The Double Life of Fidel Castro (19 page)

As for the placement of mikes and cameras in the houses, apartments, cars, offices, factories, and streets of Cuba, it was the
Técnica
—or State Security, or G2—who took care of it. Not to be confused with the
Departamento Chequeo
(which, for its part, looked after surveillance and tailing), the
Técnica
was also called Department K (like Kaf ka!) according to its different functions—the KC unit checked postal mail, the KT unit was responsible for
chequeo telefónico
(tapping of telephone lines and microphones placed in hotel rooms, offices, cars, and private homes), the KJ unit looked after
chequeo visual
(video tailing and surveillance), and finally the KR unit managed the
chequeo ra-
diofónico
, that is, the tapping of the numerous two-way radio receivers in Cuba, in both ministries and the homes of certain private individuals who were passionate about radio.

I can also reveal that surveillance cameras were placed in immediate proximity to the fortress of La Cabaña, the colonial building that overlooked the old port, where KJ agents continuously scrutinized—with the help of a powerful telelens—the movements of people at the entrance to the United States “Interest Section” situated 1.8 miles away on the seafront. After diplomatic relations were broken off in January 1961, Washington has no longer had an embassy in Havana, although informal relations have been maintained via the Interest Section since 1977.

A KJ team also operated from a building of Unit 160—the escort’s logistics center that housed the garage for the Mercedes fleet, Fidel’s private cinema, the house where he met his mistresses, the food stores of the elite, and so on, and which looked directly onto the private apartment of the Swiss ambassador situated on the other side of the street. Even better: the ordinarylooking “policeman” posted at the entrance to this residence was in fact a counterespionage officer who monitored the comings and goings from that address, frequented by numerous Westerners.

Foreigners should be aware that in Cuba nobody escapes the surveillance of State Security. Several hotels in Havana are equipped with rooms specially rigged up by the
Técnica
in order to listen to conversations and film the privacy of “targets” worthy of interest, such as businessmen, diplomats, politicians, university lecturers, and arts and literary figures. To cite a few examples: the twentieth floor of the Havana Libre hotel, the fourteenth floor of the Hotel Riviera, the Nacional, and the Cohiba. There are others. When the Cuban state invites foreign dignitaries, as it often does, it is easy to put them up in one of these special rooms and then film their sexual frolicking with a prostitute ordered by the G2. The government thus possesses a formidable means of blackmail, particularly if the sexual partner is a minor or of the same sex (even more embarrassing if the target is a traditionally married man).

I do not know how many spies per square foot there are in Cuba, but it is doubtless an impressive figure. One thing is certain: State Security—the mega-organization that is based on the three main pillars of espionage, counterespionage, and personal security, to which I belonged—had octopus-like tentacles that reached everywhere. Every industry, institution, ministry, and school, in even the tiniest village, was infiltrated or controlled by agents. In the countryside as well as in neighborhoods in large cities, their primary task was to collect information on the state of public opinion within a given geographical zone and then synthesize it in reports that were sent daily to their superiors, in a pyramid-like arrangement that ended with the
Líder Máximo.
Thanks to this surveillance, Fidel and Raúl were informed in less than twenty-four hours about the slightest criticism expressed against the regime.

Even the ministers and generals were spied on and tapped. On the vast property of Punto Cero, Fidel’s Havanan estate, there is a little house devoted to tapping the public figures who are Fidel’s close neighbors. Now that part of the town is almost exclusively inhabited by members of the elite. Situated in the grounds of Fidel’s private property but set aside from the main building, this house bears the intriguing nickname of
casa de los misteriosos
(the house of mysterious ones). I had known about this little building for a long time, but simply by reputation, because we guards were not permitted to approach it. One fine day, however, I became certain—completely by chance—that the purpose of the
casa de los misteriosos
was indeed the one we had suspected.

It was around 1990. That day, Fidel and his escort had just arrived at the
Palacio de la Revolución
to begin a working day when the
Comandante
suddenly sent me to his home in Punto Cero to fetch a document he had forgotten.

