A government smear artist (Updated)

Near the end of his appearance last week on A Mano Limpia on Miami’s Channel 41, Lt. Col. Chris Simmons explains that “we got played” by Cuban intelligence when U.S. agents detained Luis Posada Carriles and when Santiago Alvarez was sent to jail on a weapons charge.

Why? Because these men were top targets of Cuban intelligence.

Never mind Posada’s background or the fact that the Bush Administration itself calls him a terrorist.

Never mind that Alvarez pleaded guilty after machine guns, a silencer, a grenade launcher, and other weapons were found stored on property he owns in Broward County. (He entered the plea, the Herald reported, after a mean-spirited judge rejected a “proposal to include Cuban Americans from Miami-Dade County in the Broward County jury pool.”)

No, we got played because Simmons accuses an FBI informer in the case of being a double agent, and because U.S. law enforcement acted against two people whom Cuban intelligence identifies as enemies.

If Fidel’s for it, I’m against it. With that mindset, Simmons is going to do very well in Miami.

He’s certainly doing well on A Mano Limpia, where host Oscar Haza treated him with the journalistic gentleness we only see when Randy Alonso meets his comandante en jefe. It was less an interview than a chat where the host mainly nudges the guest from one topic to another – guided in this case by the notes from which Simmons read. The program, with a bad voice-over translation, is linked at Penultimos Dias.

In this hour, Simmons smilingly accuses four people of serving as agents of influence for Cuba.

Simmons is a U.S. Army officer. The Defense Intelligence Agency refers to him as a “former employee.” In his spare time he and a collection of former Cuban intelligence officers work at an organization he founded. His bio makes it appear that he worked on Cuba issues for eight years, ending in 2004.

Simmons made his accusations, he said, based on his conversations with former Cuban intelligence officers. Haza, to his credit, did ask if these Cubans might be lying; Simmons said there’s “no possibility” of that. Well, that settles that!

Simmons spoke at most length about Alberto Coll, who was convicted in 2005 of lying on U.S. government forms regarding trips he had taken to Cuba while serving as a professor at the Naval War College. Coll served earlier as an assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and had taught at Georgetown University. Simmons said that Coll is “absolutely” a Cuban agent.

When Coll faced charges related to that travel violation, rumors abounded that he was being investigated for espionage. Haza asked if Simmons had anything to do with the Coll investigation. Simmons said he would “rather not say.” Haza politely left it at that.

But Simmons insisted that there was more to Coll’s story, even though the prosecutor in the case said on the record to journalist Ann Louise Bardach, that “we recognized this was not the crime of the century, and that’s why we recommended the lowest possible punishment – something we never do.”

Simmons’ Cuban sources tell him that Coll met twice in Havana with Cuban intelligence officers, once in a public restaurant! Simmons said there was an “anomaly” in Coll’s behavior that proves he’s a Cuban agent. What was the anomaly? Simmons didn’t say. Haza didn’t ask.

In fact, Simmons never said what Coll actually did as an agent of influence. He said – surprise – that Coll spoke to his superiors after his Cuba trips. Did he disinform them or other U.S. officials? Simmons didn’t say, and Haza didn’t ask.

Similarly, while at the Pentagon, Coll was in a position to “counsel and inform” the Cuban government about U.S. special operations. And throughout his academic career, Coll was in a position to screen students, identifying potential sympathizers whom Cuban agents could later recruit. Did he actually do these things?

You get the idea.

Simmons charges that Gillian Gunn Clissold is a Cuban agent, again without evidence. He identifies her as a Trinity University professor, a job she left years ago. He claims, as if he speaks for the Justice Department, that she was never prosecuted because she’s a British subject, which makes you wonder if he has read a newspaper during the Bush Administration.

Simmons worked in a smear of the Cuban American National Foundation – a long-standing, pro-embargo organization that now favors expanded travel to Cuba, and has drawn hardliners’ ire. He noted that Coll was offered a top job there in 1987, and he expressed his assumption that the Foundation is penetrated by Cuban intelligence, no evidence offered. Say what you will about Simmons, he knows the market segment he’s going for.

Simmons is writing a book with a Miami woman who had a relation with a man whom she did not know to be a Cuban agent, and was abandoned when the agent abruptly returned to Cuba.

