The assertion is included in an article entitled ‘Time to clean up U.S.
regime-change programs in Cuba’, published by The Miami Herald earlier
this week.

Armstrong criticism is backed by three years of experience as the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee’s lead investigator into the political
operations of the State Department and the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America.

The writer, who worked on the Cuba issue on the U.S. National Security
Council during the Clinton administration, noted that “some program
successes, costing millions of taxpayer dollars, such as the creation of a
network of ‘independent libraries,’ were grossly exaggerated or fabricated”.

The article adds that “an oversight committee’s mandate is to ensure that
funds —about $20 million a year but surging to $45 million in 2009— are
used effectively and in a manner consistent with U.S. law”. However,
Armstrong wrote that “State and USAID fought us at every turn, refusing to
divulge even basic information about the programs, citing only a document
of vague ‘program objectives’.”

“The programs did not involve our Intelligence Community, but the secrecy
surrounding them, the clandestine tradecraft (including the use of
advanced encryption technologies) and the deliberate concealment of the
U.S. hand, had all the markings of an intelligence covert operation,” the
text reads.

In his article, Armstrong makes reference to American citizen Alan Phillip
Gross, a USAID subcontractor who was arrested in Cuba in 2009 and
sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment in 2011 for carrying out subversive
covert actions in the Caribbean nation.

“When a covert action run by the CIA goes bad and a clandestine officer
gets arrested, the U.S. government works up a strategy for negotiating his
release. When a covert operator working for USAID gets arrested,
Washington turns up the rhetoric, throws more money at the compromised
program, and refuses to talk,” he wrote.

“We did not know who Alan P. Gross was —indeed, the State Department
vehemently denied he was theirs after his arrest, and even some of our
diplomats in Havana thought he was working for CIA,” the author added
before writing: “Only Gross can say what he knew about Cuban law as he
carried out his $585,000 contract, including five visits to Cuba. He has
said that he was ‘duped.’ We confirmed that State and USAID had no policy
in place to brief individuals conducting these secret operations that they
are not legal in Cuba, nor that U.S. law does not allow unregistered
foreign agents to travel around the country providing satellite gear,
wide-area WiFi hotspots, encryption and telephony equipment and other
cash-value assistance.”

“Rhetoric and actions that prolong the prison stay of an innocent American
apparently duped into being a pawn in the U.S. government’s 50-year effort
to achieve regime change in Cuba are counterproductive. It’s time to clean
up the regime-change programs and negotiate Alan P. Gross’s release,” the
article concludes.