Front Burner - Will the U.S. invade Cuba?

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

In a major escalation of its months long “maximum pressure” campaign, the United States announced it has indicted Raúl Castro, former president of Cuba, over the downing of two planes flown by a group of Cuban exiles targeting the regime in 1996.It was a move officials within the Trump administration had been signalling would happen after the director of the CIA met with Cuban officials in Havana. We speak to Peter Kornbluh, an author and senior analyst at the National Security Archive specializing in Cuba, about whether this signals a Venezuela-style strike on the country.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot CA. Cargooros.ca.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Prosson. In a major escalation of its months-long maximum pressure campaign, the United States has announced they are laying charges against Raoul Castro, the former president of Cuba. He and five others face charges connected to the downing of two planes

flown by a group of Cuban exiles targeting the regime in 1996. The indictment follows a meeting, between the director of the CIA and Cuban officials in Havana. Now the Cuban government and people are bracing themselves for a potential military invasion. Peter Cornblou is an author and senior analyst at the National Security Archive specializing in Cuba. We had him on recently to talk about the decades of antagonism between the U.S. and Cuba. And he's back to talk about the CIA's involvement in Cuba now and in the 1996 incident at the center of the Castro charges. Peter, it is really great to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for making the time.

Well, it's a pleasure. It's always great to talk to Canadians, a sane audience, a country with a sane policy towards Cuba. So these charges are for an incident from 30 years ago, as I mentioned. Charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Raul Castro is also facing four counts of murder and destruction of aircraft charges, accused of ordering the downing of two civilian planes flown by a Cuban exile group in 1996. Raul Castro is 94 years old. What does this indictment accomplish? You know, the indictment is a quantum step forward in the escalation of U.S. hostility

towards Cuba. It accomplishes three goals for the Trump administration. It basically is a major political gesture to the Anticastro Miami community, which has been pushing for this indictment and some judicial accountability for the death of four young Cuban-American pilots in February of 1996. Good evening. The Clinton administration is calling for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council after two civilian aircraft were shot down by Cuba yesterday. The aircraft were part of a routine private search and rescue operation in the Florida Straits.

Down with Castro, the cry from Cuban Americans. It was the 18th hundred mission for brothers to the rescue, a group that helps refugees fleeing Cuba. Two, it is almost a psychological operation against the Cuban leadership. It basically is a message directly to them saying, you remember what we did in Venezuela and how we did it. We indicted Nicholas Maduro, and we claim that we're going to go in and seize him as a law enforcement operation rather than as a regime change operation.

We can do the exact same thing for you under the exact same false pretext. And finally, and more, I think most hard to understand is that the precedent that was set in Venezuela allowed Donald Trump to say to Congress, I'm not going to war in Venezuela. I'm just enforcing the law. This is a law enforcement operation. Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. These highly trained warriors operating in collaboration with U.S. law enforcement. caught them in a very ready position. They were waiting for us. They knew we had many...

There's not a war. I mean, we are a war against drug trafficking organizations. It's not a war against Venezuela. We are enforcing American laws with regards to oil sanctions. We have sanctioned... To the degree that they actually put FBI and Justice Department officials on the helicopters that were flying over Caracas, you know, on January 3rd of this year. And he'll tell Congress the same thing if he decides to...

do a military strike or initiate military strikes against Cuba. Right. I know you wrote about the CIA director's visit to Cuba last week. A CIA official told the Associated Press that John Ratcliffe was there to personally deliver President Donald Trump's message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes. it's also been reported that Ratcliffe brought along one of the covert operators involved in the mission to capture Nicholas Majuro. And just what did you make of that? And can you tell me more about this meeting between Ratcliffe and Cuban officials?

Yeah, the Cubans have suffered a one-two punch over the last week. The first punch was an extraordinary overt mission by the CIA director, John Radcliffe. This comes after decades and decades. It's more than 60 years of U.S. covert operations to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. And here you had an overt mission with the same goal, quite frankly, of the CIA director being sent to Havana to meet with the top intelligence officers of the country, as well as Raul Castro's grandson, Raulito, as he is known. And basically provide them with an ultimatum. Time is running out. You must do what we want you to do. do or face the consequences. That the U.S. is prepared to engage with Cuba on economic insecurity issues, but only if