As I passed the escorts’ building, situated a little over fifty yards from Fidel’s house, I suddenly remembered I had left a pack of cigarettes in the dormitory and told the chauffeur to stop for a few seconds so that I could go and get them. Inside, I glimpsed two guys fiddling with telephones but, moving hurriedly with my head down, I pretended to be in too much of a hurry to have noticed them. I went out again as quickly as possible with my cigarettes in my hand. As there was no unknown vehicle in the parking lot, I realized they were the lads from the house of mysterious ones, who had walked across from the other side of the grounds. . . . I talked about what I had seen with my wife and three or four close colleagues and then never mentioned it again. Nonetheless, I had discovered that Fidel had even tapped his guards, who were devoted to him body and soul!

It is true that, over the years, Fidel had made the use of tapping so widespread that he had had mikes installed in a good number of the protocol houses (even the one used by his friend Hugo Chávez had been fitted with them) and monitored the conversations of his ministers, as shown by the double scandal in 2009 of Felipe Pérez Roque and Carlos Lage, then minister for foreign affairs and vice president of the Council of Ministers, respectively.

Tapping is a fundamental of espionage. And in a dictatorship, espionage—also called spying or intelligence—is indispensable. Over the course of history, Fidel accumulated such considerable experience in it that he turned this art into a science. During the guerrilla years, he had organized the system of espionage himself; for a clandestine organization, intelligence is the fundamental weapon that enables its survival. Once in power, he benefited from the precious advice and invaluable technical aid of the Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi. In Cuba, Fidel is the spymaster, possessing cunning, daring, and ability to improvise. Abroad, for example, he alone decided the priority targets: the American administration in Washington, the officials of the United Nations in New York, Cuban exiles living in Florida, not to mention the universities where Castrist sympathizers could be recruited, potential future moles to infiltrate the American administration. It is fundamental to note that Fidel is always projecting ahead into the future, even generations ahead; he can wait for years, even decades, to activate a spy, until the time has come when the spy has acquired a sufficiently high position in the hierarchy of the institution Fidel wants to penetrate. Finally, Fidel personally dealt with the most important secret agents when they were passing through Havana: he would meet them in the evening in a protocol house and talk with them until late into the tropical night.

In 1980, at the time of the so-called Mariel crisis, I had a little glimpse into Fidel’s skill in this area. On April 1, 1980, five Cubans forced their way into the embassy of Peru by driving a bus through the gates and demanded political asylum, which they obtained despite Fidel Castro’s protests. In reprisal, the latter withdrew Cuban police protection from outside the embassy, as a result of which 750 and then 10,000 Cubans who wanted to leave the island rapidly invaded the diplomatic mission, camping on the premises and refusing to leave. The occupation turned into a humanitarian crisis: the overpopulated Peruvian embassy was not able to provide basic hygienic conditions or feed the occupants decently. Every square inch, inside and outside the building, was occupied by refugees—some had even taken up residence in the branches of the trees in the garden.

I had a front row seat; for three weeks, I saw how Fidel organized everything. At the start of the crisis he acted as a real war leader by deciding to transfer his office to that of the head of counterespionage, then Fabián Escalante Font, which was nearer the Peruvian embassy—in other words, closer to the action. From this command post, he immediately ordered the
Técnica
to install cameras so that he could follow the situation in the diplomatic complex and its surroundings live as it unfolded. Then he sent two medical trucks to park alongside the embassy and authorized those cloistered inside to come out to receive medical treatment. A humanitarian gesture to lend assistance to sick women, men, and children? In reality, half of the doctors in the truck were intelligence officers dressed in white tunics, using the consultations to draw up profiles of the asylum seekers. Meanwhile, I was at the side of the
Comandante
, jotting down his most important deeds and gestures in the
libreta
.

