Havana CIA Station

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Readers may be aware that US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned on Friday. The news was reported first by Fox News which stated that she was standing down because of her husband’s bone cancer. Reuters subsequently claimed that she had been forced out by the administration. Principal Deputy Director of ​National Intelligence Aaron ​Lukas will serve ⁠as acting Director of National Intelligence.

As a long-standing critic of Middle East interventions, Gabbard has been isolated in recent months. One of her subordinates, Joe Kent, resigned in March over the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The US Embassy in Havana in March 2016 (US Department of State, public domain).

The CIA’s Havana Station suffered tension with politically-appointed ambassadors during the 1950s as it sought to collect intelligence on the opposition to dictator Fulgencia Batista. The 1959 Cuban revolution put the station at the frontline of the Cold War until relations were broken off at the beginning of 1961.

Following the disastrous attempt to land a CIA-backed Cuban exile force at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, the agency participated in Operation Mongoose, a wide-ranging covert action programme which included plans for the assassination of Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders. Operations were reined in during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which briefly threatened a global nuclear conflagration, and gradually declined therefter.

A US interests section was re-established in Havana in 1977, and a CIA station seems to have resumed operations at some time thereafter. The US Embassy officially re-opened in 2015. Within a year, US diplomats began complaining of anomalous symptoms that became known as ‘Havana Syndrome.’ The possibility that this might be caused by an unknown sonic or directed energy weapon has caused considerable controversy both within and beyond the CIA.