Union with a propaganda field day and 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.21 Similar undertakings were apparently not canceled. A CIA official, who helped direct worldwide sabotage efforts against Cuba, later revealed that There was lots of sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminants in it. 22

2) 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. 23

3) According to a participant in the project:

During 1969 and 1970, the CIA deployed futuristic weather modification technology to ravage Cubas sugar crop and undermine the economy. Planes from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the California desert, where high 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).24

This said, it must be pointed out while its not terribly surprising that the CIA would have attempted such a thing, its highly unlikely that it would have succeeded except through a great stroke of luck; i.e., heavy rains occurring at just the right time.

4) 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.25

5) Ten years later, the target may well have been human beings, as an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) swept across the island. Transmitted by blood-eating insects, usually mosquitos, the disease produces severe flu-like 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 15.26

The Center for Disease Control later reported that the appearance in Cuba of this particular strain of dengue, DEN-2 from Southeast Asia, had caused the first major epidemic of DHF ever in the Americas.27 Castro announced that Cuba had asked the

United States for a pesticide to help eradicate the fever-bearing mosquito, but had not been given any.28

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.29

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. 30 Then, in 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York on an unrelated matter testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship traveled 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.31

Its 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.

6) On a clear day, October 21, 1996, a Cuban pilot flying over Matanzas province observed a plane releasing a mist of some substance about seven times. It turned out to be an American crop-duster plane operated by the US State Department, which had permission to fly over Cuba on a trip to Colombia via Grand Cayman Island. Responding to the Cuban pilots report, the Cuban air controller asked the US pilot if he was having any problem. The answer was no . On December 18, Cuba observed the first signs of a plague of Thrips palmi, a plant-eating insect never before detected in Cuba. It severely damages practically all crops and is resistant to a number of pesticides. Cuba asked the US for clarification of the October 21 incident. Seven weeks passed before the US replied that the State Department pilot had emitted only smoke, in order to indicate his location to the Cuban pilot.32 By this time, the Thrips palmi had spread rapidly, affecting corn, beans, squash, cucumbers and other crops.

In response to a query, the Federal Aviation Administration stated that emitting smoke to indicate location is not an FAA practice and that it knew of no regulation calling for this practice .33

In April 1997, Cuba presented a report to the United Nations which charged the US with biological aggression and provided a detailed description of the 1996 incident and the subsequent controversy.34 In August, signatories of the Biological Weapons Convention convened in Geneva to consider Cubas charges and Washingtons response. In

December, the committee reported that due to the technical complexity of the matter, it had not proved possible to reach a definitive conclusion. There has not been any further development on the issue since that time.35

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.36 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. 37

The US military abroad-a deadly toxic legacy

Its not quite chemical or biological weaponry, but its toxic, it sickens and it kills. Its what thousands of American military installations in every corner of the world (hundreds in Germany alone) have left behind: serious environmental damage. The pollution is remarkably widespread, the record too extensive to offer more than a taste here, such as this snippet from a lengthy piece in the Los Angeles Times:

U.S. military installations have polluted the drinking water of the Pacific island of Guam, poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic Bay in the Philippines, leaked carcinogens into the water source of a German spa, spewed tons of sulfurous coal smoke into the skies of Central Europe and pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the oceans.38

The military has done the same in the United States at countless installations.39

CHAPTER 15 : United States Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons at Home

In a January 1999 interview, President Clinton said that what keeps him awake some nights is the fear of germ warfare. 1 It is safe to say that he did not have the Department of Defense or the CIA in mind as the purveyor of the source of his fear. Yet for two decades these two institutions conducted tests in the open air in the United States, exposing millions of Americans to large clouds of possibly-dangerous bacteria and chemical particles. They did so without informing the potentially affected populations, without taking any precautions to protect the health and safety of these people, and with no follow-up monitoring of the effects.

Government officials have consistently denied that the biological agents used could be harmful despite a plentitude of expert and objective scientific evidence that exposure to heavy concentrations of even apparently innocuous organisms can cause illness, at a minimum to the most vulnerable segments of the population-the elderly, children and those suffering from a variety of ailments. There is no such thing as a microorganism that cannot cause trouble, George Connell, assistant to the director of the Centers for