China has had a spy base in Cuba for decades, former intelligence officer says
China’s espionage efforts in Cuba targeting the United States are not recent and date back at least three decades, a retired army counterintelligence agent has told the Miami Herald.
It took U.S. intelligence agencies nine years to figure out who was behind the repair and enhancements spotted during the 1990s at a “signals intelligence facility” — a reference to the interception of electronic communications — in the town of Bejucal, a 45-minute drive from Havana.
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“We saw the enhancements over a decade, a steady evolution; clearly something was going on, but we didn’t know what,” said Chris Simmons, a former chief of a counterintelligence research branch on the Western Hemisphere at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, which had Cuba as its No. 1 target. “And then, in 2001, we discovered that the Chinese had been there already for nine years. We were told at that time that when the Chinese arrived in 1992, they were embedded in a single building within Bejucal, and they were 50 officers in this facility.”
The revelations of the long-term foothold of Chinese spy agencies in Cuba come after new intelligence reported by The Wall Street Journal suggested Cuban and Chinese officials were discussing building a spy base and a military training facility on the island and paying billions of dollars to Cuba in exchange. White House and Pentagon officials first said the initial report had “inaccuracies” without further elaboration. But later, Biden administration officials confirmed that China had intelligence-collection facilities in Cuba since at least 2019, when they were upgraded.
The revelations come amid the Biden administration to improve communications with Beijing. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit China on Tuesday following a trip by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, in which he said he raised the issue of the Chinese base in Cuba with senior Chinese officials.
Following the first media reports about a spy base, members of Congress expressed concern for what seemed like a recent effort by China to establish intelligence facilities in Cuba.
“It comes as no surprise to us that the Cuban regime — which has historically opened its doors to foreign adversaries of the United States — and the (People’s Republic of China) are working together to undermine U.S. national security. However, the establishment of intelligence facilities and expansion of military ties this close to U.S. territory is a significant, escalatory step,” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairmen of the Senate and the House committees handling foreign affairs, wrote last week in a letter requesting an intelligence briefing on the matter.
But as it turns out, Chinese spies have been in Cuba longer than previously disclosed.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China quickly moved to secure a position in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida Keys, though, at the time, the Asian country was not perceived as a U.S. adversary, but just as a regional power, Simmons said.
“Washington knew the Chinese were engaged,” Simmons said. “But the conventional wisdom was that China just seized the political opportunity because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
