Traitors Like Us: Why Do Smart People Spy for Cuba?

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
~ John LeCarre

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had unsealed an indictment against  ex-USAID official, Marta Rita Velazquez, for conspiracy to commit espionage. According to the DOJ press release,

(B)eginning in or about 1983, Velazquez conspired with others to transmit to the Cuban government and its agents documents and information relating to the U.S. national defense, with the intent that they would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of the Cuban government.

As part of the conspiracy, Velazquez allegedly helped the CuIS (Cuban Intelligence Service) spot, assess, and recruit U.S. citizens who occupied sensitive national security positions or had the potential of occupying such positions in the future to serve as Cuban agents. For example, the indictment alleges that, while Velazquez was a student with Montes at SAIS in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, Velazquez fostered a strong, personal friendship with Montes, with both sharing similar views of U.S. policies in Nicaragua at the time.

In December 1984, the indictment alleges, Velazquez introduced Montes in New York City to a Cuban intelligence officer who identified himself as an official of the Cuban Mission to the United States. The intelligence officer then recruited Montes. In 1985, after Montes’ recruitment, Velazquez personally accompanied Montes on a clandestine trip to Cuba for Montes to receive spy craft training from CuIS.

Later in 1985, Velazquez allegedly helped Montes obtain employment as an intelligence analyst at the DIA, where Montes had access to classified national defense information and served as an agent of the CuIS until her arrest in 2001. During her tenure at the DIA, Montes disclosed the identities of U.S. intelligence officers and provided other classified national defense information to the CuIS.

During this timeframe, Velazquez allegedly continued to serve the CuIS, receiving instructions from the CuIS through encrypted, high-frequency broadcasts from her handlers and through meetings with handlers outside the United States.

Former DIA analyst Ana Montes is serving a twenty-five year sentence at a Federal prison in Texas. The now unsealed indictment against Velazquez is not yet posted on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia's website and no explanation was given as to why the USG chose to keep it sealed for nine years. The probable reason, however, is that the Feds had hoped to have Velazquez extradited from Sweden, where she has lived since Montes's arrest in 2001. According to the Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, Velazquez is married to a retired Swedish Foreign Ministry official. She was denied Swedish citizenship in 2002, but granted it the following year. Sweden has a policy of not extraditing individuals who are charged with "political crimes," which they deem espionage to be.

Ms. Velazquez is just the latest in a long line of well-placed U.S. national security officials who have been revealed to have spied for Havana since the Castro brothers came to power fifty-four years ago. Ana Montes may have been their most prized agent, but there likely are others who have succeeded in escaping detection. Montes, DIA's top Cuba analyst, engaged in a seventeen-year long classified data dump for Havana. Two outstanding references on the Montes case are a recent Washington Post Magazine article, by Jim Popkin, "Ana Montes did much harm spying for Cuba. Chances are, you haven’t heard of her," and True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy, by the lead investigator in the Montes case, Scott Carmichael.

Another top case was that of Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers. A respected State Department analyst, Kendall Myers spied for Cuba, along with his wife, for nearly thirty years. Arrested in 2009, he is serving life without parole at a Federal supermax prison in Colorado. His wife, 74, is serving an eighty-one-month sentence.

Little is publicly known about Velazquez other than her gold-plated higher education, impressive government career positions and refuge in Sweden. She served as a spotter and access agent for Havana, i.e., a scout for potential spy recruits and insider with a top secret clearance in a position to gather sensitive information and influence policy. As the indictment reveals, she spotted, recruited and groomed Montes, both of whom shared Puerto Rican heritage.

Montes is the daughter of a U.S. Army colonel, and has a brother who is an FBI agent and a sister who is an FBI counterintelligence official. Kendall Myers is a grandson of Gilbert Grosvenor, great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell and is related to Pres. William Howard Taft. He graduated from Brown University and earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Blood doesn't get much bluer in the United States.

Shortly after Myers was sentenced, a colleague of mine who had known him told me, "For what it's worth, aside from his detestable spying, he's someone I was happy to know." Another colleague who had worked with Montes related that she was "capable and impressive in her knowledge, though also aloof and cool." A professor who had known Myers said he was surprised at the charges. "He's been a fantastic colleague, a great guy." He added that Myers was "a smart person who we thought had done a good job at the State Department. The students loved him." But in his personal journal which the FBI had seized, Myers praised Fidel Castro as a "brilliant and charismatic leader" who is "one of the great political leaders of our time." And he called the United States government "exploiters" who regularly murdered Cuban revolutionary leaders."

