The training of Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence officers in the techniques of the East German “counterintelligence state”

 "It is well known and documented that Soviet and East European communist intelligence services played key roles in training guerrilla cadres of all types, including those engaged in insurgent intelligence and CI work.These complex, multifaceted support efforts—carried out clandestinely in insurgent host countries and in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and third country camps and facilities as well—trained several generations of insurgents and terrorists in pertinent skills including those of intelligence and counterintelligence. This history is too extensive to be addressed here but needs to be considered as a backdrop in more focused assessments of current approaches. One example is worth noting, however, since it contributed so much 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 the Stasi. Stasi training and support efforts covered a number of areas of the world. Its influence, however, was particularly strong in Cuba, where the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MINIT) was charged with a broad spectrum of internal and external security functions and became in many respects a close Stasi analog. The nature of the close relationship had been asserted and partially documented for years in Western assessments. The training of Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence officers in the techniques of the East German “counterintelligence state” was evident in many ways. The demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1990 and consequent access to Stasi files confirmed and expanded the understanding of the relationship. Regarding guerrilla CI, this relationship is important because Cuban trainers played substantial roles in passing on their knowledge to Latin American and other insurgent groups. Cuban researcher Jorge Luís Vázquez, 33 ..." 

http://www.slideshare.net/CIARO/jsou-guerrilla-counterintelligence

Cuban spies received secret messages by old-time short-wave

By Juan O. Tamayo

Every week, one short wave radio station in Cuba broadcasts 97 messages coded in fax-like tones. A computer program easily available to the public changes the tones into numbers, and the Cuban spies then decode the numbers into words.
A second Cuban spy station transmits 16 messages per week in the dots and dashes of the 175-year-old Morse code – secret messages to Havana spies who may be older or less technologically savvy.
Sixteen years after the arrests in Miami of five Cuban spies who got their secret orders by short wave transmissions, Havana is still using a system that fell out of favor in the cloak-and-dagger world with the end of the Cold War.
There are many more modern and efficient ways of communicating secrets by using satellites, burst transmissions, one-time emails and other means, said Chris Simmons, a retired Pentagon counter-intelligence officer who specialized on Cuban affairs.

It transmits 11 to 14 messages per day, a total of 96 per week, on the same schedule each week but using a dozen different short wave frequencies, said Chris Smolinski, 41, a Maryland software engineer who monitors the spy stations as a hobby.

Cuba’s most famous numbers station, known as “Atención” because of the opening line of the deadpan female voice in Spanish that started its transmissions, went off the air just late last year, Smolinski.
The lack of any accent in the voice of the Atención station was explained in December by Jorge García Vázquez, a Cuban in Berlin who has been researching the links between Havana and the STASI, the former East Germany’ intelligence service.A Jan. 10 1977 letter in the STASI archives shows Cuban intelligence Maj. Eddy Herrera had requested the equipment for a numbers station, preloaded with the Spanish words for one through zero, Attention, Goodbye and Final, Garcia Vázquez reported.

 http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/16/3939953/cuban-spies-received-secret-messages.html

Cuba’s Military Power Elite Principal Government Institutions by the Cuba Transition Project

"CUBA FACTS Issue 61 Cuba Facts is an ongoing series of succinct fact sheets on various topics, including, but not limited to, political structure, health, economy, education, nutrition, labor, business, foreign investment, and demographics, published and updated on a regular basis by the Cuba Transition Project staff. Cuba’s Military Power Elite Principal Government Institutions"

 http://www.cuba-l.com/011414-cuba-facts-miami-cubas-military-power-elite/

December 17, 2013

“Retired” Spy Back in Europe as Cuban Ambassador to Germany 

 by Chris Simmons

http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/retired-spy-back-in-europe-as-cuban-ambassador-to-germany/

http://socialistunity.com/interview-with-the-cuban-ambassador/

Alemania, 17 de diciembre de 2013. El embajador de Cuba ante la República Federal de Alemania, René Juan Mujica Cantelar, fue recibido en la Sede del legislativo por el Dr. Gregor Gysi, Jefe de la Fracción del partido La Izquierda en el Parlamento Federal alemán.

Castro-Oswald-Kennedy: Conundrum or Nonsense? 

Tags: Alfredo Mirabal, Brian Latell, Cuban Intelligence, Jack Childs, JFK Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Luisa Calderon, Vladimir Rodrigiez-Lahera

 

By Miguel Fernandez

Last Monday, ex-CIA analyst Dr. Brian Latell and Miami Herald journalist Glen Garvin addressed it at the University of Miami. The thesis statement, “Castro and the Kennedy Assassination,” became ironical.
After clumsily manipulating the reports of both FBI super spy Jack Childs and Cuban Consul Alfredo Mirabal, recycling the fairy tales of foreknowledge with Luisa Calderon and Vladimir Rodriguez-Lahera (AMMUG-1) in the leading roles, and re-telling “the Jaimanitas story” by Florentino Aspillaga (TOUCHDOWN), Dr. Latell added a “new discovery” for proving a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Castro’s intelligence machine: Oswald stayed for six days at the center of the pro-Castro activities in Mexico City.

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/castro-oswald-kennedy-conundrum-or-nonsense/

Did Castro Get Kennedy? Humberto Fontova | Nov 23, 2011

For 34 years Markus Wolf was the chief of East Germany's foreign intelligence service, a branch of the STASI with many contacts and operations in Castro's Cuba. It was the STASI rather than the KGB that undertook the training of Castro's police and intelligence services. Wolf's autobiography is titled, "Man Without a Face" and subtitled, "The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster." Most intelligence experts agree that the subtitle fits. Wolf was once asked about the Kennedy assassination and quickly replied. "Don't ask me -- ask Fidel Castro."

 http://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2011/11/23/did_castro_get_kennedy/page/full

They Came in From the Cold War

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: November 12, 2006

  In his memoir, “Man Without a Face,” Markus Wolf chronicled his 34 years directing the foreign intelligence service of East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, or Stasi. His network of spies infiltrated NATO headquarters and the West German chancellery. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/weekinreview/12excerpts.html?_r=0

From the Jewish Museum to the Stasi Museum by Yoani sanchez

And not very far from there, stands the Stasi Museum. I enter their cells, the interrogation rooms. I come from the perspective of a Cuban who was detained in the same place, where a window looking outward becomes an unattainable dream. One cell was lined with rubber, the scratch marks of the prisoners can still be seen on its walls. But more sinister seeming to me are the offices where they ripped — or fabricated — a confession from the detainees. I know them, I’ve seen them. They are a copy of their counterpart in Cuba, copied to a T by the diligent students from the Island’s Ministry of the Interior who were taught by GDR State Security. Impersonal, with a chair the prisoner can’t move because it is anchored to the floor and some supposed curtain behind which the microphone or video camera are hidden. And the constant metallic noises from the rattling of the locks and bars, to remind the prisoners where they are, how much they are at the mercy of their jailer.

 
 Yoani Sanchez/Jorge García Vázquez
 Foto: Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen

 http://generacionyen.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/from-the-jewish-museum-to-the-stasi-museum/