AP follows up on ZunZuneo

Countering USAID’s contention that there was no political content on its ZunZuneo “fake Twitter” program for Cuba, AP reports on documents containing draft messages intended to be sent to cell phones in Cuba; see here and here.  The contractor hired to write the messages said, “I do political humor. Everything I do is politics even if it is humor about politics.”

Alan Gross calls for help (Updated)

Jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross announced that he has begun a hunger strike, blaming both governments for his predicament and calling for President Obama to work for his release. 

If his move is prompted by reports that the United States is considering the release of the spy Jonathan Pollard to encourage Israel-Palestine peace talks and, separately, five Taliban prisoners to obtain the release of one U.S. soldier, one can hardly blame him.

Here is the statement announcing the hunger strike, released by the firm SKD Knickerbocker, including an afternoon update at the top:


For Immediate Release
April 8, 2014

Update on Alan Gross

From prison in Havana, Alan Gross spoke to his attorney, Scott Gilbert, on Tuesday afternoon. Gross said that he ate his last solid food on Wednesday evening, April 2nd.

On Thursday, April 3rd, he said he learned about USAID’s ZunZuneo program. Alan said the “Cuban twitter” effort “was the final straw for him” and prompted his decision to go on a hunger strike.

He has not eaten since, though he is drinking water. So far, he has lost about 10 pounds.

“When I asked him how long he planned to continue the hunger strike,” said Gilbert, “he said, ‘as long as it takes.’”

Gross has been imprisoned in Cuba for four years and four months. He has asked President Obama to personally intervene to help bring him home.


####

For Immediate Release
April 8, 2014

USAID Contractor Alan Gross Begins Hunger Strike
From Havana Prison Calls for Resolution of "Shameful Ordeal"

Washington, D.C. - Alan Gross, the USAID subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba for the last four years and four months, launched a hunger strike last week protesting the inhumane treatment to which he has been subjected, calling on both countries to "resolve this shameful ordeal" so he can return home.

Said Gross: "I began a fast on April 3rd in protest of the treatment to which I am subjected by the governments of Cuba and the United States.  I am fasting to object to mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments, not only regarding their shared responsibility for my arbitrary detention, but also because of the lack of any reasonable or valid effort to resolve this shameful ordeal. Once again, I am calling on President Obama to get personally involved in ending this stand-off so that I can return home to my wife and daughters."

Last week, the Associated Press revealed that USAID created a "Cuban Twitter" program called ZunZuneo shortly after Gross was arrested in Havana. During an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds USAID, called the program "dumb" and said that covert operations should not be conducted through USAID. USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah will testify today before Leahy's subcommittee.

Scott Gilbert, the lead attorney representing Gross, said that USAID's actions with ZunZuneo put Gross's life in greater jeopardy.

"Once Alan was arrested, it is shocking that USAID would imperil his safety even further by running a covert operation in Cuba," said Gilbert. "USAID has made one absurdly bad decision after another.  Running this program is contrary to everything we have been told by high-level representatives of the Obama Administration about USAID’s activities in Cuba.”

Since Gross, 64, was arrested and imprisoned, he has lost more than 110 pounds. He is confined to a small cell with two other prisoners for 23 hours a day, and the lights remain on 24 hours a day. He is in failing health. He faces another 11 years in prison.

Gross was arrested during his fifth trip to Cuba on behalf of USAID. He was sent there to help the Jewish community in Havana gain access to the Internet, which the Cuban government declared unlawful.

Gross's wife, Judy, said she fears that her husband will not be able to endure his confinement much longer. "I've been begging our government for more than four years to bring Alan home," said Judy Gross. "I'm worried sick about Alan's health, and I don't think he can survive much more of this."

More on ZunZuneo

The State Department answered questions about ZunZuneo, USAID’s “fake twitter” program for Cuba, at a press briefing by spokeswoman Marie Harf last week. 

“We were not generating political content of any kind on this platform,” she said, and the idea about getting subscribers at some point to engage in street protests –  “smart mobs” referenced in the AP story – was “from meeting notes between the grantee and the contractor,” at a meeting where a USAID staff member was present.  She wasn’t asked USAID’s view of the idea.  Nor was she asked about polls conducted to gauge the political sentiment of subscribers (where AP named the company and quoted the employee involved) or what was done with the data. 

The program ended when funds ran out, Ms. Harf said.  She didn’t know why the grant was not extended. 

The program was not covert action, she said, for various reasons, including that if anyone had asked participants about it, they would have responded that it was a U.S. government program.

A USAID spokesman issued a statement yesterday taking issue with parts of the article.  He says that there were “around 68,000” Cuban users at the program’s peak.  He does not address or challenge some central aspects of AP’s reporting, for example the polling to gauge the political tendencies of subscribers.  One can buy the idea that USAID didn’t originate the “smart mobs” idea and still wonder why and for what purpose the U.S. government was collecting data on Cuban citizens’ political leanings.

More reading if you’re interested:

Bush Administration USAID official Jose Cardenas on the thinking behind the program, and the Washington Post applauding the program.