So, what gives? Why do otherwise smart people from good families spy for Cuba? Do we have  American counterparts to the Cambridge Five -- the notorious high caste British intelligence officers who spied for Moscow before, during and after WWII? Perhaps. Like their earlier British counterparts, the American spies were recruited young, disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy and naively enamored with a regime that styled itself as a liberator of the oppressed and an opponent of "imperialism." They were taken in by Fidel's carefully crafted charisma. Ana Montes's FBI-employed sister wrote to her, “You betrayed your co-workers and your employer, and you betrayed your nation. You worked for an evil megalomaniac who shares or sells our secrets to our enemies.” But unrepentant, Ana Montes wrote, “Prison is one of the last places I would have ever chosen to be in, but some things in life are worth going to prison for or… worth doing and then killing yourself before you have to spend too much time in prison.”

DIA spy hunter Scott Carmichael describes Ana Montes as "a true believer. She spied out of a conviction that Fidel Castro was both the savior of the Cuban people and a champion of oppressed masses throughout the world, particularly in Latin America. Castro was her hero, and Ana served as his eyes and ears… inside the U.S. intelligence community." The same goes for the Myers couple. And this gets to the heart of the matter. The Cuban Directorate of Intelligence, trained by the Soviet KGB and with personal oversight by Fidel, always focused on recruiting true believers and tipos duros -- hard liners -- who work out of ideological conviction rather than for money. Such agents tend not to leave tell-tale signs of their treason such as fancy sport cars, expensive vacations, fancy homes and inexplicably fat bank accounts. The KGB-recruited CIA mole, Aldrich Ames, was done in by such open lavishness. Montes, Myers, et al., on the other hand, work for medals, not money. Former CIA Cuba analyst, Brian Latell, quotes a former Agency colleague, "I believe the Cubans have the best intelligence agency in the world."

I worked in Cuba as a diplomat, saw what a failed system it is, how political oppression saps the life out of a people. It is the only Latin American country whose population is in decline. Some 30,000 leave the island annually. I've tried to delve into the anomaly of why smart people work for a bankrupt dictator in my upcoming thriller, Havana Queen. But I confess I remain puzzled. Lenin cynically referred to gullible outsiders who supported the Bolshevik regime as "useful idiots." But William Shakespeare's King Lear got to the heart of it: "Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not."

Tales of a Healthy Paranoid

I flew to Europe earlier this month. All went smoothly with my travel until my return flight. A red flag was raised when United Airlines would not let me pre-check-in online. Despite my repeated attempts, I kept getting a message informing me to report to the airline's check-in counter at Brussels airport, my point of departure. As I processed in with no difficulty, three heavily armed Belgian airport police lingered nearby. Ah, yes. El Al was checking in passengers across the aisle. Yes, that was it. Extra security for the Israeli airline.

But, when I showed up at the gate, I was approached by a security man who asked me to step aside, unbuckle my trousers, remove my shoes and spread my arms and legs. The security man then proceeded to pat me down while another disassembled my travel bag to inspect its contents, piece-by-piece. I was asked to empty my pockets and explain each item therein, from my reading glasses to a couple of aspirin. The fellow took apart my pen for up-close examination, then removed the inner soles of my shoes, bent them and peered inside each. Naturally, the multitude of other passengers eyed me warily as I underwent this careful inspection. I passed and was allowed to re-dress, re-pack and board my flight. But upon my arrival at Washington Dulles Airport, I was pulled aside again to undergo an identical inspection with the addition of a paraffin test of my hands for any evidence of explosive residue. I neither protested nor asked why I was being singled out yet again. I later saw that my check-in bag had also gotten a thorough going-through.

Hey, these are precarious times. We all do our bit to cooperate to ensure safe travel. Certainly, I was randomly identified for enhanced examination. No sweat. I arrived home safe and sound after all. But then a friend who's an expert in aviation security told me I'd been "capped," security jargon for being singled out for some reason, ranging from sharing the same name as a bad guy to being fingered by "bots" that scour the internet for incriminating information attached to individuals. He surmised that my being a thriller writer might have had something to do with it. Hmm.

