Cuba on the Brink? Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign Against the Castro Regime

As tensions between Washington and Havana escalate, The Threat Podcast examines whether the Cuban regime is facing its most dangerous moment in decades.

Hosts Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali sit down with investigative journalist and ADN Cuba founder Gelet Martinez Fragela to unpack the Trump administration’s growing pressure campaign against the Castro government — including new sanctions, espionage concerns, military signaling, and accusations of Cuban involvement in global extremist networks.

The conversation explores Cuba’s historic ties to the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Iran, and Palestinian militant groups, as well as allegations of intelligence operations targeting the United States. Fragela also discusses the regime’s influence campaigns, the role of activist networks in the U.S., and what a potential post-Castro transition could look like after nearly 70 years of communist rule.

Could the Cuban government actually collapse? Is the U.S. preparing for regime change? And what would the fall of the Castro system mean for Latin America and American national security?

This week on The Threat, we go deep inside one of the world’s longest-running authoritarian regimes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm Jay Solomon. And I'm Hagar Shimali. And welcome to the Threat Podcast. Every week we'll analyze and discuss the most pressing, yet not always so visible, threats to global security and the movements and ideologies that fuel extremism and terrorism.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

We'll take listeners to the front lines of these battles, both at home and abroad, and we'll talk with the key players in law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, and academia who are working to counter these threats. Welcome to the threat. I'm Hagar Shimali.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And I'm Jay Solomon.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Today we're going to discuss the extremely fluid situation in Cuba, where at the moment the Trump administration is massively increasing economic pressure on the island nation's communist government. And last week, even indicted on murder charges the country's 94-year-old military ruler, Raul Castro. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also visited Havana last week and essentially presented the Cuban government with an ultimatum. Either open up your economic and political systems or prepare for even more American financial and military coercion. So is the Cuban regime about to fall after nearly 70 years in power? Could the US be building up for a military operation to dislodge the Castros? Could the Trump administration replicate in Cuba what it just executed in Venezuela by finding a new leader from within the system? To discuss all this, we're thrilled to have on the threat podcast Helette Marinez Fragela, one of the most astute observers on all things Cuba and the Castros. Helette is an investigative journalist and the CEO of the Digital News Association, which is a nonprofit focused on the intersection of technology and media to promote human rights in closed societies. She is also the founder of ADN Cuba, a news platform that reports on human rights violations in Cuba and has even been blocked on the island, which it sounds like is a badge of honor. She joins us from Boca Raton, Florida. Halette, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with the case.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Let's kick it off with we'll start with the beginning. Uh last week, uh, we'll start with the latest news. Last week, CIA director John Ratcliffe visited Havana and offered basically an ultimatum to the Cuban regime, as we mentioned. And we've moved now a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group, the USS Nimitz, off the Cuban coast. Hillette, do you think we're headed for a conflict?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

I think we're already in conflict, right? But I would be careful not to assume war is inevitable. I think that's exactly what the United States is trying to prevent. Uh, what what we've been seeing is uh coercive pressure. I think this is another message that the that the administration is sending to the regime, telling them we are not going to look the other way like we have done in the past. Uh last week we also saw that they arrested the sister of the lady that leads the Gaesa. Gaesa is this big military conglomerate that has 80%, controls 85% of the Cuban economy, all the hotels, the investments. And her sister was living here. She owned real estate companies. And for many years, we have been, you know, trying to raise awareness about all these kids and relatives of big generals that are in the United States, uh, that act as figureheads of the Cuban regime, entities that belong to the Cuban regime to circumvent sanctions. And there hasn't been the political will to actually take action. What we see now is the US is increasingly taking action against these people in many different ways to put pressure and avoid, in my opinion, an escalation to this conflict.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

What steps is the Cuban government like taking in response to this pressure? I've read articles about them buying attack drones from the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians, or maybe all three of them. You hear stories of the the Cuban communist government sort of mobilizing people on the ground. Is that is that what's happening, or is it kind of being, is it overblown that there's some sort of, you know, I don't know if you say a military response or some really active response?

