Exclusive: USAID Scuttled American’s Release From Cuban Prison

By Jeff Stein

Filed: 4/9/14 | http://www.newsweek.com/usaid-scuttled-americans-release-cuban-prison-245237

Demonstrators gather during a rally for U.S. detainee Alan Gross in Lafayette Square in Washington December 3, 2013. Gary Cameron/Reuters

Aggressive “regime change” projects in Cuba by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) scuttled a chance to free one of its contractors jailed on the island, a former top Senate aide to John Kerry says.

Fulton Armstrong, who was a top CIA and White House National Security Council expert on Latin America before joining Kerry’s staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2010, also told Newsweek Tuesday that, contrary to USAID statements, the Obama administration “had not been briefed on the [USAID’s] regime-change programs, and that the secret operations continued just as they had under Bush-Cheney—aggressive, over-funded, and in obvious need of oversight and review.”

USAID disputes that characterization. “USAID works in places where we are not always welcome,” the agency said on its blog last week. “To minimize the risk to our staff and partners and ensure our work can proceed safely, we must take certain precautions and maintain a discreet profile. But discreet does not equal covert.”