During a news conference at the White House, John Kirby from the National Security Council confirmed that the United States has long known about China's espionage facility in Cuba. Dating back to when Donald Trump was President, the Biden administration is taking these intelligence gathering capabilities seriously.
We won't be able to discuss our own counterintelligence initiatives in great detail, Kirby added. "As we've discussed over the weekend, this is not a new finding that China has been attempting to create some intelligence collecting capabilities in Cuba and, quite frankly, elsewhere in the hemisphere, and that from day one, when we came in, we took this matter seriously," the statement reads.
The comments followed reports from multiple media publications that Beijing has been running a spy facility in Cuba since 2019.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that China recently reached a "secret deal" to create a spy facility with Cuba, and both the White House and the Pentagon have refuted these assertions. According to unnamed sources mentioned in the paper, Beijing had promised to pay Cuba billions of dollars in exchange for the right to construct the surveillance station in the backyard of the United States.
Kirby asserted that the story was inaccurate but did not specify what was false.
The Trump administration, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, hasn't done enough to stop China's plans to expand its foreign intelligence collection.
At a press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on June 12, Blinken informed reporters that China boosted its information gathering operations in Cuba in 2019. We believed that a more direct strategy was necessary because, despite being aware of the basing activities and making some effort to address the matter under the previous administration, Blinken stated. And President Biden specifically told his team to do it to deal with the problem.
Trump attributed the surveillance station in Cuba to the Biden administration on his Truth Social page. He tweeted on June 12 that "China just, practically, took over Cuba." Under the Trump administration, this "would never have occurred!" The denial of a Chinese surveillance site in Cuba under the Trump administration came from John Ratcliffe, who served as the president's director of national intelligence.
On June 12, he said on Fox News, "It's absolutely preposterous, and, just like with the spy balloon problem, you'll see Trump administration people come out and saying, 'It's just not true.'" "The Biden administration's plan is to deny it until we can no longer deny it, then find a way to blame the Trump administration for it," said a source.
When questioned over the claim that the surveillance site was operational under the Trump administration, Kirby responded, "Not an allegation. True. The prior government would have had the same access to that intelligence as we did, in our opinion.
Confusion over the weekend resulted from the Biden administration's contradictory replies to the Wall Street Journal piece. The White House, according to Kirby, was unable to provide any specifics due to the sensitivity of the data.
"As we have stated, the first reporting was incorrect. And we tried our best to be as transparent as we could at the time," he continued. "It's disheartening that someone—or someones—might believe it's OK to inject the public with this type of material. The fact that we released some clarifying material a few days later does not indicate and should not be regarded, as I've seen in some of the news reporting, as some kind of walk-back," the spokesperson said.
The Biden administration, according to Kirby, has taken action to try and lessen the threats brought on by Beijing's operations. He said, "We're sure that we can continue to defend the country effectively and to preserve our nation's secrets in this hemisphere and beyond.
We won't be able to discuss our own counterintelligence initiatives in great detail, Kirby added. "As we've discussed over the weekend, this is not a new finding that China has been attempting to create some intelligence collecting capabilities in Cuba and, quite frankly, elsewhere in the hemisphere, and that from day one, when we came in, we took this matter seriously," the statement reads.
The comments followed reports from multiple media publications that Beijing has been running a spy facility in Cuba since 2019.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that China recently reached a "secret deal" to create a spy facility with Cuba, and both the White House and the Pentagon have refuted these assertions. According to unnamed sources mentioned in the paper, Beijing had promised to pay Cuba billions of dollars in exchange for the right to construct the surveillance station in the backyard of the United States.
Kirby asserted that the story was inaccurate but did not specify what was false.
The Trump administration, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, hasn't done enough to stop China's plans to expand its foreign intelligence collection.
At a press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on June 12, Blinken informed reporters that China boosted its information gathering operations in Cuba in 2019. We believed that a more direct strategy was necessary because, despite being aware of the basing activities and making some effort to address the matter under the previous administration, Blinken stated. And President Biden specifically told his team to do it to deal with the problem.
Trump attributed the surveillance station in Cuba to the Biden administration on his Truth Social page. He tweeted on June 12 that "China just, practically, took over Cuba." Under the Trump administration, this "would never have occurred!" The denial of a Chinese surveillance site in Cuba under the Trump administration came from John Ratcliffe, who served as the president's director of national intelligence.
On June 12, he said on Fox News, "It's absolutely preposterous, and, just like with the spy balloon problem, you'll see Trump administration people come out and saying, 'It's just not true.'" "The Biden administration's plan is to deny it until we can no longer deny it, then find a way to blame the Trump administration for it," said a source.
When questioned over the claim that the surveillance site was operational under the Trump administration, Kirby responded, "Not an allegation. True. The prior government would have had the same access to that intelligence as we did, in our opinion.
Confusion over the weekend resulted from the Biden administration's contradictory replies to the Wall Street Journal piece. The White House, according to Kirby, was unable to provide any specifics due to the sensitivity of the data.
"As we have stated, the first reporting was incorrect. And we tried our best to be as transparent as we could at the time," he continued. "It's disheartening that someone—or someones—might believe it's OK to inject the public with this type of material. The fact that we released some clarifying material a few days later does not indicate and should not be regarded, as I've seen in some of the news reporting, as some kind of walk-back," the spokesperson said.
The Biden administration, according to Kirby, has taken action to try and lessen the threats brought on by Beijing's operations. He said, "We're sure that we can continue to defend the country effectively and to preserve our nation's secrets in this hemisphere and beyond.
