MONTHLY REPORT--KEY WEST BUREAU--JULY 1986

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87-01104R000100070006-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: August 8, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/22 :CIA-RDP87-011048000100070006-9
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FOREIGN ROADCAST INFORMATION S~'iKaVICE
KEY WEST BUREAU
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FBIS
MAIN P.O. BOX 1056
KEY WEST, FLORIDA 33041-1056
MFL-6018
8 Aug 1986
MEMORANDUM T0: Director, Foreign Broadcast Information Service
THROUGH: Chief, Operations Group
SUBJECT: Monthly Report--Key West Bureau--July 1986
I. GENERAL
NAVAL AIR STATION
TRUMAN ANNEX BLDG. 1355
OFFICE: [phone]
[phone]
[phone]
TELEX: 803046
With a little bit of luck, we hope to move into our new housing around
Labor Day. Masons were busy putting on the exterior stucco as carpenters,
electricians, plumbers, and painters scurried about the interior rooms trying
to finish up as soon as possible. We also took on a more finished look when
the asphalt cul-de-sac and driveways were laid toward the end of the month.
Per instructions from Chief/Operations Group, the bureau formally
requested permission from our Naval Air Station hosts to turn our experimental
antenna on Boca Chica into a remote monitoring site which we trust will give us
better reception of Hispaniola. We plan to contract the work out to
Dynalectron, which we have asked to give us cost estimates for a completed
turn-key operation.
Meanwhile, we used our existing limited antennas at the bureau during the
latter part of the month to record and phonepatch to Production Group various
low-powered and poorly received Haitian newscasts. Unfortunately, reception
was generally poor, announcers read their scripts in Creole as often as in
French, and the news tended to be more world events rather than local action.
We hope to improve on this record when the seasonal atmospheric changes in
October and our new antenna hopefully give us better reception of these
stations.
Modernization took a giant step forward this month when we
and running. Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of monitor
who refused to knuckle under to our "Key Lime" machines
of our BACH up
and
the CRW magician who visited the bureau to install new
later spent lots of time and
annoying "Index" problem, we
software
effort fighting and finally beating a most
officially began using BACH on 29 July.
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A. Monitorial/Editorial
Continuing the pace set in June, Cuban President Fidel Castro pursued
his propaganda campaign outside of Cuba by granting more interviews to the
foreign media (not carried by domestic transmitters). At home, he continued to
be the center of attention, criticizing sloppy work, lack of discipline,
laziness, waste of resources, inefficiency, poor management, and absenteeism to
scorn guilty workers--including party cadres--for irresponsible attitudes
contrary to the revolutionary principles of the people's paradise.
Most unusual in Cuban news reporting was the TV coverage of the 17-19
July CP plenum deliberations, held at Havana's Palace of the Revolution. Most
of the edited footage focused on Castro again complaining about the country's
economic setbacks and criticizing all those less-than-noble workers guilty of
work styles considered counterrevolutionary.
In the Caribbean, Jamaica's Prime Minister Seaga has some new worries
following the major defeat suffered by his party in the municipal elections on
29 July. Adding to his concern is the troubling knowledge that sooner rather
than later he will have to face Michael Manley in general elections he will
probably lose, according to opinion polls.
In the Dominican Republic, there was quite a bit of anxiety among
Reformist Party faithfuls over the health problems of President-elect Balaguer,
who spent considerable time in the U.S. during the month nursing his various
ailments.
South of the border, counterattacks to U.S. criticism of Mexican
government corruption in dealing with the drug problem has continued to
dominate the media. At the same time, the foreign debt debate has slowly
disappeared from our main source of Mexican news--NOTIMEX--ever since
agreements with creditor banks and the IMF were signed in Washington and New
York. No one seems to be using the word moratorium anymore.
