US sent Latin youth undercover in anti-Cuba ploy

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

US sent Latin youth undercover in anti-Cuba ploy

By DESMOND BUTLER, JACK GILLUM, ALBERTO ARCE and ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press : August 4, 2014 : Updated: August 4, 2014 3:28am



WASHINGTON (AP) — An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.

Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.

In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called "the perfect excuse" for the program's political goals — a gambit that could undermine America's efforts to improve health globally.

But their efforts were fraught with incompetence and risk, an Associated Press investigation found: Cuban authorities questioned who was bankrolling the travelers. The young workers nearly blew their mission to "identify potential social-change actors." One said he got a paltry, 30-minute seminar on how to evade Cuban intelligence, and there appeared to be no safety net for the inexperienced workers if they were caught.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/US-sent-Latin-youth-undercover-in-anti-Cuba-ploy-5666288.php

[tech3149]

1. Another great example of how consistently deluded our foreign policy has always been n/t

[DRoseDARs]

2. Seriously? What is this, fucking 1962? I assume this was all volunteer work...

...and not one fucking penny of US tax money was spent on this.

[DeSwiss]

3. Thanks Obama!

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.” ~V for Vendetta

K&R

[ReRe]

4. I never did care for this...

... benign-sounding agency called "USAID". If this wasn't spying, what is? Trying to instigate a revolt. This is how it's done folks. And WE pay for it, while cutting off Meals on Wheels
for the elderly and aid for the poor at home.

[cosmicone]

5. Were the youth properly equipped with

Victoria Nuland Coup-kies?

[Billy Budd]

6. They used HIV research as a cover

Like the CIA did with the Polio vaccine program in Afghanistan it used to kill Bin Laden. Now there is no polio vaccine program because the workers get shot. The US is a treacherous Imperialist entity not to be trusted. US agent Alan Gross is going to serve his full sentence unless traded for the three Cuban heroes still in our Prisons...

[lunasun]

7. Some things never change

No matter how much we hope they do

[m-lekktor]

8. Obama is on a roll! nt

[BlueEye]

9. This is comically bad clandestine operations.

Really sloppy stuff, for example, one of the guys who got caught tried to clear Cuban customs with an encrypted flash drive that said "IronKey," well known to be used by that State Department and CIA for secret documents. I'd love to know who the imbeciles are running these types of operations.

[Todays_Illusion]

10. This is all very fishy including some of the comments, my believability scale is not registering.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

11. I know a couple of Americans in Cuba working at university.

This puts them in danger and is completely reckless and irresponsible.

[bemildred]

12. +1. nt

[Starry Messenger]

13. Capitalism is awesome!

"In all, nearly a dozen Latin Americans served in the program in Cuba, for pay as low as $5.41 an hour."

They should form a union, but that would be evil socialism.

[Peace Patriot]

14. Gawd.

GO, USA! GO, USA!

[Judi Lynn]

15. USAID Hired Young Latin Americans to Incite Cuban Civil Society Revolt

Published on Monday, August 04, 2014

USAID Hired Young Latin Americans to Incite Cuban Civil Society Revolt

Participants were given little training and payed less than minimum wage, despite known danger, AP investigtion finds.

by Max Ocean, editorial intern

A program established under the Obama Administration by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) endangered about a dozen young Latin Americans by employing them to incite political revolt in Cuba by using civil society and humanitarian aid programs as fronts for the real aim of political destabilization on the Communist island, reveals an extensive new AP investigation published Monday.

The secret program "was launched during a time when newly inaugurated President Barack Obama spoke about a 'new beginning' with Cuba after decades of mistrust, raising questions about whether the White House had a coherent policy toward the island nation," according to the AP.

To help it implement the plan, USAID hired the firm Creative Associates International, the same Washington-based company that played a central role in the creation of the secret "Cuban Twitter" that the AP reported on in April.

Characterizing the program as "an operation that often teetered on disaster," the investigation's most shocking discovery was perhaps that of an attempt to recruit dissidents using "a ruse that could undermine USAID’s credibility in critical health work around the world." This "ruse" was an HIV-prevention workshop put together by one of the key hires made by Creative Associates, Fernando Murillo, the 29-year-old head of a Costa Rica-based human rights group. Murillo reported back to his employer that such a workshop was the “perfect excuse” to recruit political activists."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/04/usaid-hired-young-latin-americans-incite-cuban-civil-society-revolt

[JackRiddler]

16. USAID discrediting medical programs...

The example of Venezuelans dispatched by USAID to pose as fake health workers while attempting to stir an uprising in Cuba is just as reprehensible as the fake vaccination program in Pakistan. Absolutely criminal, this endangers legitimate aid workers everywhere and threatens public health.

It illustrates more generally the insanity of allowing secret agencies that can employ the cover of other agencies and organizations. As soon as you do so, within any government, you create an unaccountable, separate, secret power center. And why should anyone in the world who meets anyone from "USAID" or State Department or American NGOs (or who knows which American company) not fear that they are dealing with the CIA or some other spook outfit?

This kind of behavior gets uninvolved, innocent people killed. Not surprisingly, the Cubans that these stupid fuckers tried to recruit are appalled at the manipulation.

Hector Baranda, who was a college student in Cuba when he was befriended by a group of traveling Venezuelans, said he was surprised to hear from the AP they were working for the U.S. government and had profiled him.

"How would you feel if you offered your sincere friendship and received this kind of news?" Baranda asked.

These people are fucked in the head and THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE THEY SAY THEY WANT TO FREE. They don't give a flying shit, those are pieces on a grand chessboard.

It really illustrates the ideological anti-communist fanaticism that still motivates many of these actions. These people are prepared to see innocents die in their effort to restructure the world in an American image.

Check out the rationalizations and successful ideological self-indoctrination offered up by this loser:

"We worked it so that the government here didn't know we were traveling to Cuba and helping these groups," said Yajaira Andrade, a former administrator with a Venezuelan organization. "Because that was when (President Hugo) Chavez was in power, and if he had known about us — that some Venezuelans were working to stir rebellion — we would have been thrown in jail."

Does she seriously believe her own bullshit? That would go a long way to explaining why she would participate in such a harebrained and wrongful scheme to inject U.S.-made chaos into a stable island society that never wronged her, never did anything against her country or the U.S.

At $5.41 an hour!

This is what the CIA has to offer Cuba (I use this as a general term for the covert operations national security wing of the foreign policy apparatus, which is the most important). They'd like to turn it into Libya, or the Ukraine.

FUCK THE CIA.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Cuba calls US political work on island shameful

Aug 5, 5:27 PM EDT

Cuba calls US political work on island shameful

By DESMOND BUTLER, JACK GILLUM and PETER ORSI
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Cuban government on Tuesday called on Washington to halt hostile "covert" operations against it in the wake of the recent disclosure that an Obama administration program secretly sent young Latin Americans to Cuba on politically motivated missions.

A top Cuban diplomatic official, Josefina Vidal, said an Associated Press investigation this week reveals that the U.S. government "has not desisted in its hostile and interventionist plans against Cuba, which seek to create destabilizing situations to provoke changes in our political order."

Vidal demanded the U.S. "cease, once and for all, all its subversive, illegal and covert actions against Cuba" in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. She noted the U.S. government has "shamelessly acknowledged" running the program.

The project, funded and overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, deployed nearly a dozen young people from Latin America to Cuba to recruit political activists under the guise of health and civic projects. AP's investigation found the operation put the foreigners in danger not long after an American contractor was arrested in the communist island nation for doing secretive work.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CUBA_SECRET_INFILTRATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-05-17-27-31