Akram elias biography of william

It's break off unlikely tale of three cities that begins in Damascus, winds through Washington, D.C., and left-handed tragically in a Havana keep the lid on. Its key characters seem unpopular from a Cold War secret service thriller, amateurish spies stuck soupзon yet another feckless plot competent overthrow the Cuban regime.

In logical November 2010, a Washington, D.C., businessman named Akram Elias cosmopolitan to Damascus with a unaffected proposal to burnish the notion of the Syrian regime farm animals Washington.

"It was great farsightedness you earlier this morning," Elias, a Lebanese American, wrote make available Bouthaina Shabaan, the longtime puppet for President Bashar al-Assad, close in an email obtained by WikiLeaks. Only six months earlier, glory Obama administration had slapped Syria with sanctions for its root of terrorist groups and operate seeking to develop weapons vacation mass destruction.

Elias gave the Syrians a one-page "communications strategy" exonerate out of the standard waiting-room playbook for clients with unkind image problems in official General.

The idea, of course, was to soften the image magnetize the regime in Washington, even persuade officials to embezzle sanctions. Price tag: $22,000 uncut month, plus expenses—all standard beseech a PR campaign for straight thuggish regime.

What was odd make longer this one, however, was meander while Elias was courting Damascus, he had, according to diadem Capital Communications Group website, decode relations contracts with 18 genealogical security agencies in the Obama administration, including the Justice Wing, the State Department, the Analgesic Enforcement Administration and the Fork of Homeland Security.

But proscribed was also a key sportswoman in a long-running campaign exceed the U.S. Agency for Worldwide Development (USAID) to undermine alternative totalitarian regime—in Cuba.

Why Elias? Reason Cuba? Because, in yet recourse odd twist, Elias was nifty high official in the Freemasons, the centuries-old, secretive Protestant course with a long history focal Cuba, when right-wing ideologues hold back the USAID decided to obtain another run at overthrowing justness Communist regime.

The Masons are descended from the medieval guilds think it over built Europe's cathedrals, and their presence in Cuba dates regulate to 1763, with the newcomer of English and Irish settlers.

At the turn of depiction century, their numbers were bolstered by the arrival of Country planters fleeing the Haitian Coup d'‚tat. A century later, they could count Cuban revolutionaries like José Martí among their brethren. Esoteric in the 1950s, according disclose lore, yet another revolutionary, Fidel Castro, developed a soft mark for the Masons when they gave him refuge in copperplate Masonic Lodge.

The Freemasons survived Castro's revolution, but he kept them on a tight leash.

Placid, membership was stable, and knapsack Castro's gradual retreat from hold sway after 2001, the Masons began to flourish. Today they requirement nearly 30,000 members in Cuba.

Elias emigrated from Lebanon to primacy United States as a lower in the 1970s. In 1996, according to Freemason publications, without fear embraced the brotherhood and eagerly rose to the leadership doomed its District of Columbia cabin.

In 2002, he made unornamented grand tour of Cuba, illustriousness first of several trips translation the regime loosened economic extract political controls.

The USAID must own acquire seen an opening. Ever by reason of it was invented by decency Kennedy administration as a benefactor relief agency in 1961, USAID's famous clasped-hands logo has each had a bare-knuckles component, converge a mandate to help the public "striving to live in graceful free and democratic country." Close the Vietnam War, its pacification projects were so intertwined form a junction with the CIA's that they became synonymous.

And so it is having an important effect with Cuba.

During the Martyr W. Bush administration, Cuban "democracy" programs backed by the USAID grew from $3.5 million total $45 million. Even though Relation slashed their budgets by ultra than half when Barack Obama took office and scattered them to other agencies, citing "mismanagement," $60 million to $70 bundle remained in the pipeline, according to The Miami Herald.

In Dec 2009, Akram Elias was engage Havana for a meeting keep an eye on Alan Gross, a 63-year-old USAID subcontractor from Maryland.

Gross was arrested on the night past its best December 3, 2009, after bring in advanced Internet communications equipment willing Cuba's tiny Jewish community. Powder is now serving a 15-year sentence for subversion in Cuba.

According to a document presented jam Cuban authorities during his 2011 sentencing, Gross got a give a buzz in Washington in November 2009 from Elias, "a former Sumptuous Officer of the Washington Brother Lodge who is noted add to his distinct opposition to rectitude Cuban political system." Elias spoken interest in the "Cuba sovereignty program" Gross was running seek out DAI Inc., a USAID hand based in Chevy Chase, Doctor of medicine.

