Cuba spent decades recruiting American spies. Now Washington is turning the tables on Havana
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is inviting Cubans to cooperate with the CIA, challenging the assumption that Cuba's failing economy makes it incapable of espionage operations.
Cuba's government has spent decades recruiting Americans to betray their country, objecting to Secretary of State Marco Rubio inviting Cubans to cooperate with the CIA. Havana apparently believes espionage should remain a privilege of the dictatorship. The Trump administration is right to disagree.
Rubio is challenging a comfortable assumption in Washington: that Cuba is too broke to matter. A regime unable to keep the lights on can still penetrate a government, compromise an intelligence officer, and help America's adversaries. Poverty has never disqualified a country from espionage.
Cuba's Espionage History
The record requires little elaboration. Ana Belén Montes became the Pentagon's leading Cuba analyst while working for Cuban intelligence. She exposed American intelligence officers and distorted Washington's understanding of the country. Victor Manuel Rocha served as a U.S. ambassador and on the National Security Council while secretly serving Havana.
Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers sustained an espionage conspiracy for 30 years. These were patient investments in access. Cuban intelligence cultivated ideological commitment, steered recruits toward useful positions, and allowed American institutions to supply salaries, credentials, and trust.
The most damaging agent may be the respected expert whose colleagues cannot imagine that his judgment belongs to someone else.
Human Cost of Espionage
The consequences extended beyond stolen documents. Cuba's Wasp Network penetrated exile organizations and targeted American military facilities. One of its officers was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the 1996 destruction of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft. Four men died, three of them American citizens.
Havana's intelligence operations have carried a human cost that diplomatic euphemisms cannot erase. Rubio's invitation puts pressure where it belongs: on the people who keep the regime functioning. An intelligence officer, military official, or party insider may know which Americans Havana has recruited.
Strategic Approach
The invitation also puts a question inside Cuban headquarters that no security chief can comfortably dismiss: Who among us has already answered? Even suspicion can consume time and manpower. Every officer assigned to investigate a colleague is an officer unavailable for another mission.
The work behind that invitation must be exacting. Havana will send fabricators and sources it controls. A volunteer's hatred of the regime does not establish that his information is true. Verify what he knows, test what he claims, and protect him if he proves reliable.
President Donald Trump and Rubio are right to force this choice. Pressure should make service to the regime more costly, while a credible opening gives insiders a reason to leave it. Washington must sustain both long enough to produce results.
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