An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.
Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.
Documents show Creative Associates approved the use of the travelers' relatives to carry cash to the Cuban contacts. But the family members weren't to be told that the funds were from the U.S. government.
Hector Baranda, who was a college student in Cuba when he was befriended by a group of traveling Venezuelans, said he was surprised to hear from the AP they were working for the U.S. government and had profiled him.
"How would you feel if you offered your sincere friendship and received this kind of news?" Baranda asked.
The travelers' project was paid for under the same pot of federal money that paid for the ZunZuneo program. But USAID has yet to provide the AP with a complete copy of the Cuban contracts under a Freedom of Information Act request filed more than three months ago.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in office during the program and is a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, said in her new book "Hard Choices" that she was pleased "to see change slowly creeping into the country."
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