Menendez defends it vigorously.
National Democrats interested in Cuba commonly claim their hands are tied on Cuba because of Menendez's role. Under the 1997 Helms-Burton legislation, President Bill Clinton delegated to Congress the final say over recognizing Cuba and lifting the embargo, providing the most powerful tool in Menendez’s arsenal until now. For that reason, Obama has pursued gradual progress with Cuba through executive action—like lifting license requirements for travel by Cuban-Americans, which has resulted in a flow of about 500,000 Cuban Americans per year. Obama also is conducting business-like talks with the Cuban regime on immigration, drug enforcement and other state-to-state matters. Obama shook hands with President Raul Castro at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, angering the Cuban Right.
Any ebbing of Menendez’s role will help Obama to take further steps towards normalization. For example, the State Department is considering lifting its designation of Cuba as a "terrorist state." Such a move would make it much easier for the Cuban government to engage with private banks and firms who now worry about breaching US anti-terrorism laws. While lifting the terrorist label is within the administration's power, the decision can be challenged by two-thirds of the Senate. With a weakened Menendez, the Senate might go along with Obama and John Kerry.
The surfacing of the Medicare scandal, Melgen’s donations to Menendez, and the links between that money and the Senate’s Majority PAC now increase the pressure on Senator Reid and Democrats to distance themselves from Menendez. For Democratic insiders, managing the scandal is a dicey matter, because losing the Senate in November will turn Cuba policy over to the exiles’ latest favorite son, Senator Marco Rubio.
If Democrats are uncomfortable about a nasty fight with one of their own, who will step up? Menendez is not up for election this November. Republicans who agree with his right-wing foreign policies may like him where he is. Where are New Jersey Democrats? For many years the liberal focus against the Cuban Right has centered on Miami, not so much on the enclave of right-wing Cubans in Jersey City. The recent liberal obsession about New Jersey has been about Republican governor Chris Christie, not Democratic senator Menendez. The uproar over Christie, while fully justifiable, is easier politically than Democrats taking on a leader of their own party. But while causing traffic jams on an interstate bridge is an outrage, how does it compare with a lone Senator flaunting his own president, fomenting US military interventions, and sabotaging a possible bridge to Cuba? Time will tell.


Free Alan Gross—and the Cuban Five!
If the U.S. wants Cuba to release USAID contractor Alan Gross, it should give up its own political prisoners from Cuba.
By Arturo Lopez-Levy, April 18, 2014.
Alan Gross, an American imprisoned in Cuba since December 3, 2009, recently went on a hunger strike in Havana that lasted for eight days. He did so to protest the U.S. and Cuban governments’ inaction in negotiating a solution to his tragedy.
Gross is the latest victim in a long history of conflicts between Cuba and the United States. An international development expert subcontracted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Gross entered Cuba as a non-registered foreign agent. His mission was to create a wireless internet satellite network based in Jewish community centers that would circumvent detection by the Cuban government.
Gross was quickly apprehended. But while the U.S. government has vigorously protested his treatment, it has proven unwilling to make the diplomatic overtures—like releasing the Cuban Five—that could secure his release.
Regime Change “Cockamamie”
The USAID program that landed Gross in prison was designed during the George W. Bush administration. It received approval under the Helms-Burton Act, a 1996 law that essentially committed the U.S. government to the overthrow of the Cuban regime.
Gross’ program took an indisputably covert and incendiary approach to democracy promotion, never bothering to obtain the informed consent of the Cuban Jewish community. Like most Cuban religious groups, Jews in Cuba have opposed any attempt to politicize religious organizations by turning them into tools to promote opposition to the regime. The Bush administration’s holy warriors at USAID, however, had aspirations far beyond the temple doors,they aimed to overthrow the Cuban government. If that involved getting Cuban Jews in trouble without their consent, then so be it.
USAID made a peculiar choice in selecting Gross for actions that would come to be condemned in Cuba as subversive. Gross did not know Cuba and did not speak Spanish. He loved Cuban music, but that hardly qualified him for the covert mission he was sent on. Moreover, the U.S. government systematically misinformed Gross about Cuba. According to a confidential summary of an August 2008 meeting between USAID high officials and representatives of Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI)—the contractor that hired Gross—Bush-era USAID officials recommended that project team members “stay well informed” about Cuba by reading certain blogs. At the head of the USAID-recommended list of go-to sources about Cuba was Babalu, a rabidly right wing blog based in Miami. One of Babalu’s more recent posts labels current U.S. president Barack Obama a “Marxist tyrant” in the tradition of “Mao, Stalin, and Fidel Castro.”
