The Timmerman book has a lot to say about Ana Montes who is serving 25 years for espionage on behalf of Cuba. She had a long career and, according to Timmerman, was virtually the director of US policy toward Cuba for nearly 20 years. She caused terrible damage to our attempts to spy on Cuba and may have insinuated herself with members of Congress, some of whom are conspicuous in their opposition to US policy. Scott Carmichael, the DIA counterintelligence agent who caught her, has written a book about her career. According to Carmichael and Timmerman, her analyses, written by a Cuban spy, are still being used for policy! As Carmichael says:
” Even more astonishing is the fact that not a single product authored or influenced by Montes has been pulled back by the intelligence community.
Recalling products produced by tainted sources is a common practice within the intelligence community after it conducts a damage assessment. It happened after Russian spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen were caught, and it happened on a more limited basis after an Iraqi source known as CURVEBALL, who was controlled by German intelligence, was later found to be psychologically unstable.
But the U.S. intelligence community continues to base essential judgments on Cuba on products written by convicted Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes, despite a sweeping damage assessment carried out in the months following her arrest and sentencing.”
“I don’t believe that any of her products have been pulled,” Carmichael said. This is simply amazing. Our Cuba policy is still being determined by the reports and advice of a confessed and convicted Cuban spy. Some in Congress, especially Senator Chris Dodd seem determined to battle US policy and to attack those who might change it. Why would they choose the interests of Cuba over their own country ? From the CNN report: “The other Democrats followed Dodd’s lead in dwelling on a 2002 speech by Bolton alleging Cuba’s development of germ warfare for export to rogue nations. The link to the U.N. was that another exaggerated weapons-of-mass-destruction claim would further undermine U.S. credibility there.
However, Dodd was following his regular practice of attacking anti-Castro officials, having barred Senate confirmation of Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and driven him from the government.
I have no explanation, although some have their own theories. John Bolton’s nomination to the UN Ambassador position was probably torpedoed by a Cuban spy. No doubt Castro awarded her another medal.
I like the line, “it’s hard to tell the difference between spies and useful idiots.”
I get enraged when I read the details of politicians like Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy. I have fantasies of them being stripped of their citizenship, and exiled to a concrete cell in Mauritania.
Outrageous that Montes’s work is still influencing policy and yet in the link you provided seems a rather plausible explanation for this and for Bolton’s less than favorable reviews. Not only would he have very likely been well suited to push, but more than happy to push to the point of discomfort and force a change.
“The intelligence community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers — sometimes to the point of discomfort.”
No matter what one thinks of Dodd or Kennedy, do you really believe they don’t see Cuba for what it is? Do you really think they actually believe it is a system working for the people? It seems like there has to be more going on under the surface that we don’t know about….
I suspect that they do not see the reality and so believe what they want to believe. Dodd is very hard to understand as he has opposed almost our entire Latin America policy for 20 years. He was pro-Sandanista, for example. I posted a few months ago at TFS about my daughter, who is a lefty and who visited Cuba a couple of years ago. When she got there, she was excited to see if Socialism really works. However, she is fluent in Spanish (Something I doubt is true of Dodd) and soon realized it was a prison.