“CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported,”
reprinted from Newsday in San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 10, 1977.
San
Francisco Chronicle
January 10, 1977
Front page
1971 Mystery
CIA Link to Cuban
Pig Virus Reported
With
at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials,
operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever
virus into
Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the
slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.
A U.S.
intelligence source told Newsday last week he was given the virus in a sealed,
unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in the Panama
Canal Zone, with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group.
The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the
disease has hit the
All production of pork, a Cuban staple, halted,
apparently for several months.
A CIA spokesman, Dennis Berend, in
response to a Newsday request for comment, said, "We don't comment on
information from unnamed and, at best, obscure sources."
Why the virus turned up in
However, on the basis of numerous interviews over four
months with U.S. intelligence sources, Cuban exiles and scientists concerning
the outbreak — which occurred two years after then-President Nixon had banned
the use of offensive chemical and biological warfare — Newsday was able to
piece together this account of events leading up to the outbreak.
The
The source said he was given instructions to turn the
container with the virus over to members of an anti-Castro group.
The container then was given to a person in the
Another man involved in the operation, a Cuban exile
who asked not to be identified, said he was on the trawler when the virus was
put aboard at a rendezvous point off
The source on
the trawler, who had been trained by the CIA and had carried out previous
missions for the agency, said he saw no CIA officials aboard the boat that
delivered the virus to the trawler off Panama, but added: "We were well
paid for this and Cuban exile groups don't have that kind of money . . ."
He said he was revealing the information because he
is a member of an exile group being investigated by the United States in
connection with terrorist activity in Florida. His account was confirmed by
another intelligence source in
The investigation referred to by the operative on the
trawler involves a federal inquiry into terrorist acts allegedly carried out by
Cuban exiles. Those include bombings and assassination attempts in the
Newsday