Dirección de Inteligencia

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The Dirección de Inteligencia ( Spanish : for Intelligence Directorate ; Abbreviation: DI ), formerly known as Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI , is the largest state foreign intelligence service of the government of Cuba . It was founded in 1961 shortly after the revolution and is part of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, MININT. The DI is responsible for all reconnaissance services abroad. It comprises six departments, which are divided into two categories: operational units and support units. Manuel Piñeiro , known as "Barba Roja" ("Red Beard"), was the first chief of the secret service. His term of office lasted until 1964.

Another prominent leader was General Jesús Bermúdez Cutiño . He was nominated in 1989 in the wake of the General Arnaldo Ochoa affair , which was alleged to be illegal drug dealers.

The headquarters of the DI is in Havana district of Vedado , corner Línea and A . Today's head of the DI is Brigadier General Eduardo Delgado Rodríguez .

construction

The DI operates mainly in the areas of economy and politics, which is divided into the following areas:

  • North America
  • Western Europe
  • Eastern Europe
  • Africa-Asia-Latin America

The support group is active in the areas of analysis, communication and evaluation necessary for operations.

Recruitment Techniques

The DI has its own training academy with a five-year course. Its graduates are usually first entrusted with investigative tasks within the ministry, mostly in the area of counter-espionage . However, students in regular courses, mostly in languages, history, communication and sociology, are also being recruited. This usually happens in the sophomore year. After completing their university education, they will undergo intelligence training for a few months. After about a year, they are given the rank of lieutenant .

Relations with the KGB

Relations between the Soviet secret service KGB and the Cuban DI were difficult and fluctuated between very close cooperation and periods of extreme competition. The Soviets saw the new revolutionary government of Cuba as an excellent agent in areas of the world where the Soviet Union's presence at the local level was undesirable. Nikolai Leonov , KGB chief in Mexico City , was one of the first to recognize Fidel Castro's revolutionary potential and to urge his government to work more closely with the new Cuban leader. Moscow recognized the appeal of Cuba to new revolutionary movements, Western intellectuals and members of the New Left by defying the David Cuba of Goliath in the form of the imperialist USA . In 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis , around 1,500 DI agents, including Che Guevara , were invited to the Moscow KGB training center to undergo intensive intelligence training.

Distraught by the Cuban debacle in the Congo and Bolivia and the increasing independence of the Cuban government from Moscow, the Soviets sought to influence the DI. In 1970 a team of KGB advisors, led by General Viktor Semenov, was sent to Cuba to purge the DI of what they believed to be anti-Soviet officials and agents. Manuel Piñeiro was increasingly dissatisfied with the co-optation of the DI by the Soviets. During the 1970s purges, he was replaced by the pro-Soviet José Méndez Cominches as head of the DI. Semyonov also took the opportunity to review the rapidly growing Western operations. In 1971, for example, around 70 percent of Cuban diplomats in London were DI agents and proved invaluable to the Soviets after the British government carried out a mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers.

In 1962, the Soviet Union installed its largest overseas wiretapping station , known as the Lourdes wiretapping station , about 50 kilometers outside Havana. The station is said to have covered an area of ​​73 km². Between 1000 and 1500 Soviet (and later Russian) engineers, technicians and military personnel are said to have been employed there. People who know this base have confirmed that there are different sets of satellite tracking antennas, wiretapping systems for telephone, fax and computer communications.

The Soviets also worked with the DI to defeat CIA defector Philip Agee in publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin . The bulletin was funded by the KGB, while the DI is said to have ghosted many articles.

Activities in the USA

The former head of the US military intelligence agency Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Ana Montes, is considered one of the best-known agents of the DI in the USA . She worked as DIA's lead analyst specifically on Cuba, but also on operations in Central and South America in general. For 16 years from 1985 until her arrest in 2001, she provided information on US activities in Central and South America to Havana. Montes is considered a man of conviction and was not paid for her espionage work. She is serving a term in solitary confinement in a military prison until at least 2023.

Extra-state operations

During its 50-year history, the DI actively supported various revolutionary movements, particularly in Central and South America , Africa and the Middle East . In addition, Cuban DGI agents are said to have questioned and tortured US prisoners of war during the Vietnam War .

