Obama's Ambassador Nominee Linked to Cuban Spy

Mari Del Carmen Aponte’s nomination as President Clinton’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic had to be withdrawn in 1998 when the late Sen. Jesse Helms let it be known he had an intelligence memo examining her connections to Communist Cuba’s spy agency.

On Wednesday, after years of giving many thousands of dollars to Democratic Party candidates and causes, Aponte has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador by President Obama, who said her “depth of experience … will be valuable to my administration as we work to bring about real change for the American people.”

Aponte is a lawyer and longtime friend of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who served on Bill Clinton’s White House transition team in 1993. A 1998 Insight Magazine article said, “while routinely monitoring Cuban intelligence officers at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, the FBI discovered that a member of President Clinton’s White House transition team may have been recruited as a spy for Fidel Castro.”