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 José Abrantes Fernández in 1989.
Manuel Piñeiro was in regular contact with the StB station chief in Cuba and appreciated the quality of Czechoslovak intelligence reports that were important for sustaining the Cuban revolution in its early years.
Dismayed by Cuban debâcles in Zaire (1977 and 1978) and in Bolivia (1966–67) as well as by a perceived growing independence from Moscow, the Soviets sought a more active role in shaping the DI.
By 1971, 70 percent of the Cuban diplomats in London were actually DI agents and proved invaluable to Moscow after the British government's mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers.
[citation needed] In 1962 the Soviet Union opened its largest foreign SIGINT site in Lourdes, Cuba, approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Havana.
The Intelligence Resource Program of the Federation of American Scientists stated in 2001 that the Lourdes facility was reported to cover a 28 square-mile (73 km2) area, with 1,000 to 1,500 Soviet and later solely Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base.
[7] The Soviets also collaborated with the DI to assist Central Intelligence Agency defector Philip Agee in the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin.
Shortly after a popular bloodless coup in Grenada, led by Maurice Bishop, the Cuban DI sent advisers to the island nation to assist the new government.
Fonseca was captured shortly after the jail break, but after a plane carrying executives from the United Fruit Company was hijacked by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), he was freed and allowed to travel to Cuba.
"[11] The DI, with Fidel Castro's personal blessing, also collaborated with the FSLN on the botched assassination attempt of Turner B. Shelton, the U.S. ambassador in Managua and a close friend to the Somoza family.
An early indication of the central role that the DI would play in the Cuban–Nicaraguan relationship a meeting in Havana on 27 July 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after over 25 years.
[13] Dr. Daniel James testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that the DGI, working through Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, organized and trained the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN) in 1974.
Shortly after his release on bail he disappeared but was credited with the 1979 unification of Puerto Rico's five principal terrorist groups into the Cuban-directed National Revolutionary Command (CRN).
According to the former chief investigator of the U.S. Senate, Alfonso Tarabochia, the DGI began directing criminal activities in Puerto Rico and the eastern and midwestern United States as early as 1974.