General Intelligence Directorate (Cuba)

The Intelligence Directorate (Spanish: Dirección de Inteligencia, or DI, also known as G2 and formerly known as Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI) is the main state intelligence agency of the government of Cuba. The DI was founded in late 1961 by Cuba's Ministry of the Interior shortly after the Cuban Revolution. The DI is responsible for all foreign intelligence collection and comprises six divisions divided into two categories, which are the Operational Divisions and the Support Divisions. Manuel "Redbeard" Piñeiro was the first director of the DI in 1961, and his term lasted until 1964. Another top leader who directed the famous office, located on Linea and A, Vedado, was the now retired Div. General, Jesus Bermudez Cutiño. He was transferred from being the chief of the Army Intelligence (DIM) to the Ministry of Interior after the corruption trials and executions of Arnaldo Ochoa and Jose Abrantes Fernandez in 1989. The current head of the DI is Brig. Gen. Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez. The total number of people working for the DI is about 15,000.

New recruits do research within the ministry, mostly on counterintelligence fields (which has its own five years career academy) and also, over regular college students, who are recruited around the second year on their programs. Those students mostly study languages, history, communications, and sociology. Once they get their diplomas, they undergo several months of official intelligence training, and a year or so after, they receive the rank of lieutenant.

The Soviet Union's KGB and the Cuban DI had a complex relationship, marked by times of extremely close cooperation and by periods of extreme competition. The Soviet Union saw the new revolutionary government in Cuba as an excellent proxy agent in areas of the world where Soviet involvement lacked popular local-level support. Nikolai Leonov, the KGB chief in Mexico City, one of the first Soviet officials to recognize Fidel Castro's potential as a revolutionary, urged the Soviet administration to strengthen ties with the new Cuban leader. Moscow saw Cuba as having far more appeal with new revolutionary movements, western intellectuals, and members of the New Left with Cuba's perceived David and Goliath struggle against U.S. «imperialism». Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Moscow invited 1,500 DI agents, including Che Guevara, to the KGB's Moscow Center for intensive training in intelligence operations.

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