The death of a Cuban spymaster

Posted on Saturday, 05.05.12

The death of a Cuban spymaster
By Brian Latell

Fidel Castro's young intelligence officers were skilled and relentless —
even when they were turned against their own bosses. In the last of
three excerpts from his new book 'Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's
Intelligence Machine,' retired CIA analyst Brian Latell discloses the
lethal secret behind the apparently natural death of one of Castro's
senior advisers.

When Florentino Aspillaga defected from Cuba's General Directorate of
Intelligence — the DGI, Fidel Castro's elite force of spies — it was a
double blow for Havana. Not only was he a highly decorated intelligence
officer, he was a veteran, a member of one of the first classes to go
through the DGI's intelligence school. He enrolled in November 1962, a
few weeks after the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis and several
months shy of his 16th birthday. "It was my destiny,'' Aspillaga told me
when we first met, 20 years after his 1987 defection, "to work in
intelligence.''

All of his 50 classmates were precocious too, most also teenagers, 16 to
19 years old. The eldest was 23, and there was another boy who was even
younger than he. They were malleable and learned quickly, enthusiastic
acolytes in a fledgling intelligence service led by revolutionary
stalwarts most of whom were only a few years older.

Ramiro Valdés, the interior minister at the top of their chain of
command, was 30 that year. Manuel Piñeiro — Barbaroja, the
American-educated "Redbeard'' — who led the DGI from its inception, was
28. Fidel was 36; Raúl, 31, Che Guevara, 34. Most of the other top-tier
figures were also still in their 20s or early 30s, as were the most
important DGI operatives abroad. Armando Lopez Orta — the suave
"Arquimides'' — was typical. A friend of Piñeiro, he was 30 when
assigned to run the DGI's large Center in Paris. All were in the
vanguard of a generational upheaval that was convulsing Cuban society.

Not surprisingly, Piñeiro's tough young charges attracted considerable
attention. Former Mexican foreign minister and author Jorge Castañeda,
who knew Redbeard well, wrote about how they were initially easy to
spot. The DGI chief's " muchachos were generally young, lower
middle-class, or quite poor, uncouth but bright.'' Castañeda also quoted
a Colombian who knew some of them: "Piñeiro taught these boys how to
dress and use knives and forks at the table.''

There were no manicured playing fields in their backgrounds, no tennis
whites or prom night formals. Most, including Aspillaga, had scarcely
any schooling at all. Too easily dismissed, as some in the CIA did,
those Cuban teenagers were rugged true believers in Fidel and his
revolution. Thoroughly trained and ready for almost anything, they
should not have been underestimated.

Canny and street smart, they had been toughened during the years spent
as guerrilla fighters and conspirators in the revolution's urban
underground. Some survived the brutalizing ordeals of Batista's
political prisons. Quite a few were adoring acolytes of Fidel or Raúl,
or of Piñeiro or another top lieutenant who treated them like adopted
sons. Castañeda wrote that Piñeiro's boys were "adoring and totally
devoted to him."

A CIA officer in Santiago, Cuba's second city at the eastern end of the
island also admired Redbeard when they met on several occasions in 1958.
He told me he had a high opinion of Piñeiro. "I thought he was a real
nice guy. He was not a communist when I knew him."

This experienced Agency officer had also been deceived. Piñeiro had
studied at Columbia University in New York earlier in the 1950s, where
he courted and married a Tennessee-born ballerina. He spoke colloquial
English and was adept at charming Americans. But later, when he threw in
his lot with the Castro brothers, he was a hardcore revolutionary. He
shared their antipathy toward the United States and their desire to sow
revolution throughout Latin America. Fidel and Raúl had no doubt that he
was the perfect choice to get their nascent intelligence service up and
running.

Under Redbeard's tough leadership, it did not take the DGI long to
achieve something close to world-class excellence. Five KGB instructors
played a crucial role in that. Future CIA director Richard Helms
recalled that they did "a rather astonishing job."

The Soviets taught the full range of illicit tradecraft. The chief
tutor, a short, gray-haired Russian nicknamed "the Frenchman" by the
Cubans, spoke good Spanish. With his Soviet bodyguard or aide, he was
often seen at Piñeiro's side. Cuban instructors in the intelligence
school learned quickly from these KGB veterans, and Redbeard innovated
and improvised. The best students completing a course in some
operational specialty often jumped to the front of the classroom, where
they then taught novices what they had just mastered. The pattern
followed class after class.

But Cuba's intelligence professionals could never be sure they would
remain in the regime's good graces. During his decades in power, Fidel
authorized the executions of a long list of offenders, including two
intelligence chieftains who died under mysterious circumstances,
probably on his orders.

Redbeard Piñeiro was one of them. A well-connected former Cuban
government official who worked closely with the spymaster for many years
claimed that Piñeiro was murdered in 1998 on the orders of either Fidel
or Raúl Castro.

Like so many others in the brothers' entourages over the decades,
Piñeiro had strayed from their rigid orthodoxies and had been shunted
aside. But "he was impossible to retire,'' my source told me. He knew
too much; he was writing a book, and he made the mistake of telling
others about it. His whole career — more than 40 years — had been in
intelligence and intrigue. Everything he had done was as Fidel or Raúl's
proxy in covert operations in dozens of countries on several continents.
What else could he have been writing about?

The day after his death, security personnel searched his home in Havana,
"as if he were a dissident'' or a conspirator, and "kept all kinds of
papers,'' according to the former Cuban official who now resides in
Florida. He also told me that Piñeiro's home "was surely bugged'' and
that he had been talking too freely.

Redbeard's bodyguard, who doubled as his driver, was also certain his
boss had been murdered. Piñeiro was said to have fainted at the wheel of
his car, resulting in a single-vehicle accident on the streets of
Havana. He survived with minor injuries and was taken to a government
executive hospital for observation — only to die in his hospital bed of
a heart attack, the regime said. A day before the accident, the
transportation ministry had instructed his driver to take some time off:
Piñeiro would drive himself. My source told me the distraught driver
lamented openly: "They knew. They knew."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/05/v-fullstory/2785481/the-death-of-a-cuban-spymaster.html