“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” says an FBI report from Sept. 2nd.
“One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology. “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs.”
Not that any of the above should come as earth-shaking news to anyone who:
A: Attended a typical college and suffered through typical Liberal Arts courses.
B. Knows anything at all about the history of Cuban spying in the U.S.
Give the A.B. above, here’s the main question: Who among most U.S. Liberals Arts college faculties ISN’T a candidate for recruitment by Castro’s KGB-trained intelligence services?
I really feel for the FBI agents tasked with ferreting out Cuban spies in the U.S. Would it be possible to imagine a larger pool of communist spy candidates? It’s a rare Liberal Arts professor who DOESN’T fit the profile! Of the most recently convicted Cuban spies--Ana Montes, Walter Kendall Meyers and Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, three were recruited by Castro’s agents from academia-- John Hopkins, for Montes and Florida International University for the Alvarez couple.
Cuba’s Intelligence services “will actively exploit visitors to the island” continues the report. “Intelligence officers will come into contact with the academic travelers (from the U.S.) They will stay in the same accommodations and participate in the activities arranged for the travelers. This clearly provides an opportunity to identify targets….Castro’s intelligence aggressively targets U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service,”] continues the FBI report.
“A preferred target are ‘study abroad’ programs (in Cuba,)” adds America’s top Cuban spycatcher Chris Simmons, recently retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency, “as participating students (from the U.S.) are assessed as inherently sympathetic to the Cuban revolution.”
It’s not customary for U.S. administrations to increase the size of an enemy spy agency’s “preferred spy-recruitment target,” but we’re talking the Obama Administration here, amigos. To wit: Academic and cultural exchanges along with various types of legalized “people-to-people travel” between the U.S. and terror-sponsoring Cuba now allow hundreds of thousands of people to visit Cuba annually from the U.S. —over half a million visited just last year.
By the way that‘s DOUBLE the number who visited Cuba from the U.S. in 1958, when Cuba was a “tourist playground” for Americans. Surely, you remember that from Godfather II?
So let’s chew on that for a second: When Cuba was a “U.S. tourist playground” 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.
But now that Cuba suffers from a beastly “blockade” or “embargo” (as the media calls it) by the U.S. 599,426 people visited Cuba from the U.S. 102.396 of these, by the way, went under “educational and cultural exchanges” approved by the Obama State Department.
In brief, Obama has greatly simplified matters for Castro’s Intelligence. Used to be that for recruiting U.S. spies, Castro relied on Obama’s Chicago ‘neighbors, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
You read right. You see during the late 60’s and early 70’s the terrorist offshoot from the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) known as The Weathermen and staffed most famously by Barack Obama’s future “neighbors” Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn served as the Cuban DGI’s (Directorio General de Intelligencia) top U.S. recruitment officers. They accomplished this recruitment primarily through their sponsorship of the then famous Venceremos Brigades.
During that heady Age of Aquarius hundreds of starry-eyed college kids were volunteering to “help build Cuban Socialism” and “fight U.S. Imperialism,” mostly by joining these Venceremos Brigades (many via the Weathermen,) making their way to Cuba and joyfully cutting Cuban sugar cane.
"The ultimate objective of the DGI’s participation in the setting up of the Venceremos Brigades,” says an FBI report declassified in 1976 “was the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban Government with access to political, economic and military intelligence
Sure sounds like what the very recently de-classified FBI report claims about current recruitment objectives by Cuba’s intelligence, except now they have tens of thousands more spy candidates to choose from!
In brief: nowadays instead of relying on terrorist groups as an employment agency to screen their spy recruits, the Castro regime--thanks to "People-to-People" "academic exchanges, etc. relies on the massive apparatus of academic “Cuban Studies Programs” and their U.S. government facilitators!