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In reply to the discussion: US secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest [View all]starroute
(12,977 posts)I don't know where that Wikipedia figure came from -- maybe a cumulative total? Anyway, here are the FedSpending figures:
2000 $7,100,442
2001 $15,296,000
2002 $29,182,000
2003 $77,958,305
2004 $41,721,198
2005 $10,669,050
2006 $44,296,033
2007 $31,430,182
2008 $61,419,905
2009 $225,110,577
2010 $280,737,772
2011 $76,835,700
2012 3Q * Partial year $96,518,754
*Note: FY 2012 only includes data up through part of third quarter.
So it looks like they really peaked in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Here's the detailed breakdown for 2009 -- the Cuba contract is #15: http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?fiscal_year=2009&combDuns=091345579&sortp=f&datype=T&reptype=r&database=fpds&detail=3&submit=GO
And here's an article from January 1, 2011, which explains why the funding dropped off after 2010:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/With+U.S.+subcontractor+still+in+prison,+USAID+freezes+all+new+Cuba...-a0265977189
The U.S. Agency for International Development has slammed the brakes on various controversial new Cuba initiatives. USAID and the State Department have not spent one cent of the $20 million that President Obama asked for--and Congress allocated--for the controversial Cuba program this year. . . .
Steve Horblitt, director for external relations of Creative Associates, based in Bethesda, Md., said "USAID guidelines" prevented him from speaking about his company's Cuba program. Creative Associates' staff includes Caleb McCarry, a hardliner who was the Bush administration's Cuba Transition Coordinator. In that position, McCarry urged USAID and State Department money to be used to foment dissent and civil disobedience on the island. . . .
Before President George W. Bush assumed office, most USAID Cuba grants went to exile organizations. But Bush sharply boosted funding for the program while directing more cash to groups like IRI and People in Need that had helped destabilize Soviet bloc regimes in the late 1980s. The theory was that such NGOs were most qualified to weaken the Castro regime.
But after Alan Gross, a American subcontractor for former USAID grantee Development Associates Inc., was jailed in Cuba just over a year ago, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), his outgoing counterpart in the House, held up USAID funds to change the program's focus.