State Dept. Issues McCarthyite “Cuba Report”

Today the U.S. State Department issued “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” a 100-page report which purportedly aims to expose “the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion” in the United States. Defending Rights & Dissent Policy Director Chip Gibbons has issued the following statement in response to the report:

“Defending Rights & Dissent objects to the State Department’s McCarthyite report on Cuba, which makes unfounded claims seeking to tar domestic movements for social change as agents of a foreign government.

The 100-page goes so far as to cite reports from the long-discredited House Un-American Activities Committee, in order to revive absurd Cold War conspiracy theories and update them for the present.

The report smears activists, organizations, and even elected officials using guilt-by-association techniques. It appears designed to justify both domestic political repression and regime change in Cuba.

Congress must not only condemn the report but hold hearings examining its authorship and to determine if the claims behind it have been used to facilitate the surveillance of American activists.”

Gibbons is the author of The Imperial Bureau: The FBI, Political Surveillance, and the Rise of the U.S. National Security State, a new history of the FBI that examines the continuity between Cold War anti-communist surveillance and contemporary counterterrorism, forthcoming from Verso Books.