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the CIA. By the end of the evening, I knew the Cuban agent had “made”
me in various locations around Palmera. I reported this to my colleague
afterward and asked if the agent had mentioned seeing me. He had not.
That struck me as worrisome, since a bona fide Cuban agent would be
understandably nervous about attracting surveillance while meeting his
American handler and would report any suspicions. His life was on the
line. A bona fide Cuban agent would want to confirm I was exactly what I
appeared to be: benign CIA counter-surveillance, there for his protection.
Since the Cuban was in fact a double, he wasn’t concerned by my presence,
since he didn’t need my protection. I reported this red flag in cable traffic.
Carlos and I continued to meet up from time to time at La Bussola,
while the CIA’s Cuban ops group engaged in damage control in the wake
of the recent disaster. We were losing, badly; Cuba had outplayed us every
step of the way. The CIA’s natural tendency in situations like this— pre-9/11
anyway—was to circle the wagons, conduct in-depth CI investigations and
damage assessments, and generally assume a defensive posture.
I had other ideas.
I had recently helped Carlos to obtain a tourist visa to travel to New York
“on vacation.” This hard-core Communist revolutionary said he had never
been to the United States and was eager to experience the Big Apple. What
I did not ask or know, and what he would not tell me anyway, was whether
or not he had any operational meetings planned while on Yanqui territory.
The timing was right. I drafted a detailed operational proposal to
headquarters, one in which the CIA would remain on the offensive and
in which we would come out on top no matter how things went down. We
were desperate for a Cuban win, and I believed I could deliver one.
I reported Carlos’s planned trip to New York so that at the very least
we’d learn of his contacts there. This could help validate him as a target.
The kicker was my recommendation that I travel to New York, where I
would “bump into” Carlos and cold pitch him to work for the CIA. (Alter-
natively, to keep me clean, another CIA colleague could cold pitch him.)
Bear in mind, although Carlos and I had a good relationship, we were
not trusted friends, and he had shown no real, exploitable vulnerabilities.