SPEAKER_02 4:28

No, no, there is active response. That's that's not a that's not a secret. The Cuban regime is responding the way it always does, right? There are there is definitely mobilization inside the country. They're doing military exercises every single day. It appears in Cuban press, and this is not new. This is something that is happening every single day. They're mobilizing people, trying to, but I think it's also an internal message. Trying to maintain the population thinking we're in control, don't get crazy, don't take the streets because they're very afraid of another July 11. July 11 was the biggest uh protest that we've seen in the history of communist Cuba. It was a nationwide uh protest that happened in 2021, and they're very afraid of something like that happening under the circumstances and this scenario. So they're trying to control the population. Now, are they really that crazy to think they can have a military confrontation with with the United States? I think that's the big question. So you see the rhetoric coming from the regime every single day on this on the press. So that's definitely a reality. Would it is it something just for the Cuban people uh that we'll have to wait and see? I hope it's only to scare the Cuban people and they don't try to really uh face the United States in another way because obviously they're gonna lose, but they're gonna expose a lot of innocent people.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Hillette, so you're talking you've you've talked about the tools the Castro regime is using to try and hang on. Um how fragile do you see them? I mean, how long do you think that they could hold on for?

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Well, the the regime is extremely fragile, right, economically. And and obviously politically inside the island, nobody um nobody really believes they can they can improve the situation. Nobody believes on that system anymore. I keep telling people only 5% of the Cuban population are registered on the Communist Party in a country where there's only one party, it's a one-party system. In a country where actually joining the ranks of the communist party is almost mandatory because there are a lot of jobs that you cannot have access to if you don't belong to the communist party. Aside from all of that, its survival tools internally are very strong. You know, they're very good at repressing people, they're very good at intelligence penetration around the world. Uh, so they claim that, for example, they have over 2,000 assets inside the United States, that they have ears at all levels of government, so they're gonna hear whatever it is that the US government is planning so they can mitigate. That's what they would say to Maduro, and obviously it didn't work out because the reality is that they can't, um, if the US is serious about this, they're not gonna be able to hold into power. What they're trying to do and the tools they're trying to implement is just trying to win time. And they're also going to leverage their foreign alliances and their propaganda. But I think it's very clear now that there are not a lot of people of countries even coming into the rescue because the human rights violations that they have committed for the past few decades, I don't think the world is at a point where they're gonna come and save the Cuban regime from its fate. The only way they're gonna stay in power is if the United States loses track from this goal and changes its goal. But as long as the United States goal is to have regime change in Cuba, whatever we want to call it, but to really try to change the situation in Cuba, if that's a goal of the US, it's going to happen. They don't have any resource to answer to that, you know, to the amount of actually tools that the United States have, but they were not using all the tools at their at their disposal.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Glad can you take us back a bit? Like people might say, why do we even care about the Cuban regime? But can you take us back a bit? Because for a country that small, over the last, you know, certainly from the Cold War on, they've been very active, sort of punching above their weight. They sent troops into Africa to back Angola in its fight with the South African regime. They helped over overthrow the Somoza government in 1979. Just give a bit of a picture about just how active, not just in Latin America, but globally, such a small country has been. And are they still? I guess with Nick, with the Venezuela situation, that kind of regional influence ebbed, but it would be great just to give uh listeners that historical background.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yes, definitely. Well, Cuba was never just a small Caribbean dictatorship, uh, it was a Soviet-trained export platform of anti-Western revolution, and they were they were very efficient at it, right? There is a lot of bibliography that goes back to what the Cubans would do in Latin America. For example, the Cubans will help the guerrillas in in Colombia and this uh and the drug trafficking industry to kidnap American businessmen to ask for ransom and use the ransom to reinvest that in all of the covert uh or all the covert actions that they were doing in the region when they were in Angola uh and they sent so many young kids from Cuba and they were sent to fight in a war that had really no sense for Cubans to get involved. And what they did in Angola is that they became embedded once again in all of the trafficking of diamonds. They were very involved in the Middle East. Since the beginning, they were involved in the Middle East, and this goes to their entire mentality with the Soviet Union, right? They saw the Soviet, they saw the Middle East as a place where they could they could turn against the West, against the US, and against Israel. It was the Cuban regime who introduced the Palestinian Liberation Organization into Latin America. It was it was not then they developed this close relationship with Nicaragua, but it was Cuba who was behind all of these uh revolutions. This is very simple to understand when you look at the amount of embassies, for example, the Cuban regime has around the world. It has a disproportionate present for its size and its GDP. And that is to the level of the United States and other big economies. Why? Because that's the way they maintain power. They collect a lot of intelligence on around the world and they have made the United States their sole target. So when people tell me, well, it's not a threat, yeah, it's not going to do a land invasion in the in the United States, but what it's going to do, and what he has done throughout the years, is that because it is perceived as an underdog and nobody really pays attention or has paid attention to them for the past 30 years, they are they have been able to collect a lot of secrets and not just political secrets, but also secrets of technology. And then they trade that for what they call their subsidies with our enemies, with Venezuela, with Russia, with Iran, um, through all of these oil that subsidies. And they were very efficient. And then what they did after they lost the support of the Soviet Union, they moved to Venezuela, which was always a target of Castro. He tried to invade Venezuela even decades ago and he failed. But Venezuela was always, you know, it's the Saudi Arabia of Latin America. It was a source of increased uh economic uh support for Cuba for decades. It was very um important for them. And they basically took over Venezuela, uh, exploited all of those resources, destroyed their country, they they destroyed the same way they destroyed the Q the island of Cuba, and simply to sustain the regime, because it was with Venezuelan oil that they pay for a lot of this, and a lot of the intelligence they get they provided to Venezuela in exchange of this oil and promising that as long as you have us, we are you're never going to be uh invaded. The US is never going to be able to take you out of power because look at us, we have survived for 60 years.