[[link removed]]

TRUMP AND NYT SAY THERE’S A RUSSIAN SPY BASE IN CUBA. TURNS OUT,
IT’S A SCHOOL  
[[link removed]]


 

Reed Lindsay
July 30, 2026
Belly of the Beast
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Is Russia operating a spy base in Cuba again? Trump, Rubio and U.S.
media outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all
say so. But none of them bothered to go to the alleged site of this
spy base. We did — and here's what we found. _

This Russian base in Cuba is spying on you, BellyOfTheBeast

 

_This story was written in collaboration with __Drop Site News_
[[link removed]].

Since U.S. President Donald Trump imposed an executive order in
January threatening tariffs on any country that ships fuel to Cuba,
major media outlets have descended on the island to report on the
resulting prolonged blackouts
[[link removed]], collapsing
hospitals
[[link removed]]
and piles of uncollected trash
[[link removed]]. 

Far less attention has been paid to the rationale the administration
offered for imposing the blockade in the first place.

The executive order
[[link removed]]
states that Cuba represents a “national emergency” and poses an
“unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, stringing
together a kitchen-sink list of familiar allegations, including
accusations that Cuba sponsors terrorism and aligns itself with
“dangerous adversaries” of the United States, such as Iran, Hamas,
Russia and China.

More specifically, the order claims that “Cuba hosts Russia’s
largest overseas signals intelligence facility, which tries to steal
sensitive national security information of the United States.” 

For two months, the allegation that Cuba was hosting a major Russian
spy base was largely ignored by U.S. media outlets. Then, on March 24,
The New York Times published an article
[[link removed]]
by Michael Crowley claiming not only that the Russian spy base exists,
but that it “bristles with antennas and other eavesdropping
equipment” capable of spying on the U.S. Central Command, the
satellite launchpads of Cape Canaveral and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
residence.

Crowley pinpointed
[[link removed]]
the location: a former Soviet base on the outskirts of Havana called
Lourdes that was “temporarily shut” by Vladimir Putin in 2001 but
was reopened in 2014, according to The Times.

There is just one problem with this story: the base isn’t there.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Belly
of the Beast also sent requests to The New York Times and to Michael
Crowley but received no response.

 

Today, Lourdes (also known as Torrens) is home to Cuba’s University
of Computer Sciences (UCI). Belly of the Beast reporters spent the
better part of two days walking the campus, searching the grounds and
speaking with students, faculty and workers. We found no evidence of
an active Russian intelligence base, much less the sort of extensive
equipment described by The Times.

“Do I look like a Russian spy?” laughed Malcolm Jarrozai, a
40-year-old art professor who has been teaching at UCI and living at a
residence on campus since 2006. “It’s truly laughable that these
kinds of claims are being made and that major outlets like The New
York Times give them a platform and allow them to be used to justify
policies against Cuba.”

_Malcolm Jarrozai, an art professor at the University of Computer
Sciences, speaks with Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva
Fernández. PHOTO: Alfredo Lazcano Valera_

THE RISE AND FALL OF LOURDES

Construction of a Soviet signals intelligence (SIGINT) facility in
Cuba began [[link removed]] as early as 1962,
even before the Cuban Missile Crisis. By the 1980s, U.S. intelligence
said Lourdes was
[[link removed]]
“the USSR’s largest and most valuable base outside the Soviet
Union for intelligence collection against the United States.”

_A photo of the wall of the Russian base known as Lourdes with
satellite dishes in the background, before the base was
dismantled. PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Torralbas_

In a 1983 televised address, President Ronald Reagan cited
[[link removed]] Lourdes
as evidence of the Soviet threat to argue against proposed
congressional budget cuts to defense spending. Reagan said the
28-square-mile base was manned by 1,500 Soviet technicians
[[link removed]] and
had grown by 60 percent in the previous decade. Two years later, the
Departments of State and Defense estimated
[[link removed]] there
were as many as 14,700 Soviet personnel in Cuba, including 2,100 at
Lourdes.

