Inside the Company: CIA Diary by Philip Agee

Author:Philip Agee [Agee, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0883730287
Publisher: Stonehill Publishing Company
Published: 1975-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Washington DC 12 February 1964

For the past few days I've been shuttling between the Uruguayan desk and the Cuban branch getting briefed on operational priorities against the Cubans, as my primary responsibility in Montevideo will be Cuban operations. Only five Latin American countries still have diplomatic relations with Cuba, and in Montevideo operations against the Cubans are the highest priority on the Station Related Missions Directive – the only station in the hemisphere where operations against a Soviet Embassy are in second place on the priorities list. The reason is that communist strength in Uruguay is growing considerably, particularly in the trade-union field, and is undoubtedly assisted by the Cuban Embassy there. Moreover, there have been strong indications that current guerrilla and terrorist activities in the north of Argentina are being supported from the Cuban Embassy in Montevideo.

Right now there are two main objectives for Cuban operations in Montevideo. First, in order to promote a break in relations, we are using all appropriate operations to support the Venezuelan case against Cuba for intervention and aggression based on the arms cache discovery on the Venezuelan coast last November. The arms have since been traced to a Belgian manufacturer who claimed to have sold them to Cuba. The purpose of the Venezuelan case is eventually to get a motion through the OAS calling on all Latin American countries with diplomatic relations with Cuba to break them. The hope is that such a motion, coming from Venezuela and not the US, would have sufficient momentum to get adopted by the OAS, particularly if enough propaganda of non-US-origin can be generated over the coming months. For the sake of discretion I haven't asked, but the whole campaign built around the arms cache has looked to me like a Caracas station operation from the beginning. I suspect the arms were planted by the station, perhaps as a joint operation with the local service, and then 'discovered'.

While our overall objective in Uruguay is to effect a break in diplomatic relations with Cuba, we must meanwhile penetrate their Cuban mission in Montevideo either technically or by recruiting an agent, in order to obtain better intelligence about their activities. We already have a number of valuable operations going against the Cuban Embassy, but so far we haven't been able to penetrate it technically or to recruit any of its officers.

Not that the station hasn't tried. Last year several cold recruitment approaches were made and there was the unsolicited defection of Rolando Santana. Unfortunately, in the case of Santana, he had been in Montevideo only a short while and had not had access to sensitive information because he wasn't an intelligence officer. The case served nevertheless for propaganda operations.

On another occasion we very nearly recruited the officer believed to be the Chief of Cuban Intelligence in Montevideo. This officer, Earle Perez Freeman, had spurned a cold street approach for recruitment last December in Montevideo just before he was due to return to Cuba after some three years in Uruguay.

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