标签： South America

In a deliberate show of pressure targeting Cuba’s communist government, the United States military has openly broadcast the position of its surveillance aircraft operating near the island via public plane-tracking platforms, in a move that comes as bilateral tensions between the two nations surge to multi-year highs. Analysis of open flight data from Flightradar24 conducted by BBC Verify confirms that since May 11, at least five U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance planes and three MQ-4C Triton surveillance drones have conducted regular operations in Caribbean airspace close to Cuba, with some missions bringing the aircraft within just 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the island’s coastline.

Military aircraft do not always broadcast their position during all stages of flight, meaning public flight tracking data cannot capture the full scope of U.S. surveillance activity off Cuba’s coast. This stepped-up deployment of intelligence-gathering assets follows a sharp escalation of tensions in recent months, after Washington imposed a de facto oil blockade on the Caribbean island nation. Recent reporting from news outlet Axios has further stoked friction, claiming Havana has obtained drones capable of striking the U.S. mainland. Cuba’s foreign minister has rejected the claim, stating the country “neither threatens nor desires war” and accusing Washington of constructing a “fraudulent case” to justify military intervention.

In a direct address to the Cuban people delivered on Wednesday, the anniversary of Cuba’s independence from the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed a “new relationship” for the Cuban public, blaming the island’s “unimaginable hardships” on its communist leadership rather than the U.S.-led fuel blockade. Security analysts say the intentional decision to keep flight transponders active — making the missions visible to the public — is a core part of the U.S. strategy. UK-based drone expert Dr. Steve Wright notes that the move is almost certainly deliberate, designed to send a clear signal that the U.S. maintains constant surveillance to sustain its pressure campaign.

The ongoing oil blockade has already triggered a severe humanitarian and economic crisis on the island, with widespread fuel shortages sparking rolling national power blackouts and small-scale public protests. U.S. President Donald Trump has ramped up pressure on Havana further, calling on the Cuban government to “make a deal” and threatening that the U.S. could intervene in the country just as it did in Venezuela earlier this year, when it captured sitting President Nicolás Maduro.

BBC Verify’s tracking of the flights details the pattern of surveillance operations: on May 11, one P-8A Poseidon reached the 50-mile mark off southern Cuba, continuing operations into the following day when it flew north of Havana before returning to its home base in Jacksonville, Florida. On May 15, two MQ-4C Triton drones carried out operations off southern Cuba, following a flight path nearly identical to one previously used by a P-8A Poseidon.

Mark Cancian, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told BBC Verify that the repeated, consistent flight routes are primarily intended to spot incoming fuel ships approaching Cuba from the south, with a secondary focus on vessels approaching from the north. He emphasized that none of the surveillance flights have entered Cuban airspace over land, so the operations do not represent preparation for a full-scale invasion. Cancian also added that the increased frequency of the missions is almost certainly not routine, as the U.S. military has a limited number of P-8A and MQ-4C assets available for deployment globally.

To contextualize the current surge in activity, BBC Verify compared recent data to operations between February 1 and 7 of this year, when only one P-8A flew near Cuba, with no comparable MQ-4C Triton activity recorded off the island’s coast. A U.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft did carry out two passes near the island during that February period, but operations were far less frequent than they have been since mid-May.

Wright echoed the broader assessment that the surveillance is targeted at preventing Venezuela — a key ally of Cuba — from breaking the blockade and shipping fuel to the island. Analysts from defense intelligence firm Janes reached the same conclusion, noting that there has been a general uptick in U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sorties near Cuba since February. “The fact that these flights are visible through open-source tracking tools suggests they are intended to deter attempts to break the oil blockade and apply pressure on the Cuban government,” Janes told BBC Verify.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – In a move that comes amid mounting public and international pressure over arbitrary political detentions, Venezuela’s sitting government has unveiled plans to free 300 detainees this week, a cohort that includes dozens of individuals held for years on what rights advocates describe as politically motivated charges. National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez made the announcement Tuesday during a plenary session at Caracas’ legislative palace, stopping short of explicitly labeling the upcoming releases a political prisoner amnesty. But leading human rights defenders have already confirmed that many of the people named in the government’s release list were arbitrarily detained for their opposition to the current administration.