_A map of the Lourdes base released by the U.S. government. PHOTO:
Federation of American Scientists_

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Lourdes base remained in
place to the consternation of neoconservatives and Cuban-American
hardliners. In 1998, Jane’s Intelligence Review wrote
[[link removed]] that
Lourdes remained “the greatest single overseas GRU [Russian military
intelligence] asset” and provided
[[link removed]] 60-70
percent of Russian electronic intelligence data on the United States.
Two years later, a congressional report noted that there were
[[link removed]] still
more than 1,500 Russian engineers, technicians and military personnel
at the base.

_The Lourdes intelligence facility featured massive satellite dishes
until Russia dismantled them when it closed the base in 2002. PHOTO:
Rafael Torralbas_

In January 2001, the hardline anti-Castro lawmaker Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) introduced a bill
[[link removed]]
that would have prohibited forgiveness of Russian government debt
until Lourdes was shuttered. Ten months later, Ros-Lehtinen, for whom
Marco Rubio served as an intern
[[link removed]]
in the early 1990s, got her wish.

On October 17, 2001, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced
[[link removed]]
that Russia would abandon Lourdes. U.S. President George W. Bush
congratulated
[[link removed]]
Putin for taking down a “Cold War relic” and hailed the news as
“another indication that the Cold War is over.”

But other U.S. politicians have had a harder time letting go of the
Cold War.

_A Russia-bound Antonov An-124 Ruslan cargo plane loads equipment from
the Lourdes spy base. PHOTO: University of Computer Sciences_

FROM RUSSIA TO CHINA

The closure of Lourdes didn’t end talk of foreign spy bases in Cuba.
Even before the Russians finally handed the base over to Cuban
authorities in August 2002, El Nuevo Herald published an article
[[link removed]] claiming
that Lourdes had been replaced by a Chinese base at Bejucal, a town
about seven miles away.

But allegations that China was using Cuba to spy on the United States
did not become a national news story until 2023, when The Wall Street
Journal reported
[[link removed]]
that the two countries had reached a “secret agreement” for China
to establish a spy base in Cuba. The Journal, citing anonymous
officials “familiar with highly classified intelligence,” said
China had agreed “in principle” to pay Cuba “several billion
dollars to allow it to build an eavesdropping station,” and
described the agreement as a “brash new geopolitical challenge”
that has “sparked alarm” in the Biden administration.

A year later, the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS) released a report
[[link removed]] that
used commercial satellite imagery to identify four locations in Cuba,
including Bejucal, “where China is most likely operating” its
alleged spy bases.

The report, which was part of CSIS’s “Hidden Reach” program to
expose China’s influence around the world, provided no evidence that
the alleged spy bases in Cuba, even if real, were being operated by
China. CSIS recently acknowledged
[[link removed]]
there was “no clear publicly available evidence” proving China’s
presence at Bejucal.

“The report pulls the rumors and speculation in only one direction
— to support its preordained conclusion that Chinese intelligence
capabilities are expanding in ways threatening to U.S. interests, with
Cuba’s full support,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst
who also served as the nation’s top intelligence officer on Latin
America. “That’s bad analysis.”

Belly of the Beast attempted to visit
[[link removed]] three of the four
locations identified in the CSIS report. They appeared to be Cuban
military installations but we found no evidence of heightened security
or Chinese personnel.

 

At one site, the guard posts appeared abandoned. Part of the
facility’s perimeter was lined with a rusty fence. Another section
was bordered by trees. The main entrance was guarded by an elderly
Cuban woman who was an unarmed civilian employed by Cuba’s Vigilance
and Protection Corps (CVP), a state agency that provides security
services at schools, hospitals, stores and hotels.

At another site, antennas draped in ivy and a dirt-covered satellite
dish could be seen from the street.

