The US Biological and Chemical Agression Against Cuba in 1963–1996

Abstract

For almost 60 years, the United States has tried to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, using a variety of means, including chemical and biological agents. At the same time, their use has always been officially denied by Washington. The purpose of this article is to summarize the available sources proving the involvement of the United States, as well as the groups of the Cuban opposition created and supported by the US, in biological and chemical sabotage against both the economy and the people of Cuba. Sources, research methods . The author used a variety of open sources, including the statements by Cuban officials, materials from the Cuban and American press, declassified documents from the US government agencies, as well as public confessions of former CIA agents and Cuban opposition figures. The research method is the cross analysis. The discussion of the results . The declassified US documents show that the organizers of «Operation 40» and «Operation Mongoose» planned to use biological agents and parasitic plants against plantations of crops and livestock. Sugar exported to the USSR was also poisoned. In addition, the head of one of the Cuban terrorist organizations admitted that he had imported biological agents to Cuba, which provoked an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever in 1981. The testimoies of several other former CIA agents also point to the use of African swine fever in 1971 to kill pigs in Cuba. The atypical course of the Dengue fever epidemic in 1981, as well as the absence of a strain (Dengue-2) of this virus in the Western Hemisphere at that time, indicate the planned nature of the sabotage, which resulted in an outbreak on the island. Conclusions . During the Cold War, the United States actively used chemical and biological agents against agriculture and the people of Cuba. The facts considered allow us to draw conclusions about the nature of the methods that the CIA used to organize and conduct biosabotage: such operations were planned «in the long run» and had large-scale goals – for example, to eliminate sugar production on the island or cause famine; highly contagious pathogens of human and animal diseases were used for biological sabotage; artificially caused outbreaks of epidemics and epizootics were disguised as natural ones; representatives of the local opposition, as well as mercenaries, were involved in the implementation of sabotage; to infect farm animals, vaccines contaminated with virulent strains directly at biofactories, as well as contaminated feed were used.