“Better Than the KGB”: Cuba Is America’s Deepest Spy Threat
The State Department just dropped an historic report on the threat of Cuban intelligence — 100 pages that conclude, in the words of one former CIA counterintelligence chief, that Cuba was “better than the KGB ever was,” and that it remains one of the most insidious counterintelligence threats the United States faces. What makes it insidious is the method: almost entirely human intelligence. The report describes a service that recruits its agents young and impressionable and turns them into true believers — people who work for the Revolution with no money, no compromise, and no specific orders, and who stay loyal for decades while they climb to the heights of the U.S. government. Ana Montes ran the Cuba desk at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Victor Manuel Rocha was a U.S. ambassador and NSC aide. Both were Havana’s, for years, and neither did it for cash.
Read against the rest of the year — the moves against Caracas and Tehran, and the May 2026 federal indictment of Raúl Castro over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown — this report reads less like a history and more like a casus belli: the public case a government assembles before it acts. The report also traces Cuba’s network forward, from its Cold War role running human intelligence for Moscow to a post-Soviet pivot that distributes its product to a broader set of American adversaries — and it name-checks a striking roster of American political figures as Cuba-adjacent. What remains to be seen is the shape of any escalation: espionage prosecutions, diplomatic pressure, or something further. This is the question a professional analyst watches — not the answer you’re handed.
I’m Eric Garland. I’ve spent 30 years in strategic intelligence practice, and I’m personally sanctioned by the Russian Federation for my work on Russian intelligence operations. On Game Theory Today I walk through the questions a professional analyst actually asks about the news, not the answers you’re handed.
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SOURCES
U.S. Department of State — “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism” — July 2026
James Olson, former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence — “They’re much better than the KGB ever was” — BBC News, 2024
U.S. v. Ana Belén Montes — DIA senior Cuba analyst, 1984–2001 (ideological recruit; no significant payment)
U.S. v. Victor Manuel Rocha — U.S. ambassador / NSC aide; guilty plea, 2024 — decades as a Cuban agent
U.S. v. Raúl Castro — federal murder-conspiracy indictment (1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown) — May 20, 2026
U.S. v. Gerardo Hernández et al. — the “Wasp Network,” U.S. District Court, S.D. Fla. — conspiracy to murder
State Sponsor of Terrorism designation — U.S. Department of State
