Agee on U.S. Infiltration

Former CIA agent tells: How US infiltrates "civil society" to overthrow
governments
______________________________________________

BY PHILIP AGEE

08/03/03: Condemnation of Cuba was immediate, strong and practically global
following the imprisonment of 75 political dissidents and the execution of three
ferry hijackers. Prominent among the critics were past friends of Cuba of
recognised international stature.

As I read the hundreds of denunciations that came through my mail, it was
easy to see how enemies of the revolution had seized on those issues to condemn
Cuba for violations of human rights. They had a field day.
Deliberate or careless confusion between the political dissidents and the
hijackers, two entirely unrelated matters, was also easy because the events
happened at the same time. A Vatican publication went so far as to describe the
hijackers as dissidents when in fact they were terrorists. But others of good
faith toward Cuba also jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation treating the two
issues as one.

With respect to the imprisonment of 75 civil society activists, the main
victim has been history, for these people were central to US government efforts
to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the work of the revolution.
Indeed, regime change, as overthrowing governments has come to be known, has
been the continuing US goal in Cuba since the earliest days of the revolutionary
government. Programs to achieve this goal have included propaganda to denigrate
the revolution, diplomatic and commercial isolation, trade embargo, terrorism
and military support to counter-revolutionaries, the Bay of Pigs invasion,
assassination plots against Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, biological and
chemical warfare, and, more recently, efforts to foment an internal political
opposition masquerading as an independent civil society.

The administration of US President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s decided
that more than terrorist operations were needed to impose regime change in Cuba.
Terrorism hadn’t worked, nor had the Bay of Pigs invasion, nor had Cuba’s
diplomatic isolation, nor had the economic embargo. Now Cuba would be included
in a new world-wide program to finance and develop non-governmental and
voluntary organisations, what was to become known as civil society, within the
context of US global neoliberal policies.
Coups

The CIA and the Agency for International Development (AID) would have key
roles in this program as well as a new organisation christened in 1983 the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Actually, the new program was not really new. Since its founding in 1947,
the CIA had been deeply involved in secretly funding and manipulating foreign
non-governmental voluntary organisations.
These vast operations circled the globe and targeted political parties,
trade unions and business associations, youth and student organisations, women’s
groups, civic organisations, religious communities, professional, intellectual
and cultural societies, and the public information media. The network functioned
at local, national, regional and global levels.

Over the years, the CIA exerted phenomenal influence behind the scenes in
country after country, using these powerful elements of civil society to
penetrate, divide, weaken and destroy organisations on the left, and indeed to
impose regime change by toppling governments.
Such was the case, among many others, in Guyana, where in 1964, culminating
10 years of efforts, the Cheddi Jagan government was overthrown through strikes,
terrorism, violence and arson perpetrated by CIA agents in the trade unions.
About the same time, while I was a CIA agent assigned to Ecuador, our agents
in civil society, through mass demonstrations and civil unrest, provoked two
military coups in three years against elected, civilian governments.

Anyone who has watched the opposition to President Hugo Chavez’s government
in Venezuela develop can be certain that the CIA, AID and the NED are
coordinating the destabilisation and were behind the failed coup in April 2002
as well as the failed civic strikeof last December-January.
The Cuban American National Foundation was, predictably, one of the first
beneficiaries of NED funding. From 1983 to 1988, CANF received US$390,000 for
anti-Castro activities. NED
The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but
it receives a yearly appropriation from the US Congress. The money is channelled
through four core foundations. These are the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs (linked to the Democratic Party); the International
Republican Institute (Republican Party); the American Center for International
Labor Solidarity; and the Center for International Private Enterprise (US
Chamber of Commerce).

