In an impassioned treatise in The National Interest, the Cato Institute's Doug Bandow calls for the end to economic sanctions against the dictatorship of the Castro brothers in Cuba. The policy is outdated and a Cold War relic he says, since the Defense Intelligence Agency determined years ago that Cuba is no longer a threat to the United States.

However, the problem with Bandow's argument is that he chose to support it with a DIA assessment provided by a Cuban spy:

[T]he end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. In 1998, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that “Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region. Cuba has little motivation to engage in military activity beyond defense of its territory and political system.” The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest.

Of course, this major faux pas did not escape the eye of spy-catcher Lt. Col. Chris Simmons:

Convicted spy Ana Belen Montes was the primary architect of the 1998 DIA assessment referenced above. Amazingly, 11 years into her prison sentence, Montes continues to influence think tanks and the US government. Are there any real “Cuba experts” left?   

I guess we can throw this argument to end sanctions against the Castro dictatorship in with the rest of the fallacious arguments we have been subjected to for decades.

I would say "nice try, Mr. Bandow," but that was actually quite feeble.