SNEAKY

U.S. Built Secret ‘Cuban Twitter'

White House denies it was secret.

The White House says the U.S.'s "Cuban Twitter" program was not a covert operation. Using front companies with a Cayman Islands bank account, the U.S. Agency for International Development created a social-media project that starting in 2010 aimed at sowing disruption in Cuba. The plan was to use “non-controversial content” like news on soccer and music via text messaging to get around Cuba’s Internet restrictions. Unbeknownst to the Cubans, the U.S. government and its contractors were snatching up their private data to use it for political purposes. "It was debated in Congress. It was reviewed by the [Government Accountability Office]. Those sorts of things do not happen to covert programs,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.