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used in the semiconductor industry advances so quickly that designs and manufacturing techniques quickly become outdated.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

August 2, 2012

Falling Short in Understanding Cuban Intelligence: Part I in a Series 

  ^{by Chris Simmons}

Tags: Brian Latell, Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI), Directorate of Counterintelligence (DCI), Directorate of Intelligence (DI), Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (CIM), Directorate of Military Intelligence (DIM), Florentino Aspillaga, General Directorate of Counterintelligence (DGCI), Juan Antonio Rodriguez Menier, Wasp Network

In “Cuba’s Intelligence Machine,” the newly released assessment by The University of Miami’s Cuba Transition Project, Dr. Brian Latell provides a breezy and very readable summary of Cuban Intelligence with two notable exceptions:

1. The primary mission and target of Cuban Intelligence is incorrect.
2. The number of Cuban operations known to have been destroyed/degraded by US Counterintelligence is grossly understated.

Today, I will address the first issue.   In “Cuba’s Intelligence Machine,” Latell claims the United States is “the raison d’être” of Cuban intelligence, according to still another experienced defector I interviewed.”

http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/falling-short-in-understanding-cuban-intelligence-part-i-in-a-series-2/

IKEA's Dirty Little Secret .Kelly Cogswell

I love IKEA. Their stuff is cheap. It looks good. They were among the first to use same-sex couples in their advertising. In 2002 the Swedish company ran a print ad in the Netherlands that showed two men kissing while their daughter perched atop a pair of tables, the copy declaring, "My daddies are also a set."
So I was mortified to learn that in the 1970s and '80s they used slave labor. That's what it's called when you use the cut-rate work of political prisoners who get locked up in their cells every night and can't exactly negotiate a raise or even a coffee break.
The news that IKEA used East German forced labor was reported as early as July 2011 in a German.........

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-cogswell/ikeas-dirty-little-secret_b_1510027.html

I love IKEA. Their stuff is cheap. It looks good. They were among the first to use same-sex couples in their advertising. In 2002 the Swedish company ran a print ad in the Netherlands that showed two men kissing while their daughter perched atop a pair of tables, the copy declaring, "My daddies are also a set."
So I was mortified to learn that in the 1970s and '80s they used slave labor. That's what it's called when you use the cut-rate work of political prisoners who get locked up in their cells every night and can't exactly negotiate a raise or even a coffee break.
The news that IKEA used East German forced labor was reported as early as July 2011 in a German television documentary aired on WDR, a regional public broadcasting station. They explained that during the '70s IKEA worked hand-in-glove with the East German government, capitalizing on the cheap labor source. The factory that produced their top-selling Klippan sofa was right next to

STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture, antiques, rum and guns

Posted on Wed, May. 09, 2012

STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture, antiques, rum and guns

By Juan O. Tamayo

jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

The controversial contract to use Cuban prison labor to build IKEA furniture was part of a broader deal between firms run by the Cuban and East German security services that also involved Cuban antiques, cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin.

Documents on the deal, found in the archives of East Germany’s notorious STASI security agency, also refer to Cuban prison labor and indicate that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro personally approved the overall deal, said researcher Jorge Luis García.

Garcia told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday he published an article about the deal in 2006 that mentioned the Cuban manufacture of furniture “for export to Sweden,” and posted a note about it in his blog, STASI-MININT Connection, early last year.

But the deal blossomed into scandal last week after a German newspaper reported that an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in 1987.

The Berlin Wall fell two years later and East Germany — officially the German Democratic Republic — disappeared in 1990 into the Federal Republic of Germany, also sometimes called West Germany.

It remains unclear how much of the 1987 deal was carried out, said the Cuban-born García, who was interrogated in the STASI’s underground cells in East Berlin in 1987. He now guides tours of the cells and researches the agency’s archives.

It was also unclear if prison labor was used to make Cuban products that were not part of the IKEA contract.

One document Garcia found in the archives show the East German firms involved in the deal were Delta GmbH and Art and Antiquities, known as KuA, both controlled by the Interior Ministry, in charge of domestic security. The STASI, which monitored and repressed domestic dissent, was a much feared part of the ministry.

