He retired from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2004 with a rank equivalent to a two-star general after 24 years of service and, he says, as the first Hispanic officer with paramilitary credentials in the department. Prado was born in Cuba in 1950, in Manicaragua, a town at the foot of the Escambray Mountains where Che Guevara established his guerrilla front. Prado arrived in the United States without speaking a word of English and spent several months in an orphanage in Colorado. CubaToday, it is about his country of origin, Cuba, where the veteran — despite being retired for two decades — speaks most freely. Before saying goodbye in the museum room that preserves the memory of exiles like him, he is hopeful that, this time, “Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree.”