Former U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Lead Investigator: Time to Clean Up U.S. Regime-Change Programs in Cuba

BY FULTON ARMSTRONG

Posted on Sunday, 12.25.11

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.

For three years, I was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s lead investigator into the political operations of the State Department and USAID in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. The Cuba programs — designed to identify, organize, train and mobilize Cubans to demand political change — have an especially problematic heritage, including embezzlement, mismanagement, and systemic politicization. Some program successes costing millions of taxpayer dollars, such as the creation of a network of “independent libraries,” were grossly exaggerated or fabricated.

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JG: It is a well known fact that the sitting U.S. President uses USAID funds to channel taxpayer money to their political cronies. Dubbya and Obama have both done it.