Old news is new again when it comes to the relationship between Cuba and Russia. The Cold War is turning hot at the hands of the generosity of Barack Obama normalizing the relationship between the United States and Cuba. How can it be?
Back in 1964, Cuba had an agreement with Russia which allows Moscow to maintain a signals intelligence facility near Havana at Torrens [23°00’01″N 82°28’56″W], also known as Lourdes, which is the largest Russian SIGINT site abroad. The strategic location of Lourdes makes it ideal for gathering intelligence on the United States. It has been reported that the Lourdes facility is the largest such complex operated by the Russian Federation and its intelligence service outside the region of the former Soviet Union. The Lourdes facility is reported to cover a 28 square-mile area with 1,000-1,500 Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. Experts familiar with the Lourdes facility have reportedly confirmed that the base has multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications, in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices.
According to American intelligence, an unusually large number of Soviet ships delivered military cargoes to Cuba beginning in late July 1962, to support the construction of a variety of military activities, including setting up facilities for electronic and communications intelligence. In the area just south of Havana city, a number of farms were evacuated and the boys’ reformatory at Torrens, two and one half miles on the road to San Pedro from Havana, was converted for living quarters for numbers of foreign personnel. The numerous Soviet personnel who moved in early in August 1962 wore casual, dirty, civilian clothes.
The SIGINT facility at Lourdes is among the most significant intelligence collection capabilities targeting the United States. This facility, less than 100 miles from Key West, is one of the largest and most sophisticated SIGINT collection facilities in the world. It is jointly operated by Russian military intelligence (GRU), FAPSI, and Cuba’s intelligence services. The Federal Agency for Governent Conununications (FAPSI) evolved in the early 1990’s from the former KGB’s SIGINT service. According to Russian press sources, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) also has a communications center at the facility for its agent network in North and South America.
The complex is capable of monitoring a wide array of commercial and government communications throughout the southeastern United States, and between the United States and Europe. Lourdes intercepts transmissions from microwave towers in the United States, communication satellite downlinks, and a wide range of shortwave and high-frequency radio transmissions. It also serves as a mission ground station and analytical facility supporting Russian SIGINT satellites.
The facility at Lourdes, together with a sister facility in Russia, allows the Russians to monitor all U. S. military and civilian geosynchronous communications satellites. It has been alleged that the Lourdes facility monitors all White House communications activities, launch control communications and telemetry from NASA and Air Force facilities at Cape Canaveral, financial and commodity wire services, and military communications links. According to one source, Lourdes has a special collection and analysis facility that is responsible for targeting financial and political information. This activity is manned by specially selected personnel and appears to be highly successful in providing Russian leaders with political and economic intelligence.
*** Then in 2014, and while Putin was in Cuba, he agreed to forgive 90 percent or $32 billion of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt. This move is now being interpreted as a quid pro quo for reopening the spy base at Lourdes.
It is likely that Russia was motivated to reopen the surveillance station in part because of the Edward Snowden leaks about the U.S. National Security Agency’s extensive spying operations. In addition, Ivan Konovalov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Trends Studies, told Reuters: “One needs to remember that Russia’s technical intelligence abilities are very weak. This will help.” In addition, U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated sharply since Putin returned to the presidency for a third term in 2012. In fact, U.S. sanctions over the conflict in the Ukraine have led some senior legislators in Russia’s State Duma to advocate withdrawing from the New START nuclear reduction treaty.
During his Latin America trip, Putin also signed agreements with Argentina, Brazil and Cuba to open more positioning stations for Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system. *** Then still old news is current news. Nothing has changed in Cuba and why should it when it has worked and fills the pockets of the Castro clan.