“That’s laughably old technology,” said Armstrong after viewing
video footage from two of the facilities. “It's sort of an insult to
the Chinese if you're going to say that this is the future of their
intel collection against the United States.”

CSIS claimed the fourth location, near Santiago de Cuba, was being
used to construct a circularly disposed antenna array (CDAA), a Cold
War-era technology that has become largely obsolete
[[link removed]]. The report itself
acknowledges that Russia and the United States have abandoned most of
their CDAAs.

A CSIS update to the report published last month
[[link removed]]
said construction had “largely ceased” and there was no indication
the site was operational.

The CSIS report made no mention of a Russian spy base beyond noting
that Lourdes had operated during the Cold War.

But Lourdes had nonetheless resurfaced in the news in 2014 amid
heightened U.S.-Russian tensions, when The New York Times reported
[[link removed]]
that Russia had plans to reopen the base, citing a Russian newspaper
[[link removed]] and Russian parliamentarians
who “appeared to confirm the report.” The next day, Putin said
[[link removed]]
Russia had no such plans.

Not much was heard about the purported spy base until Trump’s
executive order revived the narrative that the Russians had returned
to Cuba, though Rubio did mention Lourdes at a 2016 Republican primary
debate
[[link removed]]
against Trump in Miami: “Here’s a good deal…Cuba kicks out the
Russians from Lourdes and kicks out the Chinese listening station in
Bejucal.” 

In June testimony [[link removed]] before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio was asked for evidence
supporting Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“Cuba continues to host a pretty substantial collection of
intelligence sites on behalf of the Chinese and the Russians,” he
said. 

FROM SPY BASE TO CUBA’S SILICON VALLEY

Cuban engineer Rafael Torralbas first stepped foot on the Russian base
in April 2002. Torralbas and two other colleagues were tasked with
creating a university within a matter of months.

_Rafael Torralbas speaks to Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva
Fernández. Torralbas helped oversee the transition of the Russian
base into a university. PHOTO: Alfredo Lazcano Valera_

“We had the challenge of receiving the installations being left
behind by the Russian officials,” said Torralbas. “There were huge
[satellite dish] antennas, and I witnessed the process of dismantling
them. There was technological equipment connected to the antennas,
which we never saw. We knew it had been there, but the Russian
officials had dismantled it all and they handed over the buildings
completely empty.”

Torralbas said the Russians removed “absolutely every antenna”
along with everything else, including furniture and curtains. The
Russians hauled the base’s equipment home in six Antonov An-124
Ruslan cargo plane flights, according to Torralbas.

On September 23, 2002, one month after the last Russian left Lourdes,
the University of Computer Sciences held its first classes on the
grounds of the old base, which is located just two miles from
Havana’s José Martí International Airport.

In the following years, some of the Russian buildings were torn down,
while others were repurposed. The apartment buildings housing the
Russian personnel and their families were converted into residences
for students and professors. A daycare center became a center for
medical technology. A supermarket was turned into a library.

Torralbas now serves as the president of the Havana Science and
Technology Park [[link removed]], an innovation hub on the UCI
campus that he says was inspired by Silicon Valley. Founded in 2020,
the Technology Park serves as an incubator for Cuban tech startups,
most of them private companies (despite claims to the contrary
[[link removed]] by hard-line politicians
in Florida, Cuba’s private sector has been thriving in recent
years). The park also provides technological support to foreign and
state-run companies.

_Inspired by Silicon Valley, the Havana Science and Technology Park is
an incubator for Cuban tech startups. PHOTO: Alfredo Lazcano Valera_

Torralbas says the idea that Lourdes was reopened “could only exist
in the mind of the person who made up that news.”

“At no time, in this university, has anything existed that is not
school buildings, students, computer science development centers,
postgrad programs, that is, the normal activities of a university,”
he said. “It’s shocking to me that someone in the intelligence
community in the United States, with access to satellite images, could
claim that a [spy base] exists here now.”

