Former CIA Director Says Cuba Crisis Could Become a New U.S. Migration Emergency

Source: International Business Times

Former CIA Director Robert Gates said Cuba's greatest national security risk to the United States is not an imminent military attack, but the possibility that the island's deepening crisis could produce another mass migration emergency like the 1980 Mariel boatlift. "The biggest risk is that we end up with another Mariel evacuation from Cuba that has tens of thousands of Cubans heading to the United States out of desperation," Gates told Margaret Brennan in an interview with CBS's Face the Nation. Gates, who also served as defense secretary under Presidents George W.