Odds and ends

·         As the 15^th round of Colombia peace talks proceed in Havana, Juventud Rebelde gives ample coverage to the Colombian government’s complaint that the guerrillas are dragging their feet and trying to add extraneous items to the agreed agenda.  Cuba acts as “guarantor” in the talks.

·         Herald: Panamanian officials say that some of the aircraft engines on the North Korean freighter seized in Panama were “brand new.”  They also say that “friends overseas” tell them that Cuba and North Korea have an arms trade agreement of uncertain scope; that the North Korean crewmen in detention are happy campers (air conditioning, clothes, food, cigarettes, time for soccer every day); and that while the crew have spoken to investigators they have declined to sign statements.

·         An “updating” of Cuba’s criminal justice procedures took effect October 1 and was explained by officials on a Mesa Redonda program.  Relatively minor offenses that had been handled in provincial courts will now be heard in municipal courts.  For certain minor offenses prosecutors will have discretion to impose administrative penalties (fines) rather than go to court to seek a prison sentence, although a defendant can insist on a court trial if he wishes.  The impact seems to be a streamlining and a shift of caseload to lower courts and, depending on how prosecutors use their discretion, lesser penalties for minor criminal offenses.

·         Canadian professor Steven Kimber makes the case for the Cuban Five in the Washington Post.

·         AP on the clash between el exilio and more recent Cuban immigrants.

·         Who’s investing in Cuba?  A smart B-School student figures it out at the bar at the Hotel Nacional.

·         Granma on the art of base stealing through the years.

·         EFE: The family of Oswaldo Paya, now living in Florida, acquires Spanish citizenship.

·         AP: A ceremony in the Colon cemetery in Havana to commemorate the terrorist downing of the Cubana airliner in Barbados in 1976.

·         In the National Interest, a look at the past and the future of Cuba’s intelligence services, “punching above their weight.”  The authors link to this interesting U.S. assessment (pdf): “Cuban Subversive Activities in Latin America, 1959-1968.”

·         In an advice column for Congress, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson owns up to his bumbling in Havana in 2011.

Odds and ends

·         Fidel Castro was moved to take pen to paper in yesterday’s Granma by the Russian newspaper story that suggested that Cuba bent to U.S. pressure and denied permission to NSA leaker Edward Snowden to enter Cuban territory.  Fidel doesn’t deny that Cuba said “no” to Snowden, but he says it’s a “lie” that U.S. pressure was the reason.  My hunch is that at a time when Snowden was looking for a way our of Moscow and the U.S. government wanted no government to accommodate him, Cuba judged decided for its own reasons that Snowden would be nothing but a headache.

·         Tracey Eaton notes USAID’s new on-line system for reporting grant information and posts this list of Cuba grants.  One small transaction involves Freedom House replacing “the existing travel clause in its entirety with the new travel clause.”

·         National Review on the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who in his youth “linked up with Castro’s guerrilla groups and supported their attempts to overthrow Batista,” and came to regret it.

·         In recently released Nixon White House tapes, our 37th President talks with his staff about the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in, where his campaign’s burglars entered the headquarters of the Democratic Party.  He wonders why the FBI director doesn’t cooperate in steering the investigation in a way favorable to the White House (“What’s the matter with Pat Gray,” he asks).  He urges the squelching of a line of investigation involving Cuban Americans in Miami, saying the FBI should be told it would “open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.”

·         A document on the U.S. intelligence budget leaked to the Washington Post summarizes counterintelligence priorities – Cuba is included, but so are allies and U.S. aid recipients such as Pakistan and Israel: “To further safeguard our classified networks, we continue to strengthen insider threat detection capabilities across the Community. In addition, we are investing in target surveillance and offensive CI against key targets, such as China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and Cuba.”

Snowden's Cuba problem

Reuters notes a Russian newspaper report that NSA rat-on-the-run Edward Snowden got stuck in Moscow because Cuba denied him permission to enter its territory, even for transit purposes.  The denial reportedly followed U.S. appeals to Cuba (and to many others) not to let him go anywhere but straight back to the United States.

The newspaper report is sourced to someone “close to the State Department,” which is a little loose.  But it’s plausible because once he landed in Moscow, a flight to South America through Cuba was his best option, and something clearly went wrong.

Cuba and the United States cooperate on a number of security issues: drug interdiction, migration, search and rescue at sea, hurricane preparedness, and selected law enforcement matters.  A Cuban gesture such as this, declining to help an enemy of U.S. intelligence agencies, would be quite a different kind of security cooperation.  But stranger things have happened.

Silence broken

Cuban media finally mentions the possibility that Snowden might transit Cuba: Trabajadores sums up a Washington Post article that outlines five options for a Moscow-Caracas flight.

Quotable

“Finally I should state that the recent revelations of the U.S. citizen Edward Snowden allowed the confirmation of the existence of global espionage systems of the United States…Cuba has historically been one of the most attacked and also most spied-upon countries on the planet, and already knew of the existence of these espionage systems…

“We support the sovereign right of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and of all the states of the region in granting asylum to those persecuted for their ideas or their struggles for democratic rights, according to our tradition.

“We do not accept double standards, interference or pressures of any type.  As President Nicolas Maduro has indicated, one cannot give refuge and refuse extradition to Venezuela of an international terrorist like Posada Carriles, the author of, among other crimes, blowing up a Cubana de Aviacion airplane with 73 human beings aboard, and at the same time act as if this sister nation is not exercising its legitimate right.”

– Cuban President Raul Castro before the National Assembly yesterday, delivering his government’s first public comment on the Snowden case; neither he nor Cuban media have commented on the possibility of Snowden passing through Cuba on the way to a country of asylum, nor have they mentioned  Snowden’s request that Cuba grant him asylum