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!

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.

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.

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.]

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.]

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.

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.