Reuters: U.S. cuts staff in Cuba over mysterious injuries, warns travelers. Quoting,

Engage Cuba, a Washington-based lobbying group, said the decision was “puzzling” given that American travelers had not been targeted. It said halting the visa process in Cuba and discouraging Americans from going there “will divide families and harm Cuba’s burgeoning private sector, civil society groups and efforts to improve human rights on the island.”

Maybe it will. But consider: The “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution”, the “eyes and ears of the Revolution”,   are the the pervasive arm of the Cuban police state, present in every block of every neighborhood of Havana. Quoting Wikipedia,

As of 2010, 8.4 million Cubans of the national population of 11.2 million were registered as CDR members….CDR officials have the duty to monitor the activities of every person on their respective blocks. There is an individual file kept on each block resident, some of which reveal the internal dynamics of each household. Even after its 54-year existence, CDR activity remains contentious.

This rivals, or perhaps exceeds the penetration of  the Stasi in East Germany. And yet, quoting AP via NY Daily News,

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cuba’s top diplomat insisted Tuesday that his government had nothing to do with unexplained health “attacks” on U.S. diplomats, telling Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Cuba still has no evidence to explain what transpired in Havana.

The gist of a typical nutball conspiracy theory is that “they know everything”, or “they control everything”, and it’s false. In Cuba, the conspiracy is more likely to be true.

The inability of this police state to come up with even a partial explanation gives the hardliners against Cuba engagement all the argument they need. This is the time for a demonstration by Cuba. Come back when you have something to give us. It doesn’t have to be everything, but it has to have the ring of truth. Somebody has to pay the ticket for this.