On Monday AP reported on yet another case where USAID attempts to beat Cuban intelligence services at its own game on its own turf. (AP provides its long report here, a shorter one here, a five-point summation here, a video report here, and selected documents here.)
The new programs described by AP – where USAID sends Latin
Americans into Cuba to raise the political consciousness of Cuban youth – raise
issues not very different from those that came to light when Alan Gross was
arrested five years ago. Those issues were addressed
then by Mauricio Vicent of El Pais and by me
before we even knew Mr. Gross’ name. So I’ll note just a few things.
First, USAID continues to be very prickly about the term “covert
operations.” However, the agency is not bashful about asserting that it will
continue to operate in Cuba by sending in operatives who don’t disclose their
U.S. government connection, not even to the Cubans with whom they work, as its spokesman’s
statement makes clear. What USAID wants is the option of operating covertly
with none of the responsibilities of agencies that do so professionally. They
have lost former United Nations Ambassador John
Bolton, no softie on Cuba, who says he likes the programs “in principle,”
but “this strikes me as a bunch of teenagers playing at covert political
activity, and that’s dangerous.” On the comical side, the editors of Investor’s
Business Daily attacked
the AP for exposing the USAID program, but their editorial calls it a CIA
program seven times, which is a natural, if dumb, mistake to make if you don’t
read the AP story closely. But it’s not fair to the CIA.
In contrast to other USAID operations, this one did include
training for operatives who traveled to Cuba – coded phrases to signal
distress, etc. Not that it did any good. In the case of a Costa Rican organization
that ran a HIV/AIDS seminar in Santa Clara, a state security agent was present
and questioned the operatives and was apparently content to observe them and
allow them to go on their way. AP reports that this project fell apart when a
Costa Rican traveled later to Cuba to bring money to some Cubans. The Costa
Rican organization took issue with AP’s reporting; see here
and here.
Like the fake Twitter program called ZunZuneo that AP
described last April, the USAID programs in this week’s reporting do not
involve assisting political dissidents. Rather, they use the contractor
Creative Associates to reach average Cubans and to move them toward political
action.
ZunZuneo surveyed its subscribers to gauge their political
leanings. In the newly disclosed programs, the Costa Rican organization was one
of several that contacted Cuban students and student organizations. The idea,
its documents state, is to show the value of organizing to address social
concerns, and the hope was that this idea would catch on and spread across Cuba
in later phases of the program. In that sense, USAID told AP, the advertised
purpose of the HIV/AIDS seminar, health care education, was merely a “secondary
benefit.” The main goal was to build civil society organizations in Cuba.
USAID, in its world of its own, doesn’t seem troubled by the
idea that health programs worldwide, including those run by Americans who
operate in good faith and who do not soak up taxpayer money, and also including
USAID health programs, might be affected by the news that USAID operates health
programs under false pretenses.
And I continue to believe that Cuban citizens deserve more
respect from the U.S. government. If they are brought into a U.S. government
program, particularly one that is inherently political right down to its
founding statute, they deserve to know. The financial wellspring of these
programs, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, aims to overturn Cuba’s political
order. Agree or not with that aim, it’s something that Cuban “targets” deserve to know especially when the agency
running the programs is incapable of concealing its role.
But we have been through this before.
One wonders whether we’ll go through it again. The newly
disclosed programs were carried out after Alan Gross was arrested, which would
seem to indicate a decision by the Obama Administration that this modus operandi is just fine.
Another similarity between Zunzuneo and these more recent
programs is that they are based on the idea that Cuba’s dissidents are
ineffective.
AP reports that the Costa Rica-based manager of Creative
Associates’ programs was Javier Utset. Utset is author of a 2008
assessment of the Cuban dissident movement. Reading it now, it sounds like
the theoretical foundation for the programs he would later run. Excerpts:
“While Cubans desire change, they
are generally too atomized, apathetic, or fearful to demand it and they see no
available platforms to pursue it. Up to date, the movement has not been
effective at engaging average Cubans as active constituencies for change…[The
movement has] been generally unable to incorporate the average citizen as
active supporters.
“Of particular note is the
disconnect from receptive social sectors such as the youth.
“The [opposition activists’] ‘martyr
mindset’ dismisses the general population as a player in the equation for
power. It contributes to create a strong social bond between fellow activists
based on trust, loyalty, and camaraderie. That social bond strengthens the core
but weakens the links to the average citizen…The opposition’s strategy should
seek to impact government policy not only through direct confrontation, but
also by incorporating broad-based citizen engagement effecting targeted
pressure on the government to change behavior. Ultimately, no nonviolent social
movement stands a chance against an authoritarian system until it wins the
willful participation of the average citizen.
“The movement’s message has
remained basic and static: freedom, human rights, and democracy…Short-term, ‘bread
and butter’ concerns such as housing, food availability, and transportation are
in the minds of most Cubans. Thus, focusing on highly political issues that are
detached from the daily experiences of regular Cubans may be considered a
strategic weakness.”
Finally, there’s a lot of outrage about AP’s reporting from
the USAID program’s supporters, in and out of Congress. There’s outrage that AP
did the reporting at all, as in the editorial cited above. And there’s also a
general assertion that these programs are good because their goal is good, with
no consideration of effectiveness, even after the failure of the Alan Gross
program, ZunZuneo, and now this one. That’s an easy position to take if you’re
not the one in jail, and if your money isn’t at stake in programs that Cuban security
services see coming and going.
