The CIA’s Blind Spot

Marc Pitzke

The uncertainty surrounding Cuba’s political future caught Washington by surprise. Instead of seizing the chance to develop a new Cuban policy, the United States is falling back on old, unsuccessful recipes — and getting ready for an exodus to Florida.

If Cuba made an appearance in the headlines these last few years, it was usually because of the US military base in Guantánamo, in the southeastern part of the island. Cuba almost triggered the Third World War 44 years ago, but recently Washington has considered Fidel Castro’s state — the last satellite of the Soviet empire — an anachronism, part of the waning residue of an age before the September 11 attacks, before the “war on terror” and before the explosion of the Middle Eastern powder keg. Armaggedon now lurks elsewhere.

So do US President George W. Bush’s geopolitical interests. Which means it was hardly a surprise that the news of Fidel Castro’s illness seemed to blindside Bush. “The president’s comment was that everybody was caught by surprise, and we’ll have to wait and see,” reported US senator Robert Bennett, who discussed recent developments in Cuba with Bush on Tuesday.

“Wait and see” — Bush’s fecklessness shines through even in the official language. “We don’t know what the condition of Fidel Castro is; we don’t know the exact facts of this,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said clumsily at a press briefing Tuesday. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack spoke in similar terms. “I don’t think there are too many people outside that small core group of people who run Cuba who really know what is going on,” he said Thursday.

So now — as history arrives at the moment a whole generation once wished for — the end of Castro’s reign threatens to become a lost opportunity. Instead of reaching out to a new Cuba and playing a constructive role in the state’s transformation, Washington is relying on old, unsuccessful recipes: blockade, sanctions and a hardline approach.

“U.S. policy is going to remain the same irrespective of whether it’s Fidel Castro or Raul Castro in power,” sighs Daniel Erikson, a Cuba expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. Pride leads to stubbornness: “If the Cuban government implements a smooth transfer, that would indicate a failure of U.S. policy,” Erikson says.

As for US intelligence services, they’re especially vague when it comes to Cuba. The rigid attitude taken for decades by both Democrats and Republicans turns out to be a handicap. Taking its cue from the Cuban-exile lobby in Miami, Washington shut out Castro’s government, only to find itself shut out of Cuba.

When John Negroponte became National Intelligence Director in 2005, he immediately requested an analysis of the Cuban situation from his agencies. But the Americans haven’t had access to reliable intelligence sources for decades, let alone to circles of power in Havana. Following the start of the US embargo on Cuba in 1960, all economic relations were severed — and with them all informal channels of communication. Meanwhile, Cuban Cohiba cigars smuggled into the US became all the rage among American diplomats. The only information that trickeled through came from defectors like Alcibiades Hidalgo, Cuba’s former ambassador to the United Nations, who defected from his position in 2002 and revealed that “virtually every member of the Cuban mission to the UN” works as an intelligent agent for Castro.

On the brink of nuclear war

The US can only dream of keeping such a close eye on Cuba. Former CIA analyst Robert Baer believes the CIA will have a tough time convincing President Bush that it knows exactly what will happen when Castro dies. CIA analysts will have to rely on second- and even third-hand information, Baer believes, and compares their information about Cuba to the spotty information that was available about Iraq during the 1990s. Which bodes ill for a new policy.

So Castro is beating the “empire” with its own weapons even from his deathbed. Ten US presidents have unsuccessfully locked horns with him since 1959. They’ve planned his overthrow and his assassination. They tried to isolate him — and succeeded only in strengthening him. They all made the same mistake — “a consistent underestimation of his political strength,” in the words of Cuba expert Philip Peters, Vice President of the Lexington Institute and an advisor to the Cuba Working Group of the US House of Representatives.

This state of affairs almost spelled doom for John F. Kennedy. His CIA-led invasion of the Bay of Pigs, in 1961, was beaten back by the Cubans within two days. The dictatorial island state succeeded in dramatically humiliating a superpower — and the myth of Castro prospered. One year later, the stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The Coast Guard stands at attention

The 1980 Mariel crisis, when Castro allowed more than 130,000 refugees to escape to Florida in a mass exodus, set the seal on a tough US approach. Another wave of refugees in 1995 led to then-President Bill Clinton’s “wet-feet/dry-feet” policy: Whoever was seized by the US Coast Guard at sea was sent back, but those who reached the shore could stay. The rule is still in place today. President Bush has sharpened sanctions, imposed travel restrictions and increased financial support for dissidents — by an $80 million “democracy fund” introduced in July, for example. But, according to critics, it all amounts to little more than an elaborate deathwatch. “This has been a policy of waiting for Castro to pass away due to natural causes,” Erikson says.

President Bush’s most recent statements also indicate that Washington continues to hope for Cuban society to change from within. “We will support you in your effort to build a transitional government in Cuba committed to democracy, and we will take note of those, in the current Cuban regime, who obstruct your desire for a free Cuba,” Bush announced on Thursday. And Democratic senator Bill Nelson urged the Cuban exiles in his electoral district to “be ready to assert your independence.”

Independence is fine, it seems, as long as it doesn’t come too close to the US coast. Republican senator Mel Martinez was quick to point out that the US Marine and the Coast Guard are standing at attention to prevent mass migration or massive ship traffic across the Florida channel.