Cuba makes fundamental changes, claiming the island nation is a safe haven for countries like Russia and China. The Cuban government insists it poses no threat to U.S. national security, nor will it allow actions against any other nation to be carried out from Cuba. The ultimatum felt like the final kind of face-to-face communication that the United States was willing to make. Is that the case, who knows? But with the Ratcliffe ultimatum a week or so ago, and then the now indictment of Rao Castro, the Cubans have no choice but to take this situation extremely seriously. You mentioned the official that Ratcliffe brought with him,

who had been involved in the Venezuela attack. What people forget is that the Venezuela attack led to the death of 32 Cuban security agents that were there to guard Maduro's safety, protect him from exactly that type of assault. They failed miserably. They were overwhelmed by the formidable power of the U.S. Special Forces that attacked the compound where Maduro and his wife were living. They lost their lives. Dozens of other Cubans were injured in the attack. And basically that resonates in Cuba. They understand that their lives are on the line here. So it's a very difficult situation that they've been put in at this point. Just to come back to Raul Castro for a moment, the current president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, had even said that Castro was involved in talks with the U.S. back in March. He was president, of course, from 2008 to 2018. And during his time as president, he was president.

restored diplomatic relations with the United States with then President Barack Obama. In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, we will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Given that he was seen, at least by some, I guess, as some kind of agent of change, does this make the indictment surprising at all for you, or were you expecting this? I don't think that the United States. I don't think that the United States, States sees roo castro as an agent of change even though i think history will record him as actually a reformer in the context of the communist system of uh cuba he took over for his brother um on an interim

basis in 2006 he formally took over as president and secretary general of the communist party in 2008 he was there for 10 years and um and during that time he basically did a number of things that his brother, Fidel, had refused to do. He stepped up and said, we have to modernize our economy. He legalized the use of and sales cell phones, for example. He started to change the system of Cubans being able to buy houses. He started to import foreign cars, though they're extremely expensive. He took a very different position about people leaving. Yes, leave. Come back if you want to. You're not going to be vilified for leaving the island. We understand you. may have other options, and if you make a good living abroad, please send remittances.

And I think his greatest legacy will be that he was the Cuban leader, the Castro, who normalized relations with the United States. He engaged in back-channel diplomacy for almost two years with the Obama administration between 2012 and 2014. His son, Alejandro, was the key intermediary, traveling to Canada, wherever the majority of the secret meetings were held, which the Canadians secretly hosted to their credit. So, you know, Raul Castro didn't get everything he wanted. He wanted the embargo to be lifted as part of those negotiations, but he did get full diplomatic relations and a quantum easing of the embargo,

restoration of a commercial travel, for example, licenses for U.S. companies to start to do business in Cuba. Thor in relations brought with it an exchange of prisoners and the removal of Cuba from a U.S. terrorism blacklist. Commercial flights resumed and travel bans were relaxed. Just before leaving office in 2017, Obama ended the wet-foot-dry-foot policy, which had allowed Cubans who reached U.S. soil to stay in an effort to shift migration towards legal pathways. It was Donald Trump who abrogated that agreement. Once again, restricting travel and financial transactions. He would later restore Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

America will expose the crimes of the Castro regime. He claimed that it wasn't a good agreement. And, of course, he abrogated just about everything that Obama did just because Obama did it. Nothing to do with their merits and success of those policies. But that policy was working very well. The private sector was growing. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens were free to travel to Cuba. Cuba. Cuba was cooperating with the United States on issues of mutual interests and security.

Legal migration, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, the type of thing you would expect from a country that wants to be friendly with the United States. Shopping for a car should be exciting, not exhausting, but sometimes it can feel like a maze. where Car Gurus comes in. They have advanced search tools, unbiased deal ratings, and price history, so you know a great deal when you see one. It's no wonder Car Gurus is the number one rated car shopping app in Canada on the Apple app and Google Play Store. Buy your next car today with Cargoos at Cargooros.ca. Go to Cargooros.ca. Go to Cargooros.ca.com. Have you ever wondered how clean the seats on the TTC are? I found like chicken bones or like

Or why so many Toronto restaurant bathrooms are in dank basements. Sometimes it's the most sketchy things. Like when you go down, it's like, what is this? I'm Hayden Waters, a reporter and producer on the podcast, this is Toronto. From breaking down Doug Ford's obsession with the island airport. We have to bring jets in. To being inside an iconic Toronto strip club in its final hours. We go beyond the headlines of the day and get to know Toronto in all its big, beautiful,

frustrating, wardy, fascinating glory. So find and follow us, this is Toronto, wherever you get your podcast. The incident that he is charged for, that Castro's charged for, the downing of these two planes, killing four people over Cuban waters in 96, involved a group called the Brothers to the Rescue. And Castro was the Armed Forces Minister at the time, as I understand it. And just can you tell me a little bit more about Brothers to the Rescue and what led to the attack? In Spanish, the name of that group is Hermanos Al Rescate, Brothers to the Rescue. It was created by a former CIA exile operative who was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion and then tried to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1962 with a bazuka fired from a speedboat that had positioned itself off the coast of Havana and was aiming at a hotel where Jose Bosuto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, believed Fidel was eating. So he was an anti-Castro militant, violent exile to the extreme.