Chile

Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende in November 1970, the DI began working to improve Allende's precarious position. Local DI chief Luis Fernandez Oña married Allende's daughter Beatrice, who later committed suicide in Cuba. The DI organized an international brigade to organize and coordinate actions by the thousands of left-wing activists who came to Chile shortly after Allende's election . It consisted of Cuban DI agents, Soviet, Czech and North Korean military instructors and arms suppliers, as well as militant members of the Spanish and Portuguese communist parties.

Grenada

Shortly after the bloodless coup in Grenada , led by Maurice Bishop , the DI sent advisors to the Antilles state to assist Bishop. The DI also persuaded the Soviet Union to support the island nation, aid that the Grenadian General Hudson Austin described as vital to the Caribbean anti-imperialist movement. The DI coordinated 780 Cuban engineers and intelligence agents.

Nicaragua

In early 1967 the DI began to consolidate contacts with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. The Soviets were angry about the fact that the Cubans were stealing the show from the KGB in Nicaragua . By 1970 the DI trained hundreds of commanders of the Sandinista guerrilla force and had enormous influence on this organization. In 1969 the DI organized and funded an operation to rescue Sandinista commander Carlos Fonseca from his prison in Costa Rica . Fonseca was picked up and arrested again shortly afterwards, but after a plane carrying United Fruit Company managers was hijacked by the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) , he was released and allowed to travel to Cuba. DI chief Manuel Piñeiro then noted that of all the activities of his ministry in Latin American countries, Nicaragua was the most active.

The DI also supported the FSLN, with Fidel Castro's express consent, in the failed assassination attempt on Turner B. Shelton , the US Ambassador to Managua and a close friend of the Somoza family . The FSLN managed to secure against the exchange of hostages, an escape to Cuba and a ransom of millions .

After the successful expulsion of Anastasio Somoza , the participation of the DI in the new Sandinista government grew rapidly. An early indicator of the DI's leading role in Cuban-Nicaraguan relations was the meeting on July 27, 1979 in Havana, where diplomatic relations between the two states were renewed after more than 25 years. Julián López Díaz , a noted DI agent, has been appointed ambassador to Nicaragua.

The number of Cuban military and intelligence advisors, who first came into the country during the Sandinista uprising, would grow to well over 2,500 and serve at all levels of the new Nicaraguan government. The Sandinista defector Alvaro Baldizón confirmed that the Cuban influence on the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior ( MINT ) was far greater than widely believed at the time. Cuban "suggestions" and "observations" are said to have been treated like orders .

Puerto Rico

With the suppression and smashing of left-wing underground organizations such as Weather Underground and the Black Panthers by the US government, the DI tried to support the Puerto Rican separatist movement.

Danial James testified before a subcommittee of the US Senate that the DGI in 1974, carried out by Filiberto Ojeda Ríos , established and trained the National Liberation Army of Puerto Rico. Ríos was arrested in 1974 and charged with terrorist attacks on Puerto Rican hotels. A large number of documents from the Cuban government and secret codes were found on him . He disappeared shortly after his release on bail , but became the Cuban-led National Revolutionary Command (CRN) when the five leading terrorist groups in Puerto Rico were united in 1979.

According to the former chief scout of the US Senate, Alfonso Tarabochia , the DGI began criminal activities in Puerto Rico and the eastern and central-western United States in early 1974 . In June of the same year, the General Secretary of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party , Juan Marí Bras , met with Fidel Castro in Havana to strengthen solidarity between the parties.

From September 1974, the number of bombings by Puerto Rican extremists, including the FALN, increased. The targets were, for example, US companies and public institutions. For example, the FALN was responsible for a bomb attack on the historic Fraunces Tavern restaurant in Manhattan on January 25, 1975. Later that year, in Havana, the Cuban government hosted the 1st World Solidarity Conference for the Independence of Puerto Rico .

Ríos was killed by the FBI on September 23, 2005 in a village near Hormigueros , Puerto Rico .

literature

  • Jochen Staadt / Tobias Voigt / Gerhard Ehlert: The cooperation between the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (MfS) and the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba (MININT) , working papers of the research association SED-Staat No. 33, Berlin 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lourdes Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) facility , accessed August 28, 2009
  2. ↑ Testimony of Michael D. Benge before the House International Relations Committee chaired by the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, November 4, 1999. ( Memento of March 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) accessed August 29, 2009
  3. ↑ Special Report: America's Enemies and the Institute for Policy Studies ( Memento of June 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 994 kB)