(Adnkronos) – The CIA has secretly established a task force dedicated to Cuba, launching a plan for a more coordinated campaign aimed at exerting pressure on the Cuban government to implement the economic, political, and leadership changes demanded by United States President Donald Trump. This is what the ‘New York Times’ reports, emphasizing that the task force will allow the CIA to “rapidly allocate greater financial, human, and technological resources to operations concerning Cuba,” as sources close to the dossier reported.
The task force has already begun to strengthen its staff with operational officers responsible for recruiting and managing agents, intelligence analysts, cyber operations specialists, and officials experienced in clandestine influence operations. In 1960, the US newspaper recalls, “the CIA had already established a previous task force on Cuba, whose members oversaw the Agency-backed failed invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs (April 17-19, 1961).” Sources told the ‘NYT’ that the new task force has a more limited mandate than before: “To create divisions within the Cuban political elite, in the hope of pushing the country to replace leaders deemed most hostile to the United States with figures considered more pragmatic and more willing to accommodate Trump’s demands.” The CIA declined to comment.
“The intentions are not surprising, as Cuba has long been a target of CIA activities in espionage, subversion, and destabilization, including terrorism,” Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told the New York Times. “Yet the State Department has the audacity to call Cuba a threat simply for exercising its right to legitimate self-defense.” The creation of the task force, the US newspaper writes, demonstrates the extent to which the intelligence agency “is preparing for what could become a long clandestine campaign against one of its historically most difficult targets.” Despite the severe oil embargo imposed by the United States, Cuba has so far shown remarkable resilience, while the protracted war with Iran has absorbed much of the limited resources and attention of the US administration. “Although the most hardline advisers continue to believe that, sooner or later, Washington will allocate the necessary resources to bring about the fall of the Cuban government, they privately admit that this will most likely only happen after the conclusion of the conflict with Iran,” the New York Times emphasizes.