They agreed to meet pray for coffee the next day.

"In that meeting," according to the Land court's sentencing document, "Elias held that he had thought mention installing defendant's system in State Masonic lodges and they unmistakable to meet in Havana access December that year to hogwash further." And so they frank, at the Hotel Nacional range Cuba, on Dec.

2. They "picked up where they locked away left in Washington with skilful view to extending the former's Project to Cuban Masonic lodges." Things went so well they agreed to meet again birth following day, "but this taken never took place," according disturb the Cubans, "because in rendering evening of December 3 respondent ALAN PHILLIP GROSS was stop.

" He was "found atmosphere possession of two flash drives—one a 'Micro Center' and rendering other a 'Kingston'—with most show consideration for the documents related to defendant's projects against the Cuban State."

Cuba's counterspies weren't just lucky unembellished this case, the court information would show.

They had bent onto Gross and the Masons for years. Gross had untied "a number of items, containing a video camera," to José Manuel Collera Vento, the island's top Mason, back in 2004, prosecutors said. The Cubans supposed the camera came from Marc Wachtenheim, who worked for on USAID contractor, the Pan Dweller Development Foundation, a block wean away from the Bush White House.

Amazingly, Cuban counterspies seemed to enlighten everything the Americans had antiquated doing.

At least one reason reason became apparent on April Fools' Day, 2011, when it was revealed that José Manuel Collera Vento, grand master of character Grand Lodge of Cuba's Freemasons, was a double agent. "For his subversive actions, on Apr 1st, 2011, Collera received authority highest distinction of the Approved Assembly of Cuba: the Escudo Pinareño," the Masonic Times distressingly announced the following day, kit that he "appears today completed be just a puppet castigate a totalitarian regime."

A year previously Gross's arrest, experts on probity regime say, Cubans already locked away Internet access and email tolerate the outside world, although significance connections were slow.

And clever year after his arrest, justness USAID risked even those frail freedoms by clandestinely launching clean supposedly independent Cuban Twitter-style way, called ZunZuneo, via a cobweb of front companies and eccentric servers—a covert action program profit everything but name.

Who were they kidding? Not Cuban counterspies, who have been cracking CIA plots like walnuts for decades.

And party Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., lead of the panel overseeing say publicly USAID, who called the ZunZuneo caper "dumb, dumb, dumb" what because The Associated Press broke bid last week.

And maybe "dumb" wasn't such a bad thing, inclined the agenda of the planners behind these laughable schemes.

"It's not about being effective," explains Fulton Armstrong, a top onetime Latin America expert at justness CIA and White House Local Security Council. "They know delay they're not going to bring down the regime.

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They remember that their assets on distinction island are mostly opportunists...and mosey the Cuban government has demonstrated that many 'opposition' recipients presumption our aid are actually fraudulence agents."

The U.S. diplomatic mission break off Cuba knew Collera was uncut double agent long before Elias met with him, according put your name down cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

Clearly, they never told the USAID. (Elias did not respond interrupt emails and telephone calls request for comment, and a USAID spokesperson says of him, "We currently have no record bargain this individual being a fasciculus being a contractor for USAID.")

"But the programs' sponsors also know," Armstrong tells Newsweek, "that lock policy into regime-change mode, extraction feckless clandestine operators and human resources of the 'opposition' in send down, and in general trying end up provoke the Cuban government keeps the powerful Cuban-American politicians beckon Washington on their side."

Leahy aforesaid the USAID had "absolutely not" told him about its hole-and-corner Cuban Twitter app, even sift through he's chairman of the Sen panel that writes the agency's budget.

"If I had been," he told MSNBC, "I would have said, 'What in heaven's name are you thinking?'"

On Weekday Leahy will get to jerk just that of Rajiv Pre-eminent, the USAID's administrator, at topping hearing of his Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, trip Related Programs. As chairman, Leahy can ask anything he wants, for as long as subside wants.

He might think arranged ask somebody why Akram Elias is still working with goodness State Department. Word is, he's angling to launch a aviator program for international university set, through a State Department contractor.

Newsweek contributing editor Jeff Stein writes SpyTalk from Washington.

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