At the same time, Fidel decided to infiltrate the Peruvian embassy by sending in false candidates for exile—once again, they were actually intelligence agents. They pretended to have ailments that necessitated their going to “consult” the supposed doctors, who transmitted Fidel’s latest directives to them: as the humanitarian situation was deteriorating and the political tension increased,
El Jefe
asked them to sow conflict among the refugees by provoking crises. In addition, as the lack of food was growing critical, Fidel “generously” delivered supplies . . . but only enough to get the refugees to fight each other over them. Cuban television could therefore calmly film, through the railings, images of fighting and rioting that made it seem as though these people were the dregs of society. That was how Fidel Castro, combining cunning, cynicism, and espionage, managed at least to limit the damage even if he could not turn the situation completely to his advantage.

And the story did not end there. After three weeks of tugof-war and negotiations with both Lima and Washington, a hundred thousand Cubans were permitted to seek exile in the United States, in the biggest wave of emigration in the history of Castrism since 1959 until the present day. Fidel allowed them to go to the port of the town of Mariel (west of Havana) to embark for Florida on board vessels from the United States, and the Mariel exodus began. It has been said that the
Comandante
took advantage of the situation by emptying the prisons and getting rid of thousands of dangerous prisoners by sending them to the United States. It is completely true: I saw him selecting them personally. I was present when they brought him the lists of prisoners from the prison administrations with the name, the reason for the sentence, and the date of release. Fidel read them and with the stroke of a pen designated which ones could go and which ones would stay—“yes” was for murderers and dangerous criminals, “no” was for those who had attacked the revolution, from near or from afar. In total, more than two thousand criminals found themselves free . . . in the streets of Miami.

Finally, when the asylum seekers were authorized to embark for the United States, Fidel mobilized a hostile crowd on the port of Mariel to give them as humiliating a send-off as possible. Spurred on by policemen and G2 agents in civilian dress, their compatriots insulted the refugees, spitting on and punching them. Of course I thought it was unfair, but what could I do? At the time, I saw it as a simple defensive measure, a legitimate means of protecting the revolution and its noble ideals in the face of “counter-revolutionaries” who had intentionally attacked it by besieging the embassy of Peru. I was young and I swallowed all of Fidel’s propaganda without question.

At the time, I had just begun my counterespionage studies at the MININT Higher Institute, for one day a week from 1979 to 1985, and every day in the last months of the course. It was there, on the school benches (but also with spymaster Fidel) that I learned all the techniques taught to Cuban agents sent on missions abroad. Later, these procedures—such as shadowing and countershadowing—came in handy, particularly when I fled Cuba after having served my prison sentence and even though police continued to spy on my slightest movements and activities. The psychology courses, for example, have constantly been useful to me; we learned, among other things, the different methods of extracting information from people during ordinary conversations by activating psychological stimuli such as flattery or by sowing doubt; complimenting people who suffered from lack of recognition in their professional life; or, on the contrary, by casting doubt on the words of people with an overinflated ego (who were thereby made to give away too much in the conversation). There is no doubt about it: we learned a tremendous amount.

Future diplomats figured among my classmates. Cuban espionage is a network that stretches all over the world and, unlike those of other countries, Cuban diplomats mastered all the espionage techniques perfectly. Before leaving to take up their post they even met with psychologists who gave them insights into their own character, strengths, and weaknesses, so as to correct certain of their psychological traits. They were helped to eliminate tastes, proclivities, or preferences that could constitute flaws the enemy could exploit; their revolutionary motivation was also strengthened with a well-targeted ideological pep talk, a phase that was called mental armoring. As a result, from Paris to Mexico and Berlin to Cairo, every Cuban embassy was a nest of agents. All staff, down to the humblest of receptionists, were initiated in counterespionage, even if their training was not as extensive as that of the “head of post,” in other words, the ambassador.

I learned an extraordinary amount from traveling with Fidel and collaborating closely with our representatives abroad. For example, in every embassy it was the cipher officer
*
who was subject to the closest surveillance because of all the information to which he had access. Forced to live within the diplomatic precinct, he was not allowed to go into the town alone and was always accompanied by one or several colleagues when he went out, in a bid to avoid any defections that would have serious consequences for Cuba.