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<dd><font size=4>San Francisco Chronicle<br>
<dd>January 10, 1977 Front page</font>
<dd><font size=6>1971 Mystery
<dd>CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported<br><br>
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<dd><font size=4>New York<br>
<dd> 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 Cuba in 1971.<br>
<dd> Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced
the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal
epidemic.<br>
<dd> 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.<br>
<dd> The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the
disease has hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the "most
alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually
lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot
be transmitted to humans.<br>
<dd> All production of pork, a Cuban staple, halted,
apparently for several months.<br>
<dd> 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."<br>
<dd> Why the virus turned up in Cuba has been a mystery
to animal investigators ever since the outbreak. Informed speculation
assumed that the virus entered Cuba either in garbage from a commercial
airliner or in sausages brought in by merchant seamen.<br>
<dd> 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.<br>
<dd> The U.S. intelligence source said that early in
1971 he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at Ft.
Gulick, an Army base in the Panama Canal Zone. The CIA also operates a
paramilitary training center for career personnel and mercenaries at Ft.
Gulick.<br>
<dd> The source said he was given instructions to turn
the container with the virus over to members of an anti-Castro
group.<br>
<dd> The container then was given to a person in the
Canal Zone, who took it by boat and turned it over to persons aboard a
fishing trawler off the Panamanian coast. The source said the substance
was not identified to him until months after the outbreak in Cuba. He
would not elaborate further.<br>
<dd> 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 Bocas del Toro, Panama. He
said the trawler carried the virus to Navassa Island, a tiny, deserted,
U.S.-owned island between Jamaica and Haiti. From there, after the
trawler made a brief stopover, the container was taken to Cuba and given
to other operatives on the southern coast near the U.S. Navy base at
Guantanamo Bay in late March, according to the source on the trawler. The
base is 100 miles due north of Navassa.<br><br>
<dd> 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 . . ."<br>
<dd> 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 Miami. The source said he had
no proof that the operation was approved by CIA officials in Washington,
but added: "In a case like this, though, they would always give them
(CIA officials in Washington) plausible deniability."<br>
<dd> 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 United States and Venezuela. Trained originally by the
CIA for operations against Cuba, the exiles have become more restive as
they view what they believe to be an increasing move toward rapprochement
between Fidel Castro and the United States.<br>
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