My father used to work for a company named Bonta Alecée, sugar sales. They were a U.S. company in Cuba that was in the sugar industry. In the island, he was vice president of that company. And Fidel Castro coming to power was something that we didn't like. But in 1992, he created a kind of a fleet of small planes and pilots, all exile pilots, that really did conduct humanitarian missions to their credit. They flew out over the Florida Straits and they looked for rafters who were fleeing Cuba because of the economic deprivation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And thousands of Cubans kind of set sail in whatever makeshift, you know, floating devices. they could find. Some of them, some of them even put pontoons on their cars instead of tires and

tried to float across the Florida Straits. So very dangerous. People drowned. And Basuto's people were kind of flying overhead, looking for rafters in distress, then calling the U.S. Coast Guard and saying, you have to go rescue these folks. But after the rafters crisis was resolved, and there were no more rafters. Basuto kept flying. But now his mission was not humanitarian. It was provocation. He would overfly, his planes would overfly Cuban territory and drop leaflets and chachkas on the heads of the Cuban populace in the countryside in Havana. And then he would land back in Miami and hold a press conference boast about how he had penetrated Cuba's airspace and how vulnerable Fidel Castro was.

And even at one point he proclaimed to the press, we want a confrontation with Cuba. And his flights were endlessly provocative, deliberately so. U.S. officials received multiple official diplomatic protests from the Cubans about their airspace being violated by hostile planes. They received numerous back-channel phone calls and meetings to discuss his. Fidel Castro got involved, working with then-Congassment Bill Richardson. He basically said to Richardson, I'll make a deal with you, or at least political prisoners to you,

if you bring me Bill Clinton's promise that these planes are going to be grounded. And Richardson returned, actually just a few weeks before the shoot down and said, I met with the president. He's shut down these flights. No more flights. Give me those political prisoners. And Fecestro believed this, but in fact, Richardson had not met with the president. He'd met with some other White House aides. And the flights were not shut down. It wasn't that they were not shut down because U.S. officials didn't want them to be shut down. U.S. officials did. It was that the FAA, which would be in charge bureaucratically of halting those flights, just refused the entreaties of very high officials in the U.S. government to actually grab. round Basulto clip his wings. And that's what happened. The flights continued, and the Cubans decided to stand up for their sovereignty of their airspace, and they'd drawn a red line repeatedly, and yet another flight had come, and they fired on these two planes, which was unwarranted and wrong, quite frankly, but not unprovoked. At 322, one of the brothers to the rescue planes flies two miles

into Cuban airspace. Cuban fighter pilots ignore that plane and two minutes later shoot down one in international waters. Soon after, a Cuban fighter pilot shoots down another plane. This one, 14 miles outside Cuban airspace. Cuban authorities insist

all planes were violating their airspace. We construed as a premeditated act of terrorism by the Cuban government, which even included a press plan and everything and detail having to do with the execution of this plan of assassinating our pilots at the high seas. And just to be clear here,

did you say that Posuto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, was a former operative? Like, I know that he has said that he was a CIA operative. I was recruited by the CIA, if you may, because we were working at the time with an internal organization in Cuba called the MRR. And the CIA promised to us that they were going to give us all the help we needed

to change the government, of Cuba into a democratic government. Those were only words that ended up in what was known later as Bay of Pigs. And you were involved in that. Can you tell me more about that? Well, he was a part of the Bay of Pigs operation. I was sent back into Cuba as a radio operator, telegraphy, to send back information, in other words, intelligence to the U.S.

on what was going on before the invasion. And everything that they promised and said was going to be done, in our behalf was simply betrayed. That, in a sense, made him an operative. The degree to which he had a formal paid relationship as an asset after the Bay of Pigs is somewhat unknown, I think, or at least it's unknown to me. We'd have to get the CIA employment records, which aren't that easy to get. But he certainly was recruited by the CIA part of the, you know, elements of the invasion force at the Bay of Pigs.

