‘Attacks’ in Havana hit US spy network

Che remembered

HAVANA, Oct 2, (Agencies): Frightening attacks on US personnel in Havana struck the heart of America’s spy network in Cuba, with intelligence operatives among the first and most severely affected victims, The Associated Press has learned.

It wasn’t until US spies, posted to the embassy under diplomatic cover, reported hearing bizarre sounds and experiencing even stranger physical effects that the United States realized something was wrong, individuals familiar with the situation said.

While the attacks started within days of President Donald Trump’s surprise election in November, the precise timeline remains unclear, including whether intelligence officers were the first victims hit or merely the first victims to report it. The US has called the situation “ongoing.”

To date, the Trump administration largely has described the 21 victims as US embassy personnel or “members of the diplomatic community.” That description suggested only bona fide diplomats and their family members were struck, with no logical motivation beyond disrupting US-Cuban relations.

Behind the scenes, though, investigators immediately started searching for explanations in the darker, rougher world of spycraft and counterespionage, given that so many of the first reported cases involved intelligence workers posted to the US embassy. That revelation, confirmed to the AP by a half-dozen officials, adds yet another element of mystery to a year-long saga that the Trump administration says may not be over.

The State Department and the CIA declined to comment for this story.

The first disturbing reports of piercing, high-pitched noises and inexplicable ailments pointed to someone deliberately targeting the US government’s intelligence network on the communist-run island, in what seemed like a bone-chilling escalation of the tit-for-tat spy games that Washington and Havana have waged over the last half century.

But the US soon discovered that actual diplomats at the embassy had also been hit by similar attacks, officials said, further confounding the search for a culprit and a motive.

Trump

Cuba, Bolivia remember Che:

A half-century after his death, Ernesto “Che” Guevara will be remembered in ceremonies next week in Cuba and in Bolivia, whose CIA-trained troops sent shockwaves around the world when they executed the Cold War revolutionary icon in 1967.

In Cuba — where schoolchildren still begin their day with a raised fist salute and chant “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che” — President Raul Castro will lead a ceremony at his mausoleum in the central town of Santa Clara.

The 86-year-old Castro’s memories will be deeply personal as he fought alongside Che in the Cuban revolution led by his brother Fidel that in 1959 overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In Bolivia, the army will participate at a public commemoration of his death for the first time.

“We want this to be a moment of unity for the Bolivian people,” said deputy coordination minister Alfredo Rada, saying the context was different from 1967, when staunch anti-communist president Rene Barrientos gave the order to execute the wounded Che.

Times have changed, and the incumbent President Evo Morales is a fervent admirer of the revolutionary leader.

Che’s four children will attend the memorial ceremony in the South American country, where the guerrilla leader was executed by a CIAtrained unit of the Bolivian army on Oct 9, 1967.

“If he had not died in Bolivia in 1967, Latin America would now be free, sovereign, independent and socialist, which is what he wanted,” his brother Juan Martin Guevara told AFP at his home in Argentina.

8 still missing in Mexico:

The death toll from Mexico’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake rose to 361 on Sunday after another casualty was confirmed in the capital, where a search continued at a collapsed seven-story office building in a central neighborhood.

National Civil Defense chief Luis Felipe Puente reported on Twitter that the dead include 220 people killed in Mexico City by the Sept 19 quake. The rest were in Morelos, Puebla and three other states.

The toll has continued to climb gradually nearly two weeks after the earthquake as bodies keep being pulled from the rubble — though nearly all the collapse sites have been cleared by now in Mexico City.