WASHINGTON - The United States on July 20 accused Cuban spies of infiltrating the highest levels of government in Washington, as President Donald Trump pushes to end communist rule of the island while reviving anti-leftist rhetoric at home.

The US State Department released a report containing little new information, but adding pressure on Cuba amid a campaign that has seen Washington impose an effective oil embargo and new sanctions while indicting its former president, Raul Castro.

It comes as Trump leads a revival of Cold War-style rhetoric portraying left-wing US political figures as a communist “menace” that must be cut out “like a cancer”. The United States will vote in midterm elections later this year.

The State Department report alleged that Cuba “has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists (and) backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil”.

While the allegations represent an escalation in US-Cuba tensions, espionage between the two countries has long been known.

Since the Cold War, the US has made high-profile arrests of Cuban intelligence officers, including the “Cuban Five” who were convicted of infiltrating civil society groups in Florida in the 1990s, and Ana Montes, who spied from a senior position within the Defence Intelligence Agency.

In more recent cases, State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers and former US ambassador to Bolivia Victor Manuel Rocha pled guilty in separate cases to spying for the communist country.

Meanwhile, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Cuban exiles tried to assassinate late Cuban president and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro more than 600 times, his ex-intelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, once estimated.

US threatens takeover

The report released on July 20 made sweeping – if unsubstantiated – allegations that Cuba has cultivated relationships with leftist groups across the wo...