The Obama administration is hosting visits to U.S. Coast Guard facilities by Cuban Border Guard officials as part of its policy of seeking closer ties with the communist government in Havana.
The visits are raising concerns among officials and security analysts that closer ties with Cuba will benefit aggressive Cuban intelligence operations in the United States that have been underway for decades.
A delegation of Cuban officials arrives this week for visits to Coast Guard bases in Florida and Alabama following an earlier visit two months ago.
The Department of Homeland Security, which arranged the visits, refused to provide details of the Cuban delegation. But a spokeswoman said they are part of an exchange program.
“These visits represent professional exchanges between the U.S. Coast Guard and the Cuban Border Guard to discuss issues of mutual interest such as at-sea rescue operations,” DHS spokeswoman Gillian Christensen told the Washington Free Beacon, without elaborating.
Cuban officials on March 18 visited three Coast Guard port facilities in the south, including one near Mobile, Alabama. The group also toured an oil refinery in Alabama, according to a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
A State Department official said the Cuban Border Guard tours of Coast Guard bases are an outgrowth of the president’s pro-Havana tilt. “The administration’s new policy of engagement has enabled U.S. agencies to discuss and coordinate on topics of mutual interest as we work to normalize relations.”
The official referred further questions to the Cuban government. A Cuban Embassy official did not respond to email requests for comment.
Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Comdr. David French sought to play down the security concerns posed by the exchange by saying the service holds similar visits with many nations.
“The U.S. Coast Guard recently met with a Cuban delegation at Coast Guard sector Key West as part of the continued professional exchange between the Coast Guard and the Cuban Border Guard,” he said, declining to discuss past sessions or future visits.
President Obama traveled to Cuba in March as part of what the White House has called his rejection of “the failed, Cold War-era policy” of isolating the communist regime in Havana.
Alexandria Preston, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, said the March visit was arranged by Coast Guard headquarters as part of the International Port Security program.
The Cubans were given public information briefings and presentations about Coast Guard operations in Mobile followed by a question and answer session on the Maritime Transportation Security Act, she said. At the refinery, the Cubans were given a briefing and tour by the refinery’s security officer.
Cuba’s Border Guard troops are part of the Cuban Interior Ministry that directs the Intelligence Directorate, the political police, and an intelligence service modeled after the Soviet-era KGB intelligence service. The Border Guard in the past has been involved in liaisons with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Cuba’s intelligence services also cooperate with Russian intelligence services.
International drug traffickers are known to use Cuban waters and airspace to evade U.S. drug interdiction efforts.
The visits have raised concerns among security officials about Cuba’s role in conducting aggressive intelligence activities in the United States.
“Cuba—with historic, deeply held KGB connections—continues to command an enormous intelligence capacity and network to spy on America,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Hosting Cuban government officials and delivering them to ‘tour’ American national security facilities—as well as critical infrastructure sites in the United States—proves that this administration naively believes that Cuba has changed,” Pompeo said. “It has not. And its espionage against the United States continues.”
Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, made no mention of the Border Guard-Coast Guard program during a Wednesday meeting with reporters at the Pentagon.
Tidd said a Cuban military medical team toured the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort during a port visit to Haiti in September. In January, Southcom co-hosted a Caribbean Nations Security Conference with 18 nations represented, including Cuba for the first time.
“The island of Cuba sits directly astride principal north-south trading routes. Those trading routes also happen to be smuggling routes and Cuba has concerns about illicit trafficking,” Tidd said.
Engagement with Cuba will take time and the pace likely will be driven by the Cuban regime “because they’re not prepared for that degree of openness, frankly, and I think it will take [time] to get to that point.”
An FBI report two years ago warned that Cuban intelligence agents are targeting American academics for recruitment as spies.
“The Cuban intelligence services (CuIS) are known to actively target the U.S. academic world for the purposes of recruiting agents, in order to both obtain useful information and conduct influence activities,” the Sept. 2, 2014 report says.