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Halette, you've given us a really good overview of Cuban regime activity all over the world. Uh, you mentioned the Middle East, you've mentioned it in Spain, you've mentioned Venezuela now, the Soviets, and so on. Uh, can you let's I want to hone in a little bit on the Middle East question for a few reasons. But um, you know, uh Cuba's played this role in the Middle East. As you mentioned, most people probably don't know that Castro, for example, sent tanks to Syria to help former President Hafaz al-Assad fight Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. And that's just one example. Continue uh Cuba continues to host, as you've reported previously, Palestinian militant groups and uh US-designated Palestinian terrorist organizations that are committed to the destruction of Israel. So, for example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP. Can you explain what is Cuba's objective here? You know, you can you could talk about it generally, but what's their objective in the Middle East specifically as well?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Yes, uh as I said, and as you explained, uh they've always been very involved in in the Middle East. They're the history of Cuba has always been embedded in in the Middle East, and it is not simply ideological solidarity. Definitely they have trying to bridge the gap and be like the connective tissue between this red-green alliance, what which this you know um extremist groups uh from the Middle East and the Marxists from the West. But the regime, it's important to understand what the Cuban regime really is. The Cuban regime and the Castro regime was a movement that was called 26 de julio, July 26. And the way they took power, which is something that a lot of people seem sometimes forget, they acted like a terrorist organization. We didn't have those designations back in the days, but that's how they took power. Batista was a dictator. That's granted, nobody disputes that. But what the Cuba regime did, I mean, the movement that Castro led uh July 26, they placed bombs in theaters, they killed innocent civilians, they placed bombs in markets, uh, completely destroyed and had zero disregard from human life. And I mean, it didn't matter, okay? The means didn't matter as long as he could uh retain and gain power. And then when he gained power, he basically killed all the opposition because that was not the only movement. There were other movements trying to fight Batista, and he began killing and taking over everyone, and everyone that was even a little bit popular, it would he would have him disappear. Since the beginning, that movement was supported by the Soviet Union. Okay, he didn't become a communist lead. The Communist Party in Cuba was active since the 1919 and then in 1930, and it had already a lot of experience in undercover and clandestine operations. So it did not have the support of the Cuban people, but the that circle of the Communist Party was very well trained, had been in touch with the Soviet Union for a lot of time, and they're the ones that, uh, according to some uh historians, they're the ones that saw the Castro brothers, because Raul Castro was a member of the Communist Party, as an opportunity to support this group with all of the intelligence, all of the experience that the Soviet Union had at the time, and infiltrate that movement and help them gain um gain power so the Soviet Union could turn the island in what it was trying to do and failed to do in other countries in Latin America, right? At the time, the committerm, and the Soviet Union was trying to infiltrate every single country because it was the Cold War era. So they succeeded with Cuba. So those are two important things that we we need to understand. This is these are two brothers that acted as uh um as thugs, um, but we have provided them with the legitimacy and the diplomatic immunity and this that we treat a real president. But the Cuban regime was always um a terrorist organization, you know, what preceded the Cuban regime, the movement they come from was acted as a terrorist organization. So it's only reasonable to be to think that, okay, those are the movements, and that is the mentality they had, and that's the way they act. And the reason they align themselves and they haven't been able to move back from that is because they cannot compete militarily or economically with Washington, right? So they relied in those intelligence operations, in these influence networks, in these strategic alliances with anti-Western actors in order to expand geopolitical to be relevant because who are they gonna align themselves with? They cannot align themselves with with the democratic country because the reality is that this is a mafia state. So I think the mistake in the West and in Washington that I've seen is to think the Cuban regime is any different than the way and the mentality of a cartel or any other terrorist organization, right? And then at a point, they realize okay, there is a way to get inside a country and take control by exploiting the democratic system. And then they began helping, for example, with all these peace agreements in Colombia, they began helping FARC and other terrorist groups to gain that political legitimacy, right? Because they realized that if we can take and exploit the democratic system with all of these active measures and propaganda mechanisms and platforms that we have, then we are even more protected and we can take control of a country and stay. And once we're there, we change the constitution and we stay. And that's what they have tried to do and help others do throughout the world. And they have succeeded in several countries in Latin America.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Can you talk a bit how, I mean, one of the things Trump talks about with Cuba and Marco Rubio is that we can't have sort of this anti-American base right underneath our right below Florida. But it's not just that the stuff they're exporting. They US officials talk about how both China and Russia have really set up listening posts, espionage posts in Cuba to sort of basically just be a listening post for everything going on in here. Can you talk a bit more about? I mean, there have been stories last year about the Chinese setting up a pretty big listening post, but what you know about those types of um spying act uh activities that the Chinese and the Russians do using Cuba as the base?