In the wake of mounting public and congressional scrutiny over a months-long U.S. military campaign targeting suspected drug smuggling vessels in Latin American waters, the Pentagon’s independent inspector general has launched a formal evaluation to assess whether military personnel adhered to established, standardized targeting protocols during the operations that have left nearly 200 people dead.

The review, which the oversight body confirmed Tuesday is self-initiated, centers its examination on the military’s own six-step Joint Targeting Cycle – a structured framework that outlines clear requirements for defining a commander’s core intent, developing and vetting potential targets, conducting rigorous threat analysis, securing formal approval for action, executing the strike, and completing a post-operation assessment. Details of the evaluation, first reported by Bloomberg News, were laid out in a May 11 correspondence sent to senior Defense Department leadership.

Notably, the inspector general’s office has stated it will not investigate whether the strikes themselves violate domestic or international law, a gap that comes as the operations have drawn sharp criticism from Democratic members of Congress and independent military legal scholars. To date, the watchdog has declined to share a projected completion date for the review, leaving the timeline for any findings unresolved.

The controversial campaign, launched by the Trump administration in early September, frames its actions as a direct war on transnational Latin American drug cartels, which officials blame for the ongoing public health crisis of fatal opioid and drug overdoses devastating communities across the United States. Since the operations began, strikes carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea have killed at least 193 people, according to official tallies.

In the most recent incident on May 8, U.S. Southern Command confirmed one person survived the strike, but there remains no public confirmation that U.S. Coast Guard teams located and rescued the survivor – an outcome that could push the final death toll even higher.

A key point of contention that has fueled criticism is the U.S. military’s refusal to release public evidence confirming any of the targeted vessels were actually carrying illicit drug shipments. In public social media statements, military officials have repeatedly relied on vague references to unspecified intelligence and the fact that the boats were traveling along well-documented narco-trafficking corridors to justify the attacks.

The very first strike carried out in early September sparked particularly intense outcry over reported rules of engagement. Military records show nine people on the targeted vessel were killed in the initial attack, leaving two survivors clinging to the capsized wreckage. The boat was hit a second time with ordnance, killing the remaining two survivors. In a December statement, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, condemned the action, describing the men as “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water — until the missiles come and kill them.”

White House officials have publicly defended the follow-up strike, asserting it was carried out in self-defense, intended to fully disable the targeted vessel, and aligned with the established laws of armed conflict.

Declassified satellite photographic evidence has brought to light a previously undisclosed joint operation that moved a shipment of uranium out of Venezuela and into United States territory, according to newly released observational data. The mission, which had been kept entirely under wraps since its execution, was only uncovered when commercial satellite analysts examining recent orbital shots of Venezuelan port facilities identified unusual cargo movement activity that did not match any recorded official shipments. Multiple independent verification checks of the imagery have confirmed that the large cargo containers documented in the shots match the profile of materials transported in cross-border uranium shipments, and the route tracked from Venezuela directly to a receiving facility in the U.S. The revelation of this secret operation has sparked immediate discussion about the undisclosed coordination between U.S. and regional partner agencies, as well as questions surrounding the origins of the Venezuelan uranium and the security protocols that allowed the entire mission to remain hidden from public and diplomatic scrutiny for an extended period. At the time of this reporting, no official government spokesperson from either the U.S. or Venezuela has issued a formal statement confirming or denying the details of the shipment operation.

Six months after Rodrigo Paz took office as Bolivia’s president, the South American nation is grappling with its most severe political and humanitarian crisis in decades, as nationwide protests and coordinated road blockades have left the country’s administrative capital La Paz effectively under siege. What began as scattered demands from disparate labor and social groups has evolved into a full-scale movement calling for Paz’s resignation, amplified by the shadow of influential former president Evo Morales, who is currently evading arrest on sexual assault charges.