Cuban intelligence seeks out academics as agents because the Havana government lacks the funds to provide cash to recruits. “Therefore, the CuIS have perfected the work of placing agents that includes aggressively targeting 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 CuIS,” the report said.
A key objective is “influencing American and Cuban-American academics, to recruiting them if possible, and to converting them into Cuban intelligence agents,” the FBI said, adding that students also face recruitment.
“Unfortunately, part of what makes academic environments ideal for enhancing and sharing knowledge also can assist the efforts of foreign intelligence services to accomplish their objectives,” the FBI said. “This situation is unlikely to change, but awareness of the methods used to target academia can greatly assist in neutralizing the efforts of these foreign intelligence services.”
Fred Burton, a Stratfor analyst, stated in a recent report that CIA and FBI agents will be closely monitoring Cuban intelligence activities following the resumption of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic ties.
“U.S. intelligence agencies are well aware of the Cuban threat,” Burton stated, adding that “the threat is real … and in a world full of hidden threats, there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.”
U.S. intelligence agencies also were fooled for years by a long-term Cuban spy in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Montes, who supplied U.S. intelligence secrets to Cuba, including the identities of four American spies. Montes, who spied for Cuba from 1984 until her arrest in 2001, also was blamed for disclosing to Cuba the location of a clandestine U.S. Army base in El Salvador. The disclosure led to the 1987 death of Army Green Beret Sgt. Gregory Fronius, who was killed in El Salvador during an attack by pro-Cuban insurgents.
Cuba also has close ties to North Korea, as disclosed by the seizure in July 2013 of a North Korean ship found to be illegally carrying Cuban military jets and missile guidance components. North Korea was hit with Treasury Department sanctions but Cuba was not sanctioned as part of the Obama administration’s policy of seeking closer ties.
Disclosure of the Cuban visits to the United States comes as a leading Cuban dissident, José Daniel Ferrer García, said political repression on the island located 90 miles from Florida is increasing as opposition to the regime is growing.
“We make advances, then the regime represses us and we have to take steps back,” Ferrer told reporters in Washington this week.
“But the best thing we see is the change in the mentality of the people,” he added.
Ferrer said he expects “periods of more repression” and that dissidents could take to the streets in pro-democracy protests like those in Poland in the 1980s.
Ferrer cautioned American businesses to be wary of setting up subsidiaries in Cuba.
“The Castros never negotiate for a win-win,” he said. “They have a sick need to win and for the rest to lose.”
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State Department censored video of press briefing about secret Iran talks
BY ADAM KREDO
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) is calling for an immediate investigation into recent disclosures that the Obama administration censored public video of a State Department briefing about secret discussions with Iran, according to comments provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
Ryan, a vocal critic of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, accused the White House of misleading Congress and the American people about the nature of last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.
The disclosure on Wednesday that an unnamed State Department official ordered portions of a December 2013 press briefing about secret negotiations with Iran to be cut reinforces the need for full investigation into the administration’s deceptions surrounding the deal, Ryan said.
“This admission proves once again that the White House intentionally misled the American people about the Iran deal,” Ryan told the Free Beacon on Thursday. “If they truly care about transparency, the administration should investigate who requested this selective editing and why.”
State Department Spokesman John Kirby admitted on Wednesday that officials gave a direct order to delete portions of the briefing, which was conducted by former spokeswoman Jen Psaki and focused on the administration’s secret outreach to Iran early in the presidency.
Kirby revealed “that a specific request was made to excise that portion of the briefing.”
However, he maintained that the administration does “not know who made the request to edit the video or why it was made.”
The administration will not conduct a further investigation into the matter, even though interviews with State Department officials could not determine why this information was withheld from the public.
“The recipient of the call, who is one of the editors, does not remember anything other than that the caller was passing on a request from somewhere else in the bureau,” Kirby told reporters. “I see little foundation for pressing forward with a formal investigation.”
The administration also will not make an attempt to determine the name of the official who gave the order to delete the briefing.
