• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 12 / 02 / 2010

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Top News: CubaDebate, the state-run Web portal, published a biting criticism of Spanish daily El País' report on diplomatic cables in which U.S. officials said that Cuban spies operate openly in Venezuela and have direct access to President Hugo Chávez.

The article, originally published on Cuban journalist Iroel Sánchez's blog, attacked the credibility of Juan Jesús Aznarez, the author of the El País report. Sánchez called Aznarez a "disciple of John Le Carré" and intimated that Aznarez had a bias because he had published an investigative report for El País in 2005 that concluded that Cuban intelligence agents had infiltrated anti-Castro groups in Spain, established links with some leftwing newspapers and gained influence in various other sectors of Spanish society.

"In few instances in the history of journalism has there been a swindle of such magnitud," wrote Sánchez.

Aznarez's piece attributed the allegation that Cuban spies operate openly in Venezuela to the U.S. officials who wrote the cables and noted that the information could not be independently confirmed.

Cuban state media has closely followed the WikiLeaks story, focusing on U.S. cables that provide evidence for perceived wrongdoing by the U.S. government. As of writing, however, Cuban authorities had not made any public statements regarding the documents.

Source: Miami Herald