ABSTRACT
Diplomats based at the Canadian embassy in Havana conducted espionage in Castro’s Cuba during the 1960s and early 1970s. The activities encompassed military as well as socio-economic and political intelligence gathering and included surveillance of Soviet facilities on the island and handling of Cuban agents. Canada and the United Kingdom, which also conducted operations, shared both raw intelligence and assessments with the United States.1 These
The research herein received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Northern British Columbia. David Vogt, Jillian Merrick, Costina Keresztesi and Stephanie Campbell provided research assistance. The author is also grateful to a number of former Canadian foreign service officers who agreed to interviews. The present article is a revised version of a paper presented to the Conference on ‘Choices for Western Intelligence’, University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog, April 2007. 1Details of the Canadian operations in Cuba are provided in Don Munton, ‘Our Men in Havana; Washington and Canadian Intelligence on Castro’s Cuba’ (forthcoming). The primary sources available at the
arrangement began in earnest at Washington’s request, shortly after the United States government broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in early 1961 and continued through the turbulent times of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban missile crisis and a Soviet-American dispute over a would-be base in Cuba for Soviet submarines. Tasking of specific activities largely originated with the US intelligence community, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, and the information collected often went directly back to Washington. The nature and full extent of this liaison has been secret, until now.2
