Preparing legislation that would ban US projects like ZunZuneo

The Agency for International Development US government is preparing new internal rules prevent him from performing "dangerous undercover work in hostile countries" as the -best ZunZuneo formerly secret program known as the Cuban Twitter, that entity helped orchestrate , The Associated Press learned.

The new policy was formulated after an investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year on the work of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which created a sort of Twitter in Cuba to produce regime change in Cuba and sought secretly recruit a new generation of opponents on the island, while concealing his ties to the US government.

In an investigation, The Associated Press found that USAID and its contractor took steps to conceal their involvement in the program, such as how to create a facade enterprise, funneling money through banking in the Cayman Islands ye up stories as an excuse to operate on island, as an alleged HIV prevention workshop. The agency relies on the cooperation agreements with foreign governments to help poor and vulnerable in the world, and its recent efforts to combat Ebola in West Africa.

Policy changes USAID are very similar to a Senate bill introduced earlier this year, according to government officials aware of the discussions but who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The Senate bill would contemplate prohibit USAID spending money on programs to promote "democracy" in countries that reject the help of the agency, where employees were not employed by the agency directly and where USAID would have to "make great efforts to protect beneficiaries of the program and those who work in it. "

Officials said the democratizing efforts, a high risk undertaken by USAID would probably be turned over to another branch of the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit organization that receives funding from the US government organization. That would have made it impossible for the agency to operate programs like ZunZuneo in Cuba.

In a statement released Sunday night statement, USAID said it will continue to implement programs to promote democracy in "politically restrictive environment" that will promote transparency. However, he said that the new rules balance the safety and security risks, which is fitted with a proposed initiative law that prevents USAID programs work directly in countries rejected the help of the agency, and where the role of the agency must be reduced.

"We will also assess risks effectively preventing the implementation of our projects or to undermine the security of our partners, including IT risk, legal, financial, physical and programmatic."

Government officials who spoke to AP said USAID admitted change its advocacy of democracy after being questioned by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who sent along a letter to the agency after of the Associated Press published an investigative report in April. Leahy called the program "ridiculous" during the hearing of a subcommittee in the Senate.

Both ZunZuneo as another program to recruit Cuban "dissidents" were part of a multimillion-USAID effort to effect change in countries that the United States consider enemies. However, government officials who spoke to The Associated Press asserted that they were informed that USAID had concluded that these programs were not effective.

"The civil society and dissidents in countries with repressive governments which refuse human rights deserve our support," said Leahy, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on budgetary allocations abroad, in a statement released Monday.

"But USAID is a development agency and its programs must be open and transparent, not hidden. Nothing illustrates this more tragic that the continued imprisonment of Alan Gross in Cuba, "he added.

Programs within USAID established roughly at the time that President Barack Obama, who at the time had little time in office, spoke of a "new beginning" with Cuba after decades of mistrust, which raises questions about whether the White House had a coherent policy towards the island nation.