The Associated Press reports: The head of the U.S. government agency that secretly created a “Cuban Twitter” communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba is expected to testify next week before a senator who thinks the whole idea was “dumb, dumb, dumb.” The congressional hearing could resolve key questions around the clandestine program, including whether the Obama administration adequately informed lawmakers about its plans.

Administration officials on Thursday defended the program, saying it had been “debated” by Congress and wasn’t a covert operation that required White House approval. But two senior Democrats on congressional intelligence and judiciary committees said they had known nothing about the effort.

An Associated Press investigation found that the network was built using secret shell companies and financed through a foreign bank. The project, which lasted more than two years and drew tens of thousands of subscribers, sought to evade Cuba’s stranglehold on the Internet with a social media platform.

The program aimed first to build a Cuban audience, mostly young people. Then the plan was to push them toward dissent.

But the Cuban users of the network, called ZunZuneo, were not aware it was created by the U.S. Agency for International Development, overseen by the State Department. They also did not know that American contractors running the program were gathering personal data about them, in the hope that the information might be used someday for political purposes. [Continue reading…]