Our men in Havana: Canadian foreign intelligence operations in Castro’s Cuba
| Author | Don Munton |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702014562592 |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2015, Vol. 70(1) 23–39
! The Author(s) 2015
Our men in Havana:
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Canadian foreign
DOI: 10.1177/0020702014562592
ijx.sagepub.com
intelligence operations
in Castro’s Cuba
Don Munton
Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
Abstract
Diplomats based at the Canadian embassy in Havana conducted extensive foreign intel-
ligence operations in Fidel Castro’s Cuba from the early 1960s through the early 1970s.
They collected human intelligence of both a political and military nature, using covert as
well as overt means. They did so generally at the behest of the United States, and
undertook specific ‘‘tasked’’ operations on request from the State Department and the
US intelligence community. The diplomat-spies also collaborated operationally with
United Kingdom personnel. This article represents the first detailed survey of the
Cuba operations and attempts to place Canada’s foreign intelligence program in the
context of its relations with the United States and of Canadian foreign policy generally.
Keywords
Espionage, intelligence, intelligence cooperation, Canadian foreign policy, Cuba, Castro,
US, USSR, UK
In late 2014, US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Rau´l Castro
announced that, after more than fifty years of tension and open conflict, their
two countries planned to resume formal diplomatic relations. The respective
embassies, closed since 1961, would reopen. Soon after the announcement,
Canadians learned that their country had hosted some of the talks leading to the
joint announcement. That revelation was fitting, and perhaps even ironic.1 Canada
1.
Campbell Clark, ‘‘Facilitating dialogue: Canada plays host to secret U.S., Cuban meetings,’’ Globe
and Mail, 17 December 2014, http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/facilitating-dialogue-
canada-plays-host-to-secret-us-cuban-meetings/article22137559/?service=mobile
(accessed
29
December 2014).
Corresponding author:
Don Munton, Kwansei Gakuin University, Center for International Education and Cooperation, 1-155
Uegahara Ichibancho, Nishinomiya, 662-8501, Japan.
Email: munton@unbc.ca
24
International Journal 70(1)
also played a secret role in the first decade of the US-Cuba conflict, one sparked by
the original closing of the American embassy more than 50 years earlier.
That Canada is involved in Western signals intelligence (Sigint) cooperation (the
‘‘UKUSA’’ arrangement, or so-called ‘‘Five Eyes’’) has long been public knowl-
edge.2 Canada’s active involvement in a parallel alliance for gathering and sharing
human intelligence (Humint) is much less well known. The latter alliance helped fill
the intelligence void created by the loss of the US embassy in Havana.
Thus it was that, beginning in the early 1960s, the Department of External Affairs
conducted foreign intelligence operations in Fidel Castro’s Cuba at the behest of the
United States. Diplomats at the Canadian embassy in Havana collected human
intelligence, especially of a political and military nature, through covert as well as
overt means. External Affairs shared raw and processed information with the State
Department, the US intelligence community, and the United Kingdom. The diplo-
mat-spies3 undertook ‘‘tasked’’ operations, responding to specific requests from the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US intelligence bodies. The Canadians
collaborated operationally in Cuba with UK personnel, including Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS, or MI6) field officers. They also used Cuban sources and agents. This
article represents the first detailed survey of these Canadian operations.4
2.
The five are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. On the history and structure of
UKUSA, see Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, Ties that Bind: Intelligence Cooperation
between the UKUSA Countries (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985). In 2010, the US and UK
governments jointly released previously classified documents on the origins and early operations of
the UKUSA arrangement. See http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/ukusa.shtml and http://
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/ (accessed 24 July 2014). The UKUSA alliance received
renewed attention during 2013 with revelations by former American intelligence contractor
Edward Snowden. See Greg Weston, Glenn Greenwald, and Ryan Gallagher, ‘‘Snowden document
shows Canada set up spy posts for NSA,’’ CBC News, 9 December 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/
politics/snowden-document-shows-canada-set-up-spy-posts-for-nsa-1.2456886 (accessed 24 July
2014).
3.
