US report accuses Cuba of spy and influence campaign

A US State Department report released Monday accused Cuban spies of reaching senior levels of government in Washington and supporting what it called left-wing terrorism in the United States.

The report, titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," was issued as President Donald Trump increased pressure on Cuba's communist government and sharpened anti-leftist rhetoric in the United States before November elections. The source said the report contained little new information.

The State Department alleged that Cuba had infiltrated high levels of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, and backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on US soil. It also alleged that Cuba had developed relationships with leftist groups in the United States and abroad to encourage resentment and hostility toward the United States and the broader West.

The report said Cuba had influenced what it described as a disproportionate share of America's best-known and most influential extremist movements in an effort to turn the United States against itself. The source described the allegations as sweeping and unsubstantiated.

Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez rejected the report in a post on X, calling it "the latest fallacy from the US State Department." He said it was part of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's effort to create a pretext for maintaining what Rodriguez called a cruel and criminal economic war that punishes Cuban families. Rodriguez also claimed Rubio wanted to launch a military attack on Cuba and was seeking support from US citizens for it.

The report comes during a months-long US pressure campaign against Cuba. The source said Washington has effectively imposed an oil embargo on Cuba, issued economic sanctions against key state-run companies and indicted former Cuban president Raul Castro.

Espionage between the United States and Cuba has long been known. Since the Cold War, the United States has made high-profile arrests of Cuban intelligence officers, including the "Cuban Five," who were convicted of infiltrating civil society groups in Florida in the 1990s, and Ana Montes, who spied from a senior position at the Defense Intelligence Agency. More recently, State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers and former US ambassador to Bolivia Victor Manuel Rocha pleaded guilty in separate cases to spying for Cuba.

The source also cited an estimate by former Cuban intelligence chief Fabian Escalante that the CIA and Cuban exiles tried more than 600 times to assassinate Fidel Castro, Cuba's late president and revolutionary leader.

The latest report marks another downturn in a long tense relationship. In 2015, then president Barack Obama sought closer diplomatic ties with Cuba after decades of hostility. Trump reversed course in 2017, and after returning to office in 2025 reinstated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism on his first day.

The source said the US military earlier this year overthrew Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, a longtime supporter of Cuba who had supplied subsidized energy to the island. It said US oil pressure on Cuba since then has contributed to several nationwide blackouts.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Cuba could be next after Venezuela to face US pressure. In June, he said Washington would be "taking over" the Caribbean island, which lies about 90 miles, or 145 kilometers, from Florida, "almost immediately."