The unrest has stretched into its third week, led by a coalition of Bolivia’s largest labor union, the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), peasant unions, and mining groups. The sustained road closures have gutted local markets in La Paz, drained critical oxygen supplies at the capital’s hospitals, and already claimed at least three lives: emergency response vehicles were blocked from reaching medical facilities, leaving patients without urgent care. On Monday, clashes broke out between police and Morales supporters who joined the mass mobilization in the capital, intensifying pressure on a beleaguered administration that holds no legislative majority and lacks a cohesive, nationwide political party structure.

For Paz, a business-friendly centrist who won office last year as part of a broader regional wave of conservative electoral gains, the uprising represents the existential threat of his young presidency. Despite his warning Friday that “Those seeking to destroy democracy will go to jail,” blockades have since expanded to cover nearly the entire country, leaving more than 5,000 vehicles stranded on national highways and draining the national economy of an estimated $50 million every single day, according to local business associations.

The demands driving the protest are varied across participating groups. The COB initially called for significant wage hikes, while peasant groups have demanded a consistent, affordable supply of gasoline. Miners are pushing for expanded access to untapped mining territories, and public school teachers are conducting separate negotiations for salary increases. Presidential spokesperson José Luis Gálvez argues that most of these demands have already been addressed responsibly in line with Bolivia’s current economic constraints, claiming “dark forces” aligned with Morales are deliberately destabilizing the elected government.

Paz has repeatedly emphasized that he inherited a “bankrupt state” from the previous government led by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). His critics, however, decry his slow, ineffective response to a national crisis that has seen annual inflation climb near 20% and persistent fuel shortages – the worst economic downturn the country has faced in 40 years. A damaging early controversy, dubbed the “junk gasoline” scandal, further eroded public trust: the government imported low-quality fuel that damaged thousands of vehicles, sparking initial transport strikes and forcing the resignation of two senior executives at the state-owned oil company.

Morales, who led the MAS government for 14 years before leaving office in 2019, has emerged as the most high-profile figure behind the current unrest, organizing the latest mass march from his remote hideout in the Bolivian tropics. The former president has evaded an arrest warrant for 18 months stemming from allegations that he sexually abused a 15-year-old girl, charges he dismisses as politically motivated fabrication. In a recent post on social media platform X, Morales pushed back against claims he has lost his political influence, saying, “The government and the right wing claim that I am a political corpse and that I lack the ability to mobilize anyone, yet they continue to blame me. As long as structural demands — such as those concerning fuel, food and inflation — remain unaddressed, the uprising will not be quelled.” Most independent political analysts, however, argue Morales no longer holds the broad popular support he once commanded, and is instead stoking unrest primarily to distract from his legal troubles and avoid imprisonment.

The collapse of the MAS, which governed Bolivia for 20 years before splitting into factions led by Morales and former president Luis Arce, left Bolivia’s political landscape deeply fragmented, with no single party holding a clear governing majority. Paz’s surprise electoral victory last year quickly unraveled when his own political vehicle, the Christian Democratic Party, fractured soon after he took office. Compounding his governing challenges, Paz is also locked in a public, bitter feud with his own vice president, former police officer Edman Lara.

Early in his term, Paz positioned himself as a reformer, moving quickly to end the country’s international isolation that marked the MAS era and court foreign investment and loans. While he secured multiple pledges of international financial support, most of those funds have yet to materialize in Bolivian coffers. His first major domestic policy move, cutting long-standing fuel subsidies to stabilize public finances, did initially avoid mass unrest, but the subsequent low-quality fuel import scandal undermined what early goodwill he had with the public.

The crisis has drawn significant attention and response from across Latin America and the United States. Eight Latin American governments, ranging from Chile to Costa Rica, released a joint statement rejecting “any action aimed at destabilizing the democratic order.” Neighboring Argentina has stepped in to launch a week-long humanitarian airlift to bring critical supplies to Bolivia and alleviate widespread shortages of food and medical goods. The United States, which is rebuilding diplomatic and economic ties with Bolivia after decades of tense relations under Morales, has expressed public support for Paz’s efforts to “restore order for the peace, security and stability of the Bolivian people,” while also issuing a travel alert urging U.S. citizens in the country to exercise heightened caution amid ongoing unrest.