But then…

Upon arriving home, there was a message from the Department of State. The good folks in the Department’s Office of Program Information and Services wanted to discuss the latest book manuscript I submitted for security review prior to publication, as required under the nondisclosure rules to which I'm bound. The good fellow who is handling my book pointed out four sections that had to be redacted. Much as I tried to negotiate my way out of some of it, he stuck to his guns. Just doing his job. Censorship in the name of national security, protecting the good ol' U.S. of A. from itinerant secrets spilling from the keyboard of one former employee. Loose lips sink ships. I must part with 411 of the juiciest words in my book of essays. Redacted! The Scarlet Letter forever branded onto my book in the form of line-after-line of blacked-out text. Welcome back to the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!

And today…

My publisher sent me an email:

"Hi Jim, this was funny. Paypal called me and wanted to know if we were doing business with Cuba, and why we are sending money around regarding Havana. LOL. A recorded line, the whole bit. They were relieved to learn you are writing a novel about Havana."

So, some anonymous, yet alert factotum deep inside the bowels of Paypal caught onto a Cuba connection in the monetary transactions between me and my publisher. And Paypal recorded their conversation with him over this matter. If only George Orwell were alive! He could write about it without fear of official censorship. Maybe even travel without undergoing enhanced interrogation. Yes, I'm about to publish Havana Queen, a spy thriller set in Cuba, a place where I'd served as a diplomat and had every reason feel paranoid. But, no, dear Paypal, rest assured I am sending not a single centavo to Fidel.

Someone once said, "Paranoia is the delusion that your enemies are organized." Am I delusional? Or are the events described above somehow all connected?

What're you looking at?!

My Presentation at International Thriller Writers' "ThrillerFest"

International Thriller Writers has invited me to speak at their annual "ThrillerFest" in NYC in early July. I'll be presenting at the same kickoff session as NYT bestsellers Steve Berry and John Sandford. Anne Rice is this year's "ThrillerMaster." Needless to say, this is quite an honor for me. It's like Oscar Night for thriller writers.

My presentation topic: "Writing the National Security Thriller: Tips for the Lay Author."

From ITW: 
"ThrillerFest is 'a four-day celebration of thriller books, the authors who write them, and the fans who read them.' Or, as Co-Presidents of International Thriller Writers, Kathleen Antrim and Douglas Preston, say: 'ThrillerFest creates an environment in which readers meet authors, and aspiring authors gain the tools and make the contacts they need to get published. It’s a place where agents discover new authors, and where up-and-coming authors find resources to move their careers forward. And finally, it’s a place where bestselling authors share their experiences, advice, and wisdom with those traveling the same road."

Fans of thriller fiction are also welcome to attend. If you do, please come and see me.

ThrillerFest

What the Foreign Service Can Learn from the U.S. Military

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Ricks's latest book, The Generals, is a fascinating study of U.S. Army commanders from WWII to the present. It's an excellent evaluation of good vs. bad leadership. What particularly struck me were parallels to the Foreign Service and lessons that should be learned and applied. Following are highlights:

On Mediocrity 

• An Army battalion commander said, "in today’s Army, the B-minus and C-plus officer fares better than the A performer who occasionally takes risks and fails." "The personnel equivalent of Gresham’s Law is that bad leaders drive out good ones."

• "a study in 2010 by the Army Reserve Institute concluded that 'the main reason talented people leave is not the lure of a lucrative civilian career, but because mediocre people stay in and get promoted.'"

• "success rarely can be rewarded adequately if failure carries little or no consequence. Nor will the standout officer be watched and imitated as he or she should be."

• Admiral Arleigh Burke said, "the first thing that a commander must learn is not to tolerate incompetence. As soon as you tolerate incompetence…you have an incompetent organization."

Keep the Outliers & Innovators

•  "In considering 360's, it is also important that they do not reward the pleasant conformists and punish the brilliant outliers… All too often, an officer is promoted not for professional competence but…for being" a member of the club.

• Gen. George C. Marshall wrote, "There are very few of them, (who) are of that unusual type who enthuse all of their subordinates and carry through almost impossible tasks."

