A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling, and prostitution in the tumultuous decades preceding the Cuban revolution. Eduardo Saenz Rovner argues that Cuba's historically well-established integration into international migration, commerce, and transportation networks combined with political instability and rampant official corruption to help lay the foundation for the development of organized crime structures powerful enough to affect Cuba's domestic and foreign politics and its very identity as a nation. Saenz traces the routes taken around the world by traffickers and smugglers. After Cuba, the most important player in this story is the United States. The involvement of gangsters and corrupt U.S. officials and businessmen enabled prohibited substances to reach a strong market in the United States, from rum running during Prohibition to increased demand for narcotics during the Cold War. Originally published in Colombia in 2005, this first English-language edition has been revised and updated by the author.

A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gamblin

Details the connections between the CIA and organized crime in Cuba in the late 1950s, exploring the root of the U.S.'s hostility toward the nation and how that set the stage for the Cuban missile crisis and JFK's assassination.

In April 1959, Fidel Castro toured the United States at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Though he was wary, Castro entertained some hope of establishing a rapprochement with Washington. But after being snubbed by President Eisenhower and receiving a less-than-cordial reception from Vice President Richard Nixon, Castro got the strong impression that US intentions toward his new Cuban government were hostile. In The Cuban Connection, former FBI agent and investigative journalist William Turner examines the fateful meeting between Castro and Nixon and the murky connections that existed between official Washington, the CIA, and organized crime in Cuba. Based on firsthand interviews with many of the key players involved in Cuban-American relations of that era, plus thorough background research, Turner raises a host of disturbing questions: Before the ouster of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by Castro, why did Vice President Nixon often socialize at Havana casinos with his Cuban friend Bebe Rebozo? How was the rabid anticommunism of the Eisenhower administration, especially its instant dislike of Castro, connected to its cozy relationship with the former mob-controlled dictatorship? How did all of this set the stage for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and ultimately the Cuban Missile Crisis and the JFK assassination? In a vivid narrative The Cuban Connection provides insider information that rarely reaches the public and that many in power never wanted the public to know.

First published in 1988, Terrorism: The Cuban Connection examines Cuba’s involvement in terrorism. With a focus on Havana, the book begins by looking at Cuba’s history and the origins of terrorism. As it progresses, the book traces the development of terrorism and explores Cuba’s connections with other parts of the world, including America, Russia, the Caribbean, South America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Terrorism: The Cuban Connection is a detailed study, equipped with a wealth of key documents and photographs.