Panama finds more munitions aboard ship travelling from Cuba to North Korean

Posted: 11 Aug 2013 02:31 AM PDT

Panama finds more munitions aboard ship travelling from Cuba to North Korean
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AUGUST 10, 2013
PANAMA CITY - Authorities in Panama say they have found more explosives
aboard a North Korean-flagged ship detained in the Panama Canal for
carrying undeclared arms from Cuba.
Anti-drug prosecutor Javier Caraballo said Saturday that inspectors
found a kind of "anti-tank RPG (rocket-propelled grenade)" explosive
when they opened one of five wooden boxes on the Chong Chon Gang. He
said the other boxes were not opened because of security fears.
The discovery comes just over a week after authorities said
explosive-sniffing dogs had found another batch of ammunition for
grenade launchers and other unidentified types of munitions.
The ship was seized July 15 based on intelligence that it may have been
carrying drugs.
The manifest said it was carrying 10,000 tons of sugar, but Cuban
military equipment was found beneath the sacks.
Source: "Panama finds more munitions aboard ship travelling from Cuba to
North Korean" -
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Panama+finds+more+munitions+aboard+ship+travelling+from+Cuba/8774524/story.html

CDR - The Number of Spies is Not Rationed

CDR: The Number of Spies is Not Rationed / Tania Diaz Castro
Posted on August 13, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, July, www.cubanet.org. Cubans know that Fidel Castro's
government, since its inception, violated citizens' right to privacy of.
On September 28, 1960 he founded the Committees for the Defense of the
Revolution (CDR), an organization with fascist roots, whose program is
"Everyone spies on each other."

I know — because I worked as a young woman in that organization for four
years — that even Raul Castro himself did not like the idea of the CDR.

This organization not only served to divide the people, but also to
systematically violate the privacy of everyone, to end the right of each
individual to his or her own privacy.

Perhaps Mr. Edward Snowden, fugitive ex-CIA agent, as they say here, for
trying to alert Americans about government wiretapping, does not know
much about the history of our dictatorship, nor is he interested to
know. But what is incomprehensible is that it is definitely the Cuban
government and its unconditional friends of ALBA, who are the most
ardent supporters of this man, who supposedly fights to defend the right
of individuals to privacy.

The history of the CDR has left a bitter taste in Cuban society. Gossip,
slander, envy, lies and hatred all proliferated.

From the 1980s, the phones of those of us who are in the peaceful
opposition, along with those of hundreds of thousands of citizens who do
not support the Castro regime, were tapped through a listening center of
the Interior Ministry, a program widely criticized by civil rights
advocates, in clear violation of the Constitution.

I remember in 1987, my little girl picked up our home phone and heard a
man say he was going to crush me with his car, because I was a
counterrevolutionary cockroach — as Fidel Castro publicly called those
who opposed him. My daughter, crying, could barely repeat the words of
that person who was complying with an order from State Security.

Then there were no more threats. The phone service that I had since long
before the Revolution was suspended, along with that of all those who
belonged to the Human Rights Movement in Havana. And to make us feel
watched, a video camera operated 24 hours a day in front of our houses.

This organization of tips or snitches even has its museum, Fidel
Castro's idea, for anyone who wants to know its entrails. It is located
on busy Obispo Street, at number 310, in Havana. Exhibited there are
historical documents which reflect the spying of some CDRs, with
multiple complaints to neighbors, humble people, so-called internal
enemies of the Revolution.
This ancient and valuable building on the capital boulevard today
represents one of the most unfortunate and unsuccessful stories of
Castro, in which a good part of the people served as volunteer
protagonists, to police one another, in order to prop up a bankrupt regime.

The significance of this organization in times of structural changes,
occurring now under the Raul Castro regime, remains to be seen. The
neighbors are no longer the "eyes and ears" of the Revolution, the
fundamental element for detecting the unhappy. Today almost everyone is
unhappy. So the question is who spies on whom, if everyone sees that
Fidelista socialism is dissolving, like a handful of salt in a toilet bowl.
Monday, July 29, 2013 | By Tania Diaz Castro
Source: "CDR: The Number of Spies is Not Rationed / Tania Diaz Castro |
Translating Cuba" -

http://translatingcuba.com/cdr-the-number-of-spies-is-not-rationed-tania-diaz-castro/

Payá was Murdered by Cuban Secret Services

Angel Carromero, who was sentenced to prison in Havana for the death of two Cuban dissidents in a car accident, said in an interview published Sunday by Spain’s daily newspaper El Mundo, which was subsequently reported by the news service EFE, that Cuba’s secret service murdered Oswaldo Payá.

Meanwhile, Ofelia Acevedo, Payá’s widow, said she hopes Carromero’s interview “will add clarity about the attempt on my husband’s life.”
In an interview with El Nuevo Herald Sunday night, Acevedo said that she and the rest of her family never trusted the Cuban government’s version of the accident.
According to EFE and El Mundo, Carromero also said that he is convinced that Payá and another dissident leader who accompanied him survived the accident. “The nurses and a priest,” he was quoted as saying, “assured me that all four of us were admitted at the hospital.”