•  There is a need "to keep alive the careers of outliers and innovators…so that they can be called upon during a crisis."

•  Paul Yingling said, "in large organizations, the challenge is to keep the skeptics from becoming extinct."

• "Leadership should not be seen as a matter of officers taking turns or waiting in line."

• "We also should reward commanders who cultivate and maintain cultures in which their subordinates feel free to exercise initiative and speak their minds freely."

• Petraeus was fond of a company commander’s sign put up in western Baghdad which said, "In absence of orders and guidance, figure out what they should have been and exercise vigorously."

On the Need to Be Able to Fire Incompetents

•  "Relief then can be seen…not as a sign of the system failing but rather as a sign that the system is working."

• "when making such reliefs, it probably is better to announce them, in order to remove the mystery and dispel rumors… A relieved commander's peers need to be informed about why something has happened so they can learn from it."

• "Failure to relieve is sometimes a form of leadership indiscipline."

  On Bureaucratic Resistance to Change

• A 2011 study by Harvard’s School of Government found that most young Army officers left due to "limited ability to control their own careers” and “frustration with the military bureaucracy."

• "The former officers overwhelmingly believed that the Army did not reward talent with faster promotions and did not do a good job of matching talent to jobs." Among their recommendations: "Be willing to fire people for poor performance.” Most valued talent in the Army: "don't rock the boat."

•  "Any attempt to make such reforms will be attacked by the military bureaucracy." We should be wary when it "rejects suggested changes and defends current personnel policies on the grounds of ‘fairness.'" This "puts the interests of the officers and bureaucracy above those of the rank and file and the nation as a whole."

Retired FSO, Jon P. Dorschner wrote about this need to take lessons from the U.S. military as well -- Why the Foreign Service Should Be More Like the Army -- in the June 2011 issue of the Foreign Service Journal. The son of an Army colonel and a former instructor at West point, Mr. Dorschner addresses particularly the personal and moral side of things:

        

Importance of Esprit de Corps

• "I have never heard esprit de corps mentioned in the Foreign Service context. Instead, the Foreign Service emphasizes individuality over collegiality, exclusivity over inclusiveness. This is a hangover from its earlier history, when its membership was largely restricted to East Coast elites who were 'male, pale and Yale.'"

•  "Yet class prejudices still linger and the Foreign Service often continues to connote elitism. What individual officers bring in the form of social class, elite education and family connections can still play a big role in placement and career advancement."

Primacy of Mission 

• In the military, "the goal comes first and units are told to work cohesively to ensure successful completion of the mission. Individuals who showboat and subordinate the mission to their individual ambition do not do well and are singled out for correction. By contrast, the Foreign Service spends little or no time explaining to its members why they are doing what they are doing. Instead, duties are often performed mechanically. The mission becomes subordinate to the procedures. This is a common curse of bureaucratic organizations, and State Department bureaucracy is legendary."

•  "Just as takes place in the Army, Foreign Service personnel should be told how their efforts fit into broader U.S. foreign policy and how their hard work and sacrifice benefit the nation. Otherwise, there is often no sense that a mission has been accomplished."

Need for Transparency

• "Foreign Service members who serve repeatedly in hardship posts are not provided a career advantage. Those who demonstrate dedication, hard work and technical expertise are not necessarily rewarded with regular promotions or choice assignments. This vagueness leads to accusations that 'it is not what you know but who you know,' and erodes morale."

Equal Treatment for All - Enforce the Rules

• "The State Department issues rules and then almost immediately makes exceptions to them. There are limits on how long personnel can serve in Washington, D.C. Those who do not serve in hardship posts are supposed to face negative consequences. Those who do not fulfill their language requirements are supposed to pay the price."

•  "Like the military, we must staff positions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan that are dangerous and require separation from family. Everyone is supposed to pull their fair share, but for some reason it just doesn't happen. There always seem to be people who are able to manipulate the system. They stay in Washington longer than they are supposed to and avoid hardship tours, yet continue to be promoted."

•  "A rule is a rule and must be enforced. Otherwise, the perception grows that the institution is not interested in fairness."

