Dirección General de Inteligencia

The Intelligence Directorate (Spanish: Dirección de Inteligencia, or DI, also known as G2 and formerly known as Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI) is the main state intelligence agency of the government of Cuba. The DI was founded in late 1961 by Cuba's Ministry of the Interior shortly after the Cuban Revolution. The DI is responsible for all foreign intelligence collection and comprises six divisions divided into two categories, which are the Operational Divisions and the Support Divisions. Manuel "Redbeard" Piñeiro was the first director of the DI in 1961, and his term lasted until 1964. Another top leader who directed the famous office, located on Linea and A, Vedado, was the now retired Div. General, Jesus Bermudez Cutiño. He was transferred from being the chief of the Army Intelligence (DIM) to the Ministry of Interior after the corruption trials and executions of Arnaldo Ochoa and Jose Abrantes Fernandez in 1989. The current head of the DI is Brig. Gen. Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez. The total number of people working for the DI is about 15,000.[1][2]

Recruiting Techniques

New recruits do research within the ministry, mostly on counterintelligence fields (which has its own five years career academy) and also, over regular college students, who are recruited around the second year on their programs. Those students mostly study languages, history, communications, and sociology. Once they get their diplomas, they undergo several months of official intelligence training, and a year or so after, they receive the rank of lieutenant.

KGB relationship

The Soviet Union's KGB and the Cuban DI had a complex relationship, marked by times of extremely close cooperation and by periods of extreme competition. The Soviet Union saw the new revolutionary government in Cuba as an excellent proxy agent in areas of the world where Soviet involvement lacked popular local-level support. Nikolai Leonov, the KGB chief in Mexico City, one of the first Soviet officials to recognize Fidel Castro's potential as a revolutionary, urged the Soviet administration to strengthen ties with the new Cuban leader. Moscow saw Cuba as having far more appeal with new revolutionary movements, western intellectuals, and members of the New Left with Cuba's perceived David and Goliath struggle against U.S. «imperialism». Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Moscow invited 1,500 DI agents, including Che Guevara, to the KGB's Moscow Center for intensive training in intelligence operations.

Dismayed by Cuban debâcles in Zaire (1977 and 1978) and in Bolivia (1966–67) as well as by a perceived growing independence from Moscow, the Soviets sought a more active role in shaping the DI. In 1970 a team of KGB advisers led by Gen. Viktor Semyonov was sent to the DI to purge it of officers and agents considered anti-Soviet by the KGB. Manuel Piñeiro, becoming increasingly upset at the co-option of the DI by the Soviets, was removed during the 1970 purge and replaced with the pro-Soviet José Méndez Cominches as head of the DI.

Semyonov also took this opportunity to oversee a rapid expansion of the DI's "western" operations. By 1971, 70 percent of the Cuban diplomats in London were actually DI agents and proved invaluable to Moscow after the British government's mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers.

In 1962 the Soviet Union opened its largest foreign SIGINT site in Lourdes, Cuba, approximately 30 miles (50 km) from Havana. The Lourdes facility is reported to cover a 28 square-mile (73 km2) area, with 1,000 to 1,500 Soviet and later solely Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. Those familiar with the Lourdes facility have confirmed that the base has multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices.[3]

The Soviets also collaborated with the DI to assist Central Intelligence Agency defector Philip Agee in the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin.

Operations abroad

Throughout its 40-year history the DI has been actively involved in aiding leftist movements, primarily in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. There have also been allegations that Cuban DI agents interrogated U.S. POWs held at the Cu Loc POW camp in North Vietnam.

Chile

Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in November 1970, the DI worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's increasingly precarious position. The Cuban DI station chief Luis Fernandez Oña married Allende's daughter Beatriz, who later committed suicide in Cuba.

Grenada

Shortly after a popular bloodless coup in Grenada, led by Maurice Bishop, the Cuban DI sent advisers to the island nation to assist the new government. The DI was also instrumental in persuading the Soviet Union to aid Grenada, aid that Grenadian general Hudson Austin called essential to the success of the Caribbean anti-imperialist movement. The DI coordinated 780 Cuban engineers and intelligence operatives.

Nicaragua

Beginning in 1967 the DI had begun to establish ties with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. The Soviets were upset at what they saw as Cuba upstaging the KGB in Nicaragua. By 1970 the DI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinista guerrilla leaders and had vast influence over the organization. In 1969 the DI had financed and organized an operation to free the jailed Sandinistan leader Carlos Fonseca from his prison in Costa Rica. Fonseca was captured shortly after the jail break, but after a plane carrying executives from the United Fruit Company was hijacked by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), he was freed and allowed to travel to Cuba.

