CUBAN OPS 101ness cards and pleasantries in Spanish, and after some small talk I invited
him to lunch the following week at La Bussola, an Italian restaurant, osten-
sibly to discuss Latin American politics.
La Bussola was Palmera’s first authentic, upscale Italian restaurant,
and it was located in a popular middle-class shopping and restaurant dis-
trict. If I was going to voluntarily subject myself to mind-numbing Latin
American revolutionary bullshit for a few hours—and I was—I would
at least treat myself to an authentic insalata caprese and some ravioli al
pomodoro in the process.
Over time I developed a friendly but businesslike relationship with
Carlos. I didn’t come out and identify my actual employer, but Carlos knew
I was CIA. No “normal” American in my position would waste his time
meeting with a known Cuban agent, and in fact would probably be pro-
hibited from doing so. Carlos and I would regularly debate Latin Amer-
ican and world politics, and we had shown a polite respect for each other’s
views. (Carlos, if you’re reading this, turns out my stated fear of Cuba’s
destructive influence in Latin America was warranted. Witness Venezuela.
Fidel’s lackey Hugo Chávez—and his successor, drone-dodging conspiracy
theorist Nicolás Maduro—destroyed Latin America’s oldest, wealth-
iest democracy and millions of Venezuelan lives. Like Syria, Venezuela
has been devastated by its own leadership, who value power more than
country. Venezuela has become a country of poverty, refugees, and human
trafficking.^1 Well done!)
Again, I digress.
While I was building a working relationship with Carlos, the CIA suf-
fered a devastating hit to its sensitive Cuban ops program. In late July
1987, the Cuban government revealed on state television that a number
of Cubans believed by the CIA to be unilateral agents were in fact double
agents, controlled all along by the DGI.^2 Many of these agents had even
passed CIA polygraph exams. A colleague and classmate of mine, assigned
to Havana, was videotaped by the DGI while engaged in an operational
act and had to leave the country. He was set up by a double agent himself.
A few months earlier, I’d personally run counter-surveillance while
another CIA colleague met one of the doubled Cubans in Palmera. At
the time, the CIA assumed the Cuban was good and not a double; we
believed he was an agent who was betraying Cuba by providing secrets to