Rather than revising USAID’s regime change program, the Obama administration preferred to cover up the mess that the Bush administration had left behind. Worse still, as we just learned this April, even after Gross’ arrest, USAID implemented another covert operation in Cuba: ZunZuneo, or “Cuban Twitter.”
ZunZuneohad been developed under Bush in 2007-2008, but was implemented under Obama between 2010 and 2012. The program’s designers aimed to create a Twitter-like social network among Cuban youth to mobilize “smart mobs” and further the possibility of a revolt. It involved the same disrespect for Cuban sovereignty and civil society that the Helms-Burton law has repeatedly advanced. As always, the purpose was to create chaos and destabilization—this time with the intent of generating a Cuban Spring modeled after the Arab Spring revolts.
Washington maintains that USAID does regular humanitarian work in Cuba. Yet the agency’s own officials show that to be untrue. During an April 8 budget hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, USAID director Rajiv Shah said that the Helms-Burton law precludes any program to promote child healthcare on the island. Shah is correct. The law only authorizes humanitarian activities, travel, or trade if they are certified to serve the goal of overthrowing the Cuban government. In other words, these programs have nothing to do with promoting human rights or Cuba’s peaceful transition to democracy.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has called ZunZuneo a “cockamamie idea.” His remarks highlight the way USAID’s deviation from humanitarian aid standards in Cuba has caused tremendous harm to the organization’s more legitimate development efforts elsewhere. Citing Gross and ZunZuneo among other examples, several world governments and political parties have denounced USAID altogether as a tool of American subversion and hypocrisy.
Gross and the Cuban Five
Gross’ detention is considered arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that analyzed his case. According to that panel of experts, his trial in Cuba was politically motivated and lacked the international minimal standards of a fair and just legal process.
But Cuba is not the only government holding political prisoners. The same UN body also considers “arbitrary” the 1998 detention of five Cuban agents, three of whom remain in prison, by the U.S. government. The “Cuban Five” infiltrated anti-Castro groups with a long pedigree of violent actions against Cuba—acts that were planned on U.S. soil with the knowledge of the U.S. government. Most assessments agree that the Cuban agents caused no harm to U.S. national security. According to the UN panel, the political circus surrounding the trial of the Cuban Five in Miami made a fair and just trial impossible. The Cuban government has indicated that it will release Gross if the United States releases the three “Cuban Five” agents who remain in prison.
Aiming to inspire parallel acts of international conciliation, Uruguayan president José Mujica has indicated his country’s willingness to accept some of the detainees who remain imprisoned in the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. This would contribute to the closure of a camp that has brought tremendous harm to America’s reputation and raised serious questions about Washington’s commitment to international human rights. Mujica said that he hopes the gesture will lead Obama to think about the potential benefit for U.S.-Latin America relations that would follow a release of the three Cubans still in U.S. prisons.
But the same pro-embargo crowd that sent Alan Gross on the ill-conceived covert action leading to his arrest is now willing to keep him locked in prison. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have called on the White House to demand Cuba’s “unilateral and unconditional” release of Gross—an irrational requirement. Their insistence is a transparent attempt to torpedo Obama’s overall dialogue with Cuba, even when improving relations between the two countries would clearly serve the national interests of the United States.
Rather than seek a realistic solution to Gross’ tragedy, the Obama administration has engaged in semantic nonsense. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor John Kerry have both held that Gross was not a spy. They are correct only at the most technical level, since he did not seek secret information. Still, Cuba’s description of Gross as part of a subversive regime-change strategy is difficult to dispute, not the least because U.S. legislation says so openly. In the meantime, while the U.S. and Cuban governments engage in the “spy-not spy” discussion, Gross remains a prisoner.
Gross will be released only as a result of diplomatic compromise. Gross has written to Obama “on behalf of every American who might ever find himself or herself in trouble abroad” and asked him “to direct his administration to take meaningful, proactive steps to secure my immediate release.”
It’s time to do it.
*Arturo Lopez-Levy is a PhD Candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver. You can follow him on Twitter @turylevy.


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