Frances Stonor Saunders deserves the acknowledgement and gratitude of those who have been victims of an empire that, in Europe alone, as its own agents explained to her, had unlimited financial resources. It was not the author's intention to analyze what was going on elsewhere at other times. That is why her book merits, first and foremost, being emulated by an exposé of everything that Washington has done outside of Europe and what it still continues to do.
The issue is especially relevant for all Cubans, for our country has always had a "privileged" position when it comes to these matters.
Cultural aggression against Cuba began in 1959 and did not cease with the end of the cold war. Not only does it still exist, but it has steadily increased. It still preserves its covert, clandestine dimension, directed by the CIA, but since the beginning of the 1990's, has also acquired a new, public and shamelessly open dimension. For all these reasons, the Cuban case is exceptional, absolutely unique.
It is likewise unique because what is being done to us in the field of culture has always been part and parcel of a much wider aggressive plan, and which has included cruel and constant economic warfare, military aggression, terrorism and other criminal acts whose purpose, stated explicitly and in detail in an infamous Yankee law, is to put an end to our independence.
The aforementioned has been profusely recorded in several U.S. official documents, originally secret but finally disclosed several decades later as a consequence of the demands of persons in the United States who have succeeded in discovering the truth concerning their government's conduct. The refusal on the part of the authorities to allow that becomes all the more evident through their acknowledgement that the information disclosed is just part of the existing information, and that important sections of the documents published have been deleted or eliminated, and continue being as secret as they used to be.
Thus, in 1991 the State Department published a book of more than 1,200 pages of official documents related to its policy towards Cuba during the final year of the Batista regime and the first two years of the revolutionary era (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960. Volume VI, Cuba).
The book contains copious references to the military, economic and political support given to that brutal dictatorship up until its very last day, attempts to avoid any publicity concerning that support and the persecution of patriotic emigration; as well as brazen efforts to fabricate an alternative political force and "prevent the victory" of the revolutionary movement when the collapse of the dictatorship was apparent. The book describes all the arrangements made by the State Department and its embassy in Havana to protect the defeated criminals (Batista included) and to help them to find a safe haven in the United States and other countries. Hundreds of pages describe all the plans perpetrated by the Washington government against the Revolution from its very first year of existence. They were illegal actions - including intensive hostile propaganda, but were not confined to that - and had to remain covert. In a memorable meeting at the White House on March 17, 1960, President Eisenhower launched a clear warning: "everyone must be prepared to swear that they have not heard of it" (Id., document 486, page 861) and "our hand should not be seen in anything that is done" (Id., p. 863).
A further document written in October 1961 was disclosed on February 25, 1998. In other words, it was kept secret for 36 years and four months. The document contained an analysis by the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency of the failed invasion via Playa Girón (the Bay of Pigs). Its author, General Kirkpatrick, offers revealing precisions about what they baptized the "Cuba Project". The essence of the project, which began in 1959 at a time when the Revolution had not yet proclaimed itself socialist or restored relations with the former Soviet Union, involved the "creation of an exiles' organization" whose mission was "to be a cover for Agency operations", and "to create an opposition inside Cuba" that would appear to be directed by the exiles - under Agency control - and would be "nurtured... by means of clandestine assistance from abroad." Echoing the president's admonition, Kirkpatrick stated: "The hand of the US government would not be seen."
But it was a generous hand. The leaders of the exile groups organized by the CIA were paid $131,000 USD per month in salaries . Substantial funds were allocated for propaganda purposes, including radio broadcasts, trips by politicians and "academics", conferences, and articles disseminated throughout the entire continent. The cost paid by the CIA for the so-called "Bohemia Libre" magazine amounted to $35,000 USD per week.
After the defeat at Playa Girón, the U.S. government remained adamant in its attempt to destroy the Cuban Revolution. Recently disclosed Pentagon documents reveal efforts to fabricate conditions that could facilitate a direct attack by the U.S. armed forces. The subversive and terrorist actions associated with Operation Mongoose are also well known. The report of the commission presided over by Senator Frank Church on December 1975 revealed the existence of numerous plans to assassinate comrade Fidel Castro as well as other similar projects aimed against Cuba. A book published in 1999 (Psywar on Cuba: the declassified history of U.S. anti-Castro propaganda, by John Eliston) has incorporated further declassified material that reveals how psychological and propagandistic aggression has been maintained during these 40 years, and which has included the use of books, newspapers, comics, films, leaflets, and radio and television programs.
After the cold war, the United States did not cease its aggression against Cuba. It did quite the opposite. It intensified and expanded the aggression. The Torricelli (1992) and Helms-Burton (1996) Acts not only intensified the blockade and extended sanctions to all states and persons failing to comply with it, but also openly proclaimed their intention to overthrow the revolutionary regime by promoting internal subversion through the employment of Washington-backed groups. Since then we have had to confront two Cuba Projects: the one secretly carried out by the CIA since 1959 and the one sponsored from the 1990´s by the State Department and the so-called U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
From 1996 to 2000, USAID allocated $10 million for 22 projects designed to finance the "opposition" inside Cuba. According to its own reports, in 2001 and 2002, the Agency allocated $5 million per year for this purpose, and it intends to spend $6 million in 2003. Of course what the CIA is currently spending will only be approximately known in 30-40 years when fresh documents are declassified - most certainly with deletions and mutilations.
