FLASHBACK: Obama Continuing to Spend $20 Million on USAID Subversion in Cuba

Granma

Havana, Cuba, June 16, 2011

by Jean-Guy Allard

WHILE the economic crisis is sentencing hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to poverty, the Washington government continues channeling tens of millions of dollars into plans of interference whose ineffectiveness is well known.

This is the case with USAID subversion plots in Cuba which, according to analysts, have merely served to prompt the arrest and sentencing of one of the employee’s of this State Department body.

The U.S. administration’s obsession for programs costing $20 million to “promote democracy in Cuba” and which are a front for intelligence and destabilization activities, has come up against the decision taken by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to suspend funds for these programs on April 1.

The USAID programs aimed at Cuba and comprising “investments” in anti-government groups and intelligence have ineffectively cost $150 million from the 90s.

According to Kerry himself, U.S. funds were utilized to artificially mobilize protest in Cuba through deeply penetrated dissident groups, to the point that American money is in fact helping to “finance” Cuban state security bodies.

Criticizing USAID’s activities, Kerry condemned the use of coded communications, secret codes and pseudonyms, all characteristic of intelligence operations, and has ordered an investigation into widespread fraud within the program.

Kerry has stated that there is no evidence that the programs are helping the Cuban people, and that they would seem to have done little more than to provoke the Cuban government into arresting a U.S. government employee.

This was a reference to Alan P. Gross, of Potomac, Maryland, arrested in Havana in 2009 after illegally giving contacts on the island latest generation satellite communications equipment.

Replying to Kerry, the Obama administration admitted that the so-called pro-democracy programs have been utilized to call international attention to activists recruited, financed, directed and promoted outside of Cuba.

In its written argument, USAID strangely attributes to itself the existence of a rap festival in Cuba, as if this musical genre was an element of its subversive programs.

Its more recent projects include programs to help gays – which already exist on the island – and people with disabilities, as if Cuba did not have wide-ranging free services far superior to those available in the United States in this sphere.

Kerry’s suspension of funds has been attacked by Senator Bob Menéndez, known for his links with the Cuban-American terrorist mafia, whose anti-Castro NGO’s have in the past received million-dollar handouts on many occasions.

Similar or harsher criticism has come from Ileana Ros-Lethinen, Mario Díaz-Balart and other members of the mafiosi clan in the House of Representatives.