Date: Fri, 16 May 97 19:21:45 CDT
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 22, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper
A chronological history of U.S. aggression against Cuba since its 1959 revolution--including examples of biological and chemical warfare--takes up 381 pages of documentation in Jane Franklin's "Cuba and the United States" (Ocean).
Just one example was the outbreak of swine-fever virus in Cuba on May 6, 1971--its first appearance in the Western hemisphere. The highly contagious virus is lethal to pigs. Six weeks into the epidemic, the Cubans were forced to slaughter a half-million pigs to stem the spread of the epidemic.
In 1977, a U.S. intelligence source admitted that the U.S. used the virus as biological warfare against Cuba. The agent told U.S. media he was ordered to transport the virus from a U.S. Army Base and CIA training center in the Panama Canal Zone to a group of right-wing Cuban exiles who in turn delivered it to operatives inside Cuba in March 1971.
--LF
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