A top White House official accused of misleading the public on China’s plans to build a spy station in Cuba said Monday that he was constrained by the sensitive nature of a media report on the potential national-security threat to the U.S.
“We were as forthcoming as we should have been,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House.
The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday that China and Cuba had reached a secret agreement for Beijing to build an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, allowing Chinese intelligence services to “scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic.”
Mr. Kirby last week called the report “not accurate.”
But on Saturday, an anonymous administration official confirmed that China had upgraded its intelligence facilities in Cuba, saying it occurred in 2019 during the Trump administration.
The official said China’s efforts were well-documented in U.S. intelligence reports that were available to the previous administration.
On Monday, Mr. Kirby said he had been unable to elaborate further about China’s efforts in Cuba last week, and that Biden officials tried to “downgrade” some of the intelligence over the weekend to release more information to the public.
“The sensitive nature of this information is such that we simply couldn’t go into more detail, even before the first story appeared,” Mr. Kirby said. “There’s a limit even now to what we can say about our knowledge of these activities.”
He said the U.S. is capable of defending against China’s moves.
“We’re confident that we can continue to protect our nation’s secrets in this hemisphere and beyond, and that we can continue to defend the country appropriately,” Mr. Kirby said. “This is not a new development.”
On social media, Republicans and other critics of the administration accused officials of lying or misleading the public.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican who sits on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, called the administration’s conflicting statements on the subject “unserious and embarrassing.”
“This is a serious national security issue & the American people deserve to know the truth,” he tweeted Monday.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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