Until mid 2012 US AID, the alleged "development organization" known for clandestine work against U.S. enemies, ran a secret Twitter like service in Cuba to "promote democracy", i.e. incite opposition to the government there. It also ran, as the Associated Press now reports ( long version, documents), another undercover program aimed at recruiting Cuban youth as U.S. agents:
An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.
The U.S. contractor, one Alan Gross, was hauled to jail in Cuba because he secretly distributed U.S. communication devices like satellite phones for U.S. supervised Internet access. He allegedly also worked for US AID.
But the scheme uncovered now is even worse. Poor young Latin American people were hired for very small money to go to Cuba under cover and to find Cuban "activists" who could be recruited for U.S. political purposes. This not only endangered the little trained Latin American agents and those they recruited but it also abused health services and other legitimate needs as a cover:
In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called "the perfect excuse" for the program's political goals – a gambit that could undermine America's efforts to improve health globally.
As in Pakistan, where the CIA abused a polio prevention program to spy on the suspected Osama Bin Laden, the blowback will not only hit "America's efforts" for health projects but also those of everyone else. It will literally hit and possibly kill the persons that do the health work on the ground.
Using an fake HIV project in Cuba also shows the utter stupidity of the wannabe spies at USAID. Cuba is the state with the lowest HIV infection rate in the Caribbean. Its rate is even lower than the rate in Canada and Switzerland and only a third of the HIV rate in the United States. Anyone who starts a HIV prevention service in Cuba rather than in a hundred other countries sticks out like a large red pole in the blue Caribbean sea.
All three secret USAID infiltration attempts in Cuba, the "communication equipment", the "Twitter service" and this "activist recruiting" drive were launched under Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both had promised better relations with Cuba and then immediately started secret "regime change" programs which, when becoming public as they did, would undermine all such efforts.
This only shows again why every nation on this world must distrust ANY word that comes out of official Washington. The leaders from African countries who are just now visiting Washington should keep the Cuban example in mind when Obama tries to charm them into U.S. dependency. None of his words can be trusted or be accepted as having any real meaning.