This Date in History: The CIA’s Failed Cuba Program Exposed

by Chris Simmons

          June 1987:  Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, head of the intelligence center at the Cuban Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, defected to the US.  Aspillaga revealed to the CIA one of Havana’s most closely held secrets – almost every Cuban agent the CIA had recruited since 1961 was actually controlled by Cuban Intelligence.  Aspillaga told the CIA he knew this as he had previously worked for the element that targeted CIA operations in Cuba.

          According to media accounts, Aspillaga claimed that Havana had “turned” 38 of the CIA’s Cuban agents.  He explained that the CIA assets had been “dangled” before the CIA by Havana or identified and “doubled back” after their recruitment by CIA case officers.  Furthermore, this decades-long operation helped Cuba identify between 151 to 179 CIA officers.  In sum, almost everything the CIA thought it knew about Cuba was well choreographed disinformation scripted by Havana.  According to published accounts, 24 of these CIA officers were serving undercover in the US Interests Section in Havana when Aspillaga exposed Havana’s efforts.  All were quickly withdrawn.

          However, Cuba’s success cannot be attributed solely to the professionalism of its intelligence officers and agents.  According to Ernest Volkman, an acknowledged authority on intelligence issues, poor CIA tradecraft and the Agency’s amazing degree of gullibility were critical to Havana’s success

          Subsequently, another highly reliable former Cuban Intelligence officer  reported that Aspillaga actually identified 85 doubled agents.  This former Cuban officer learned of the real size of Cuba's successful anti-CIA operations as one of the double agents lectured at the Superior Institute of Intelligence (ISI) in the 1990s.  Note:  The ISI is where Cuba trains its civilian intelligence officers.