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/carromero-paya-was-murdered-by-cuban-secret-services/

Cuban Dissident Says Security Forces are Studying Vladimir Putin’s Rule

Cuban Dissident Says Security Forces are Studying Vladimir Putin’s Rule by Chris Simmons

By Juan O. Tamayo, jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban security officers are studying post-communist changes in Russia — and being nicer to dissidents — in preparation for a possible transition away from the island’s totalitarian system, leading opposition activist Guillermo Fariñas said Tuesday.

  http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/cuban-dissident-says-security-forces-are-studying-vladimir-putins-rule/

Then, in July 2008, Dr. Joel F. Brenner, Director of the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (an element of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) said: "The Russians and the Chinese remain big problems for us. The Cubans are a problem for us and the Iranians are a big problem for us... and the Cubans have a very accomplished set of intel services and they are something we have to watch

OPED: Forgotten Cuba? Is Washington Playing Word Games in Latest Espionage Estimate?

 By Chris Simmons

A key example of Havana’s success in economic espionage is the case of Guillermo “Bill” Gaede, In the 1980s, Cuba recruited Gaede to steal information on computer software and provide it to case officers in Mexico. Havana, in turn, passed the information to the USSR and East Germany until the end of the Cold War. Gaede, an Argentine communist and software engineer, worked for Advanced Micro Devices, Incorporated in Sunnyvale, California from 1979-1993. He provided Cuba with AMD specs, designs, “Blue Books,” masks, wafers, and small measuring devices.

Experts said Russia, with whom Cuba shared its stolen information, possibly narrowed the US technology lead by exploiting the chip designs and manufacturing techniques, which AMD spent millions of dollars to develop. Experts opined that Gaede’s damage was limited, as the technology used in the semiconductor industry advances so quickly that designs and manufacturing techniques quickly become outdated. However, the damage control provided by the experts failed to address the true effect of systematic and long-term economic espionage.

Gaede later claimed his initial motivation was his belief in communism, but this motivation waned after he repeatedly traveled to Cuba and became disillusioned. He left AMD in 1993 because of mistaken fears that the company would soon detect his misconduct. The technology giant Intel then hired him and greed became his motivator. He filmed the entire process used to make the Pentium chip, down to the smallest technical detail. He subsequently sold the information to China and Iran, which paid him handsomely. The secrets stolen from ADM and Intel ultimately earned Gaede the nickname, the “The Billion Dollar Spy.” He was arrested in late 1995.

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/oped-forgotten-cuba-is-washington-playing-word-games-in-latest-espionage-estimate/

La Tecnología de los Otros. Espionaje industrial STASI MININT
Jorge L. García Vázquez
Berlin

"En cuanto a la información de la AMD, en esta ocasión le hacemos una entrega voluminosa que comprende 2,526 documentos con total de 62,618 páginas. Los especialistas cubanos afirman que estos materiales tienen un gran valor para un país que, como el suyo, tenga un fuerte desarrollo de la industria microelectrónica.Los documentos que le remito contienen las descripciones tecnológicas completas de varios procesos muy modernos que ha creado esta firma norteamericana...”
Las informaciones entregadas contenían detalladamente las descripciones tecnológicas de los procesos creados por AMD, entre ellos el IMOX, desarrollado para producir circuitos integrados bipolares de alta velocidad de operación, el proceso HV-4, utilizado en la producción de dispositivos de alto voltaje, que se usan en la técnica telefónica  y el SLIC, un dispositivo necesario en la técnica telefónica digital.
Agregaba además  1,426 cartas tecnológicas que describen los procesos de fabricación de circuitos integrados de la AMD..
 http://stasi-minint.blogspot.de/2011/12/la-tecnologia-de-los-otros-el-espionaje.html

Cuba & Czechoslovakia Begin Bilateral Intelligence Operation

Today in History: Cuba & Czechoslovakia Begin Bilateral Intelligence Operation by Chris Simmons

By 1962, intelligence cooperation already existed between Cuba and Czechoslovakia. Prague’s primary assistance was aiding selected Latin Americans in their covert travels to and from Cuba...

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/today-in-history-cuba-czechoslovakia-begin-bilateral-intelligence-operation/

The training ofCuban intelligence and counterintelligence officers in the techniques of theEast German “counterintelligence state:

"It is well known and documented that Soviet and East European com-munist intelligence services played key roles in training guerrilla cadres ofall types, including those engaged in insurgent intelligence and CI work.These complex, multifaceted support efforts—carried out clandestinely ininsurgent host countries and in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and third coun-try camps and facilities as well—trained several generations of insurgentsand terrorists in pertinent skills including those of intelligence and coun-terintelligence. This history is too extensive to be addressed here but needsto be considered as a backdrop in more focused assessments of currentapproaches. One example is worth noting, however, since it contributed somuch to guerrilla approaches in a region of the world. The example is the role of the East German Ministry for State Security(Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit—MfR), more commonly known as theStasi. Stasi training and support efforts covered a number of areas of theworld. Its influence, however, was particularly strong in Cuba, where theCuban Ministry of the Interior (MINIT) was charged with a broad spectrumof internal and external security functions and became in many respectsa close Stasi analog. The nature of the close relationship had been assertedand partially documented for years in Western assessments. The training ofCuban intelligence and counterintelligence officers in the techniques of theEast German “counterintelligence state” was evident in many ways. The demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1990 and conse-quent access to Stasi files confirmed and expanded the understanding ofthe relationship. Regarding guerrilla CI, this relationship is important because Cubantrainers played substantial roles in passing on their knowledge to LatinAmerican and other insurgent groups. Cuban researcher Jorge Luís Vázquez, 33 ..." http://www.slideshare.net/CIARO/jsou-guerrilla-counterintelligence