Putin Names Cuba Adviser as Russia’s New Intel Chief

Earlier this year, General James R. Clapper, the U.S Director of National Intelligence, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that:

“The threat from foreign intelligence entities, both state and nonstate, is persistent, complex, and evolving. Targeting and collection of US political, military, economic, and technical information by foreign intelligence services continues unabated. Russia and China pose the greatest threat, followed by Iran and Cuba on a lesser scale.”

Only one of these nations is in the Western Hemisphere — just 90 miles from the United States. 

In the last week alone, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Havana to discuss (further) strengthening ties with Castro’s regime.

In other words, contrary to the argument of President Obama and his supporters, The White House’s new Cuba policy has only emboldened and coalesced these anti-American regimes.

Also this week, Russia’s Vladimir Putin named Sergei Naryshkin as head of its notorious foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR.

Naryshkin is a long-time Putin confidant. They first met as pupils at the KGB’s “training school” in the late 1970s.

He is also a long-time Cuba hand.  

Naryshkin travels to Havana frequently and has very close relationships with senior Castro regime officials, whom he recently referred to as “Russia’s most trustworthy partners in Latin America.”

He led the effort to forgive 90% of Castro’s debt to Russia and has been a proponent of Cuba forming part of Russia’s political-military alliance,Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

(Learn more here.)

In The Washington Post last week, U.S. officials estimated that Russia’s SVR, now led by Naryshkin, is believed to have 150 or more operatives in the United States.

Add to that Cuba’s vast network of intelligence operatives in the United States, which has been exacerbated by Obama’s new policy — along with the Castro regime’s unprecedented access to U.S. officials, Members of Congress, celebrities and business leaders — and it’s a bonanza for intelligence collection, influence and blackmail.

Picture below: Naryshkin (with a red cap) recently taking a tour of Old Havana, the Cuban military’s newest tourism holding.