According to its web site, the NED also gives money directly to groups
abroad who are working for human rights, independent media, the rule of law, and
a wide range of civil society initiatives.
The NED’s NGO status provides the fiction that recipients of NED money are
getting privaterather than US government money. This is important because so
many countries, including both the US and Cuba, have laws relating to their
citizens being paid to carry out activities for foreign governments.
The US requires an individual or organisation subject to foreign controlto
register with the attorney general and to file detailed activities reports,
including finances, every six months.
Cuba has its own laws criminalising actions intended to jeopardise its
sovereignty or territorial integrity as well as actions supporting the goals of
the anti-Cuba US Helms-Burton Act of 1996, such as collecting information to
support the US embargo or to subvert the government, or for disseminating US
government information to undermine the Cuban government.

Efforts to develop an opposition civil society in Cuba had already begun in
1985 with the early NED grants to CANF. These efforts received a significant
boost with passage in 1992 of the Cuban Democracy Act, better known as the
Torricelli Act, which promoted support, through US NGOs, of individuals and
organisations committed to non-violent democratic change in Cuba.
A still greater intensification came with passage in 1996 of the Cuban
Liberty and Solidarity Act, better known as the Helms-Burton Act.
As a result of these laws, the NED, AID and the CIA (the latter not
mentioned publicly but undoubtedly included) intensified their coordinated
programs targeted at Cuban civil society. CIA

One may wonder why the CIA would be needed in these programs. There were
several reasons. One reason from the beginning was the CIA’s long experience and
huge stable of agents and contacts in the civil societies of countries around
the world. By joining with the CIA, the NED and AID would come on board on-going
operations whose funding they could take over while leaving the secret
day-to-day direction on the ground to CIA officers.
In addition, someone had to monitor and report the effectiveness of the
local recipients’ activities. NED would not have people in the field to do this,
nor would their core foundations in normal conditions. And since NED money was
ostensibly private, only the CIA had the people and techniques to carry out
discreet control in order to avoid compromising the civil society recipients,
especially if they were in opposition to their governments.

Finally, the CIA had ample funds of its own to pass quietly when conditions
required. In Cuba, participation by CIA officers under cover in the US Interests
Section would be particularly useful, since NED and AID funding would go to US
NGOs that would have to find covert ways, if possible, to get equipment and cash
to recipients inside Cuba. The CIA could help with this quite well.
Evidence of the amount of money these agencies have been spending on their
Cuban projects is fragmentary. Nothing is publicly available about the CIA’s
spending, but what is easily found about the other two is interesting. The AID
web site cites $12 million spent for Cuba programs during 1996-2001, but for
2002 the budget jumped to $5 million plus unobligated funds of $3 million from
2001. AID’s 2003 budget for Cuba is $6 million showing a tripling of annual
funds since the George Bush junta seized power. No surprise given the number of
Miami Cubans Bush has appointed to high office in his administration.

>From 1996 to 2001, AID disbursed the $12 million to 22 NGOs, all apparently
based in the US, mostly in Miami. By 2002, the number of front-line NGOs had
shrunk to 12 the University of Miami, Center for a Free Cuba, Pan-American
Development Foundation, Florida International University, Freedom House, Grupo
de Apoyo a la Disidencia, Cuba On-Line, CubaNet, National Policy Association,
Accion Democratica Cubana and Carta de Cuba.
In addition, the International Republican Institute received AID money for a
sub-grantee, the Directorio Revolucionario Democr tico Cubano, also based in
Miami.

These NGOs have a double purpose, one directed to their counterpart groups
in Cuba and one directed to the world, mainly through web sites. Whereas, on the
one hand, they channel funds and equipment into Cuba, on the other they
disseminate to the world the activities of the groups in Cuba. Cubanet in Miami,
for example, publishes the writings of the independent journalists of the
Independent Press Association of Cuba, based in Havana, and channels money to
the writers.

