FILE - In this April 8, 2014 file photo, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah pauses while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs. Shah told a U.S. Senate panel that the program shrouded in secrecy to build a “Cuban Twitter” on the Communist-governed island was not intended to influence Cuban politics. But that doesn’t square with previously unpublished documents showing a worker was hired to categorize Cuban cellphone users as “pro-revolution,” “apolitical” or “anti-revolutionary.” (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) (The Associated Press)
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Paula Cambronero was studying public relations at a Costa Rican college when she landed her first real job working for a U.S. government contractor. But it wasn't to write press releases.
As part of a program shrouded in secrecy to build a "Cuban Twitter" on the Communist-governed island, Cambronero profiled Cuban cellphone users, categorizing them as "pro-revolution," ''apolitical" or "anti-revolutionary."
The social media network, paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development, sought to undermine the Cuban government through cellphone text messaging to get around the island's Internet restrictions, The Associated Press detailed in an investigation published in early April.
The plan for the bare-bones service, known as ZunZuneo, was to build a subscriber base slowly through innocuous news messages, then when it reached a critical mass of users, introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" to "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society," according to documents obtained by the AP.
Following the AP's report, USAID chief Rajiv Shah told a U.S. Senate panel that the program was not intended to influence Cuban politics. But that doesn't square with Cambronero's work, first as an intern then as a contracted employee, as detailed in the documents.
Cambronero's job was to test the political waters before the program was launched. The contractor asked her to sign a security protocol that required encrypted communications with other staff and emails sent from a domain name "not publicly linked" to the contractor. It cautioned that she would handle a "considerable amount of sensitive information that must be safeguarded to protect critical operations of the Project."
USAID and its contractors went to great lengths to hide the U.S. government's role in ZunZuneo, including establishing a front company in the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail.
Cambronero, who studied at the University of Costa Rica, said enthusiastically in a report on her work that it was "my first job experience with an established schedule."
Nevertheless, she had considerable responsibility, building out a database about Cuban mobile phone users, including gender, age, "receptiveness" and "political tendencies" that USAID believed could help bolster its Cuba programs. The Cubans responding to the text messages were not aware the U.S. government was gathering data on them.
Cambronero did not respond to requests for comment.
The political content of the social networking program is sensitive because the Obama administration has denied it involved covert action. The U.S. National Security Act defines "covert" as government activities aimed at influencing political conditions abroad "where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." The law requires the president to approve covert activities.
The State Department has said it would be "troubling" if political messages were sent under the program, and ordered a review.
On Tuesday, USAID spokesman Matthew Herrick told the AP that the agency had completed its review and forwarded to congressional oversight committees a catalog of the messages sent to Cubans.
He said that the 249 messages related to technology, sports, world news and trivia and that they "were consistent with the objective of creating a platform for Cubans to speak freely among themselves."
Contractors hired a Cuban-born satirist to craft overtly political messages that took aim at Cuba's leaders and some of them were sent to Cuban mobile subscribers. Responses to those texts were reviewed by Cambronero.
Herrick said those messages were sent out "under a grant that pre-dated the ZunZuneo project."
However, multiple documents reviewed by the AP show USAID characterized the grant that funded the political messages as the first stage of the same project, describing it as the "test phase" of the network that became ZunZuneo.
Under the program, contractors sent the texts from Spanish telephone numbers to thousands of Cuban cellphones as part of a test to see if a text-message based social network was viable. Some of the messages included questions and Cubans were asked to respond.
Cambronero collected a sample of more than 700 responses and analyzed them according to two variables. The first was the level of interest in the messages received, and the second was the political nature of the response.
She wrote in her report that 68 percent of responses showed mild interest in the texts. But what many of the respondents most wanted to know was the question that those behind the project were keeping secret: Who was sending the messages? 210 responses criticized the sender's anonymity, she noted.
"Explain your point better because I don't understand and remember that if you haven't done anything you shouldn't fear anything, at least tell me your name if you're not a coward," said one respondent.
One asked text senders not to "play around with the feelings of the Cuban people."
Many users realized the messages were from Spain and they replied using the term "Gallego" — which means someone from Spain's Galicia region but is used in Cuban slang for a stupid person.
Other respondents asked for help in obtaining birth certificates of Spanish ancestors, one of the basic requirements for obtaining Spanish passports needed to leave the island.
Cambronero analyzed 59 responses for political content. She found that only 10 had a political character, of which two were counter-revolutionary. She also identified the respondents — by cell number, name and location.
She recommended that "messages with a humorous connotation should not contain a strong political tendency, so as not to create animosity in the recipients."
Julia Sweig, director of Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said profiling the Cuban twitter users was "highly inappropriate."
"Imagine for a moment how the American people would feel if the shoe was on the other foot and a foreign government was gathering data on them surreptitiously through a social network it had set up."
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AP writer Jack Gillum in Washington contributed to this report.
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