Controlling Egos

• "West Point cadets with large egos, who constantly tell their peers that they will become generals and who seek as much 'face time' as possible with officers, are known as 'tools.' Being a tool is not a good thing. This does not mean that the military does not reward strong personalities, of course. Ambition is the first requirement for anyone aspiring to make the higher grades, after all. But the system teaches such individuals to rein in some of that egoistic behavior."

•  "West Point cadets learn that the most egotistical general is not always the most successful, and that an effective institution must make room for different leadership styles. Or, to put it another way: A little humility is not a bad thing. Perhaps the Foreign Service could benefit from a similar teaching model."

Looking After Subordinates' Interests

• "Officers and NCOs so egotistical and wrapped up in their own advancement that they do not show concern for the well being of their subordinates receive poor evaluations and do not progress in their careers. From the outset, Army personnel are taught this essential component of leadership. By contrast, concern for subordinates is not part of the State Department evaluation process. Nor is there much emphasis on families. Instead, officers are taught to look after themselves and their careers first and foremost. This can lead, rightly or wrongly, to a perception by subordinates that 'successful' Foreign Service officers are those willing to do anything to get ahead, including letting down colleagues and disappointing subordinates."

•  "These allegations arise out of the fact that such self-centered behavior is seldom punished in the Foreign Service. Selfishness and excessive egotism are not viewed as indicators of poor leadership and a lack of esprit de corps, but are often seen as the norm."

What are the chances that the USG and Department of State will pay heed and reform, adopting useful lessons from our military? Note the following: 

“One of the worst abuses in the conduct of our foreign affairs is our habit of appointing ‘lame ducks,’ second-rate politicians and other incompetents, to important positions of international commissions or as delegates to international conferences. The other civilized nations as a rule appoint their government experts and diplomatic and consular representatives to these positions with the consequence that their representatives grow in wisdom and acquire a larger confidence and recognition from their fellow citizens.” 

~ Recommendations for reforming the U.S. Foreign Service by the National Civil Service Reform League - 1919.

Life After the Foreign Service, Part II

Escape from Devil's Island

Clusiot: You're Louis Dega. I'm Clusiot. How come you ended up in a place like this?
Dega: Patriotism.
~ Papillon (movie, 1973)

Nary a day goes by that I don't find among the Key Search Words of my blog stats variations on the following:

"life after the foreign service"
"careers after the foreign service"
"deciding to leave the foreign service"
"leaving the foreign service"

Of DIPLO DENIZEN's hundred, or so, blog posts thus far (approaching 100,000 hits), Life After the Foreign Service ranks fourth in popularity. This tells me that a sizable segment of my reading audience comprises U.S. Foreign Service personnel and that many of these are actively contemplating leaving the service, but are anxious about timing, life plans and post partum depression. Some of you Foreign Service folks are on the threshold of retirement. Others of you are unhappy and simply wish to turn a new leaf, finally make an honest living. Still others have personal reasons ranging from relationship commitments to health issues to children's needs, etc. In Life After the Foreign Service, I said, "'Do the right thing' doesn't necessarily apply. You've done that for years as a buttoned-down, team-playing, don't-rock-the-boat bureaucrat. Try something new. Listen to your heart and follow your dreams. I did." This is clearly easier said than done. Being a cautious, rick-averse sort, with two toddlers and a foreign-born wife, I chose a decade ago to give up a government salary for a secure career in fiction writing. Next, with the help of some friends, I plan to break into Hollywood, also a no-brainer. The Foreign Service prepared me well for these pursuits, with Daliesque career turns, personalities straight out of One Flew Over of the Cuckoo's Nest, Kafkaesqe bureaucracy, and a personnel system that could keep Rod Serling at his typewriter for decades. My leap has yielded success with three Kindle bestsellers, national media attention and now selected among the top 20 percent out of 10,000 entrants in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest with my fourth novel. Yes, next stop, Hollywood.

Camp Commandant: Make the best of what we offer you, and you will suffer less than you deserve. 

For those of you who feel trapped on a bureaucratic Devil's Island and with the desperate need to escape, you may wish to be bolder than I: take that leap into becoming a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil, a male stripper, or starring in your very own nationally syndicated cooking show. But if you're a hopeless prisoner of the nothing-ventured-nothing-lost Foreign Service culture, go for those lucrative UN consulting jobs, diplomat-in-residence teaching posts, or processing FOIA requests in the basement of SA-137½. Foreign Service people have a wealth of training and experiences to draw on to take the next leap into the private sector or other areas. I think many may undervalue the transferability of their skills. This is a possible shortcoming that each individual must overcome. I chose to take the unusual step of following my passion for creative writing. I did not want a "paycheck job," and eschewed forever bosses, commutes, dress codes and office politics. Others are comfortable in that world. If you are, go for it. But, if, like me, you're not, don't tie your hands.

