The CIA Secretly Set Up a Task Force on Cuba — NYT
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has secretly formed a task force on Cuba. According to The New York Times, the unit is intended to coordinate efforts to increase pressure on the Cuban government and implement a more coordinated policy toward Havana.
The creation of the task force will allow the CIA to quickly direct additional financial, personnel, and technical resources to Cuba. Operatives who recruit and manage spies, intelligence analysts, cyber operations personnel, and specialists in covert influence operations have already begun to be recruited to the task force.
It is noted that in 1960, the CIA established a predecessor task force on Cuba. Its members led the failed 1961 invasion of Cuba, carried out with the agency’s support, known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
According to individuals familiar with the new operational group’s activities, its mandate is more limited and consists of sowing division among the Cuban political elite, to pressure Cubans to replace hard-line, anti-American supporters with more pragmatic leaders who would be more accommodating to the demands of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency did not provide the NYT with any comments on this matter.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio stated that the CIA’s intentions come as no surprise.
“These intentions come as no surprise, as Cuba has long been the target of CIA efforts aimed at espionage, subversive activities, and destabilization, including terrorism. And yet the State Department has the audacity to call Cuba a threat for exercising its right to legitimate self-defense,” he said.
The article notes that, unlike the previous task force, which oversaw the training and equipping of Cuban partner forces that launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, the current task force has no organized Cuban partners. It is also not authorized to conduct lethal operations, although the CIA task force is flexible by nature, and the mandate under which it operates can be changed by the president at any time.
The NYT notes that the CIA’s actions coincide with an intensification of efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies aimed at better understanding the situation on the ground in Cuba.
Each administration sets its priorities for intelligence gathering in a document known as the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF). The Trump administration recently revised its version of the document to classify Cuba as a “Priority 1” country on the NIPF list. Other countries in this category include China, Iran, and Russia.
U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, have begun directing more intelligence-gathering assets toward Cuba, including satellites, sources said. The new intelligence will provide U.S. military and intelligence officers with a better understanding of Cuba’s intentions, its military capabilities, and its defense capabilities, the report states.
In turn, officers in the CIA’s Cuba Task Force will carefully analyze the new intelligence in search of inside information on the activities of Cuban leaders and other members of the political elite, in particular by tracking shadow cash flows and business transactions both on the island and beyond.
For many years, the CIA has played a multifaceted role with regard to Cuba: both as an intelligence agency operating covertly against the Cuban government and as an occasional mediator between Washington and Havana, the article states, according to the NYT.
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