But it is known beyond any doubt that the volume of resources being used by the CIA is much larger than that. USAID itself acknowledges that fact in a report published on July 26, 2000. After evaluating the program it recognizes that this is "just a small part of what the U.S. government is doing with regard to Cuba".
With the arrival of the third millennium and the establishment in Washington of an administration closely linked to the annexationist Miami mob - which allowed it to seize the White House through an outrageous electoral fraud -- aggression against Cuba has become all the more shameless and vicious.
In broad daylight on May 20, 2002, President George Bush met in Miami with some of its most notorious terrorists, and proclaimed without hesitation his decision to intensify the blockade and increasingly deploy his subversive and interfering projects. The new USAID Director for Latin America, a member of that mob, has reiterated in all his speeches that the ultimate goal is to revert Cuba to what it was in the past and hand over land, houses and other properties to their former owners awaiting their chance in Florida.
While Mr. Bush participated in this shameful get-together, a USAID communiqué, dated April 22, 2002, was circulated in U.S. universities and other institutions, inviting them to join the subversive program by channeling funds through their and other U.S. non-governmental organizations to finance opposition groups inside Cuba. USAID would also help to coordinate activities aimed at the same purpose undertaken by NGOs from other countries. However, it is clearly stated that each and every addressee in Cuba "must be specifically approved by USAID after consultations with the State Department" (USAID Outreach to the Cuban People M/OP-02-916). This is an example of the way in which private institutions are being utilized and manipulated to serve the purposes of covert activities carried out by the U.S. government, a key element of the CIA's cultural cold war thoroughly discussed by Stonor Saunders in her book.
In 1870, at the time when the nation was emerging, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Cuban Founding Father, had discovered the key to the essential conflict of our history: "to take possession of Cuba" was "the secret of its policy" (U.S. policy). José Martí openly denounced this and devoted his entire life, until his very last days, to attempting to prevent it. This has been the cause and the real nature of the challenge facing Cuba since it finally achieved its independence in 1959.
In the fields of propaganda, culture, and ideology, imperialism has resorted to every possible means to conceal and distort that fact, and continues to do so despite the fact that there is more than sufficient evidence to unmask it.
An intensive and well-orchestrated propaganda is presenting Cuba as a country from which a large part of the population has "fled". Statistics from the U.S. Immigration Service and the U.S. Population Census are public and would seem to prove otherwise. First of all, the overwhelming majority of Cuban émigrés have traveled on direct flights from Havana to Miami and have done so for economic or family reasons. On the other hand, in 1958 Cuban migration to the United States ranked second after Mexico in the whole continent. At present, the emigration rates from more than half a dozen countries in this hemisphere are much higher, despite the fact that none of them have an Adjustment Act, nor there is any U.S. policy that deliberately encourages and promotes emigration from any of these countries; not to mention the millions of non-Cuban illegal immigrants.
The manipulation of the migration issue fuels the key and decisive element of its counterrevolutionary strategy: to silence its aggression and disguise the conflict between imperialism and the nation as intra-Cuban strife. This maneuver is being perpetrated by seemingly disparate characters - from common criminals to moderate academics - whom, however, conform without batting an eyelid to the line they have been ordered to follow: that the hand of those who order and pay should not be seen. From the annexationist and terrorist Cuban-American National Foundation created by Reagan to those publishing a magazine in Spain that, to its very name, is a copycat of the oldest creation of the CIA.
Although official documents state that the so-called "exile" movement was organized by the CIA, which paid the wages of its "leaders" and employees, and trained and directed them for decades, and that the alleged internal "opposition" has been fabricated and is being directed and financed by the CIA, the media giants controlling information in full consonance with Agency plans, are overlooking what they know and trying to foster legends to serve the empire's purposes.
These media and certain academics are aware of the declassified documents and can easily access the sources describing how Washington organizes and finances its Cuban agents. But far from using that information, they are ignoring it and repeating what - by chance (?) -Washington wants them to write and say. In Stonor Saunders' book it is pathetic to find the names of certain intellectuals and artists who volunteered to do exactly what the CIA wanted them to do. Subsequently, they alleged that they did not know. That is possible, although more than a few have affirmed that they should have tried to find out.
With regard to the warfare against Cuba launched by the CIA and even by other less covert Washington agencies, it is currently impossible to claim ignorance. Of course, it is possible to allege cowardice or seek refuge in cynicism. But people can no longer pretend innocence.

Preface to the Cuban edition of "Who paid the Piper?
The CIA and the cultural Cold War", by Frances Stonor Saunders