And then thereafter, as CIA operations continued against Cuba, he was participating in violent exile acts. The point is that the Cubans had no choice, but to look upon him as a hostile actor, given his history, and given what he was doing. Fidel Castro's argument was twofold. One, if he can drop tens of thousands of leaflets and chakas on the head to the Cuban people,

can drop a grenade on the heads of the Cuban people. And two, was Cuba just, Cuba, like any respectable country, could not tolerate just the wanton hostile penetration of its airspace. The United States, as Fidel would later tell Time magazine in an interview, would not have tolerated the repeated overflights of Washington by hostile planes coming from, you know, Iran or China or Russia, because they would have been worried about their security. And they would have warned that country not to do that again. And then if that country did it again, they would have shot down those planes. And he was right. It was an intolerable situation. They still should not have shot down those unarmed civilian planes. The Cuban mig fighter pilots violated international

protocols. They gave no warning. They did not attempt to escort those planes out of Cuban airspace. they shot them from from behind as they were leaving Cuban airspace. So it was wrong to do and it had grave consequences for U.S.-Cuban relations. But the history is not a simple one. It's a complicated one. It shows that Cuban officials try for over a year to keep these flights from coming. And several very high-level U.S. officials, including the top White House point man on Cuba, Richard Nunesio also tried to stop them.

The night before the actual fatal flight, he called FAA in Miami, and he said, I really think, you know, this could be trouble. You have to keep those planes from flying. And the FAA, which means a federal aviation administration in the United States, the FAA kind of local Miami officers said, told him on the phone, we can't stop him from flying. You know, our regulations don't permit us to stop him from flying. We can warn him yet again not to penetrate Cuban airspace, and that's the most we can do. And the planes took off. And it was a Greek tragedy, you know, in the skies over Cuba. Everybody knew it was going to happen.

Many people tried to keep it from happening, and then it happened anyway. is still around today, right? He and other exiles in Cuba, many of whom are based in Miami, have been calling for this. A moment of celebration in Miami. One that some in the Cuban-American community have longed for. What can I say? I mean, like just my heart beating, my just feeling finally, I've been here since I was two. And just feeling like finally that maybe we can have, you know, be able to visit our country again.

where I was born and I've never been able to go back. It's very emotional because finally after 67 years, we are, well, really, in reality, it's after the avionitas were shot. These four beautiful young men, American citizens, three. Beyond justice for this specific 1996 shootdown, what is it that they want to happen, especially those that have been away from Cuba for decades now? Well, you know, one can't generalize for the entire Cuban-American community for the basultos of the world. Certainly, they want Raul Castro to be prosecuted, but really what they want is the United States to invade Cuba and eliminate, neutralize, as the CIA used to say, the entire Cuban Communist Party leadership and military, so that the exiled community can go back to Cuba. and restore it to the way it was when they were there before. There are, you know, the militant, violent anti-Castro-Cubans are only part of the community.

There's a moderate part of the community that also would like to see an end to the regime in Cuba. And Cuba enter the modern world with the support of Cuban-American investment. And then, you know, there are an element of the community that believes in engagement rather than violence. But overall, the politics from Miami are very weighted towards hostile aggression and the overthrow of the Cuban government by force. So what happens now? I don't know. What would you like to see? I don't know. They're going to go get them out, I guess. I guess the end of it somehow. It's time for them to go to the trash gang of history. And the indictment of Rao Castro has unleashed yet another round of rhetoric from Cuban-American politicians in the Miami area and in Congress,

demanding that Trump go in and basically take out the entire Cuban leadership. We are sending the message to the Castro family. It's time for you to leave. You have the option not to wind up where Maduro is. I do want to spend some time now talking with you about what you think could happen here now. on Wednesday in the hours following the announcement of the indictment, Trump said that there won't be escalation. I don't think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart.

It's a mess. And they sort of lost control. They've really lost control of Cuba. And he didn't want to say whether there were plans to go in and capture Castro. But he also sent this aircraft carrier to the Caribbean on Thursday, though. I know some people have pointed out that it's kind of on his last tour, but like there's other stuff here too, right? Reporting in the BBC and Wall Street Journal have noted the U.S. military surveillance aircraft, including drones, have been circling Cuba, although they have left their transponders on, allowing these news organizations and others to track their movements. Marco Rubio told reporters on Thursday that Cuba is a national security threat. Like, what are we to make of all of this?