When foreign tourists bask in the sun at a Sol Melia or Club Med beach resort in Cuba, get away to one of the island’s remote pristine keys on commuter airline Aerogaviota, visit Havana’s famed Morro Castle, enjoy typical Cuban cuisine at a restaurant, or indulge in a Cohiba cigar after dinner (1), they are also unwittingly contributing to the bottom line of the Cuban military’s diverse business ventures that bring in an estimated US$1 billion a year. (2)
The armed forces are involved not only in the international tourist industry but in the lucrative domestic economy as well. The military-owned retail chain TRD Caribe S.A. operates more than 400 locations throughout the island and caters to Cubans with U.S. dollars. “TRD” is an acronym for “Tiendas de Recuperacion de Divisas,” or foreign currency recovery stores. Employing a Wal-Mart-like strategy, TRD Caribe distinguishes itself from other state-owned competitors by “continuously offering discounts” on Chinese-sourced consumer goods that it reportedly “buys cheap and makes a resale kill” on. (3)
GAESA, or Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (Enterprise Management Group Inc.), is the holding company for the Cuban Defense Ministry’s vast economic interests. Among its more visible subsidiaries are Gaviota S.A., which directly controls 20-25 percent of Cuba’s hotel rooms in partnership with foreign hoteliers, and Aerogaviota, a domestic airline that carries tourists on refurbished Soviet military aircraft flown by Cuban air force pilots. Under GAESA’s management team, Cuba’s military-industrial complex — the Union de la Industria Militar (Defense Industry Group) — provides outsourcing services, such as rental car maintenance and tour bus repairs, to foreign companies and joint ventures on the island.
The man behind the transformation of Cuba’s Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR) into a major economic force is Gen. Raul Castro, Cuba’s defense minister and designated successor to elder brother Fidel. Beginning in the late 1980s, as materiel and subsidies from Moscow progressively dwindled, Raul Castro introduced the “Sistema de perfeccionamiento empresarial (SPE),” or enterprise management improvement system, that streamlined the Cuban military’s operations. With the disappearance of the Soviet bloc by 1991 and the ensuing severe economic crisis that threatened the regime’s survival, the younger Castro went further and established state corporations like the Gaviota tourism group for joint ventures with foreign capital. Today, the military is not only a largely self-financing institution but a major player in the overall Cuban economy.
Raul Castro entrusts a military managerial elite for the day-to-day oversight of the FAR’s business empire. Vice minister of defense, General Julio Casas Regueiro, and Maj. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, son-in-law to Raul Castro, serve as GAESA’s chairman and CEO, respectively. Key money-making enterprises are also headed by high-ranking officers, as in the case of Gaviota whose CEO is Brig. Gen. Luis Perez Rospide.
The military managerial elite surrounding Raul Castro extends its reach far beyond GAESA’s direct holdings. An increasing number of senior military leaders have taken over civilian-run ministries and industries. Former Interior Ministry (state security) head and newly-appointed member of Fidel Castro’s ruling Council of State, Comandante Ramiro Valdes Menendez, has been at the helm of the electronics industry since becoming president of the Grupo de la Electronica in 1996. General Ulises Rosales del Toro was assigned to the strategic Sugar Ministry (MINAZ) in 1997. A second civilian ministry with close ties to the military is Basic Industries (MINBAS). Led by engineer Marcos Portal Leon, another of Raul Castro’s confidants, MINBAS oversees state energy, mining, and pharmaceutical sectors that are second only to tourism in foreign exchange earnings.
Given Fidel Castro’s rapprochement with Beijing since the demise of Soviet communism, several Cuba analysts see parallels between Cuba’s FAR and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), particularly with the PLA’s “bingshang,” or military officers turned businessmen, and their pivotal role in the Chinese authoritarian transition to a limited market-oriented economy. “China offers an interesting case,” argues professor Frank Mora, “because it is comparable to Cuba in terms of revolutionary experience and government and as a model of party/civil-military relations, economic reform…and institutional involvement in the civilian economy.” (4)
In November 1997, Raul Castro went to China “to learn more about China’s experience in economic construction.” (5) According to Domingo Amuchastegui, formerly with Havana’s Higher Institute of International Relations, “when Raul Castro went to China [in 1997], he spent long hours talking to Zhu [Rongji, Chinese premier and architect of economic reforms under Jiang Zemin] and invited [Zhu’s] main adviser to Cuba. This famous adviser went to Cuba, caused a tremendous impact, talked to [military] leaders and executives for many hours and days…” However, adds Amuchastegui, “there was one person who refused to [listen to Zhu’s economic adviser]: Fidel Castro.” (6)
While supporting the militarization of the Cuban economy, Fidel Castro is opposed to any economic liberalization in the island. The elder Castro, on his recent visit to China in February 2003, seemed bewildered by the capitalistic changes in the People’s Republic: “I can’t really be sure just what kind of a China I am visiting,” confessed Castro, “because the first time I visited [in 1995], your country appeared one way and now when I visit it appears another way.” (7)