I wish him well in that pursuit, but he is showing himself now to be a mediocre smear artist. He portrays himself as an expert on one of the world’s top intelligence services, a service that operates in a language he can’t speak. Simmons trades on his government experience, and on the uniform he wears, to level grave charges against American citizens. He offers no evidence but his own judgment, and conversations he has supposedly had with former Cuban officials. His assertions make for good television in the 305 area code, but they are not backed by anyone in government who has the courage to speak in public.

More important, it doesn’t inspire confidence that our government put a person such as this up against one of the world’s top intelligence services. Watch the program and judge for yourself, but this example jumped out at me. Simmons noted that Coll has the same alma mater, the University of Virginia, as convicted spy Ana Montes, which establishes a “trend” – “certain universities that are associated with Cuban intelligence.”

By my count, there are 20,356 students enrolled now at the University of Virginia. Better get busy, Colonel.

[Update: A reader asked, with good reason, why I discussed only three of the four people whom Lt. Col. Simmons accused of being Cuban agents of influence, omitting Marifeli Perez-Stable. I meant nothing by the omission. Her views on Cuba are in the public domain, and they are critical; moreover, she has openly discussed how her views have evolved. If we are going to go back to the 1960’s and 1970’s to find people whose sympathies or affiliations were with The Revolution, and cross them all off our lists, then we have a lot of crossing off to do – including much of the dissident community in Cuba today. Again, this was a case where Simmons made a charge but failed to say what the accused actually did, in this case about 40 years ago. From a showbiz point of view, readers might want to check the video where Simmons mentions her name, mangling the pronunciation, and Mr. Haza acts extremely surprised even as his producers put her image up on the screen behind him.]

Lt. Col. Simmons, Episode Two

I finally watched the entire appear-
ance of Lt. Col. Chris Simmons on Miami’s A Mano Limpia television program; you can watch it in five segments, here, here, here, here, and here.

You can also read his publicist’s press releases, one before his appearance, and one after. And you can watch this trailer from a forthcoming movie in which he is collaborating.

In his latest appearance, Simmons continued in his smear-artist mode. He accused three Americans of being Cuban agents, but offered no evidence, or he referred to evidence (“a transcript,” a “recently acquired confession”) that he is unable to present in public. He stuck with his practice of saying that there’s nothing unfair about his accusations, and if the accused don’t like it they can take him to court. The idea seems to be that Simmons has such authority that his statements are beyond question.

That, at any rate, is how the host Oscar Haza sees it. One again, Haza didn’t interview Simmons as much as he gently guided him through a presentation. Simmons spoke at times from prepared notes. When Haza asked a question, it was big, fat, belt-high, and right in the middle of the plate.

In previous appearances, Simmons has pointed out that he speaks for himself, and that he is a retired Army officer now serving in the reserves.

To the audience last week, it probably seemed that Simmons was speaking for the U.S. government. On the screen, the graphic says, “Lt. Col. Chris Simmons, U.S. Military Intelligence.” For all the viewers knew, his theories and the information at his disposal are all derived from his official duties, which may in fact be the case.

The U.S. government didn’t put that graphic on the screen. But one wonders what connection the intelligence community has with an officer who does media tours where he discusses Cuba’s signals intelligence capabilities or the number of Cuban agents in Florida, and where he accuses a series of American citizens of disloyal, criminal activity.

At the end of the program, Simmons promised to return to name more names.

Alejandro Armengol wrote a sharp column in the Nuevo Herald about Simmons’ appearances. It’s not kind to Simmons and its conclusions about Miami’s political culture are not pleasant; its title is “Anti-American.”

My comments on previous appearances by Simmons are here, here, and here.

The smears continue

Lt. Col. Chris Simmons was on the Babalu Radio Hour last night, and the first thing that his interview made clear is that he doesn’t like the way his credentials and job history are being discussed.

“There has been some confusion caused intentionally by a small cabal of misguided but enthusiastic others,” he said, who are trying to “cast aspersions.”

Well.

He doesn’t like the word “former,” but that’s what I was told when I called a Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman: “former employee.” It turns out he worked there until last December. He is now an Army reservist, on active duty, working as an intelligence officer. He says his “area of specialty is counterintelligence,” although from the way he phrased his answer, it sounds like he’s not assigned to counterintelligence duties now. From the bio on his website, it seems he spent eight years working on Cuba matters, ending in 2004. And in a stern “legal” section of his website, he warns his that his readers “should neither rely nor act upon any of the information contained in these pages and, if you choose to do so, it will be entirely at your own risk.” Fair enough.

