SiriusXM Radio Interview Regarding Cuba
I am spending a considerable amount of time of late on Cuba. My latest political/espionage thriller, Havana Queen, will be launched very soon. SiriusXM Radio interviewed me about Cuba as well as the book on June 3. The host of "From Washington al Mundo," Mauricio Claver-Carone proclaimed Havana Queen "extraordinary." "This is definitely going to be the book of the month if not book of the year," he added. Following is a summary of the interview and a link to the broadcast.
Mauricio kicked off the interview by asking what I did as a diplomat and how I got to be a bestselling fiction writer with Amazon Kindle. I explained that I had served mostly in trouble spots and communist regimes during my twenty-three years in the Foreign Service. I said that I kept finding myself in situations in which I told myself, "Fiction can't rival this." So, I decided to write novels drawing on my adventures. Havana Queen is inspired by my service inside Castro's Cuba as well as at Guantanamo Naval Base. When one strolls around Havana, one encounters piles of rubble every few blocks. These are collapsed buildings, I said. Every three days, a building collapses in the city of Havana. "Imagine, if in the city of Houston, which has a comparable population, ten buildings collapsed each month…Houstonians would not put up with that. It got me wondering what are the limits to Cubans living under such a system in which they have to worry about their homes collapsing on them due to internal rot and neglect." Havana Queen profiles one such building, "La Reina," a typical old baroque former hotel or apartment building crammed with families who are crushed to death when it collapses. La Reina symbolizes Cuba, beautiful, but deteriorating. This event sparks peaceful protests which are put down forcefully by the Cuban government. The resultant public anger sparks a chain of events leading to a popular revolution against the Castros. The protagonist is a Cuban-American FBI agent, Nick Castillo, who gets drawn into Cuba's political maelstrom.
Noting my past job to monitor whether the condition of Cubans who were returned home after failing to succeed to reach U.S. soil, Mauricio wanted to know if Havana has complied with its obligations under 1994 migration accords not to persecute the returnees. I replied that, with some exceptions, it had, in my experience. The exceptions were officials and military personnel who had tried to escape the island. Mauricio asked about my service at GTMO, where I had met monthly with Cuban military officers for discussions. In the movie, A Few Good Men, I said, Col. Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, stated, "I eat breakfast three hundred yards from four thousand Cubans who are trained to kill me." I didn't find it quite like that; not that melodramatic. I explained that the meetings were to ensure no misunderstandings or flareups occurred. They were constructive and in the interests of both sides.
Mauricio asked whether after the passing of Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, who are in ailing health, Cubans would find transition traumatic. Raul just turned 82; Fidel turns 87 in August. Their appointment with the actuarial tables is nigh, I said. In Havana Queen, I lay out one possible scenario, as I explained. It's a roller coaster tale of citizens taking to the streets, leading to formation of a guerrilla movement, led by an Afro-Cuban colonel and his son, to overthrow the regime .
Mauricio asked me to elaborate on my remark that I also explore in my story why otherwise smart people spy for a bankrupt dictator like Fidel Castro. In my book, I draw on the cases of Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers and Ana Belen Montes. Kendall Myers was a State Department civil servant in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research who had spied for Havana for nearly thirty years, with the complicity of his wife. Montes was a senior analyst on Cuban matters at the Defense Intelligence Agency who had been a Castro mole for sixteen years. People decide to betray their country for individual reasons, I explained. Some do it for money; others for ideology. The Myers's and Ana Montes were true believers who were enchanted with Fidel Castro and highly critical of U.S. policies. Montes, the daughter of an abusive U.S. Army colonel, also may have had psychological issues that motivated her to betray her country.
Mauricio asked if I had ever met either the Myers's or Montes. I said I hadn't, but that I have friends who had worked with them. They've described Myers as very intelligent, likeable, humorous and gentlemanly and were shocked when he was arrested in 2009 (Kendall is serving a life sentence without parole at a supermax prison; Gwendolyn received a sentence of eighty-one months imprisonment. Both are in their 70s). Colleagues of Ana Montes have described her as very bright, very competent, but aloof and cool. Arrested in 2001, she is serving a twenty-five-year sentence without parole. In response to Mauricio's observation that Cuban intelligence has had considerable success in recruiting Americans to spy for them, I said that many U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence officials believe the Cuban service is the best in the world. "They are very good at what they do and are to be taken seriously," I said.
Mauricio asked what my plans were with Havana Queen. I replied that I would kick off my promotion in early July when I give a presentation in New York City at ThrillerFest, the annual convention of International Thriller Writers. After that, I expect to do book signings and interviews in Miami.
Finally, the radio host asked if I had incurred any "backlash" from the Cuban government over Havana Queen. Laughing, I said that, so far, no, but that "I could use some notoriety." Mauricio interjected, "It'll keep it on the bestseller lists for a while."
SiriusXM Radio Interview audio clip
"Havana Queen" Sample
See also:
What Cubans Really Want
Traitors Likes Us: Why Smart People Spy for Cuba
End of Days for the Castro Brothers