The apparent Cuban Interior Ministry video from February 2011 (with English translation) that shows what Cuba knew about U.S. technology programs at the time,  Juventud Rebelde on other U.S. technology programs operating in Cuba, and Reuters on the same.

The ZunZuneo Facebook page is still open.  It was active from December 2010 to May 2012.

USAID’s adventures in covert action, the latest chapter

This is quite a piece of reporting by Desmond Butler and colleagues at the Associated Press. 

It’s worth absorbing because it shows a little-known aspect of U.S. policy toward Cuba and a little-known aspect of USAID’s work, which is covert action plain and simple.

The essential facts are that USAID created ZunZuneo, a Twitter-like information service for Cubans that operated by text message.  The U.S. government’s involvement was hidden “to ensure the success of the Mission.”  (En silencio ha tenido que ser, as they say.)  Cuban subscribers registered for the service, USAID gathered their personal data, and through interactions with subscribers it ranked their political tendencies.  For example, subscribers were asked whether bands critical of the government should have been allowed to perform at the Juanes concert.  The idea was to build the subscriber base by offering interesting news content, gradually to introduce political content, and eventually to try to mobilize subscribers to political activism so as to “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.” 

These were, in other words, “activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”  That is “covert action” as defined in U.S. law (National Security Act of 1947).

Now I am not against covert action in principle, nor are most governments regardless of what they say.  But it’s a little rich for USAID to be engaging in covert action and refusing to admit it, much less participating in the controls and oversight mechanisms that Congress and the Executive have for that purpose.

Here’s what a USAID spokesman told the AP: “USAID is a development agency, not an intelligence agency, and we work all over the world to help people exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms, and give them access to tools to improve their lives and connect with the outside world.  In the implementation, has the government taken steps to be discreet in non-permissive environments?  Of course.  That’s how you protect the practitioners and the public.  In hostile environments, we often take steps to protect the partners we’re working with on the ground.  This is not unique to Cuba.”

In other words, the Obama Administration’s position today is that USAID programs like this are hunky-dory.  It amazes me that USAID is employed in this manner, that it doesn’t see it as a threat to its good, overt work in many countries.  Others can sort that out, I’ll concentrate on Cuba.

The ZunZuneo program’s activities began and ended during the Obama Administration, but I wonder if the program’s origin was in the Bush Administration, which increased funding for Cuba political programs and started seeking proposals for technology components in 2006.  This request for proposals is the first I know that focused on technology to deliver information and to strengthen political opposition in Cuba.

The AP story quotes a USAID document that mapped Cuba’s political terrain and labeled the “democratic movement” – i.e. the dissidents on which USAID spends millions – as “still (largely) irrelevant.”  Harsh, but true, and we should keep this from Senators Menendez and Rubio.  (To digress a moment, this is not the first time that the U.S. government reached this conclusion.  Almost exactly 54 years ago, this State Department memo argued that there was “no effective political opposition” and the “only foreseeable means of alienating internal support” was to “weaken the economic life of Cuba” and eventually “to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.”)

So with the dissidents leading nowhere in USAID’s view, ZunZuneo was a tool to generate effective political activism. 

USAID isn’t very competent at acting like a junior CIA and running covert operations in Cuba.  Its operations tend to be found out.  Indeed, the Cuban intelligence service tends to see them coming, as shown in this 2011 video.

But more important than that is USAID’s political malfeasance.

Just as Alan Gross has cast suspicion on Americans who assist religious institutions in Cuba on their own, unpaid by U.S. government contracts, this program casts suspicion on people who have no U.S. government connection and try to help Cubans gain access to information.  Cuban citizens, not to mention the Cuban intelligence service, will reasonably suspect that there’s a hidden U.S. government hand in an offer of information or access to technology – or that the offer is really bait for a future attempt to bring them into a political program.

USAID’s program was disrespectful to Cubans.  It is patronizing of USAID to refer to Cuban citizens as “partners” when they don’t know that they are dealing with the U.S. government.  Our government should not be operating under false pretenses with Cubans, as it did through Alan Gross and now through ZunZuneo.  And the U.S. government has no business luring Cuban citizens into a social media operation to gather information on their political views without their consent.  It’s hard for the U.S. government to say that Cubans need to find their own way and “determine their own future” when it is trying not to assist, but actually to generate political activity.

USAID discredits genuine political opposition in Cuba, of which there is plenty, of all shades, in many places, including inside the system itself where many of Cuba’s most interesting and certainly most consequential debates are raging today.  Some of this debate is, believe it or not, encouraged by the government.  But when the government wants to set a limit, it invokes national security and warns that the United States is trying to “fabricate a political opposition.”  If the DGSE hasn’t thanked USAID, it should do so now.

It’s easy to find Cubans unhappy with their government.  It’s hard to find one that wants to be treated unwittingly as an object by ours.  They deserve better, and since this is apparently the best we can do after eight years of Bush and six of Obama, maybe they deserve to be left alone by the U.S. government.