Numbers Stations: A Bad Day to be a Cuban Spy. By Chris Simmons

Numbers Stations: A Bad Day to be a Cuban Spy

by Chris Simmons

 http://cubaconfidential.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/swlingpost-spy-numbers-station.jpg?w=560

By Thomas, The SWLing Post

While band scanning last Sunday (September 8, 2014) I stumbled upon the Cuban numbers station HM01 on 11,530 kHz at 17:30 UTC.

It’s always intriguing to hear shortwave numbers stations, but I prefer those that stick to pure vocal number strings; HM01 has numbers with digital bursts between number sets, which is a more fatiguing listening experience.  Nonetheless, I kept it playing in the background as I tooled around the radio room Sunday afternoon, putting away supplies from my recent three week road trip.

"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 Vasquez reported.."

 http://stasi-minint.blogspot.de/2014/01/atencion-atencion-havana-moonlas.html

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

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/16/3939953/cuban-spies-received-secret-messages.html#storylink=cpy

FBI: Cuban Intelligence, Spies and Influence Agents

FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents

by Chris Simmons

By Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon

Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.

Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],” the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans “devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.”

“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” the report concludes.

https://www.phc.edu/intelligencer/entryway-to-espionage

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/fbi-cuban-intelligence-aggressively-recruiting-leftist-american-academics-as-spies-influence-agents/

Former DGI Officer Identifies 17 Castro Spies

Former DGI Officer Identifies 17 Castro Spies by Chris Simmons

DGI officer and Ambassador, René Ceballo Prats

Cubans Involved In Peru-Based Espionage Operations During The 1970s & 1980s

Former Dirección General De Inteligencia (DGI) officer Enrique García Diaz served on the “Peru Desk” at DGI headquarters during this period. During an interview, he explained that three other officers also worked the “desk:” Eulalia Sardain (codenamed "Mayra"), René Ceballo Prats ("Ibrahim") and Ismael Cruz Arce ("Jose Luis"). Two additional DGI officers who worked with García Diaz on Peru issues were Juan Pedro Gonzalez ("Giraldo") and Jose Francisco Molina Mauri ("Ivan").

 http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/former-dgi-officer-identifies-17-castro-spies/

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.