Dega: If I stay - here in this place - I will die! 

While serving as Charge d'Affaires in Phnom Penh in the early '90s, I had the mixed fortune of hosting Richard Holbrooke for a weekend. Bored in the private sector, Mr. Holbrooke was angling for a position in the Clinton administration, so went on a "fact-finding" jaunt to SE Asia. But that's another story. Anyway, the garrulous former FSO leaned forward while we were having drinks one evening, locked his eyes on mine, pointed his index finger at me and said, "The Foreign Service will always break your heart." (In his Scarsdale accent, he said, "haht.") I'm sure he had his own career path in mind when he said this, having quit the service after a decade to pursue a meteoric rise in foreign affairs by way of journalism, business and government. 

I knew too many colleagues at State who were locked in bitter resentment in a career they no longer enjoyed. Their corrosive attitude wore on the rest of us, sometimes hindering the goals we needed to accomplish. They stayed in out of the need to pay the bills, reach that twenty years to be able to retire early, or the simple lack of courage and imagination to take the leap. I felt sorry for most of these people and occasionally tried to counsel them friend-to-friend. Others, with an inborn malignant streak, I ignored. If you detest what you're doing, but feel trapped, weigh the toll it may be taking on your health -- mental as well as physical -- and on your relationships with your loved ones. And while I greatly appreciate your reading my blog -- really! -- I don't want to write any more "Life After" posts. And you will find the answers not in cyberspace, but in your own heart.

Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe, you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.
~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex And The City

 So, if your passion is trapeze, stripping, or cooking, and you're either leaving the service, or desperately wanting to leave, focus on the possibilities more than the hindrances. Everybody I knew thought I was nuts (some still do!) for not taking a safey post-FS route, having turned down a college teaching position, a consulting job, gigs teaching regional studies to spooks, and stiffing Mother State on WAE assignments. Call me crazy. Meanwhile, I collect royalties. And then there's Hollywood…

Miles: Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, "What the f---." "What the f---" gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future. 

~ Risky Business (movie 1983)

  
See also --

Life after the Foreign Service

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award: HAVANA QUEEN Makes the First Cut

HAVANA QUEEN, my nearly completed spy thriller set in Cuba, has made it to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Authors compete in one of five categories—General Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, and Young Adult fiction—for the chance to win a publishing contract with Amazon Publishing. My book is competing in the Mystery/Thriller segment. A finalist will be chosen in each category, and a Grand Prize winner will then be selected by Amazon customers and receive a $50,000 advance. The remaining finalists will also receive a publishing contract with Amazon Publishing, with a $15,000 advance. The top 20 percent of 10,000 eligible entries -- 400 entries from each category -- are selected to go onto the second round. Amazon reviewers will then read excerpts of the entries and narrow the pool to 100 titles in each category. In the subsequent round, reviewers from Publishers Weekly will read, review and rate the full manuscripts to choose the top five semi-finalists for each category. Amazon Publishing editors will then select a finalist in each of the five categories. In the final stage of the contest, Amazon.com customers will vote for a Grand Prize winner.

The judges selected HAVANA QUEEN based on the following pitch:

Three buildings collapse every week in Havana due to internal rot and neglect. La Reina (The Queen) is one such building. It symbolizes Cuba itself. The once majestic structure implodes, killing eighty-six occupants. This sparks a revolution against the communist regime as Fidel and Raul Castro sink deeper into dementia and failing health. In a desperate ploy, sultry female Cuban spymaster Larisa Montilla takes on the CIA in a tit-for-tat shadow war of assassination. As the bodies pile up, Cuban-American FBI Agent Nick Castillo is swept up in a maelstrom of espionage, intrigue and guerrilla war. But he must navigate a wilderness of mirrors that leads him to an assassination plot against the Castros’ No. 1 enemy – the President of the United States."