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yes. So the data we have um for us is not new because there's a lot of uh independent research on this issue for for a long time. You have another site in Santiago de Puba and Sizny or Bejucal, is another town where there are listening posts and there are this military base. In fact, uh there are several GRU um agents that have arrived to the uh to the island in recent years, and they did not usually when you go through the through the embassy through as a diplomat, you have to register. This never registered, and there was an investigation by a media side intercept where they uncover all of these agents, some of them who were involved in uh extrajudicial killings around the world, etc., Novi shock killings, and they have been stationed inside the island for a long time. Their kids are there studying in in Cuba, very under the radar have this has gone through. This is not something that comes from this administration as an excuse. This is something that has been independently researched for for a long time. And this is definitely very sensitive because because of the how close we are to the United States, this is uh there's a ration of sensitive US military infrastructure, such as Southcom in Miami or SETCOM in Tampa, and all of the Cape Canaveral and even the Guantanamo Bay, with where analysts see these facilities that you know they could potentially intercept communications, they can monitor military exercises, they can even track uh rocket launches and gather a lot of um radar intelligence. So Russia has also maintained a long-standing intelligence relationship with Havana. We have to understand that this is not a relationship that was built 10 years ago. Uh, dating back to the Cold War, this relationship was so close that, for example, when Cuba would collect uh intelligence um uh from the from the United States, specifically technology, right? But Cuba, the Cuban regime was not able to exploit this information, so they would give it to the Soviets. There was a Soviet agent that would always go once a month to the Cuban intelligence offices to collect all this data that Cuba was did not have the technology to exploit. So you have this regime basically helping the one of the biggest enemies of the United States to collect all of this intelligence in many different ways to operate freely. And from there, from Havana, um, aside from all of the exporting all of this extremism, it also allows from this. Agents to move into the region. There are also reports of trainings being conducted in Cuba to where the Cubans have trained people on how to infiltrate and cross the southern border. I think that is something that definitely requires a lot of more in-depth investigation. But I do see it as a threat. And the biggest threat is that it's very difficult to explain to the American people because of how underreporter Cuba has been for the past three decades, how big of a threat it is, because they play it very carefully. So their their hands are always clean, and but they're like the ones providing and facilitating all of this for to happen.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

I think you're right that the Americans don't understand these threats because it does sound like Cold War relics, right? Um I wanna I wanna hone in a little bit on this question about the threat to the United States specifically and how Cuba um, you know, how they're exploiting Americans who don't understand the threat posed by the regime. And you have, for example, just as an example, this past March, the Cuban government hosted a large delegation of left-wing American activists, uh, including the podcaster, may I add troublemaker, Hassan Piker, and the daughter of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Um, and they all went, there was a very public show. The group called for an end to U.S. sanctions on Cuba. Um, they joined Cuban officials in attacking U.S. foreign policy in general. They also made uh quite a lush show of themselves going around in in cars and and these vehicles and having a concert where they had full electricity while the rest of the island sat in the dark. Um so hypocritical at best is is is a polite way of mentioning it. Um can you but but but the thing is a lot it doesn't feel like a lot of folks here understand why that was so problematic. So can you talk about Cuba's long history of seeking to promote and incite left-wing activism inside the United States and how they do it?

