It sounds like a fantasy TV script or a failed CIA effort, but a plan to undermine the government of Cuba was created by the US Agency for International Development. Associated Press reports -- from 1000 pages of documents and "multiple interviews"-- that USAID drew 40,000 Cubans onto a clandestine cell-phone messaging network. After building a "critical mass" with "non-controversial content," operators would introduce political issues, hoping to inspire "smart mobs" to trigger a "Cuban Spring" like those that toppled regimes in the Middle East. Freelance journalist Ann Louise Bardach is author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Washington and Havana.
Bay of Pigs in 140 Characters?
Credits
Guest:
- Ann Louise Bardach - editor-at-large for Los Angeles Magazine - @albardach