It would never occur to me to question whether Simmons has spent a career in intelligence; that’s obviously the case. (His interview includes lots of interesting nuggets, about Cuba’s signals intelligence capabilities and other matters.)

His status in the government arouses curiosity because it has been reported about a dozen different ways in news articles, and because – as would occur to most intelligence professionals – it is rare in our country that anyone in our government who does not exercise prosecutorial power, would step out to accuse Americans of specific crimes.

Which Simmons did again last night, with gusto.

So here’s the deal: “I welcome the opportunity,” Simmons says, to back up his charges, which he says are based on a professor’s articles, and by his talks with former Cuban intelligence operatives. If people feel then have been defamed, they can “take me to civil court, sue me for defamation, and I will parade my evidence in front of the world.”

He “can’t speak for” the Justice Department, Simmons says, but he does exactly that: “And the court case will go from civil case to a criminal case very quickly, and the people accused will find themselves being charged by the government” for espionage, working as an unregistered foreign agent, or tax evasion if they were paid by the Cuban government and did not declare that income.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Simmons says. “If you don’t believe me, take me to court and make me prove it.” Until then, he will presumably keep his notes of conversations with Cuban defectors to himself. Meanwhile, we should defer to his judgment, because according to Simmons, “when it comes to intelligence issues those areas are best left to counterintelligence officers.”

How is this anything other than a smear campaign carried out by a uniformed officer of our military?

[Discussion of Simmons’ appearance on A Mano Limpia last week is here.]

Cuban agents in the White House?

Did you know that the White House has been infiltrated by Cuban intelligence?

That’s the assessment of Christopher Simmons, a Defense Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer who appeared at the Heritage Foundation last week.

Simmons said that confessed spy Ana Montes, the former top DIA Cuba analyst, was not an anomaly. “Ana Montes was not the only senior U.S. official working for the Cubans,” he told the Heritage audience. “Based on my estimate there are at least six others like her. There may be, the number may actually be in the teens, of long-term penetrations at the highest level of the U.S. government. And we’re not talking a slipshod operation. We’re talking the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, Congress, and the White House.”

If you don’t believe me, I don’t blame you. You can watch it here, it begins around 1:17. (And no, he did not include the State Department in that list.)

The entire program, which examines the Cuban threat to U.S. national security, is about an hour and forty minutes long. I found one news account only, from the Washington Times.

Simmons is joined in the Heritage program by State Department official Robert Blau, who describes the “reconfigured” threat that Cuba poses today, after the post-Soviet drop in its conventional force strength. He cites a number of items in the State Department’s report on state sponsors of terrorism, and makes the allegation – a new one, not contained in the terrorism report – that “whatever they collect” in terms of intelligence information, “they will share with our enemies, with Iran, with terrorist groups.” He says that another element of the Cuban threat to U.S. national security is Cuba’s press and propaganda activity around the world, “constantly interpreting the news, putting their spin on it so that the anti-American view is what’s out there all the time.” Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart is also on the program; he discusses the Cuban threat through the decades, and in response to a question, he gives a remarkable description of U.S. policy toward Cuban American travel, and of his own constituents who choose to travel to Cuba.

But Simmons is the most interesting, an extreme exception among counterintelligence officers, who tend to avoid public discussions. In addition to the Heritage appearance and another on Miami Spanish-language television, Simmons has been writing in the Miami Herald, and when he was introduced at Heritage, his host said he is writing a regular column for that paper, every three weeks.

Simmons says that Cuba sells intelligence to other countries for profit, and he generally paints a picture of a skilled, effective, and highly active intelligence service that focuses on the United States, its opponents at home, and its opponents in Miami. He discloses that the Cuban Interests Section in Washington has a signals intelligence facility that carries out electronic eavesdropping in the Washington area.

His latest column appeared in yesterday’s Herald, and focused on Iran.

In that column, he mentioned a controversy from the summer of 2003, where it was alleged that private Los Angeles-based satellite broadcasts to Iran were being jammed, and that the jammer was located in Cuba. Simmons states that “Cuban intelligence” performed the jamming, “acting on behalf of Tehran.”

This is a new interpretation. When the allegations arose in 2003, the State Department called in Cuban diplomats, asked for an explanation, and eventually received one.