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Yes, well, definitely uh the Cuban regime was, for example, instrumental in domestic terrorist groups in the United States, like the uh Weatherman Underground and also some Puerto Rican um terrorist groups that committed uh hideous crimes throughout the years. Um, and that has been documented for decades. What happened is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the focus on Cuba uh entered, right? I think there was this sense globally that okay, we we won, the the threat of communism is gone. And then a lot of people were told that communism was no longer a threat, that somehow it had changed, it had reformed itself into something um less less confrontational, less hideous. And under this mentality, for the past 30 years, what we have seen is that this regime, the nature of this regimes did not uh did not was not transformed, and they continue to operate but with a lot more um less scrutiny, uh let's put it that way. One of the issues is that because of how connected we are today, because how accessible information it is today, that they have been able to exploit also the democratic system. And if you look at every terrorist group around the world have their own media platform, right? They're always trying, they have radio shows, they're always trying to influence because they understand, especially in the United States with all of our freedoms, that public opinion matters. And when you have a protest in New York, right, there's people that are gonna think, oh, it's a bunch of crazy people. But when you have all of the mainstream media covering, you you in a way you're putting pressure into those politicians, right, that have to go to an election, that have to, uh, that are accountable to their to their to their country, unlike in a in an authoritarian regime. So definitely they have exploited that. Now, I think the big story with this and what are counterintelligence uh and law enforcement, perhaps of the American people, because a lot of information about Cuba hasn't been declassified since, I don't know, 1980s something. We declassified something in the 2000s that was from the 80s, so there's not a lot of information that has been declassified. So there's a lot of things that are happening in the shadow, but they're not being uh the story is not being told. And what we need to explain is that this is not people who simply um have ideological sympathies. Okay, this is not what we're talking about. I understand that in the United States you can think the way you want, right? And you should not be persecuted for thinking the way you want, if you're a communist, even if you support uh any type of extremist speech, right? I get it. But what's happening in Havana is not ideological thing, sympathies, okay. What is happening in Havana, and what I have documented and and I have discussed this with Jay in the past, is that, for example, let's put the Popular Front for Deliberation of Palestine, just as one little example. They began a branch in 2017 in Cuba, okay? This branch has embedded itself in all of these activist groups that travel constantly to Cuba. They interact, they participate in warshops, they know each other, they follow each other. So you have all of these extreme ideas from around the world that then are going back to their country. They're banned. If it's the topic is we're talking is the Middle East, okay. Then they vandalize, for example, Jewish business. You look at a lot of the protests against the Elvis system, which is a military uh entity from is owned by Israel, and a lot of the protesters behind that in the US have all traveled to Havana. Okay, then you have entities in the United States that are registered on the 501c3, but they are co-founder or members of the Popular Front for Deliberation of Palestine living in Havana, are part of this entities, right? And then it becomes a little bit more muddy, right? It's not just ideological because there are laws in the United States that prevent from providing material support to terrorist groups. And material support is not just financial support, even coordinating advocacy. When you're trying to provide legitimacy to a terrorist group, when you're trying to sanitize this level of violence, right, and legitimize this violence, you are providing material support to terrorist organizations. And I think that's the big question for law enforcement. And then you're also allowing not everyone that travels to Havana is going to end up being recruited, but you're allowing terrorist organizations to have more encounters with malcontent Americans, with very young kids, sometimes 17 years old, that are very impressionable, that they don't understand a lot about history. And then you're providing all of these regimes like Iran. This is exactly what Cuba did with Iran in Latin America. You are providing them with access to these networks that are already disenchanted, they're very young, to that they could potentially recruit and radicalize. And there's a lot of uh information. The last disclosure of this is um or discussion about this happened in 2015 in Congress. We haven't had a serious discussion about this issue since then. But even the discussion back then 10 years ago was that Cuba had given Iran, it was providing Iran with the intelligence to penetrate and create networks inside Latin America because Iran lacked the cultural expertise in the region, right? Nothing more distant from a Hispanic uh country than Iran, right? Um, so a Chia theocracy, there was no conversion point. So what the Cuban regime did is that it helped Iran with all of its solidarity movement, all of this network that had cultivated throughout the years. It helped them with all of this intelligence, how to create cultural centers, media sites. And that is why when you look at the people, even inside the US, in my assessment, that are helping Iran with their propaganda, you see a big amount of uh and big number of activists that are also long-time Cuban regime solidarity activists. Because Havana recruited them for decades, and when Iran needed those people when it began paying attention into this region, who was the partner to allow to to basically lease in a way Iran all of this network? It was Cuba, it was not China, it was not Russia, it was the Cuban regime, and the overlap is it's it's out there, it's very easy to track.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Can you talk a bit? One group that gets a lot of focus in the US nowadays, it's called the Singham Network, which is led by this um American tech billionaire who lives in in Shanghai and is essentially seen as working with the Chinese um Communist Party, but it's got a lot of different political party, a media arm, and then activist groups, particularly Code Pink, I would think gets the most attention. Doesn't Code Pink have particularly strong ties to the Cuban regime and the Singham Network in general?

