6-03-08, 9:22 am

In its new plans for destabilizing Cuba, the USAID is to promote the clandestine dispatch of electronic materials to the island via European and Latin American intermediaries, which will undertake the dirty work that it cannot legally do: to send agents into the country under cover of so-called humanitarian licenses in order to make on-the-ground evaluations, and to guarantee their collaborators that their activities will never be divulged, over and above the Freedom of Information Act.

Forced by the General Accountability Office to fabricate a certain image of decency in the distribution of taxpayers’ money that it has squandered to date without the least accountability, the USAID (the so-called Agency for International Development), called an assembly at its Washington headquarters on May 14 to discuss the distribution of the $45 million assigned by the Bush administration to provoke a rupture in the Cuban revolutionary process.

For three hours, from 9:00 a.m. to midday, behind closed doors and in a conspiratorial atmosphere in line with the operations planned, José 'Pepe' Cárdenas, USAID chief for Latin America, and a former Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) director, headed a clique of federal official 'specialists' on Cuba:

• His right-hand woman for the island, Elaine Grigsby, director of the Cuba Program;

• Amadjan Abani, from the USAID Aid and Acquisitions Office;

• Anthony Christino III, from the Department of Commerce Industry and Security Office;

• Clara Davis of the OFAC (the State Department Agency that monitors and punishes exchanges with Cuba).

Outstanding among the organizations present, some already notorious and others less well-known, but likewise dedicated to appropriating millions from the State Department, and whose representatives peopled the room, bent on getting a slice of the cake, were:

The pseudo Czech NGO People in Need; Global Partners, IBMC, Loyola University, the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Jackson State University, the Mississippi Consortium for International Development, the International Resources Group, the Panamerican Development Foundation, Partners of America, the Alliance for Family, the Trade Council of Hungary and the millionaire TV Martí.

No diplomat – not even the Czech agent Kolar – was present.

In what is equivalent to confessing authentic espionage operations against Cuba and in Cuban territory, 'Pepe' Cárdenas, the former CANF director who replaced the supremely corrupt Adolfo Franco, insisted on the need to identify NGOS in third countries that can channel USAID’s resources for subversion.

He stressed the need to dispatch to Cuba, via such intermediaries, 'propaganda pamphlets, cell phones and modern communications equipment,' as well as 'to train Cubans resident in third countries.'

Highlighting the philosophy behind the significant expansion of the USAID’s Cuba Program, Cárdenas announced that its budget of $13 million in 2007, 'shot up' to $45 million in 2008.

He then moved on to the new geography of this monumental squandering, noting Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia and Puerto Rico as countries most inclined to develop this clandestine operation.

However, Grigsby, supposedly his most faithful collaborator, commented that, in her experience, it would be difficult to find partners in Latin America.

As a good instructor of what clearly constitutes an intelligence operation, Cárdenas spoke of the convenience of using East European countries that have had recent transition experiences.

However, he did not go into details as to the degree of collaboration or complicity that U.S. intelligence clearly enjoys with government officials from the countries that he mentioned.

Replying to one question, Cárdenas forgot that he had already recommended 'institutions experienced in carrying out this type of program,' such as the NED, the NDI, the IRI, Florida International University, Freedom House, and his CIA agent Jaime Suchlicki…

And, of course, his buddy Frank 'Paquito' Calzón’s Center for a Free Cuba.

'SECRET' OPERATIONS: ACCESS TO BE DENIED

With a language corresponding to an espionage operation, the former CANF director confessed that it is difficult to introduce materials into Cuba and thus implied that the work 'had to be done in a clandestine manner.'

Grigsby compounded the top secret nature of the designated tasks by stating that if applications for the declassification of documents should be made via the FOIA, USAID would only issue a 'general summary' and would keep secret details of each NGO’s program, given that these concern 'secret materials.'

Clear as water.

In this same collective confession, Anthony Christino III spoke of the need to send computers and software to Cuba, for which his services would issue licenses.

For her part, Clara Davis, the pearl of the OFAC, proposed travel licenses, making it clear that so-called humanitarian licenses are to be utilized for infiltrating agents under the cover of projects linked to public health, the environment and 'specific' initiatives.

She also referred, openly and crudely, to the 'interest' in promoting travel to Cuba in order to undertake 'on-the-ground evaluations' utilizing general licenses.

Davis noted that the largest entry of money into Cuba is done via the Churches, an intentional reference whose aim was to damage the excellent relations existing between the Churches and Cuban state.

ELECTIONS WILL DETERMINE THE FUTURE

In another confession in this lengthy succession of confidences, Grigsby pointed out that a further expansion of the subversive budget would depend on the November elections.

According to observers on the ground there is no doubt that the victims of this new turn in funding subversion in Cuba will duly adjust their accounts to the administration.

The organization that has handled the squandering of federal funds on fraudulent operations evidently called its meeting in order to be seen to be falling into line in the wake of the GAO reprimand.

Nevertheless, significantly enough, the USAID publicized the day and time of its assembly, but omitted to say where it was, so that those interested had to call and ask. The strategy worked. Very few new faces appeared for this sharing out of an already divided cake.

In its report, the GAO disclosed how USAID top officials managed to conceal the whereabouts of $65.4 million handed out over 10 years to friends in Miami and Washington.

José Cárdenas was a senior CANF director from 1986. He was successively director of 'research and publications,' spokesman for the organization, and chief lobbyist when the Mafia organization had a luxury 'embassy' in Washington.

He is, of course, close friends of Ileana Ros Lehtinen and her two accomplices the Díaz-Balart brothers.

The CANF, created by the CIA under Ronald Reagan, spent a fortune funding the operations of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, a fact that Cárdenas obviously knows.

He is equally aware of the already strident lamentations of the Miami capos, left in a somewhat precarious situation by the reorientation of USAID’s methods to the benefit of its traditional European correspondents.

From Granma International