“Cuba informed us on August 3 that they had located the source of the interference and had taken action to stop it,” according to a State Department spokeswoman in an August 26, 2003 story by Agence France-Presse. “The government of Cuba informed us that the interference was coming from an Iranian diplomatic facility,” she added.

Two months later, the Deputy Secretary of State testified about the jamming, to the same effect:

SEN. BILL NELSON: You were talking to Senator Brownback about the jamming. There was a report that the Cuban government was jamming broadcasts into Iran at a time that -- when students were protesting the oppression by the ruling clerics. What do you know about that?

MR. ARMITAGE: We approached the government of Cuba about some jamming that was emanating from Cuba. It was not the government of Cuba, it was another entity, and it has ceased.

There’s a lot to comment upon here; I hope readers do, and I certainly will in the future.

Get your popcorn

Chris Simmons, described in media reports as an active duty U.S. Army officer and a top expert on the Cuban intelligence service, will appear tonight on A Mano Limpia, Oscar Haza’s program on Miami’s Channel 41.

According to Cuban Colada, “A press release issued by Simmons’ associate in South Florida, Ana Margarita Martinez, said Simmons will be here Thursday to ‘follow through on his word to publicly name Cuban spies in South Florida.’”

In addition to his government work – the Washington Times says he works for the Defense Intelligence Agency – Simmons is founder of the Cuban Intelligence Research Center, a private company that offers a variety of services, including a seminar that you can host at your company for up to 25 participants for $51,750. The Center’s website has a number of videos of Simmons on Spanish-language media, speaking English.

At Babalu, they posted a message from Simmons indicating that he will not be divulging any classified information, and he will only divulge the names of spies in which the U.S. government has no investigative interest.

Well, we can’t have everything.

What we do have is probably the most talkative member of the U.S. intelligence community in recent memory. Last November at the Heritage Foundation, he said there are probably Cuban agents working inside the U.S. government today, just as Ana Montes did. “There may be, the number may actually be in the teens, of long-term penetrations at the highest level of the U.S. government,” he said. “And we’re not talking a slipshod operation. We’re talking the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, Congress, and the White House.”

Maybe Mr. Haza will ask about that.

Colonel Simmons, call your office!

Silvia Wilhelm, one of the Americans smeared by Lt. Col. Chris Simmons, has made a strong statement in response.

In it, she notes that during the program, host Oscar Haza asked Simmons if he was aware that Wilhelm is married to a high-ranking military officer. “I did not know that,” Simmons replied. This was a truly absurd moment – Haza was apparently referring to the former commander of the U.S. Southern Command, General Charles E. Wilhelm (Ret.), who is not, and never has been married to Silvia. Although as Silvia points out, a different Charles Wilhelm, a physician, is indeed her husband.

But don’t be deterred, Lt. Col. Simmons...a quick Google search – which seems to be what Haza relied upon for his revelation – reveals that General Wilhelm has traveled to Cuba!

Odds and ends

• Lt. Col. Simmons didn’t impress former Cuban political prisoner Nicolas Perez, who wrote in today’s El Nuevo Herald. He can’t quite figure Simmons out, and wonders if he is, among other things, settling scores between federal agencies, trying “irresponsibly to promote his book,” or promoting “an electoral agenda.” He says Simmons claims there are Cuban agents among the staff of Miami’s Versailles restaurant, something I had missed. Regarding Simmons’ charges against Marifeli Perez-Stable, Perez asks why he singles her out “in this Miami of a million inhabitants, where 950,000 sympathized and cooperated with the Cuban revolution,” and where people who were “until yesterday” ministers, military officers, functionaries, and torturers in Cuba, are on the radio and television constantly.

• Lincoln, call your office: Alabama’s baseball team heads to Cuba in mid-December to play three games.

• The Czech Republic, one of the few reliable partners of the Bush Cuba policy, broke ranks in June. Now, Costa Rica: President Arias calls on the United States to take the first step toward normalized relations by returning the naval base at Guantanamo to Cuba.

• The UN Human Rights Council picks its new president, Miguel Alfonso Martinez, a Cuban law professor and former foreign ministry spokesman. [Correction: the post is president of an advisory committee, not of the council itself.]

Colonel Simmons back on tour (updated)

Lt. Col. Chris Simmons returns to Oscar Haza’s Miami television program A Mano Limpia tonight, and his publicist promises that he will “identify more Cuban spies and their operations in the U.S.” More on his previous appearance and his statement that there are Cuban agents in the White House (I’m not making that up) here, here, and here.