DI chief Manuel Piñeiro commented that "of all the countries in Latin America, the most active work being carried out by us is in Nicaragua."[4]

The DI, with Fidel Castro's personal blessing, also collaborated with the FSLN on the botched assassination attempt of Turner B. Shelton, the U.S. ambassador in Managua and a close friend to the Somoza family. The FSLN managed to secure several hostages, exchanging them for safe passage to Cuba and a $1 million ransom. After the successful ousting of Anastasio Somoza, DI involvement in the new Sandinistan government expanded rapidly. An early indication of the central role that the DI would play in the Cuban–Nicaraguan relationship a meeting in Havana on 27 July 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after over 25 years. Julián López Díaz, a prominent DI agent, was named ambassador to Nicaragua.

Cuban military and DI advisers initially brought in during the Sandinistan insurgency, would swell to over 2,500 and operated at all levels of the new Nicaraguan government. Sandinista defector Alvaro Baldizón confirmed that Cuban influence in Nicaragua's Interior Ministry (MINT) was more extensive than was widely believed at the time, and Cuban "advice" and "observations" were treated as though they were orders.

Puerto Rico

The DI sought to aid the growing Puerto Rican separatist movement. Dr. Daniel James testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that the DGI, working through Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, organized and trained the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN) in 1974. In October 1974, Ojeda was arrested and charged with terrorist acts against American hotels in Puerto Rico. Authorities found a substantial amount of Cuban government documents and secret codes in his possession. Shortly after his release on bail he disappeared but was credited with the 1979 unification of Puerto Rico's five principal terrorist groups into the Cuban-directed National Revolutionary Command (CRN). According to the former chief investigator of the U.S. Senate, Alfonso Tarabochia, the DGI began directing criminal activities in Puerto Rico and the eastern and midwestern United States as early as 1974. That June the secretary general of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, Juan Marí Bras, met in Havana with Fidel Castro to consolidate party solidarity.

Beginning in September 1974, the incidence of bombings by Puerto Rican extremists, particularly the FALN, escalated sharply. Targets included U.S. companies and public places. The FALN was responsible for a bombing that killed four and wounded dozens at the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan on January 25, 1975. Later that year, Fidel Castro sponsored the First World Solidarity Conference for the Independence of Puerto Rico in Havana.

Ríos was killed by the FBI on Friday, September 23, 2005, in a rural village in the town of Hormigueros, Puerto Rico.

Venezuela

Some accuse the government of Venezuela of being advised by Cuban agents of the DI. Following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, Chávez no longer trusted his own personnel in his "situation room" and brought in the G2.[5] One Chávez aide stated that "I saw their strategy: seal Chávez off from public, manipulate him, nourish his insecurity, find evidence of assassination plots, of betrayals. Make him paranoid."[5]

In 2014, accusations came from Father Palmar, a Catholic priest and supporter of government opposition protestors in Zulia, Venezuela who was attacked and injured by Venezuelan government forces during a peaceful demonstration.[6][7][8] This happened days after Father Palmar gave a speech against Nicolás Maduro asking for his resignation and claiming that the Cuban G2 was responsible for influencing Maduro.[9]

Camp Mantanzas

Camp Mantanzas is a training facility operated by the DI and is located outside Havana since early 1962. It has hosted the likes of Carlos the Jackal.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Chris Hippner, "A Study Into the Size of the World's Intelligence Industry" (Master's Thesis, December 2009), 90, http://www.scribd.com/doc/23958185/A-Study-Into-the-Size-of-the-World-s-Intelligence-Industry.
  2. ↑ Edward González and Kevin McCarthy, "Cuba After Castro: Legacies, Challenges, and Impediments," RAND (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2004), 44, https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2005/RAND_TR131.pdf.
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (1999). The sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. p. 386.
  5. 1 2 Carroll, Rory (2013). Comandante : myth and reality in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela. Penguin Press: New York. pp. 98–100. ISBN 9781594204579.
  6. ↑ "Herido con golpes y perdigones el Padre José Palmar en el Zulia". El Nacional. 19 February 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  7. ↑ "Padre Palmar se encuentra herido en Maracaibo (Fotos)". El Diario de Caracas. 19 February 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  8. ↑ "Padre José Palmar fue golpeado en Plaza República de Maracaibo". El Nacional. 19 February 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  9. ↑ "Padre José Palmar: "Maduro es un mentiroso, Maduro es un asesino"". Diario las Americas. 17 February 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  10. ↑ Ovid Demaris (7 November 1977), "Carlos: The Most Dangerous Man In The World", New York Magazine, p. 35

External links

Coordinates: 23°08′18″N 82°23′55″W / 23.1384°N 82.3986°W / 23.1384; -82.3986

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