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Yes, that's that's a very good uh case study, right? Because it's not just Code Pink, for example, Archie Singham, which was Royna Bill Singham's uh father, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

This is the founder of the Singham Network, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Correct, he's the founder of this network, the guy that has all this money. But his dad was a close ally of the Cuban regime. He was spotted, uh, according to former Cuban officials that I've interviewed, that were stationed at the United Nations. Uh the Cuba has a mission in the UN. 90% of that mission is as people believed, and like counterintelligence believed, and 90% are Cuban intelligence. Um, and they have a lot of mobility, a lot of flexibility to recruit from New York. Not really so much like the Washington Embassy, because they have some restrictions to move around the US, but yes, the people in the UN mission. So I interviewed someone who met Archie, and it was a very close friend of Archie Singham. And Archie was a very famous academic of the non-alignment movement. And Cuba began um building a lot of ties with the non-alignment movement and all of this network of academics. So, what we see in the Singham Network is the result of a lot of political socialization, right? Some of them are the kids of others who were close to the Cuban regime, right? And then you have Jodie Evans, who worked with McGovern, who ran for president years ago, who was a very close ally of Castro, whose first husband was also very close to the Cuban regime and advocated for the Cuban regime. So it's an entire network that comes from this world. Many of them come from the years of the Vietnam War. Uh, they traveled uh to Vietnam, etc. So you have then other cases within this network. For example, Medaya Benjamin uh met the Cubans in Angola when the Cubans were in Angola, and she was there, and that's how they met, and then they invited her to Havana. Medaya left for years in Havana. She worked as a journalist in Havana, which might be true, but we also have to take into account for based on interviews I have conducted, and even people who met her at the time, there are a lot of people who were suspicious of that position because when you go to the island and you stay for many years and you're working with the Cuban regime, sometimes one of the covers they use is uh they put you as a journalist, right? Because they need a cover. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I'm saying that the people that knew her that I have interviewed in the past and the pattern we see in Cuba has it's has been that. So this is a source of concern for many people. And then you have Medaya, but you have all other members on the coping board, um, like um Vivian Lesnick. She is the daughter of Max Lesnik, a long ally of Castro. Um, in fact, when the broad you saw the indictment this year, this week, right? Last week, we indicted Raul Castro. It was done by the broad because of the shooting of Brothers to the Rescue. Let me tell you a little story. Before Brothers to the Rescue, right around that time, there was a big negotiation between Havana and the Clinton administration. Max Lesnick was part of that negotiation. Clinton was willing to remove the sanctions at the time because we didn't have the Libertarian Act. So the sanctions were not law, they were not statute at the time. It was easy for any president to remove them. And Clinton was willing to do that. While they were having this relationship, Castro decided to shut down Brothers to the Rescue because he wanted, and this is what a lot some people that were part of those negotiations have told me, that he really wanted to sabotage having a good relationship with the United States because it's not, it was not in his interest to have a good relationship with the United States and lose the antagonist, right, in front of the Cuban people, because that antagonism, that constant war was beneficial for him politically, for this scare tactic internally. So when you see that you have several members of Coping, several members of the Singham Network, Manolo de los Santos, we for those who haven't uh followed him, he's one an executive on the Singham Network, executive on the People's Forum, an organization that has been organizing a lot of protests around the country, an executive in the Justin and Education Fund, another nonprofit that is uh tied to Singham. De los Santos was recruited, spotted, was spotted by a group that is called Pastor for Peace, by Des Mars' pastor in New York, to travel to Havana when he was very young. He then lived in Havana for many years. They said he studied there at a religious seminary in Matanzas. But Mr. de los Santos, I think he arrived in Cuba. If he wasn't 17, he was around 18, also at a very young age, um, has a very close relationship with the Cuban regime. I interviewed a Cuban journalist who actually saw him at an office in Cuba when he arrived to Havana, he was the one uh organizing all the movement and the advocacy campaign for the release of the other spies that were in the United States. Mr. de los Santos used, according to the testimony of this gentleman that I've interviewed and another journalist, he used to frequent, he used to go to this office as part of this international committee that was promoting this campaign to release the WAS network. So, long story short, when you look at all of this pattern, Jay and Hagar, and you also did the story about Kala Walsh, also arrived to Cuba at 17. When you look at Claudia de la Cruz from Party of Socialism and Liberation, also said that her activism uh got stronger when she visited Cuba. When you look at Gloria La Riva, also part of the Cuba Solidarity Network, I mean the list is so long that it's overwhelming. So the entire network has a very close relationship with Cuba because they either live there, they have been part of the of the solidarity movement for a long time. And anyone who understands how the regime operates knows that this solidarity movement is a big part of Cuban's intelligence uh assets, because that's how they recruit. The moment that they the passports are sent to Cuba, they start analyzing, profiling those activists. I'm not saying everyone that travels to the island ends up working for them, but that is the goal for them. The goal is that if you're a person of interest, if you're someone you're a journalist, and all of a sudden you you know you have access to a lot of people in the US, you you are um ideologically, you are sympathetic with them. Of course, they're going to try to recruit you because you're a valuable asset, and that is not a secret for anyone. So anyone that is traveling to Cuba and has that strong, close relationship with Cuban authorities, with Cuban intelligence, I think it should be a source of concern for the United States. My concern with this is that the Singham network, it's more than an ideological hub for Marxism and anti-capitalism. There are a lot of extreme actors that I have identified at some of the meetings that are taking place and orbiting around this network. And this is the story I'm about to publish. And I think those are issues that should be addressed in this country.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