Interestingly, AID claims on its web site that its grantees are not
authorised to use grant funds to provide cash assistance to any person or
organisation in Cuba. It’s hard to believe that claim, but if it’s true, all
those millions are only going to support the US- based NGO infrastructure, a
subsidised anti-Castro cottage industry of a sort, except for what can be
delivered in Cuba in kind computers, faxes, copy machines, cell phones, radios,
TVS and VCRs, books, magazines and the like.
On its web site, AID lists purposes for the money: solidarity with human
rights activists; dissemination of the work of independent journalists;
development of independent NGOs; promoting workers’ rights; outreach to the
Cuban people; planning for future assistance to a transition government; and
evaluation of the program. Anyone who wants to see which NGOs are getting how
much can visit <http://www.usaid.gov/regions/lac/cu...> .

AID’s claim that its grantees can’t provide cash to Cubans in Cuba, makes
one wonder about the more than $100,000 in cash that Cuban investigators found
in the hands of the 75 mostly unemployed dissidents who went on trial. A clue
may be found in the AID statement that US policy encourages US NGOs and
individuals to undertake humanitarian, informational and civil society- building
activities in Cuba with private funds. Could such private funds be money from
the NED?
Recall the fiction that the NED is a privatefoundation, an NGO. It has no
restrictions on its funds going for cash payments abroad, and it just happens to
fund some of the same NGOs as AID. Be assured that this is not the result of
rivalry or lack of coordination in Washington. The reason probably is that NED
funds can go for salaries and other personal compensation to people on the
ground in Cuba.

The Cuban organisations below the US NGOs in the command and money chain
number nearly 100 and have names [translated from Spanish] like Independent
Libraries of Cuba, All United, Society of Journalists Marquez Sterling,
Independent Press Association of Cuba, Assembly to Promote Civil Society and the
Human Rights Party of Cuba.
NED’s web site is conveniently out of date, showing only its Cuba program
for 2001. But it is instructive. Its funds for Cuban activities in 2001 totalled
only $765,000 if one is to believe what they say. The money they gave to eight
NGOs in 2001 averaged about $52,000, while a 9th NGO, the International
Republican Institute received $350,000 for the Directorio Revolucionario
Democratico Cubano for strengthening civil society and human rights in Cuba. In
contrast, this NGO is to receive $2,174,462 in 2003 from AID through the same
IRI.

Why would the NED be granting the lower amounts and AID such huge amounts,
both channelled through IRI? The answer, apart from IRI’s skim-off, probably is
that the NED money is destined for the pockets of people in Cuba while the AID
money supports the US NGO infrastructures.
Whatever the amount of money reaching Cuba may have been, everyone in Cuba
working in the various dissident projects knows of US government’s sponsorship,
funding and of its purpose regime change.
Far from being independentjournalists, idealistic human rights activists,
legitimate advocates for change or Marian librarians from River City, every one
of the 75 dissidents arrested and convicted was knowingly a participant in US
government operations to overthrow the government and install a US-favoured
political, economic and social order. They knew what they were doing was
illegal, they got caught and they are paying the price.

Anyone who thinks these people are prisoners of conscience, persecuted for
their ideas or speech, or victims of repression, simply fails to see them
properly as instruments of a US government that has declared revolutionary Cuba
its enemy.
They were not convicted for ideas but for their paid actions on behalf of a
foreign power that has waged a 44-year war of varying degrees of intensity
against this poor country.
To think that the dissidents were creating an independent, free civil
society is absurd, for they were funded and controlled by a hostile foreign
power and to that degree, which was total, they were not free or independent in
the least.

The civil society they wished to create was not just your normal, garden
variety civil society of Harley freaks and Boxer breeders, but a political
opposition movement fomented openly by the US government. What government in the
world would be so self-destructive as to sit by and just watch this happen?
The threat of war against Cuba from Bush and his coterie of crusaders, all
of them crazed after Iraq, is real. A military campaign against Cuba, coinciding
with the 2004 electoral campaign, may be the only way he can hope o get himself
elected for his second term.

[Abridged from Granma Internacional. Philip Agee was a CIA covert operations
officer from 1959 to 1969 and is the author of Inside the Company: A CIA Diary.
He lives in Havana, where he runs a travel web site, <http://www.cubalinda.com> .]