LATIN AMERICA

Cuba

General

H - Z

Hinckle, Warren, and William W. Turner.

1. The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

NameBase: "Over ten years of research by two well-connected investigative writers have produced a classic that belongs on every shelf.... While other books deal with discrete events relating to Cuba and Castro, this one attempts a history of the anti-Castro Cuban community and their CIA and Mafia sponsors."

2. Deadly Secrets: The CIA- Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Surveillant 2.6: This is a revised edition of The Fish Is Red. It includes drug-smuggling, gun-running, and murder for hire by CIA's anti-Castro Cuban commandos. Hinckle is the founding editor of Ramparts; Turner is a former FBI agent.

Karabell, Zachary. Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946-1962. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.

Cohen, FA 78.6, believes that the author "writes well and does a service by combining case studies on American intervention in Greece, Italy, Iran, Guatemala, Lebanon, Cuba, and Laos. He is strongest on Iran and Lebanon, weakest on Cuba and Laos, and includes no studies of intervention by the Soviets, Chinese, British, or French."

To Sullivan, I&NS 16.2, this is "a readable engaging work," the basic thesis of which is that "local elites essentially manipulated the United States into intervening in their countries to shore up reactionary forces there."

Kornbluh, Peter. The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 5. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/.

This is "a selection of key CIA, State Department, and Pentagon documentation relating to Guevara and his death" from the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project.

Lunt, Lawrence K. Leave Me My Spirit. Encampment, WY: Affiliated Writers of America, 1990.

Petersen: "Purported first-hand account of a U.S.-spy in Cuba captured by Castro."

Masetti, Jorge. In The Pirate's Den: My Life as a Secret Agent for Castro. New York:  Encounter, 2002. 

According to Peake, Studies 47.2 (2003), these memoirs outline the life of "a disaffected agent" who served the Cuban General Intelligence Agency (DGI) from 1973 to 1989. "[O]ne senses that [the author] is holding back.  Still, it is a firsthand account."

Preston, Julia, and Tim Weiner. "A Document by Cuban Spy Talks of Acts Against C.I.A." New York Times, 8 Oct. 2000. [http://www.nytimes.com]

When Cuban official Pedro Riera Escalante was arrested by the Mexican government, he "was carrying a document, parts of which were made public [on 7 October 2000], in which he outlined his career running operations against the Central Intelligence Agency." Riera Escalante "was summarily deported by Mexico to Havana" on 4 October. He had previously "served under cover as the Cuban consul [in Mexico City] from 1986 through 1991. In the document, he described Cuban espionage operations against the C.I.A. station in Mexico City and other operations he ran in Europe and Africa."

Ridenour, Ron. Backfire: The CIA's Biggest Burn. Havana, Cuba: Jose Marti Publishing House, 1991.

Surveillant 1.6 calls this a "truly gripping exposé of the 26 Cubans and one Italian who infiltrated CIA operations in Cuba on behalf of Cuban State Security. They surfaced voluntarily in unison in 1987 to the embarrassment of the CIA. Provides testimonies and background reports on how CIA ran operations in Cuba (tells how each operation was misled or subverted)."

Also on the same subject, see: Miguel A. Lopez Escobar, Objetivo Langley: Veintiseis Mas Uno (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Capitan San Luis, 1989). This is described by Surveillant 1.6 as the "testimony, in Spanish, of the agents of the Cuban Security Service who infiltrated various CIA operations in Cuba."

Rodriguez, Felix I., and John Weisman. Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. [pb] New York: Pocket Books, 1990.

Surveillant 1.1: Rodriguez takes the reader from the Bay of Pigs to the capture of Che Guevara (he was "the last man to interrogate him") to Vietnam to Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair.

Rohter, Larry. "Leader of Exile Group Tells of Spying for Cuba." New York Times, 11 Nov. 1992, A8.

Francisco Avila Azcuy of Alpha 66 group.

Ryan, Henry Butterfield. The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

According to Maxwell, FA 77.3, the author argues that the Americans involved in the Bolivian guerrilla war "exercised considerable restraint, preventing the Americanization of the struggle, and leaving Guevara, who lacked a good rapport with the local population, isolated and exposed."

Page, Washington Monthly, Nov. 1997, sees Ryan's book as "a case study of perhaps the most successful counterinsurgency effort ever launched by the U.S. government." The author provides "a thoughful critique of both the operational and intelligence-gathering aspects of the U.S. intervention against the Cuban intervention in Bolivia.... However, he fails to give the Bolivians the attention they merit."

Santoli, Al. "China's Electronic Spy Bases in Cuba." China Reform Monitor (3 Mar. 2003). [http://www.afpc.org/crm/crmmain.shtml]

"Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University says Chinese personnel have been operating two intelligence signal stations in Cuba since early 1999, after an agreement reached in February 1998. The large complex at Bejucal, just south of Havana, is equipped with 10 satellite communications antennas and is mainly concerned with intercepting telephone communications in the U.S.... The second station is located north-east of Santiago de Cuba, reportedly dedicated to intercepting satellite-based U.S. military communications."

Simmons, Chris. "When Spies Become Diplomats." Miami Herald, 11 Mar. 2008. [http://www.miamiherald.com]

"[T]wo former Cuban intelligence officers who are now in the United States" have identified René Mujica Cantelar, Cuba's ambassador to the United Kingdom, "as a deep-cover spy in Cuba's foreign-intelligence service, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI)."

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of Intelligence. Cuba: Handbook of Trade Statistics, 1995. Washington, DC: November 1995.

Weiner, Tim. "Castro's Moles Dig Deep, Not Just Into Exiles." New York Times, 1 Mar. 1996, A4 (N).

This article is keyed to the redefection to Cuba of a pilot from the anti-Castro group, Brothers to the Rescue.

Wines, Michael, and Ronald J. Ostrow. "Cuban Defector Claims Double Agents Duped U.S." Washington Post, 12 Aug. 1987, A8.

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