Johann Sebastian Bach, the “Stasi” and Cuba

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Arch Ritter

By Arch Ritter

My wife Joan and I completed our J. S. Bach “Pilgrimage” in late November, 2011, travelling to the various locations where he lived and worked. Our first stop was his birthplace Eisenach where he attended the same school as Martin Luther – but about two centuries later. Then came Ohrdruf, where he lived from age 9 to 15 with his eldest brother, J. C. Bach, also an organist and composer, with whom he studied the organ – both its music and its maintenance and construction. Bach then was capellmeister, organist or court musician in a variety of locations, namely Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar, and Köthen before moving to Leipzig for his last 23 years.
http://thecubaneconomy.com/articles/2011/12/johann-sebastian-bach-the-%E2%80%9Cstasi%E2%80%9D-and-cuba/

 

"The Sordid History of Cuba's Spy Apparatus"
Appendix to Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder
by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton

---

To those who labor under the misconception that Fidel Castro’s regime was incapable of maintaining a secret pipeline to a Lee Oswald, or not inclined to authorize and/or condone assassinations, an overview of Castro’s spy agencies might prove instructive. Traditionally, it has been infinitely easier to obtain operational details and internal structural layouts for the offices of America’s secret warriors than for those of its intelligence adversaries. This is especially true for Cuba’s spy apparatus. Given the relative transparency of the US government, thousands of books and monographs have been written on CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc. But for those seeking to determine if Cuba’s spooks were prone to instigate (or even condone, as in the Kennedy case) foreign assassinations, it has been near impossible to get answers. However, when one pieces together testimony, CIA debriefs, and interviews from Cuba’s spy defectors, some very close to the top of its bureaucracy, a consistent and far different picture emerges of Cuba’s intel modus operandi than most would assume.
    The New York Times called Cuba's intelligence apparatus the “Little Spy Engine That Could.”  Indeed, far from being the undersized counterintelligence force that is commonly perceived for the diminutive nation, Cuba’s secret services are surprisingly aggressive and proactive. In fact, despite its weak economy and small size, the island nation boasts an intelligence arm that, relatively speaking, is much larger than that of the United States, with wide-ranging clandestine operations ongoing throughout the globe. The only small nation that even comes close to Cuba’s spycraft intensity is Israel.

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_451-475/doc0451.html

Sunlight is the Best Medicine: Cuba and the Stasi

  

by: PiledHigherandDeeper

Sun Nov 04, 2007 at 08:20:38 PST

I often find discussions about Cuba frustratingly polemic. On one side are the demonizers, who see everything the Cuban government does as evil, even if it's providing free healthcare, education, or inculcating equality as a value in Cuban society that is not going to be erased by any infusion of capital. On the other side are the romanticizers, who  have such tight blinders on that they cannot see anything wrong with anything the Cuban government does. They refuse to admit that the central management system in Cuba suffers from severe bureaucratism, and they rationalize away the human rights abuses that certainly do take place on the island with a Bush-like excuse of, "we'll they're under constant threat, so they have to take tough security measures." What, so it's OK to torture somebody if you're a Cuban government official but not if you're a Bush Administration one?
Really, the only way we're going to get a better perspective on any of this is to get rid of the idiotic embargo and restore full diplomatic relations between the two countries. That's when the dirty laundry will also come out. Like Cuba's relationship with the Stasi.

http://www.docudharma.com/diary/1983/

East Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying

East Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying

ESPIONAGE
E. Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying (2007)

A once-jailed Cuban exile's research reveals how East Germany exported its repressive Stasi security system to Cuba, where it lives on

BY MICHAEL LEVITIN
Special to The Miami Herald

BERLIN –

In the cavernous underground jail once run by East Germany's notorious Stasi security agency, Jorge Luís Vázquez leads a visitor into a dank,tiny, pitch-black cell, then slams the iron door shut. 

The world vanishes into darkness. Moments later, the door swings open and light returns.''Well, how was it?'' asks Vázquez, a Cuban exile who was jailed in oneof these very Stasi cells in 1987, when East Germany was under communist rule, and now leads tours through

More importantly, he has found hundreds of East German government documents on Stasi relations with Cuba's own feared Ministry of the Interior, known as MININT, and is nearly finished writing what may well be the most thorough report to date on the links between the two security agencies.

Vázquez says he found the MININT is ''almost a copy'' of the repressive Stasi security system, exported by East Germany to Cuba in the 1970s and'80s, and that the ties between the two organizations run far deeper than previously known.

From how to bug tourist hotel rooms to an intriguing mention of the hallucinogenic LSD, the degree to which the Stasi trained and provided material and technical support to the security arm of Fidel Castro's regime had a sweeping and harsh impact on Cuba.


http://www.michaellevitin.com/politics/east-germans-drew-blueprint-for-cuban-spying/