The Cuban Connection
On a trip to Cuba, I picked up a book in the Havana "Revolutionary Museum",
entitled
"Biological Warfare Against Cuba", by Ariel Alonso Pérez.
Cuba may be a poor country (partly due to abuse from the United States), but
it is
a well-educated country and respected in the areas of medicine and
microbiology.
The right-wing Republican diplomat, John Robert Bolton, fretted that Cuba
might
use biological warfare against the United States.
The viciously homophobic North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms once
endorsed Bolton: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I
would want to stand
at Armageddon."
With government figures like Helms and Bolton in high
positions, "Armageddon"
is always a more distinct likelihood, owing to their
own crackpot attitudes and
deep reservoirs of hatred and brutality.
Helms was also one of staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill for
the Chilean
dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who killed thousands of opponents and
anyone
left-of-center, sometimes throwing them from airplanes without parachutes.
A book by Peter Kornbluh, a contributor to "The Nation" magazine, cowrote a
book,
endorsed by President Jimmy Carter, called "Back Channel to Cuba",
which mentioned
Bolton's paranoid allegation that Cuban
microbiologists might engage in biological terrorism
against the United
States. Yet that book does not mention a word about the lengthy
and
long-standing Cuban allegations concerning U.S. biological warfare against Cuba.
This glaring and inexplicable omission shows the ignorance (or cowardice) even
of
American authors who supposedly are representing "the Left".
Fidel Castro and the communist regime had not been a friend to gays,
initially,
to say the least. The French existentialist, Jean Paul
Sartre, who once called
guerilla leader Che Guevara "one of the most complete
persons" of their time,
objected to Cuban treatment of gays, and referred to
gays as "the Jews of Cuba".
Castro, at least, has acknowledged the
historical mistreatment of gays, which is
more than can be said for most
American conservatives.
Fidel Castro is also one who agreed that AIDS represented a product of
biological warfare.
Castro should know, since as it said in Ed Haslam's book, "Dr. Mary's
Monkey",
it was Fidel Castro who was a target of the virus that was being
created in
New Orleans, in the era preceding the Kennedy assassination.
It is documented
history that the CIA engaged in multiple plans to
assassinate Castro, including by
poison, and including cooperation enlisted
from American Mafia.
The book by Mr. Peréz lays out a detailed case of evidence, including:
* testimony in a New York court
by an agent who confessed to being paid
to spread a virus to infect Cuban
turkeys (New York City Federal
Court, P. 21898, 1984, file
2 FBI NY 185 - 1009)
* acknowledgment by the U.S. that a crop-dusting plane
had violated
Cuban airspace and was spraying a substance.
The U.S. claimed that
the plane was sending a "smoke
signal" as a "standard procedure".
Cubans cited that there
was no such "standard procedure" in American
aviation
regulations. What Cubans found when they investigated the
spraying site was Trips Palmi, an insect used as a biological agent,
never seen before on the island, and intended to harm to agriculture.
* An unnatural, simultaneous outbreak in 3
widely separated parts of the
island, of a disease not
found in any neighboring countries and not
seen before in
Cuba. At once, in the east, the west and middle of
the island, as if intended to spark a sudden, widespread outbreak.
As a poor country, foreign travel was not common among the Cuban
general population. Cuban epidemiologists would have the data on
who had traveled to what destinations.
Other outbreaks followed a similar
pattern: never seen before in
Cuba, yet existing in no
surrounding countries.
* Church Committee revelations concerning CIA efforts
for covert use
botulin toxin, including for the attempted
assassination of Cuban leaders.
Among the biological agents allegedly used were Hemorragic dengue, tobacco
blue mold, sugar cane rust, Thrips palmi,
Newcastle virus and swine fever.
At one point, the spreading of swine fever was even theorized wrongly as
precipitating the AIDS epidemic.
The real story, though, is the role played
by irresponsible research and covert activities involving many
biological
agents, of which "swine fever" was only one of the lesser examples,
providing context
for the more serious covert programs.
In one of the
Cuban incidents, the alleged means of spreading a disease was by way of vaccines
"helpfully" administered to Cubans at the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo base.
The book by Mr. Peréz
mentions this without reference at all to the
corroborating information concerning the U.S. gay "vaccine"
connection, or
the similar, alleged African vaccine connections. Nor does it mention the
corroboration
of Ed Haslam's revelations concerning the biological warfare
research that was aimed at Castro.
It is this author's opinion that it would be naive to imagine that U.S.
intelligence would develop
a virus aimed simply at a single human being like
Fidel Castro. A project of such a scope would be hugely
expensive and
not much "bang for the buck" if intended for such a limited target, compared to
alternatives
such as assassinating by simply by rifle or bomb. More
likely the claim of simply "killing Castro" was
a story and a cover told to
anti-Castro researchers and project participants, to make them feel
comfortable with what they were doing, when the real intent was to kill a great
many people.
If you are beginning to see the picture, please wish this
author luck in trying to persuade these other
authors that there more puzzle
pieces that need to be tied together.