Just one month before U.S. special forces removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, a starkly different outcome played out for another former Latin American head of state: Juan Orlando Hernández, ex-president of Honduras, who had been convicted on nearly identical drug trafficking charges, walked free after receiving a full presidential pardon from former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Hernández had spent nearly four years behind bars at West Virginia’s maximum-security Hazelton Federal Correctional Institution, serving a 45-year sentence for his 2024 conviction on conspiracy charges linked to a transnational cocaine trafficking ring that moved 400 tonnes of the drug into the United States. Trump announced the pardon on his Truth Social platform on November 28, just 48 hours before Honduras’ general election. In the same post, Trump threatened to cut U.S. aid to Honduras unless his preferred candidate – Nasry Asfura of Hernández’s conservative National Party – won office. After a tightly contested race and delayed vote count, Asfura ultimately claimed victory.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC from his current residence in the U.S., Hernández described his sudden release as an extraordinary turnaround, saying he is “thankful and just trying to rebuild my life” after half a decade of incarceration. He has forcefully rejected claims that the pardon was granted for political reasons, aligned with Trump’s long-stated regional policy rooted in a reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, which frames the Americas as Washington’s exclusive sphere of influence.

Most notably, Hernández pushed back hard against comparisons between his case and that of Maduro. Both right- and left-leaning sitting presidents were ultimately accused of large-scale drug trafficking, but Hernández secured Trump’s backing while Maduro faced forced removal. “My case is completely different,” he insisted, arguing that the entire criminal narrative around him was constructed by “leftist politicians in Honduras in tandem with left-wing politicians in Venezuela.” He claims upcoming evidence in Maduro’s upcoming U.S. drug trial will reveal that corrupt, drug-linked connections actually lie with members of Honduras’ left-wing Libre party, not his conservative administration.

The pardon granted Hernández unconditional legal clearance for all the charges he was convicted of, leading the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss his pending appeal as moot, since the conviction no longer carried legal weight. The Trump administration has framed the pardon as a correction of what it calls a wrongful prosecution carried out under the Joe Biden administration.

But for many Hondurans, the pardon does nothing to change their view of Hernández, who remains the most controversial Honduran president in recent memory, and was extradited to the U.S. in shackles to face trial. The decision sparked widespread protests both among Honduran communities in the U.S. and across Honduras, with demonstrators gathering outside the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa to condemn the move. “It’s a mockery for Honduras. This country doesn’t deserve that,” one local resident told Honduran television at the time.

At Hernández’s 2024 sentencing, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel branded him a “two-faced politician” who leveraged his presidential authority and Honduras’ national security forces to protect drug traffickers who bribed his administration and funded his political career. Prosecutors alleged he turned Honduras into a narco-state, a particularly notable charge given the country’s long-standing role as a key transit point for South American cocaine bound for U.S. consumers.

Hernández has repeatedly denied all charges, pointing to a extradition law passed by his own administration – the same law that allowed his extradition to the U.S. for trial – as proof of his commitment to combating drug trafficking. He claims the law angered traffickers who ultimately coordinated to testify against him in retaliation.

Among the most damning evidence introduced at trial was an alleged quote attributed to Hernández, in which he reportedly told a senior Honduran trafficker: “We’re going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” Prosecutors also claimed he accepted a $1 million bribe from infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Pressed on these claims, Hernández dismissed them as “false and ridiculous,” noting that El Chapo was already known to U.S. law enforcement at the time of the alleged meeting and was never in Honduras. “If you look at El Chapo’s trial, he doesn’t even mention Juan Orlando Hernández,” he told the BBC.

He also rejected another key piece of prosecution evidence: handwritten ledger entries from a major Honduran trafficker that purportedly documented bribes paid to both him and his younger brother, Tony Hernández, a former Honduran congressman who is currently serving a life sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking. Tony Hernández’s conviction two years before his brother’s trial was a core part of the prosecution’s case against Juan Orlando; Tony was secretly recorded meeting with a top Honduran trafficker, who later testified against both siblings, alleging a $250,000 bribe was paid for protection while Juan Orlando was running for president. When asked what Tony was doing at that meeting, Hernández acknowledged: “I ask myself the same question, it was a grave mistake.”

