The Biden administration on Saturday admitted that the Chinese have been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019. The admission came after a couple days of denials.

The drama began to unfold Thursday when The Wall Street Journal ran a bombshell report revealing that China has agreed to pay Cuba billions of dollars to build an “electronic eavesdropping facility” on the island.

“An eavesdropping facility in Cuba, roughly 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic,” the Journal reported.

“Officials familiar with the matter said that China has agreed to pay cash-strapped Cuba several billion dollars to allow it to build the eavesdropping station and that the two countries had reached an agreement in principle,” the newspaper added.

An eavesdropping facility in Cuba, roughly 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic. https://t.co/GbRJevjZK7

— Sam McNeil سام (@stmcneil) June 11, 2023

Yet following the publication of the Journal’s report, the Biden administration and its allies went into immediate denial mode.

“This report is not accurate. We remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and in the region,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told MSNBC that afternoon.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also denied the report, albeit in a Twitter post written in Spanish.

“The slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum patterns of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate,” he wrote, according to a translation from the New York Post.

But then something extraordinary happened: The Biden administration did a 180 and completely changed its story.

“The White House on Saturday said that China has had a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019 and Beijing’s efforts to expand its intelligence gathering are ongoing. It added that the Biden administration has taken steps to counter Chinese expansion of its security footprint globally,” the Journal confirmed.

“Saturday’s White House statement said that when the Biden administration came to office in January 2021, officials were briefed on China’s efforts to expand its global military and intelligence presence, including projects in the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.”

These projects included “intelligence collection facilities” in Cuba that were reportedly upgraded in 2019.

The statement added that the Chinese “will keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba, and we will keep working to disrupt it.”

Republicans and even some Democrats were not pleased by the sudden change in story:

President Biden needs to stop ignoring the threat from China.

In less than 48 hours, officials from the Biden Administration have contradicted themselves multiple times about whether or not the Chinese Communist Party is spying on the United States.

This is unacceptable. https://t.co/l3IAqxBbvZ

— US Rep. Mike Turner (@RepMikeTurner) June 10, 2023

“Why did the Biden administration previously deny these reports of a CCP spy base in Cuba? … Without a coherent explanation, we must conclude they are deliberately misleading the American people and whitewashing CCP aggression in order to revive the counterproductive strategy of engagement,” Rep. Mike Gallagher said, according to Politico.

Gallagher is the chair of the House China Committee.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat member of the committee, added that this news is “sufficiently plausible to merit congressional oversight.”

“If the CCP is using a spy facility in Cuba, as media reports have alleged, then Congress has a duty to investigate the matter rather than accept at face value the denials of the Defense Department,” he said in a statement Saturday.

He’s not the only Democrat who’s spoken out about the Journal’s reporting.

“The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security,” Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner, a Democrat, and ranking member Marco Rubio, a Republican, said in a joint statement following the publication of the Journal’s original report.

“We must be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles of Florida and the United States, in an area also populated with key military installations and extensive maritime traffic,” they added.

And so from the looks of it, this is a fairly bipartisan issue.

What remains unclear is what’ll happen next.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit China as soon as next week and will almost certainly discuss this matter with his counterparts,” Politico notes.

Recall that his previously scheduled visit in February was cancelled because of the Chinese spy balloon fiasco.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week, rescheduling the visit which was canceled in February over the ‘spy’ balloon saga.@alysonle tells you more

Watch more: https://t.co/AXC5qRuO3J pic.twitter.com/rRAMUjRPT9

— WION (@WIONews) June 10, 2023

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Vivek Saxena

Senior Staff Writer
Vivek@bizpacreview.com

V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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