Is your .45 an ex-Cuban?

 Is your .45 an ex-Cuban?

Story

17th May 2007, 12:31

A spy tale from the Wall Street Journal - read the bold parts. Makes you wonder, considering the dealer paid about $63 per pistol...

Secret Police Past
Doesn't Cramp
Style of Stasi Agent
His Resort Outside Berlin
Plays Host to G8 Ministers;
The Files on Axel Hilpert
By MARCUS WALKER
May 17, 2007; Page A1

BERLIN -- Gordon Brown, the next prime minister of Britain, a deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury and other grandees of global finance will convene here tomorrow at a lakeside luxury resort featuring American-style clapboard villas, rose-petal baths and tai chi classes.

Their unusual host: a longtime agent of the former East Germany's feared secret police, the Stasi.

Axel Hilpert, the resort's co-owner, rented it to the German government for the meeting of ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialized economies. Long before the 59-year-old became a successful and well-connected property developer, Mr. Hilpert was an undercover agent, code name "Monika," decorated by both the German Democratic Republic and Fidel Castro's Cuba.

 http://forum.m1911.org/archive/index.php/t-30875.html

Abstracts of Documents:The cooperation between the Ministry of Internal Affairs of People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republic Cuba /Bulgarian Intelligence & Security Services in the Cold War

Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria
Coordinator: Dr. Jordan Baev
e-mail: baevj@mail.orbitel.bg

  Research Blog by Jorge L. García Vázquez: "The Havana-Berlin Connection

                                                                                                                              CC BCP

Secretariat Secret Resolution re: Training Cuban security officers in Bulgaria, 8 June 1966 [Source: CDA, Fond 1-B, Opis 64, File 352] RESOLUTION "B" No 8 Of The Secretariat of The Central Committee of The Bulgarian Communist Party from June 8th 1966. The CC BCP Secretariat approves the proposal Comrade Pineiro to visit our country. We can accept 30 people for training only on counterintelligence work. We have no conditions to train people on sabotage.1 Top Secret [Translated by Kalina Bratanova] 1 Handwritten resolution by Todor Zhivkov, First Secretary CC BCP and Prime Minister of PR of Bulgaria .

 TO THE SECRETARY OF THE CC BCP COMRADE LUCHEZAR AVRAMOV Comrade Avramov, At a meeting with Comandante Sergio Del Valle – Politburo member of the Cuban Communist Party, captain Osmani Cienfuegos – head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CC of the CCP and Secretary General of the Tricontinental Committee and Comandante Manuel Pineiro - member of the CC of the CCP and head of the State Security service, before my departure from Havana on May 21st there was a demand for accepting 30 Cuban comrades for training in sabotage and contra revolutionary activity. They consider the training period to be about a year and the training itself should be at our expense. They expect to receive an to our country to coordinate the details. I answered I would report the issue to the respective people and they would be informed aanswer in principle not later than June 5th or 6th this year. They can send Comandante Pineiro bout the result. I would like to ask you for your instructions. June 4th 1966 Sofia [Gen. Angel Solakov, Chairman of the State Security Committee]  Ministry of the Interior. Sofia, Fond 1, Record 10a, File 561). 
  
"We have sent information to MVR-Cuba concerning a completed case, information and materials on the operational-investigating work, the organization, structure and activities of VAI - Ministry of Defense."(1). Trad. Greta Keremidchieva).   AMVR Fond 1 Record 12 File 43

Agreement for collaboration between Bulgarian and Cuban Ministries of the Interior, Source: AMVR, Fond 1, Record 10, File 1214]   
 /Bulgarian Intelligence and Security Services in the Cold War years Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria. Coordinator: Dr. Jordan Baev (2)Handbook of the Comunist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe Institute of National Remembrance, Warszawa, Poland /Bulgaria, Jordan Baev, Kostadin Grozev/

[

Draft!

Top secret!

Only copy

AGREEMENT

For cooperation between the Ministry of Internal Affairs of People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republic Cuba

[…]

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People’s republic of Bulgaria and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Cuba […] agreed upon the following:

Article 1

Both countries will cooperate in the obtaining of political, economic and military information for the USA, Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, China and Albania, NATO, the Vatican, Latin America, about the activities of the USA and NATO in the African countries, for other organizations and military pacts, as well as about the contradictions in and between them and will exchange information on the following issues:

- about the forms and the methods of the activities of the hostile intelligence services and the planned and fulfilled actions and operations implemented by them, about the activities of the Zionist centers, Maoism, emigrant and other reactionary organizations and sects, conducted against the People's Republic of Bulgaria, Republic Cuba and the other socialist countries, about the staff and the agents of these services, centers, units and organizations;

- about different companies, institutions and organizations used by the intelligence of the capitalist countries, which carry out subversive activities against the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Republic Cuba, about the activities of the military attaches and the intelligence agents working from legal positions, about provocative actions against the citizens of against the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Republic Cuba; about data and materials, obtained by .....Translated by Yulia Cherneva]

[

     
 Research Blog by Jorge L. García Vázquez: "The Havana-Berlin Connection: State Secrets and Notes on the Collaboration between the Stasi and MININT "                                                                                                                           www.stasi-minint.blogspot.com/ http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/media/Pdf1/CartadeRC.pdf

"East German foreign intelligence: myth, reality and controversy"

 http://books.google.de/books?id=WZOyf8bAStIC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false

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/