Hernández has framed the entire case against him as a “political operation” built on the testimony of witnesses motivated by revenge, reduced sentences and entry into witness protection programs. He claims the prosecution was backed by an international alliance of left-wing politicians, including Democratic leaders in Washington, targeting him as a conservative leader. He and his family echo Trump’s description of the case as a “horrible witch-hunt” carried out by a politicized Biden-era Department of Justice, arguing the pardon merely corrected a gross injustice.

However, multiple current and former officials from the Department of Justice, State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration who worked on the case told the BBC their investigation was conducted with full due process and no improper political interference. They emphasized that the investigation into Hernández began during Trump’s first term, and was not a Biden administration initiative. Ana María Méndez Dardón, Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America research organization, confirmed the years-long investigation was built on solid evidence. “The conviction had strong evidence that supported finding Juan Orlando Hernández guilty as a drug trafficker,” she said. “There were many witnesses which exposed linkages with other transnational drug organisations, including El Chapo Guzmán. It was huge. And it goes beyond Juan Orlando Hernández as a former president and a former convicted drug trafficker.”

Five months after his release, Hernández has still not been reunited with his family in person. He remains facing outstanding corruption and misappropriation of state funds charges in Honduras, and his wife Ana García Carías has been subject to U.S. visa restrictions since his 2020 arrest. Hernández says his top priority is securing permission to return to Honduras to be with his family, and he has ruled out any return to politics: “I’m not interested [in returning to politics]. My interest is in my family. I’ll never get back those four years I lost. Even today, I still haven’t seen them.” With his former National Party colleagues back in power in Tegucigalpa, however, Hernández is growing increasingly hopeful he will be allowed to return home. If he does, he will face the massive challenge of convincing the Honduran public, many of whom are frustrated by corrupt political elites avoiding accountability, of his version of events.

In the wake of a early-year Venezuelan military operation that resulted in the capture of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the United States has steadily escalated diplomatic and economic pressure on Cuba, the Latin American nation long led by a communist government, according to reporting from multiple senior U.S. and international sources. The escalating standoff has put bilateral relations, already fraught after more than 60 years of enmity, at a critical turning point, with the U.S. Justice Department now moving toward a criminal indictment of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, a step that could send regional tensions soaring.

A potential indictment against Castro would require approval from a federal grand jury before it can be formally filed, three anonymous sources familiar with the ongoing investigation confirmed to the Associated Press. Three insiders noted that the preliminary charge is tied to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 downing of two aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based Cuban exile group, an incident that left four people dead. At the time of the shootdown, Castro served as Cuba’s defense minister, and he retains behind-the-scenes influence over Cuban governance despite stepping down from official office years ago. The Cuban government has not issued any public response to multiple requests for comment on the pending investigation, which was first reported by CBS.

This push for legal action comes amid a year of rapidly shifting friction between the Donald Trump administration and Havana, unfolding concurrently with a fragile, uneasy ceasefire in the U.S. military conflict with Iran. To contextualize the fast-moving developments, here is a chronological breakdown of key milestones in U.S.-Cuba relations over the first five months of the year:

On January 4, just 24 hours after the Venezuelan operation that removed Maduro from power, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly warned that Cuba’s ruling government “is in a lot of trouble.” That same day, Trump renewed his long-stated public call for the United States to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory owned by Denmark.

A week later on January 11, Trump issued a direct public ultimatum to Cuba, Maduro’s closest regional ally, as the island braced for potential domestic unrest following Maduro’s ousting. “Cuba needs to make a deal BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote in a social media post. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel pushed back sharply on the threat, arguing that the U.S. government, which he criticized for turning even human lives into a commercial transaction, has no moral standing to judge Cuba’s actions.

