Washington Post: US government agency tried to engineer a “Cuban Spring” using a fake social network

In 2010, USAID - a government agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid in third world countries - created a secret social network to generate unrest in Cuba. The project, called ZunZuneo, was intended to create a "Cuban Spring" movement similar to contemporary uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere. Article by Alberto Arce for the Washington Post In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government.

In 2010, USAID - a government agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid in third world countries - created a secret social network to generate unrest in Cuba. The project, called ZunZuneo, was intended to create a "Cuban Spring" movement similar to contemporary uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere.

Article by Alberto Arce for the Washington Post In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company’s ties to the U.S. government.

McSpedon didn’t work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.

- Read more at the Washington Post