_The University of Computer Sciences, which occupies the grounds of
the former Russian base known as Lourdes, has graduated thousands of
students since it was founded in 2002. PHOTO: Alfredo Lazcano Valera_

HUNTING FOR RUSSIAN SPIES

We spent hours walking around UCI’s expansive tree-lined campus and
drove around the perimeter, looking for any signs of signals
intelligence or military installations. The security presence was
minimal. We moved around freely and nobody seemed to care who we were
or what we were doing. There was a guard at the entrance and two
others in a far corner of the campus, where they watched over what
appeared to be a side entrance — a partially closed door made of
corrugated metal. The guards, who were unarmed, said they worked for a
state-run security company. There were no military checkpoints.

_An unarmed security guard sits in a guard post near the edge of the
campus. PHOTO: Reed Lindsay_

According to Torralbas, more than 80 percent of the buildings on the
campus were built since the Russians left 24 years ago. New classroom
buildings, computer labs and research centers now occupy land where
Soviet antennas once stood.

The only remnant of the old base we came across was a crumbling
watchtower near the perimeter of the campus. It was impossible to
ascend as its metal ladder had long since rusted away, leaving a small
piece still visible at the top.

_This abandoned watchtower is one of the few structures left from the
Lourdes spy base in Cuba. PHOTO: Reed Lindsay_

As for The New York Times’ claim that the re-opened Lourdes
“bristles with antennas” — we ultimately found two mobile phone
antennas belonging to ETECSA, the state telecommunications company.

_One of the only antennas that is visible at the university.
University staff say it is a mobile phone antenna owned by Cuba’s
state-run telecommunications company. PHOTO: Reed Lindsay_

“We're in a rural area, so this is the only way we can have service
for phone calls, text messages, internet, and everything else,”
explained Héctor González, a UCI graduate who now works in its
communications department. “The antennas that were here [under the
Russians] that were dismantled were different. They were enormous
satellite dishes that you can see in some old photos, giant radars
many meters high. These are just ordinary mobile network antennas.”

The campus was mostly deserted. There are more than 2,500
undergraduate students currently enrolled at UCI, but only a handful
were on campus.

The oil blockade has ground Cuba’s public transportation to a halt.
In February, with students and professors unable to get to class,
Cuba’s universities shifted to remote and hybrid instruction,
suspending most in-person classes.

“It's a shame our students aren't here today," said Aylín Estrada,
a UCI graduate and now a university dean who guided us around one of
the newer school buildings, which has dozens of classrooms.
“Normally these hallways are full of students, smiling, learning.”

“Those buildings over there used to be for the people who worked [on
the base],” said Franklin Quintana, a 37-year-old software
developer, pointing to faded green five-story apartment buildings that
now house university staff.

Quintana, who recently returned to the university to work as a
software developer, shook his head when asked about the spy base.

“It’s a false justification. There’s no other way to understand
it,” he said.

“Rubio should come and look for it himself then. Look for it and
prove it’s here,” said 68-year-old Estrella Luque, a school
administrator whose daughter and son graduated from UCI and are now
professors. "Cuba isn’t a threat to anyone. I don't think anyone
with two brain cells to rub together believes that.”

After watching her children study and later teach at the university,
Luque said she was sad to see the campus without students.

“They can say we’re a failed state if they want…but no one can
ignore or deny the impact of the blockade,” said Luque. “A country
like this little island, which has virtually no natural resources —
we’re not a major oil-producing island or a country with abundant
resources — if you don't let oil in, naturally everything starts to
fall apart. That's what’s happening to us. But here we are. We keep
going.”

* Cuba
[[link removed]]
* spying
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* marco rubio
[[link removed]]
* The New York Times
[[link removed]]
* The Wall Street Journal
[[link removed]]
* Lourdes SIGNIT Signals Intelligence facility
[[link removed]]
* Soviet Union
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]