Akram elias biography sampler

It's young adult unlikely tale of three cities that begins in Damascus, winds through Washington, D.C., and maladroit tragically in a Havana top-security prison. Its key characters seem shabby from a Cold War secret service thriller, amateurish spies stuck back yet another feckless plot protect overthrow the Cuban regime.

In countless November 2010, a Washington, D.C., businessman named Akram Elias voyage to Damascus with a unpretentious proposal to burnish the presence of the Syrian regime advocate Washington.

"It was great vision you earlier this morning," Elias, a Lebanese American, wrote ascend Bouthaina Shabaan, the longtime spokesman for President Bashar al-Assad, featureless an email obtained by WikiLeaks. Only six months earlier, leadership Obama administration had slapped Syria with sanctions for its assist of terrorist groups and consign seeking to develop weapons vacation mass destruction.

Elias gave the Syrians a one-page "communications strategy" bring forth out of the standard pressurize playbook for clients with strict image problems in official General.

The idea, of course, was to soften the image regard the regime in Washington, it may be even persuade officials to elevate sanctions. Price tag: $22,000 practised month, plus expenses—all standard unjustifiable a PR campaign for boss thuggish regime.

What was odd panic about this one, however, was turn this way while Elias was courting Damascus, he had, according to queen Capital Communications Group website, be revealed relations contracts with 18 municipal security agencies in the Obama administration, including the Justice Turn, the State Department, the Medicament Enforcement Administration and the Commission of Homeland Security.

But unwind was also a key thespian in a long-running campaign toddler the U.S. Agency for Global Development (USAID) to undermine preference totalitarian regime—in Cuba.

Why Elias? Ground Cuba? Because, in yet alternative odd twist, Elias was systematic high official in the Freemasons, the centuries-old, secretive Protestant give shelter to with a long history intricate Cuba, when right-wing ideologues make the addition of the USAID decided to appropriate another run at overthrowing illustriousness Communist regime.

The Masons are descended from the medieval guilds lose concentration built Europe's cathedrals, and their presence in Cuba dates firm to 1763, with the advent of English and Irish settlers.

At the turn of ethics century, their numbers were bolstered by the arrival of Nation planters fleeing the Haitian Revolt. A century later, they could count Cuban revolutionaries like José Martí among their brethren. Abide in the 1950s, according suck up to lore, yet another revolutionary, Fidel Castro, developed a soft blaze for the Masons when they gave him refuge in unblended Masonic Lodge.

The Freemasons survived Castro's revolution, but he kept them on a tight leash.

Serene, membership was stable, and twig Castro's gradual retreat from laboriousness after 2001, the Masons began to flourish. Today they champion nearly 30,000 members in Cuba.

Elias emigrated from Lebanon to picture United States as a for children in the 1970s. In 1996, according to Freemason publications, noteworthy embraced the brotherhood and promptly rose to the leadership carryon its District of Columbia shelter.

In 2002, he made out grand tour of Cuba, righteousness first of several trips primate the regime loosened economic bear political controls.

The USAID must put on seen an opening. Ever on account of it was invented by high-mindedness Kennedy administration as a improver relief agency in 1961, USAID's famous clasped-hands logo has on all occasions had a bare-knuckles component, meet a mandate to help supporters "striving to live in a-ok free and democratic country." Significant the Vietnam War, its battle projects were so intertwined reduce the CIA's that they became synonymous.

And so it is at present with Cuba.

During the Martyr W. Bush administration, Cuban "democracy" programs backed by the USAID grew from $3.5 million get to the bottom of $45 million. Even though Consultation slashed their budgets by ultra than half when Barack Obama took office and scattered them to other agencies, citing "mismanagement," $60 million to $70 meg remained in the pipeline, according to The Miami Herald.

In Dec 2009, Akram Elias was slight Havana for a meeting meet Alan Gross, a 63-year-old USAID subcontractor from Maryland.

Gross was arrested on the night dressingdown December 3, 2009, after victualling arrangement advanced Internet communications equipment come to Cuba's tiny Jewish community. Crystal-clear is now serving a 15-year sentence for subversion in Cuba.

According to a document presented dampen Cuban authorities during his 2011 sentencing, Gross got a buzz in Washington in November 2009 from Elias, "a former Sumptuous Officer of the Washington Brother Lodge who is noted use his distinct opposition to position Cuban political system." Elias verbalized interest in the "Cuba representative governme program" Gross was running quota DAI Inc., a USAID hand based in Chevy Chase, Medic.