The term ‘‘diplomat-spies’’ is intended to be an accurate portrayal of the tasks involved, not a
pejorative. Some of those involved now publicly refer to themselves as such. See John Graham, ‘‘Bill
Warden, 1934–2011: Diplomat, bus driver, sailor, spy,’’ Bout de Papier 26 (summer/fall 2011):
31–32.
4.
This article is a much revised version of Don Munton, ‘‘Our men in Havana: Washington and
Canadian intelligence on Castro’s Cuba, 1959–1963,’’ paper presented to the Canadian Association
for Security and Intelligence Studies, September 2002, http://circ.jmellon.com/docs/pdf/our_me-
n_in_havana_washington_and_canadian_intelligence_on_castros_cuba.pdf
(accessed
24
July
2014). The antecedent of the pronoun ‘‘our’’ in the present title is intended to be ambiguous if
not ironic. In a discussion of British intelligence operations in Cuba, James Hershberg notes, albeit
only in passing, that Canada was also engaged in intelligence work there. See Hershberg, ‘‘Their
men in Havana: Anglo-American intelligence exchanges and the Cuban crises, 1961–62,’’ in David
Stafford and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, eds., American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939–
2000 (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000), 121–176. Hershberg neither elaborates on the Canadian
role nor mentions that the British and the Canadians collaborated closely. Peter Haydon refers to
Canadian intelligence work in Cuba in a single endnote, but offers no details. See Haydon, The
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: Canadian Involvement Reconsidered (Toronto: Canadian Institute of
Strategic Studies, 1993), 120n9. The only known public reference to Canadian espionage activity
in Cuba around the time it was underway is Harold Boyer, ‘‘Canada and Cuba: A study in inter-
national relations,’’ PhD dissertation (Simon Fraser University, 1972), 225, 448. Boyer refers,
somewhat vaguely, to Cuban suspicions of Canadian espionage, and to anonymous reports of an
Munton
25
Cuba in the 1960s was hardly uneventful. The Canadians in Havana observed
the end of a brutal Latin American military dictatorship, the coming to power of
the forces of Fidel Castro, the consolidation of the first Marxist revolution in the
Americas, Cuba’s defeat of the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion, and the emer-
gence of a long-lasting conflict with the United States. The Canadians also wit-
nessed Cuba’s political alignment with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), a substantial Soviet military build-up on the island, and elements of
what is now recognized as a secret American campaign to subvert the Castro
government: Operation Mongoose.5
The background to Canada’s intelligence effort in Cuba was the Cold War at its
height: the acute tensions of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the world came
perilously close to a nuclear confrontation; the vast expansion of superpower
nuclear arsenals; and the Sino-Soviet conflict. Various developments, including
the peaceful resolution of the missile crisis, emerging superpower de´tente, and
the beginnings of nuclear arms control, led in turn to Cuba’s decline as a US
national security preoccupation (although not as a domestic political issue) and
to the end of intensive clandestine Canadian intelligence operations there.
I adopt here the notion of intelligence as ‘‘information relevant to a govern-
ment’s formulation and implementation of policy to further its national security
interests and to deal with threats from actual or potential adversaries.’’6 While
Canada did not fully share American views of the Castro regime as a national
security threat, Ottawa did perceive as threats both the Soviet presence in Cuba and
the possibility of subversion in Latin America. Canada also had a general security
interest in furthering intelligence cooperation among members of the Western alli-
ance with its work in Cuba.
This essay provides a descriptive analysis of Canada’s decade-long intelligence
program in Cuba rather than a theoretical or explanatory treatment.7 After estab-
lishing the historical context and summarizing the nature and extent of the avail-
able evidence depicting Canada’s intelligence operations in Cuba, I address a series
of questions: What was the overall scope of the Canadian operations? What sort of
information did the Canadian diplomat-spies collect and how did they collect it?
What impact did the information have? And finally, what light does the Cuba
intelligence program shed on Canadian foreign policy more generally?
unnamed Canadian living in Cuba who claimed that ‘‘one embassy official was in the employ of the
CIA’’ (225).
5.
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble’’: Khrushchev, Castro and
Kennedy 1958–1964 (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1997), chapter 7; Lawrence Freedman,
Kennedy’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 17.
6.
Abram N. Shulsky and Gary J. Schmitt, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3rd
ed. (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2002), 1.
7.
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