Cuba still no threat, Pentagon insists

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
Herald Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday portrayed Cuba as a neighborhood menace, even as his intelligence service concluded that Cuba ``does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region.''

The seemingly contradictory views emerged as the Pentagon released a report to Congress outlining its assessment of the dangers posed by Cuba to U.S. interests, including by such unconventional threats as mass migration and biological weapons.

Cohen had delayed release of the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency for five weeks after Florida lawmakers, citing an advance Herald account of its conclusions, objected that it downplayed the Cuban threat.

Cohen sent the report back to its authors in the intelligence agency for a second look. They returned the report essentially unchanged.

Caught between competing views, Cohen on Wednesday appeared to split the difference, voicing a variety of personal worries about Cuba while releasing the DIA report, which minimized or largely dismissed such fears.

``While the assessment notes that the direct conventional threat by the Cuban military has decreased,'' Cohen said, ``I remain concerned about the use of Cuba as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United States, the potential threat that Cuba may pose to neighboring islands, [Cuban President Fidel] Castro's continued dictatorship that represses the Cuban people's desire for political and economic freedom, and the potential instability that could accompany the end of his regime.''

Maj. Gen. Erneido Oliva, Ret., once the highest-ranking Cuban American in the U.S. Army, applauded Cohen's remarks, saying he had correctly summed up Castro's ability to make mischief by developing unconventional weapons, disrupting U.S. communications or abetting drug smugglers. But he attacked the DIA report as naive.

``If you read the letter of the secretary of defense, I agree 100 percent with him,'' said Oliva, a Bay of Pigs veteran.

As for the report, Olivas said it ``tried to portray Castro as not aggressive. They're ignoring the history of Fidel Castro.''

Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who initially requested the report, declined to comment Wednesday. Miami's two Cuban-American lawmakers criticized the report, saying it would damage their efforts to promote freedom in Cuba.

``They wrapped up the package with bows and ribbons but you can't escape their summary conclusion which says Castro does not pose a threat to the U.S.,'' said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, also a Miami Republican, said the report gave short shrift to ``asymmetrical threats'' posed by Cuba's alleged links to drug traffickers or by its attempts to complete construction of a nuclear power plant in Cienfuegos.

``The underlying current here is that it reflects a strong support for the status quo,'' Diaz-Balart said. ``It shows there is no solidarity for the freedom of Cuba.''

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based forum of hemispheric leaders, accused Cohen of succumbing to political pressure in an area Hakim said should be devoid of politics: the security arena.

``Clearly the way that Secretary Cohen characterizes the report reflects some political judgments about what would be palatable,'' Hakim said. ``No one that I know that has seriously looked at this -- from U.S. military officers to neighboring Caribbean countries -- thinks Cuba is a threat. It doesn't have the resources. And it doesn't have the will.''

Cohen's initial request that the report be reassessed risked alienating two top U.S. generals -- the head of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami and the recently retired chief of the Atlantic Command -- both of whom backed the finding that Cuba was not a major threat.

The DIA's seven-page unclassified report, which was prepared in consultation with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, portrays a severely diminished Cuban military that poses a ``negligible'' threat to the United States and its neighbors. The report shrugs at the risks posed by a mass outflow of refugees, internal strife on the island or the potential for attacks against U.S. protesters in international airspace or waters.

``At present, Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region,'' the report concludes. ``Cuba has little motivation to engage in military activity beyond defense of its territory and political system. Nonetheless, Cuba has a limited capability to engage in some military and intelligence activities which would be detrimental to U.S. interests and which could pose a danger to U.S. citizens under some circumstances.''

In assessing Cuba's once potent armed forces -- the largest per capita in Latin America just one decade ago -- the report describes an army with mothballed equipment, incapable of mounting effective operations above the battalion level; a navy with no functioning submarines; an air force with fewer than two dozen operation MiG fighter jets.

The report says that Cuba has the facilities and expertise to develop biological weapons but did not assert that it had done so. It assesses as ``low'' the threat of another mass migration or the potential for a popular uprising.

``There is undoubtedly widespread desire for greater economic and political freedom and weariness with continuing hardship, deprivation and repression,'' the report says. ``Nonetheless, relatively few Cubans now appear willing to risk the consequences of pressing for sweeping political changes.''