There's a very coordinated, strategic campaign that the Trump administration has mounted across the board. The CIA, Secretary of St. Marco Rubio, the U.S. military, all basically preparing to the coup de grace against the Cuban government. There's been a protracted effort to turn the economic screws to wage economic warfare on the Cuban people. Cuba's been deprived of oil of now for almost four months by a clear, explicit blockade that Trump and Rubio has instituted since the takeover of Venezuela. Tonight, the island nation of Cuba largely in the dark as its energy grid is on the verge of collapse. Extensive blackouts across the country have sparked protests. Cubans banging on pots and pans shouting, turn the lights on. Many without power up to 22 hours a day as a U.S. deprivation is spreading across the island.

Canadians have been affected. Canadians can no longer if you actually fly to Cuba because your airlines have canceled their flights because they don't have any way to refuel when they get there. Your companies that are president in Cuba are being challenged with sanctions. It's very interesting what has just happened with Sherritt International, withdrawing its operations in Cuba, apparently selling them to U.S. interests. That's not clear. But this is part and parcel of the U.S. plan to push out foreign interests, even friendly foreign

interests, such as the Canadians, and create a Cuba that's open for basically a U.S. takeover, takeover of the economy, take over political situation, et cetera. us. So it's very difficult. But that's what's happening here. And the escalation of the military option, well, let me just back up. What Trump would really thought would happen and what he would like to see happen is his economic pressures and his threats of military force basically scare the Cuban leadership into bending the knee and pledging allegiance to the, you know, mad king of the North, if you will. And that hasn't happened in four months of Trump's submission diplomacy. And so he has now expressed his impatience. And the White House has directed the military to step up its planning for an

actual attack on Cuba. We know there was a directive that went to the, from the White House, to the Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense in the United States, about stepping up those activities. You saw quantum escalation in the surveillance operations. The Southern Command of the U.S. military just released a video, which was obviously designed to scare the Cubans. It's strongly implying that Cuba was a target for a forthcoming U.S. attack. The kind of legal fig leaf around the Raul Castro indictment creates a pretext. You see an incredibly skilled propaganda campaign coming out of the CIA and the White House and the State Department to cast Cuba as a national security threat to the United States, which is completely false. Any rational act or

country that has been threatened for as long as Cuba has been is going to do its best to defend itself. That's, I think, perhaps the final point here. Donald Trump has always thought that Cuba would just surrender. He mused recently. What we'll do. On the way back from Iran, we'll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world. We'll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore. And they'll say, thank you very much.

We give up. And this kind of surrender dream. that Trump has and that previous U.S. officials have had, has never worked out. The Cubans have stood up for their revolution, and they'll, I think, stand up and fight here. Will they win? Of course not. There's into country on the face of the planet that could withstand the full force of the United States military, which has formidable powers. But will there be a struggle, will there be instability, will there be chaos? Will there be death and destruction? Yes, there will be. And that is not in the long-term U.S. interests or short-term interest. It's not in

the interest of the Cuban people. And it's not necessary. That's what's so heartbreaking about the situation. I think the Cubans are ready to come to some agreement with the Trump administration. but the degree to which Trump wants them to capitulate is perhaps too bittersweet a pill for them to swallow given the pride and dignity of the Cuban Revolution. And just finally to ask you, and I don't want this to be an unfair question because I think it requires like a bit of a crystal ball, I guess,

but how likely do you think it is that that is the outcome, that the United States is prepared to launch some kind of military action here? As I look at this situation and we come to understand Donald Trump's kind of psychology of power, which, of course, Canadians have also had to deal with, I think it is very likely that he will pursue the use of force, military force, in addition to economic warfare to get the Cuban regime to capitulate to his dictates. I think he sees himself as an emperor of the Latin American region. It's a region that has traditionally been in the U.S. sphere of influence and of intimidation.

And Trump likes to see himself as the intimidator, and as well as the conqueror, I think. And Cuba has a long history of being in the kind of target sites of U.S. presidents going all the way back to the 1800s. And I think Trump would like to return Cuba and the rest of Latin America for that matter to the kind of era of empire at the turn of the 20th century when the United States exercised its will in the entire Caribbean and throughout the entire region through gunboats and military force. And that is extremely regrettable. I'm hoping it can be avoided. But the demands that are being made on the Cuban leadership are too much for any dignified. country to accept. Okay. Peter,

thank you so much for this. It's a pleasure to be on your show and talk to Canadians who I greatly respect and admire. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.