So, Hillette, you know, you you're getting me thinking about the heart of all of this, which is what would the fall of the Castor regime mean for US national security and the broader Caribbean and Latin America region?

SPEAKER_02 39:14

I think it's going to be um a source of stability for Latin America. Cuba has been uh distressing it, it has been um destabilizing Latin America for a long time. Uh, so I'm very happy for the domino effect that this is gonna have in the region uh once this intelligence apparatus uh is no longer, no longer has the diplomatic immunity that they enjoy. I think the threat that the United States is gonna have to mitigate is that what are they going to do with this uh intelligence apparatus that is so sophisticated to prevent them from inserting themselves into the drug trafficking and into money laundering and those types of activities, but definitely it's gonna be positive in that sense. I also have to be honest, aside from ideologically how I where I stand or anything, look, I'm a mom. I have a kid that is 14 years old, and when I see a lot of these young people, 17, who I know they're just ignorant a lot about my country, right? And they're going to my country to hear this very well crafted propaganda. And you can you can buy you can drink this coolie, you know, because you don't have a lot of uh information, you didn't live, and they have crafted this for 60 years, so they're very it's it's very well constructed. So I'm very concerned about the lives of Americans that could be uh radicalized, that sometimes we know that Cuba had a hand on it, but sometimes we don't even know. And we and and and I'm pretty sure that we have um people in counterintelligence and even insider intelligence that know that this has happened, that Cuba's hands have been behind the radicalization and some of the things that have occurred in in a in the last few decades, but we don't have the data publicly, hasn't you know it hasn't been disclosed. And I think there should be a cause of concern for Americans like why American kids at 17, 18 are traveling to this country to be exploited, but this authoritarian regime who violates every single human rights in the book, that it's really atrocious. This is not about, oh, maybe I'm a Democrat, you're a Republican, we disagree. No, no, no, no. Those those are disagreements that we can discuss and we can solve, and they're not, you know, they're not deal breakers. What is happening in Cuba is really people that are being that are made in vain belief they have grievances against the system, and those grievances are being exploited to go against the system, to break the law, to vandalize, um, and to really put themselves on on a position where they can end up in prison. That in in in one it's it's one thing that could happen. The other thing is that they end up committing uh terrorist, domestic terrorist crimes, like it has happened in the past. And so definitely I think that a lot of things are going to change when this platform for our enemies to freely operate 90 miles from from our shores is is is closed for business and the United States become an ally of not just the Cuban people, because the United States has always been an ally of the Cuban people. No, no other country has helped us than the United States government. But at this, even though the political will sometimes was lacking, but the truth is that it has always helped the democracy movement in Cuba. But I'm I'm eager to see what it's going to be of the region, what's going to happen, what is also gonna be able to be an ally of a democratic government in Cuba.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