But the companies were officially branches of the government’s foreign trading agency, Kommerzielle Koordinierung. The agency was led by the notorious wheeler-dealer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a STASI officer who defected in 1989.

The document shows that the Havana side of the deal was EMIAT, and described the company as owned by Cuba’s Interior Ministry, or MININT. Like its East 

German counterpart, MININT is in charge of domestic security and runs Cuba’s prisons as well as the General Directory of State Security, which monitors and cracks down on dissidents.

García said the German-language document shows that three officials of KuA and Delta visited Cuba and met with MININT and EMIAT officials Sept. 17-26 of 1987 to discuss a broad array of deals.

“There were visits to production centers. In part, those centers are in penitentiary establishments of the MININT,” Garcia quoted the document as saying. “EMIAT wants to increase the use of those installations for the manufacture of products for export.”

The same document reported that Cuban Foreign Commerce Minister Ricardo Cabrisas had met with the East German visitors and told them “This cooperation has been authorized by Compañero Fidel Castro.”

García added that the document also reported that EMIAT “supplies the guest houses of the government and the Central Committee” of the Cuban Communist Party. “It is also a commercial branch of the MININT.”

A separate document, in Spanish and dated Sept. 26, 1987, is a memorandum of understanding that lists all the agreements reached by the East German visitors and their Cuban hosts, but does not give all the details of all the deals.

The memo notes that the agreements included a deal on “the production of furniture for export to Sweden” — the world headquarters of IKEA — with a total value of 12 million German Marks. But it does not specifically mention IKEA or prison labor.

It appears from the memo that Delta acted on behalf of the Swedish furniture and housewares chain.

Also mentioned in the memo are deals on textiles as well as 10,000 tons of grapefruit juice valued at 4.5 million marks, 200,000 bottles of rum and 200,000 cigars — all three products highly coveted in East Germany because of their “tropical” image.

KuA also ordered three containers of “antique furniture,” the memo added. Castro’s government seized tens of thousands of valuable antiques, paintings and sculptures as wealthy families fled abroad in the early years of the revolution and had to leave their property there.

The Cuban partners also asked for KuA help in exporting to the non-communist world what the document called “Oldtimers” — the antique U.S.-made cars and trucks still seen in Cuban streets to this day. “400 Oldtimers are ready for export,” the document said.

Also mentioned in the memo were sales to East Germany of Cuban shellfish, coffee, precious metals and even coffins, García said by telephone from Berlin. He also provided digital copies of some of the documents.

But there was no indication of which agreements were turned into legal contracts, or which contracts were actually carried out.

Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin in the late 1980s as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began cutting subsidies to the island.

Other documents published in Germany last week showed that the initial batch of IKEA sofas produced in Cuba had quality problems, and that a group of Delta officials had to travel to the island to fix the issue. There was no indication of what happened.

The memorandum of understanding was signed by three representatives of Delta and KuA as well as EMIAT chief Lt. Col. Enrique Sanchez, the first secretary at the Cuban embassy to East Germany and Gen. Santiago Borges. García said other STASI documents show Borges ran MININT logistics.

García said another document in the STASI archives, reporting on the East Germans’ trip to Cuba, showed Havana authorities were so happy that they made KuA president Axel Hilpert an honorary MININT colonel and upgraded his flight home to first class.

After he returned to East Berlin, Hilpert brokered the sale of 2,200 U.S.-made Colt pistols in Cuban stockpiles — apparently left over from pre-Castro days — to a Los Angeles weapons dealer, according to the document quoted by García.

Hilpert, a long-time STASI agent code-named “Monika,” became wealthy after the collapse of East Germany, telling reporters that he had made profitable contacts with Western business people during his years at Kommerzielle Koordinierung.

He was investigated in the 1990s in a case involving forged Cuban mail stamps, and the mishandling of some funds during the final days of East Germany, and is now jailed while under investigation on other complaints.

But he is still the co-owner of record of the four-star Resort Schwielowsee in the former East Germany, which hosted a 2007 gathering of G-8 finance ministers. A single room at the lakeside resort near Berlin goes for about $160 a night.

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