- "What undoubtedly was an even more sensitive venture
was the use of chemical and biological weapons against Cuba by the United
States. It is a remarkable record.
-
- In August 1962, a British freighter under Soviet lease,
having damaged its propeller on a reef, crept into the harbor at San Juan,
Puerto Rico for repairs. It was bound for a Soviet port with 80,000 bags
of Cuban sugar. The ship was put into dry dock and 14,135 sacks of sugar
were unloaded to a warehouse to facilitate the repairs. While in the warehouse,
the sugar was contaminated by CIA agents with a substance that was allegedly
harmless but unpalatable. When President Kennedy learned of the operation
he was furious because it had taken place in US territory and if discovered
could provide the Soviet Union with a propaganda field-day and could set
a terrible precedent for chemical sabotage in the cold war. He directed
that the sugar not be returned to the Russians, although what explanation
was given to them is not publicly known.{19} Similar undertakings were
apparently not canceled. The CIA official who helped direct worldwide sabotage
efforts, referred to above, later revealed that "There was lots of
sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminants
in it."{20}
-
- The same year, a Canadian agricultural technician working
as an adviser to the Cuban government was paid $5,000 by "an American
military intelligence agent" to infect Cuban turkeys with a virus
which would produce the fatal Newcastle disease. Subsequently, 8,000 turkeys
died. The technician later claimed that although he had been to the farm
where the turkeys had died, he had not actually administered the virus,
but had instead pocketed the money, and that the turkeys had died from
neglect and other causes unrelated to the virus. This may have been a self-serving
statement. The Washington Post reported that
-
- "According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Cubans
-- and some Americans -- believe the turkeys died as the result of espionage."{21}
-
- Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner, citing a participant
in the project, have reported in their book on Cuba that:
-
- During 1969 and 1970, the CIA deployed futuristic weather
modification technology to ravage Cuba's sugar crop and undermine the economy.
Planes from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the California desert,
where hi tech was developed, overflew the island, seeding rain clouds with
crystals that precipitated torrential rains over non-agricultural areas
and left the cane fields arid (the downpours caused killer flash floods
in some areas).{22}
-
- In 1971, also according to participants, the CIA turned
over to Cuban exiles a virus which causes African swine fever. Six weeks
later, an outbreak of the disease in Cuba forced the slaughter of 500,000
pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic. The outbreak, the first ever
in the Western hemisphere, was called the "most alarming event"
of the year by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.{23}
-
- Ten years later, the target may well have been human
beings, as an epidemic of dengue fever swept the Cuban island. Transmitted
by blood-eating insects, usually mosquitos, the disease produces severe
flu symptoms and incapacitating bone pain. Between May and October 1981,
over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities, 101 of which
were children under 15.{24}
-
- In 1956 and 1958, declassified documents have revealed,
the US Army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitos in Georgia and Florida
to see whether disease-carrying insects could be weapons in a biological
war. The mosquitos bred for the tests were of the Aedes Aegypti type, the
precise carrier of dengue fever as well as other diseases.{25} In 1967
it was reported by Science magazine that at the US government center in
Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue fever was amongst those "diseases that
are at least the objects of considerable research and that appear to be
among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare] agents."{26}
-
- Then, in 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York testified
that in the latter part of 1980 a ship travelled from Florida to Cuba with
a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against
the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical
war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected,
because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces,
and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree.{27}
-
- It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man
thought that the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to
only Russians, or whether he had been misled by the people behind the operation.
-
- The full extent of American chemical and biological warfare
against Cuba will never be known. Over the years, the Castro government
has in fact blamed the United States for a number of other plagues which
afflicted various animals and crops.{28} And in 1977, newly-released CIA
documents disclosed that the Agency "maintained a clandestine anti-crop
warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries
throughout the world."{29}
-
- It came to pass that the United States felt the need
to put some of its chemical and biological warfare (CBW)expertise into
the hands of other nations. As of 1969, some 550 students, from 36 countries,
had completed courses at the US Army's Chemical School at Fort McClellan,
Alabama. The CBW instruction was provided to the students under the guise
of "defense" against such weapons -- just as in Vietnam, as we
have seen, torture was taught. As will be described in the chapter on Uruguay,
the manufacture and use of bombs was taught under the cover of combating
terrorist bombings.{30}
-
- The ingenuity which went into the chemical and biological
warfare against Cuba was apparent in some of the dozens of plans to assassinate
or humiliate Fidel Castro." (continues)
-
- excerpt from William Blum's "Killing Hope"
http://members.aol.com/bblum6//cuba.htm
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