# Opinion: Former CIA Officer Rick de la Torre Says Rubio Is Right to Invite Cubans to Work With the CIA

A retired chief of station argues that Havana spent decades recruiting Americans and should now have to guard against its own insiders. He also warns that volunteers must be tested, not trusted.

- Section: [Opinion](https://rightnewsrightnow.com/opinion/)
- Published: 2026-10-25
- By: RightNewsRightNow Staff
- Canonical page: https://rightnewsrightnow.com/articles/opinion-rick-de-la-torre-former-cia-chief-of-station-rubio-right-invite-cubans-work-with-cia/

Rick de la Torre, a retired CIA operations officer and former chief of station who is Cuban American, argues in a Fox News column that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is right to invite Cubans to work with the CIA.

His premise. De la Torre says Washington has assumed Cuba is too broke to matter. He argues a failing economy does not mean a weak security service, because a dictatorship spends on what keeps it in power. "Poverty has never disqualified a country from espionage," he writes.

His record of cases. He points to Ana Belen Montes, who became the Pentagon's leading Cuba analyst while working for Cuban intelligence, and to Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador who secretly served Havana. He also cites Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers, who ran an espionage conspiracy for 30 years, and the Wasp Network, whose officer was convicted in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft that killed four men.

His case for the invitation. A Cuban intelligence or party insider may know which Americans Havana recruited or who ordered a dissident's arrest, he writes, and the offer gives that person something to trade. It also forces Cuban security chiefs to ask who has already said yes, tying up officers in hunting their own colleagues.

His caution. He says the work must be "exacting." Havana will send fabricators, and a volunteer's hatred of the regime does not prove the information is true. Success, he writes, is a Cuban agent identified inside an American institution or a threatened source protected.

His conclusion. Pressure and a credible opening must both be sustained: "America cannot answer with an attention span measured in news cycles."

Note for readers: this is one former intelligence officer's argument. The case summaries are his, and the column does not present any response from Havana or from critics of the CIA invitation. We did not check his claims independently.

## Source

Original reporting: [Fox News (opinion by Rick de la Torre)](https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/cuba-spent-decades-recruiting-american-spies-now-washington-turning-tables-havana)