[Update: I did not see the program, but it is covered in El Nuevo Herald and at Cubapolidata. El Nuevo reports that Simmons claimed to have proof for his new acusations but did not present them on the program. That would be par for the course for this smear artist, and if Oscar Haza didn’t press him for details, that would be par for the course too.]

Odds and ends

• A week after announcing a trip to Cuba where he sought a meeting with Raul Castro, Senator Specter announces that it won’t happen; he’s told that there was not sufficient time to arrange his visit.

• The Herald reports today on Lt. Col. Simmons’ allegations, with a sidebar on Simmons and the other players in the story.

• Dayron Robles, a 110-meter hurdler on the Cuban Olympic team, joins other athletes signing a letter to Chinese President Hu calling on China to respect human rights and “to ensure that human rights defenders are no longer intimidated or imprisoned.” (H/t Penultimos Dias)

• Vermont kids head to Cuba tomorrow to play baseball.

Odds and ends

• Someone should tell Rui Ferreira and his graphics editor that Lt. Col. Simmons’ accusations are NOT FUNNY.

• Mary O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal, on Hector Palacios and Gisela Delgado as they prepare to return to Cuba.

• Reuters: Eight American students finished a free medical education at the Latin American Medical School in Havana, and graduated last weekend.

• Why has Granma been running a 1973 Fidel speech, and why did Raul dwell on it in his July 26 speech? Brian Latell takes a stab at an answer in a Herald op-ed.

Odds and ends

• El Nuevo Herald reports that a passenger bound for Cuba was nabbed by federal agents in the Miami airport last March with $16,738 in his carry-on bag. He said the envelope came from a travel agent, for delivery to her mother in Cuba.

• South Florida Daily Blog looks at the status of former DIA employee, Lt. Col. Chris Simmons.

• A very interesting post at Miami & Beyond on what Solzhenitsyn meant to someone growing up in Cuba.

• The Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami announces that two videoconferences with Cuban dissidents and independent journalists are available for viewing on its website, under “New/Relevant.” It would be nice if the U.S. Interests Section would put the rest of its videoconferences on its website, rather than keep them in the closed circle of U.S. officials, Cuban participants, and Cuban spooks who tuned in too.

Odds and ends

• Bloomberg: The Treasury Department agrees that its policy that blocks Microsoft and Google instant messaging software in Cuba and other countries is dumb, and is convening meetings with other federal agencies to figure out how to undo it. Kudos to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (!) for answering a letter from the public, in this case from the Center for Democracy in the Americas.

• Miami’s New Times on Robert Kelly, an international man of mystery who says he was recruited by Cuba, then duped the Cubans by working for the FBI. A little craftier than Colonel Simmons, he explains that his complete inability to speak Spanish is actually an asset that helped him fool the Cuban intelligence service.

• A Boston University forum on Cuba next week featuring Senator Kerry, Congressman Delahunt, and other luminaries.

• As part of Cuba’s sector-by-sector media campaign in advance of the UN vote, the sports institute claims that Cuba has not been able to receive prize money owed to Cuba for its performance in the World Baseball Classic, AFP reports.

Spy stories

If you were distracted by Governor Richardson’s bumbling, you may have missed the return of Lt. Col. Simmons, the ex-DIA operative who speaks about Cuban intelligence matters.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, he has pried loose the diplomatic note that the State Department presented to Cuba in 2003 to expel eight Cuban diplomats based in Washington. Our friend Mauricio has it here.

The note politely says that the diplomats’ activities were “deemed sufficiently detrimental to the security interests of the United States,” which the eight surely saved in their personnel file back home.

The release is accompanied by anonymously sourced charges (Herald, Diario de Cuba) that the diplomats were gathering intelligence on U.S. military operations to pass to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It would be interesting to know more about that, if it is true.

At the time, the FBI spoke otherwise; see coverage from the late Chris Marquis in the New York Times here and here. From the latter story:

Bureau officials said there was no specific espionage event that touched off the action, adding credence to Cuba’s charge that the expulsions were part of a new political strategy.

“It was not our recommendation to take this action at this time,” said a senior F.B.I. official. The decision to expel Cubans was made “at the highest levels” in the State Department and the White House, and the policy makers then turned to the bureau for names of intelligence operatives, said the official, who asked not to be named.