In the movie, “A Few Good Men,” Colonel Jessup says, “I eat breakfast three hundred yards from four thousand Cubans who are trained to kill me.” I’ve been there. I met monthly with Cuban military and intelligence officers on “The Line” at Guantanamo Naval Base for over a year. That experience and those from my service inside Cuba as a U.S. diplomat often made me think, “Fiction can’t rival this.” So, I wrote a novel about it all, “Havana Queen.”

A respected reviewer said of my writing, “The author has an eye for detail and a style of rich description that the eager reader can feast upon.” A former intelligence officer wrote, “His descriptions are so good I wondered at times how he got them  through the government reviewers." My fiction appeals particularly to fans of “Homeland,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and readers of well written spy thrillers. What makes my writing stand out from the pack is the authenticity I bring to it.

The ABNA contest is fun and exciting. Making it to the finalist stage is a real long shot. But the ride is great!

Confessions of a Sleeper Agent

Just after we'd settled in the small rural village (pop. 2600) in which we now reside, the rumors began flying. The first, predictable, one was, "He's a CIA agent working undercover." That one got some traction and for years I've found imaginative ways to shoot it down. Forget about why the CIA would plunk one of its "agents" in Toad Stool Hollow, USA. I took particular delight, however, in the second rumor: "They're in the FBI's witness protection program." I relished the notoriety I got from this rumor. But how many Ivy League-educated introverts of farmer stock get mistaken for mafiosi? I didn't care. I went out of my way to stoke this rumor, including trying to affect a Brooklyn accent and a facial twitch. Why the rumors? Because the American hinterland simply has a hard time processing "he's an American diplomat-turned-writer with a Dutch wife whose kids were born in South Africa and who are all multilingual."

Over dinner the other day, I told my wife, "You know, I feel like one of those Russian sleeper agents." She expressed puzzlement. "Yeah," I said. "I live an identity that isn't my own, participate in a way of life that doesn't come naturally and must affect a down-home patter whenever I mingle with the locals." As with most of my off-the-cuff commentary, she dismissed it as crazy talk. That's why I didn't continue with comparing us with the old Saturday Night Live tv comedy Conehead family, outer space aliens stranded in American suburbia after their spaceship had crashed on earth.

 But, continuing with the "illegals" formula, let's look at some examples. Days after moving in, I stopped in my tracks while walking down Main St. and began laughing like a mad man. Why? A sign in a hair salon window proclaimed, "Walk-ins Welcome!" In my world, "walk-ins" were defectors who appeared unannounced at an embassy requesting political asylum. During my strolls or while driving, I found myself inadvertently conducting surveillance detection runs. I stopped at storefront windows to view reflections of a possible "tail" and double tracked, memorizing faces, again, to detect a tail. One eye was always in the rearview mirror. My phone conversations were guarded and terse, used as I was to electronic bugging. I turned the radio up loud when conducting private conversations. My trained ear would try to discern AK rounds in holiday fireworks. I applied my kremlinology skills in analyzing local power structures. Big mistake. The mayor is not an appointed apparatchik and you cannot consider PTA members as conniving politburo aspirants each with his or her own power base. The village court is not rigged and dialectical materialism is worth less than the grocery list. No, the Girl Scouts are not a front organization; it's okay for your daughters to join. The school board does not conduct purges. Not usually anyway.

At social get-togethers, in response to the inevitable question, "So what do you do?" I respond, "I'm a writer. I worked previously for the U.S. State Department." "Ah. State Department, huh? So, how long did you live in Albany?" Then the rumors begin. "Psst. They're like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in that movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith"). Of course, what can you expect when you're called out of the blue by a State Department bureaucrat coolly advising you to pack your bags for return to active duty to Afghanistan? Or, the fact that you write bestselling spy novels that must be security reviewed by government censors? Or, that you tool around in a '72 U.S. Army jeep you brought back from Vietnam? These are not exactly the quotidian activities of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Having spent the bulk of my government career in or tracking communist regimes, guerrilla movements, puppet states, satrapies, dictatorships and the byzantine U.S. foreign affairs bureaucracy has left me a twisted soul, largely out of touch with my own society, a sleeper agent in my adopted home town. Excuse me. My handlers are expecting me at a dead drop location and some State Department functionary is calling…