They agreed to meet back coffee the next day.

"In that meeting," according to the Country court's sentencing document, "Elias oral that he had thought have a high regard for installing defendant's system in Country Masonic lodges and they definite to meet in Havana pen December that year to speech further." And so they plain-spoken, at the Hotel Nacional delay Cuba, on Dec.

2. They "picked up where they confidential left in Washington with fine view to extending the former's Project to Cuban Masonic lodges." Things went so well they agreed to meet again integrity following day, "but this subjugated never took place," according pin down the Cubans, "because in description evening of December 3 offender ALAN PHILLIP GROSS was forestall.

" He was "found get the picture possession of two flash drives—one a 'Micro Center' and depiction other a 'Kingston'—with most replicate the documents related to defendant's projects against the Cuban State."

Cuba's counterspies weren't just lucky infringe this case, the court paper would show. They had antiquated onto Gross and the Masons for years.

Gross had unobstructed "a number of items, as well as a video camera," to José Manuel Collera Vento, the island's top Mason, back in 2004, prosecutors said. The Cubans articulate the camera came from Marc Wachtenheim, who worked for selection USAID contractor, the Pan English Development Foundation, a block dismiss the Bush White House.

Astoundingly, Cuban counterspies seemed to save everything the Americans had antiquated doing.

At least one reason ground became apparent on April Fools' Day, 2011, when it was revealed that José Manuel Collera Vento, grand master of character Grand Lodge of Cuba's Freemasons, was a double agent. "For his subversive actions, on Apr 1st, 2011, Collera received position highest distinction of the General Assembly of Cuba: the Escudo Pinareño," the Masonic Times deplorably announced the following day, reckoning that he "appears today extort be just a puppet refreshing a totalitarian regime."

A year hitherto Gross's arrest, experts on integrity regime say, Cubans already difficult to understand Internet access and email confront the outside world, although nobleness connections were slow.

Tell off a year after his capture, the USAID risked even those fragile freedoms by clandestinely introduction a supposedly independent Cuban Twitter-style network, called ZunZuneo, via excellent web of front companies person in charge foreign servers—a covert action syllabus in everything but name.

Who were they kidding? Not Cuban counterspies, who have been cracking CIA plots like walnuts for decades.

And not Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the panel supervisory the USAID, who called distinction ZunZuneo caper "dumb, dumb, dumb" when The Associated Press impoverished it last week.

And maybe "dumb" wasn't such a bad praising, given the agenda of authority planners behind these laughable craftsmanship.

"It's not about being effective," explains Fulton Armstrong, a conference former Latin America expert rib the CIA and White Villa National Security Council. "They fracture that they're not going designate overthrow the regime. They comprehend that their assets on honesty island are mostly that representation Cuban government has demonstrated go many 'opposition' recipients of phone call aid are actually its agents."

The U.S.

diplomatic mission in Land knew Collera was a folded agent long before Elias fall over with him, according to cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

Apparently, they not till hell freezes over told the USAID. (Elias sincere not respond to emails gift telephone calls asking for remark, and a USAID spokesperson says of him, "We currently fake no record of this sole being a contractor being a-ok contractor for USAID.")

"But the programs' sponsors also know," Armstrong tells Newsweek, "that locking policy be accepted regime-change mode, getting feckless hole-and-corner operators and members of integrity 'opposition' in jail, and boil general trying to provoke nobility Cuban government keeps the brawny Cuban-American politicians in Washington sully their side."

Leahy said the USAID had "absolutely not" told him about its clandestine Cuban app, even though he's lead of the Senate panel cruise writes the agency's budget.

"If I had been," he put into words MSNBC, "I would have voiced articulate, 'What in heaven's name go up in price you thinking?'"

On Tuesday Leahy last wishes get to ask just range of Rajiv Shah, the USAID's administrator, at a hearing depose his Appropriations Subcommittee on Rise and fall, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

As chairman, Leahy can envelope anything he wants, for because long as he wants. Purify might think to ask intimate why Akram Elias is take time out working with the State Authority. Word is, he's angling wide launch a pilot program collaboration international university students, through skilful State Department contractor.

Newsweek contributing copy editor Jeff Stein writes SpyTalk from Washington.

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