And final question: How is this transition gonna work? Is there some power, is there some person like in Venezuela that we could ally with, or is this gonna be a massive kind of effort bringing you know Cubans back from Florida, working with the kind of the disaffected elements inside Cuba? How would a transition work?

SPEAKER_02 43:18

Well, I think a transition is possible, but it's not gonna be automatic. I don't think it's going to be that difficult, or that it's portrayed as bringing people uh from Florida. There's a lot of big important actors uh in the democracy movement and even business people who are eager to go and help reconstruct the island and contribute to a democratic Cuba. I think the danger is a controlled succession where the military and this intelligence services and and the elites that are linked to the regime preserve power under a new face. And I'm a little bit more optimistic now than what I was a few months ago because I saw them uh presenting a lot of options to Washington. Washington, a lot of so-called Delcy Rodriguez. We have to understand that what happened in Venezuela is not necessarily the same scenario for Cuba, right? We have similar uh issues, but it's very different country, right? In Cuba, there are no political parties, there is not a position that is able to even run for office, right? Because it's a one-party system. Cuba is more actually, it's probably similar to Iran in the sense of how authoritarian it is, right? Without obviously the military capabilities that Iran has, right? Um so I think um in the case of Cuba, the the real danger is in that elites to stay in power under a new phase. I think there the administration, in my in my opinion, should um help and support uh this democracy organizations and civil society. There's a lot of documents that need to be preserved in Cuba in order to have legal accountability. Because this is a country that is gonna, we're gonna need a process of legal accountability if we really want to heal as a nation and we want to move forward, because there are a lot of crimes that have been committed that nobody has paid for that, right? So we're going to have to we need a process um in that in that direction also. I don't see I don't see a Dulcie Rodriguez as an easy solution for us. And the difference perhaps I see between us and Venezuela, we don't have the networks inside the country that Venezuela has, right? The networks are outside, but inside the country we don't have the same situation. Um the the level of support for the regime, like I said, it's virtually non-existent. Um, the other thing is that the diaspora outside Cuba has a lot of political influence, right? We've been here for a long time. We have people in Congress, people in the Senate. So I think um a fake transition or a transition that lasts too long with a figurehead is not going to be well received. But Cubans in the US, which and we, you know, which do have political, uh, political capital in in this country. So I do I think that's I don't see a path for a Dulcie Rodriguez like that. I believe there should be maybe a transition, a commission of a transition, an administrative government, um, with very small, with people that are involved in that government and not allowed to run for elections the next cycle. So we protect that, you know, the integrity of the future democratic system. And the only path is just to follow the law. Everything in the transition for Cuba, a statute, is in the Libertad Act, is drafted there, and there are very specific steps that the Cuban regime or a transition government needs to take in order for the embargo to be lifted, right? Release of political prisoners, legalization of political parties, a timetable for free elections, and a clear process to pay the debt the Cuban regime has with American business and business that are on the home sport. And those are business that were expropriated, and we're talking about a debt that goes in the billions now. So the Cuban regime or the transition government, that this administrative government needs to have a clear path in order to solve those issues. So that is why I don't see a Delci Rodriguez as a solution. The Venezuelan did not have this in statute. We do have the transition, it's in the law, and it's going to be very difficult for the administration to circumvent the law.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Well, Halette, this has been fantastic, a tour de force. We appreciate it. Where can our listeners find your work, your writings, your you know, investigations?

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Well, they can follow us on social media. We have a website that is called ADN Cuba, adncuba.com, like Cuba's DNA, and we publish a lot of the human rights crisis inside the island there. And they can also follow me in social media. Not very good on social media, but I'm also there. It's uh Helet Martinez in X, and they're very happy if they follow us and start reading about what's happening inside the island. And thank you guys for having me.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Thank you, Hillette, for joining us. Um, and to our listeners, thank you for listening. If you are so inclined, please leave us a review and preferably five stars. It makes a huge difference in helping new listeners find us, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Bye. Thanks you guys.