Foreign policy experts who spoke to the Free Beacon speculated that the video might have been deleted to insulate Psaki, the State Department spokesperson at the time, from accusations that she deceived reporters about the administration’s diplomacy with Iran.
One senior congressional source who has worked closely on the Iran nuclear issue accused the administration of trying to sweep this lie “under the rug.”
“The Obama administration was caught in a lie, and now they’re trying to sweep it under the rug,” the source said. “Americans deserve to know who ordered this damning footage to be cut from the record.”
The administration’s behavior is consistent with other attempts to mislead congressional officials about the nature of the Iran deal.
The White House has been engulfed in a growing scandal over efforts by senior National Security Council figure Ben Rhodes to create a pro-Iran propaganda effort inside the West Wing.
The effort, which included outside nonprofit groups and prominent academics, was aimed at creating a so-called “echo chamber” to promote the Iran nuclear agreement.
The senior congressional aide who spoke to the Free Beacon said that the administration continues to violate the law with its efforts to suppress information about the nuclear agreement.
“This [behavior] should come as no surprise from an administration that repeatedly withheld critical information about the Iran deal from Congress, and even broke the law by failing to submit the secret side agreements,” the source said. “The fact is this deal was sold to the American people on a lie that’s finally starting to unravel.”
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Obama Blames Right Wing Conservative Media for Anger of White Americans
BY SUZANNE HAMNER
Like many Americans in this nation, the time for Hussein Soetoro to leave office cannot come soon enough. If members of Congress followed the Constitution, the totalitarian dictator would have already been removed from office and serving a sentence after facing impeachment and a criminal court. The man speaks so many lies and stirs the pot of racism and division in this nation all the while blaming the division on citizens. It has gotten to the point that people are angry; and, it is going to get worse.
On par for the megalomythomaniac, he has done nothing to stir the pot of racism in this nation – it is the fault of "conservative" right wing talk shows and naturally, the Republicans. Speaking in Elkhart, Indiana, the egotistical dictator "accused 'right wing' talk radio and cable channels like Fox News of angering white people in America about the economy...." He claims the economy is doing well under his administration. However, the majority of Americans would disagree.
As Breitbart reported:
During his speech, Obama decried Republicans who campaigned on stopping "welfare queens" complaining about "makers and takers" and even referred to Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment.
"Their basic message is anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, and let's face it — it's anti-change," Obama said, accusing them of lying just to oppose him.
"What they are saying just isn't true," he said, before launching his own attempt at "mythbusting" narratives from conservative media.
Obama complained that people failed to recognize that he was succeeding in improving the economy, cutting the deficit, and cutting spending.
Since when does cutting the deficit equate to increasing the debt? With the way the District of Corruption calculates "cutting spending," cuts from necessary elements of government occur while wasteful spending on "teaching prostitutes how to use a condom" receives yearly funding. Once again, Republicans are run over by the Soetoro bus as he engages in stellar abundant lying fashion to discredit the Republican majority.
This man lies and lies and lies on top of more lies. He couldn't tell the truth to God himself with his life on the line. Funny that Democrats, especially this one, accuses Republicans and conservative of being "anti-government, anti-immigration, and anti-trade" when it is not the case at all. Yet, no matter how often it is explained, no Democrat, liberal, communist or socialist gets it.
No one is anti-government. What many are is for an anti-totalitarian, anti-police state, anti-spying government. Conservatives want a government that follows the law – the Constitution. Remember that piece of brilliant prose submitted to King George declaring this nation's independence from England? How is wanting our government to follow the Constitution being "anti-government" when it is one of the documents that established our republic? It's not being anti-government at all – it is being pro-limited government.
How is wanting to follow constitutionally established immigration law being "anti-immigration?" It isn't; however, Democrats can gain a new voting bloc through the "freebies" given to illegal alien invaders that taxpayers fund. Conservatives are pro-legal immigration.