In one of the worst commo outages in memory down here, all of Key West
was cut off from the rest of the world (so what else is new) on the last day of
the month when a construction crew sliced Ma Bell's underground cable at Mile
Marker 74 near Marathon. As a result, we lost our Autodin and backup telex
circuit as well as all long-distance telephone service for nearly 12 hours
after the cable was cut in the middle of the morning. The bureau chief had his
first opportunity to ask a favor of the COMUSFORCARIB J-6 staff who found a
secure phone for him to use to let the Wire know we were dead in the water.
See attached Miami HERALD article for further details.
Earlier, our full-duplex line to the Navy Communications Unit on Boca
Chica, where our copy is entered into Autodin, was converted from high- to
low-level in compliance with Southern Bell's ongoing effort to upgrade its Key
West telephone and digital communications network.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/22 :CIA-RDP87-011048000100070006-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/22 :CIA-RDP87-011048000100070006-9
Technician) put his many years of experience to work
when he came up with a variety of ideas that were incorporated into the
bureau's response to an overseas technical support study requested by
Chief/Engineering Support Group.
D. Cruising
An amplifier for the bureau's first and only FM antenna arrived during
the month. This antenna should allow us to hear FM broadcasts from Pinar del
Rio in western Cuba for the first time. In addition, we should get better
reception of broadcasts from existing FM transmitters in the Havana area. We
are also hoping to pick up several other reported but previously unheard FM
stations from central Cuba when we eventually get our new gear mounted above
the Yagi TV antennas on our 80 foot metal tower.
The bureau worked out an arrangement with Admin so that monitorial
candidates who will be visiting Key West for testing will not have to pay out
of pocket for their airline tickets and motel costs. The bureau had
experienced some justifiable hesitation on the part of several candidates who
were fresh out of school and either did not have credit cards or just did not
have the up-front money to pay for the trip before being reimbursed. We hope
this arrangement, which ensures that tickets will be waiting for pick-up at the
airline counter on day of departure, will help ease any potential cash-flow
problems. We have three Puerto Rican candidates scheduled to visit in late
August. We also have several romisin candidates scared up by the chairman of
the Spanish department of alma mater near Chicago.
B. Building and Grounds
A new contractor, hired after the loss at sea of our former diesel
specialist, cleaned the auxiliary generator of rust and corrosion and then gave
the entire works a fresh painting.
1. Naval Capt Grandick, Reserve COMUSFORCARIB J-2, 9 July.
2. Joe Kidd, McLean-based Operatons & Maintenance Manager of Dynalectron
Corporation, 14 July.
3. Michele Magnin, CRW contractor, 18-21 July.
4. Major Kurt Davidson, head of COMUSFORCARIB's Joint Intelligence Center,
and four junior officers, 22 July.
STAT
STAT
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~. !'1 ~
V. COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
The bureau chief came in a distant last in the recent Key West Ernest
Hemingway .Look-Alike Contest,:
`' KEY. WEST:: ='. (AP) '=.. More'~,than:, 10,000,;
visitois attended the weeklong Hemingway Days :':;
Festival, which ended Sunday, with the naming of a`;''
Dade .City resident as the, winner.'. of,: the Papa.`,
jwhen. he vvas selected, as the one who cooks most'~`~
;like the' bearded, gray-haired author,; who would j;'~
~have_celebrated his 87th: birthday Monday:,,Ernest_
~' ~ In the short-story" competition; Jonathan Haws...::
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the World:' Judges for the 'contest included Tom:
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Garden of Eden; recently published as a book: ti ti `~ Johnson , , : ~ r'+ .::: ~ C ~.: Hemingw
134-pound blue martin:' , +~ ~, > fir, `q; ; ~~ +, i ; J i T - -
.~ The. event, ~. which ~~ ,began : July : 14, was' Key ~ ,y A one time resident of Key .West, Hemingway
West's, sixth annual Hemingway Days Festival i wrote To ;; Have ;,and '' Have... Not, ` Snows. ~~ of
?'~~~ One of the most popular. and? influential.writers;; ` Kilimanjaro'~and .Green Hil[s; .of ~ Africa here 4;_His
of this century; Hemingway, won the Nobel,. prize r;