On January 30, Trump signed a new executive order imposing punitive tariffs on any goods imported from nations that export or supply petroleum to Cuba. Policy analysts widely agree the move will further damage Cuba’s already fragile economy, which has been strained by decades of U.S. sanctions.

On February 26, one day before the U.S. launched its full-scale military campaign against Iran, Trump unexpectedly announced that Washington was holding high-level talks with Cuban officials and floated the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba,” though he offered no further details on what such a framework would entail. He confirmed Rubio was leading discussions with senior Cuban leadership, noting that the decades-long adversarial relationship between the two nations was approaching a pivotal moment. That same month, Raúl Guillermo “Raúlito” Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson and a rising figure in Cuban politics, held a secret closed-door meeting with Rubio on the sidelines of the Caribbean Community summit in St. Kitts.

It was not until March 13 that Díaz-Canel publicly confirmed the backchannel talks, marking the first official acknowledgement of negotiations between the two governments amid a crippling national energy crisis. He said in a public statement that the discussions “were aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences between our two nations. International factors facilitated these exchanges.” Two weeks later on March 31, a Russian oil tanker that had been sanctioned by the U.S. docked in Cuba, delivering the first shipment of fuel to the island in three months.

Through early April, Díaz-Canel repeatedly rejected U.S. pressure to step down, stating in an April 12 interview with NBC’s *Meet the Press* that Washington has no legitimate justification for either a military invasion of Cuba or an attempt to remove his government from power. He warned that any U.S. military incursion would carry heavy costs and destabilize the entire Caribbean region. On April 16, during a mass rally in Havana marking the 65th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution’s formal declaration of socialism, Díaz-Canel called on the Cuban people to prepare for potential external aggression. “The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression,” he told the crowd of hundreds of supporters. “We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it, and if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it.”

The following day, news broke of a new round of in-person talks between a U.S. delegation and senior Cuban government officials, marking a renewed push for diplomatic progress. This meeting was the third confirmed discussion between U.S. representatives and Rodríguez Castro, and a senior State Department official had met with the Cuban envoy earlier that month, a department official confirmed on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations. The official declined to name the members of the U.S. delegation, while a second U.S. official clarified that Rubio was not part of the delegation that traveled to Havana.

On April 23, Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Ernesto Soberón Guzmán told the AP that Havana would reject any U.S. ultimatums requiring the release of political prisoners as a condition of continuing talks, stating that all internal Cuban matters related to detentions “are not on the negotiating table.” The release of political prisoners has been a core demand from U.S. negotiators in the first formal bilateral talks held on Cuban soil in a decade. A week later on April 28, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic-sponsored bill that would have forced Trump to lift the U.S. energy blockade against Cuba without prior congressional approval. The vote underscored unified Republican support for Trump’s unilateral exercise of U.S. military and diplomatic pressure across multiple global hotspots, including Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba.

By May 7, senior U.S. officials moved to quell widespread speculation about an imminent U.S. military strike on Cuba, despite repeated public threats from Trump that “Cuba is next” and hints that U.S. warships deployed to the Middle East for the Iran conflict could sail to Cuba after concluding their operations. The sources, who are involved in the ongoing preliminary talks with Cuban authorities, also told the AP that U.S. negotiators are not optimistic that Havana will accept a sweeping U.S. offer that includes tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, two years of free Starlink internet access for all Cubans, agricultural support, and infrastructure investment. The proposal comes with strict policy conditions that the Cuban government has rejected for decades, though officials noted that Havana has not yet formally turned down the offer even after new Trump administration sanctions took effect.

One week later on May 14, both U.S. and Cuban officials confirmed that CIA Director John Ratcliffe had traveled to Havana for high-level meetings with Cuban officials, including Rodríguez Castro. Ratcliffe held discussions with Rodríguez Castro, Cuban Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuba’s national intelligence service, covering intelligence cooperation, economic stability, and regional security issues. A CIA spokesperson later confirmed the meeting to the AP. A day after that visit, the AP first reported that the Justice Department was moving forward with plans to seek a grand jury indictment against Raúl Castro, the latest development in a rapidly shifting standoff between the two nations.