Intel gathering

The CIA at 70: How Going Undercover Has Gotten Harder

On April 21, 1963, three emaciated Americans walked out of Cuba’s LaCabana prison and flew to freedom, released in a prisoner exchange after being held for 949 days under brutal conditions. The three men were undercover CIA officers, who the Cuban authorities had caught seemingly red-handed in a bugging operation. The Fidel Castro regime put them on trial, convicted them of “activities against the security of the Cuban state” and threw them in jail. But throughout their ordeal the trio had clung grimly to their cover story that they were tourists, a cover that their alias documents—driver’s licenses, visas and credit cards—backed up. The Cubans never even discovered their real names: David L. Christ, Thornton J. Anderson, Jr., and Walter E. Szuminski.