The U.S. State Department published a report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism", which documents over six decades of espionage, infiltration, and influence operations by the Cuban regime on U.S. territory.
The document, also shared on social media by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, states that Havana has developed a systematic strategy to infiltrate institutions, promote support networks, and obtain sensitive information over more than 60 years.
"For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the main sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States," Rubio wrote in his post. "The State Department is exposing the complete history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country. The American people deserve to know," he added.
The report claims that Cuban agents were able to infiltrate the highest levels of the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon, operating undercover for decades without being detected.
Among the most serious cases documented is that of Víctor Manuel Rocha, who spied for Cuba for about 50 years, from 1973 until his arrest in December 2023, while holding positions such as Director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council under Clinton's presidency, Ambassador to Bolivia, and advisor to the Southern Command. At the time, Attorney General Merrick Garland described the case as "one of the most profound and enduring infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent." In 2026, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to revoke his U.S. citizenship.
The document also outlines the case of Ana Belén Montes, a senior analyst from the Defense Intelligence Agency recruited by Cuban intelligence in 1984, who revealed the identities of at least four undercover agents, the location of a secret military base in El Salvador, and the existence of a multimillion-dollar satellite program. Former National Counterintelligence Director Michelle Van Cleave testified before Congress that Montes "compromised practically everything we knew about Cuba."
The former head of CIA Counterintelligence, James Olson, is quoted in the report with a striking assessment: “They are a very formidable adversary. They were very professional, very disciplined, and had a vendetta against the United States... The Cubans have penetrated our government. I guarantee you that we only know the tip of the iceberg. They are much better than the KGB.”
Beyond classic espionage, the report outlines the ideological genealogy of the Cuban project: how Havana developed a form of Marxism based on "Third Worldism" that turned racial and anti-colonial resentment into a political weapon, influencing movements like the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and more recently, anti-ICE groups and organizations linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The document notes that in a period of just 18 months between 1971 and 1972, the FBI recorded about 2,500 attacks on U.S. soil, at a rate of almost five per day, during a wave of leftist terrorism that Cuba actively helped to facilitate.
The report also warns about the current dimensions of the threat: China and Russia have tripled their intelligence personnel at facilities located in Cuba since 2023, and the island hosts 18 signals intelligence facilities, three of which are operated by Beijing. According to the document, “China and Russia consider their bases in Cuba among their most critical foreign listening posts.”
The publication is situated within a sustained escalation of pressure by the Trump administration against the Cuban regime throughout 2026, which includes multiple rounds of sanctions, the deportation of a former official from the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), and the investigation of 145 pro-Cuba organizations for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The report concludes with a warning that encapsulates its central thesis: "Cuba's aggression against the United States was never fundamentally a dispute over economic policy or sovereignty. It was a revolution against Western civilization itself, partly waged through the insidious method of persuading the children of the West to turn against their own heritage."
Related videos:
Filed under: