Manuel Rocha is a longtime former United States diplomat and alleged Cuban spy. His recent arrest reminded me of a Cuban spy who I got to know quite well. Here some excerpts from my book that tell some of his story.
As a student at the University of Havana in the early 1950s, Clinton Adlum was a schoolmate of Fidel Castro. But unlike the tall, strapping, white Castro, Adlum was a smallish black man, the son of Jamaican immigrants. That meant that Adlum, a Guantánamo native, lived in a world quite different from Castro’s.
Cuba was virulently racist. There was no Ku Klux Klan or lynchings, but Jim Crow-like practices were a fact. Blacks were banned from many public places, and it was virtually impossible for any to achieve professional success. Sports and entertainment were the only fields open to them, just as was true in the United States. Black Cubans were disproportionately poor, often desperately so. Open animosity and suspicion greeted blacks whenever they found themselves in white Cuba.
Upon graduation with a business degree, a rarity for a black man, Adlum went job-hunting in Havana. He was turned away everywhere he applied. “I remember that the American companies, like Chase-Manhattan, were the most open in showing me the door without so much as an interview. There were no black people in white-collar jobs, and I would not be an exception,” Adlum said. “Even classmates who were sympathetic told me I was crazy to try finding a decent job.”
Eventually, he found work as assistant manager of the officers’ club at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo. “I kept track of inventory and made sure the service was good. I was overqualified, but that was the best job I could find here in those years.”
But Adlum was able to parlay the job into much more than seeing to it that American officers were fed and served drinks. He, like many other young, educated Cubans, chafed under the rule of the Americans’ puppet, Fulgencio Batista. Adlum would not say if he took the job simply because it was all he could find or for the exceptional fringe benefits it offered. In fact, through clandestine contacts, he was recruited to spy on Cuban government operations at the US base.
Batista’s troops and planes were re-supplied at Guantánamo, and Adlum secretly passed along the information to the guerrillas. It was valuable intelligence because it signaled government military operations. Adlum spied for several months but picked up signs that base counterintelligence agents were suspicious of the unassuming assistant manager. He then slipped away and went to the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where he fought during the last months of the war.
I will summarize the next few pages. Soon after the revolutionaries took over Cuba, Adlum became a spy under diplomatic cover. We developed a cordial, professional relationship that lasted many years. During his Washington, D.C. posting, Clinton, always affable and courtly, made friends with many prominent black Americans, including Jesse Jackson and actor Danny Glover. Here is another bit of excerpt:
The colorful Adlum, supposedly beyond his diplomatic duties, struck up a romantic relationship with a black woman foreign service officer based at the US State Department. He has always insisted that it was strictly an affair of the heart. My frequent suggestions that he benefited from pillow talk were always greeted by hearty laughter—but no denial.
Clinton retired in Cuba.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 