USAID chief to face questions on 'Cuban Twitter'

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

USAID chief to face questions on 'Cuban Twitter'
By DESMOND BUTLER and JACK GILLUM, Associated Press | April 8, 2014 | Updated: April 8, 2014 3:40am

WASHINGTON (AP) — The administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Tuesday begins a series of appearances before lawmakers who are asking questions about his agency's secret "Cuban Twitter," a social media network built to stir unrest in the communist island.
First up to question agency head Rajiv Shah is Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who publicly called the social media program "dumb, dumb, dumb."

Last week, an Associated Press investigation revealed that USAID oversaw the creation of the text message-based service, dubbed ZunZuneo for the sound made by a Cuban hummingbird. USAID and its contractors went to extensive lengths to conceal Washington's ties to the project, according to interviews and documents obtained by the AP.

A key question for the hearings will be whether or not the program endangered its users by concealing that the U.S. government was behind the program. The network was publicly launched shortly after the 2009 arrest in Cuba of American contractor Alan Gross. He was imprisoned there after traveling repeatedly on a separate, clandestine USAID mission to expand Cuban Internet access using sensitive technology that only governments use.

Lawmakers will also try to determine whether the program should have been classified as "covert" under U.S. national security law, which requires covert action to be authorized by the president and briefed to congressional intelligence committees.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/USAID-chief-to-face-questions-on-Cuban-Twitter-5384467.php

[VWolf]

1. Cuban Twitter sounds like a dance n/t

[jwirr]

2. We need to leave them alone. We have been working against them since Eisenhower refused to help

them get rid of the organized crime bosses who were running their country. It is significant that they reached out to the US before they turned to the USSR. Had we listened back then none of this would have happened. And they have managed to survive all these years - we have no right to treat the rest of the world like we do just because they do no agree with our corporations.