Newsman: Cuba has agreed to allow China to build a spying facility on the island that could allow the Chinese to eavesdrop on electronic communications across the southeastern US, referring two sources familiar with the intelligence, CNN reports.
The US learned about the plan in the last several weeks, the first source said, and it is unclear whether China has already begun building the surveillance facility.
The second source familiar with the intelligence says it suggests that a deal has been struck in principle but there hasn’t been any movement on building the facility.
The officials, granted anonymity to discuss an extremely sensitive intelligence matter, said that China was in direct conversations with Cuba to set up a base on the island nation just 100 miles from the United States. The move would allow Beijing to surveillance the southeastern United States, home to many military facilities and sensitive industries.
“This report is not accurate,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “We have had real concerns about China’s relationship with Cuba, and we have been concerned since day one of the Administration about China’s activities in our hemisphere and around the world. We are closely monitoring it and taking steps to counter it. We remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and in the region.”
Kirby initially told the Journal on Thursday morning that he “cannot speak to this specific report,” but that US officials are “well aware of—and have spoken many times to—the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere.”
The US has been trying to mend the relationship, and dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to Beijing last month for talks with Chinese officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also expected to visit China in the coming weeks a trip that was postponed in February after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon after it traversed North America.
But last week, China’s defense chief refused a meeting request by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and warned the US to stop operating near Chinese waters and airspace.
“The best way to prevent this from happening is that military vessels and aircraft not come close to our waters and airspace,” Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu said in Singapore last week, referring to recent close calls between Chinese and US planes and ships. “Watch out for your own territorial waters and airspace, and then there will not be any problems.”
The US also conducts spying missions near China, using reconnaissance aircraft that routinely engage in electronic eavesdropping. One of those US planes was recently intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet, in what the US described as a dangerous and unprofessional maneuver.
The Wall Street Journal, which was first to report on the discussions, said Beijing and Havana reached a “secret agreement” whereby China pays Cuba billions of dollars for a facility.
It would not be the first time China has attempted to spy on the US’ electronic communications, known as signals intelligence. A suspected Chinese spy balloon that transited the US in February was capable of gathering signals intelligence and is believed to have transmitted back to Beijing in near-real time, sources told CNN at the time.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio denied the reports.
At a press conference in Havana on Thursday, he called them “totally untrue” and “slanders.”
Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.
“Slanders like these have been fabricated frequently by US officials,” he said, alleging that the reported spy base was being used to legitimize US sanctions on Cuba.
“Fallacies promoted with the malicious intention to justify the unprecedented reinforcement of the economic blockade, destabilization and the aggression against Cuba and deceive public opinion in the United States and around the world,” de Cossio added.