And for goodness sake, why is it that Americans wanting an equitable trade agreement with foreign nations to prevent the united States from running a trade deficit detrimental to this nation are considered "anti-trade?" For decades, inequitable trade agreements with other nations have benefitted those nations at the expense of the citizens of this nation. Those individuals sent to represent the citizens of this nation, as well as men occupying the office of the president, have catered more to foreign nations, cared more about foreign nations' citizens, and cared more about being "friends" when it comes to trade agreements than looking out for the interests of this nation first.
If all of this means being "anti-change," then so be it. For the change that is offered by the Democrats, RINOs, Democrat Socialists, liberals and Communists amounts to nothing less than totalitarian oligarchic government where an iron fist rules not governs. Along with this totalitarian government comes massive surveillance, a police/military state, eradication of God-given rights, theft of all types of property, impoverishment, eradication of Christianity, enslavement, and misery, except for the political elite, the wealthy, the famous and the corporations.
Hussein Soetoro claimed this is the story being broadcast every day on cable news channels and "right wing radio" reaching people in cars, bars and VFW halls. He stated summarily that repetition of these stories leads one to believe them. "It's no wonder people start thinking big government is the problem," His Dictatorness stated.
"White Americans think that reverse discrimination is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities," this cretin argued.
Discrimination is discrimination. And yes, blacks discriminating against whites is a big problem. But, who actually scratched that healing wound, making it itch and bleed? The community organizer did through his continual campaigning, rock star style behavior while occupying the Oval Office, and support of black, criminal thugs over police in justifiable incidences of shootings.
Big government is the problem. At this point in time, no individual can go through the day without committing about three felonies based on law and pseudo-law enacted by government agencies through rules and regulations governing every aspect of life. Bit government is a problem when one cannot turn around without paying some sort of fee to government, violating some ordinance, law, or "rule," and find government agents on their property when making improvements.
Big government stifles free enterprise and the free market system. It inhibits entrepreneurs starting businesses and current business owners. His Dictatorness believes government is the answer to everything, like most Democrats, and Republicans, most, are right behind him. Yet, this nation prospered more under less interference by the government than it is now with "big government" and big brother watching.
Breitbart continues:
Obama argued they were wrong, since black unemployment was still twice as high as white unemployment and Hispanic women earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by a white man.—Obama warned voters against listening to Trump's political argument.
"The one thing I can promise you is if we turn against each other based on divisions of race and religion—if we fall for a bunch of okey-doke just because it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative, then we're not going to build on the progress we started."
And here is the crux of his ranting – jabbing Donald Trump. Unfortunately for Hussein Soetoro, these problems existed before Trump hit the political scene to run for president on the Republican ticket. But, the 36-hour memory sheep will buy all his hay and march right into the pack of wolves only to be eaten, as is his plan. He lies claiming to be the "unifier" while working to divide this nation along every line possible to keep the people from uniting, getting behind the Constitution, and pulling his dead backside out by his Armani suit.
His "divide and conquer" plan, formulated by his puppeteers, has divided this nation in order to turn this country into third world nation governed by totalitarian communist principles. That is the "progress" he started and one the elite needs to be completed soon.
And, let's not focus on the problems surrounding black communities that include gangs, drugs, destruction of the family unit by Democrats, and idolization of the "thug" lifestyle and culture. When solid, good role models for young blacks are demonized and characterized as "Uncle Toms" or "sell-outs," it pushes these impressionable young people to role models who glamorize the thug culture and criminal behavior. Rap music glorifying misogyny, crime, and anti-social behavior doesn't help either.
Hussein Soetoro is doing what he does best – continual campaigning, stirring the pot of racism, division and dissent, continuing his rock star style occupation of the Oval Office, and stuttering accusations at Republicans, white America, Trump and anyone in opposition to the "change" of government from a republic to a totalitarian communist dictatorship. If the sheep continue to walk in the direction he is herding them, they will find that what they wanted is not what they wanted after all. But, by then, it will be too late.
Yes, white America is angry, but not for the reasons this mythomaniac believes. Moreover, it's not only white America that is angry. It sounds better though when stirring the pot to highlight only white American anger.
