Former Latin America National Intelligence Officer Fulton Armstrong described the designation as “wrong”. Photo: Latin Press
Former United States intelligence officials say Cuba’s inclusion on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism is unfair, according to a news source from the northern country.
Half a dozen people involved in shaping policy toward the island in both the Republican and Democratic governments have claimed that the “consensus position” in the US intelligence community is that the nation does not sponsor terrorism .
Former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America Fulton Armstrong called the designation “wrong” in an interview with NBC News.
Larry Wilkerson, who served as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff in the administration of former President George W. Bush (2001-2009), ruled that the Caribbean country was not a state sponsor of terrorism.
“It’s a fiction that we created … to reinforce the logic of the blockade,” he said.
Adding Cuba to the list of countries that support terrorism is not only unjustified, but also harms the national security interests of the United States, according to Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser to former President Barack Obama (2009-2017). .
He told NBC News that using that term for purely political purposes by the United States in relation to Cuba is incorrect and delegitimizes the purpose of the rule, which aims to punish those whom Washington designates as alleged defenders of terrorism.
Meanwhile, American University of Washington professor William LeoGrande opined that Cuba’s inclusion on the list ironically comes from a country conducting attacks on the island.
“During the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) encouraged assassination, sabotage and paramilitary raids against Cuba, which would now be termed state-sponsored terrorism, and Cuban exiles trained by that organization continued the attacks for decades. ” he said.
Washington removed Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism it had been on since 1982 during the Obama administration in 2015, but the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021) reinstated it nine days before the end of his term . .
At the time, the White House claimed that Havana had granted asylum to leaders of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN), who had been offered a safe haven as part of Cuba-brokered peace negotiations with the government of the South American country Norway, and backed by the Obama administration and the Vatican.
The day before, the island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, said that designating Cuba as a sponsoring nation of terrorism increases the country’s risk and implies paying between a third more and twice as much to acquire supplies of goods.
He reiterated that the few suppliers who decided to maintain ties with the Antilles territory had increased prices, and that at the same time the United States was using intimidation and prosecution measures against fuel suppliers.
(With information from Prensa Latina)