Cuba Producing Biological Weapons, Defector Says

Cuba is producing weaponized biological agents such as plague, botulism and yellow fever in a laboratory near Havana, a defector said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 14, 2006).

“They can develop viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses that are currently unknown and difficult to diagnose,” Roberto Ortega, former head of Cuba’s military medical services, told The Miami Herald.  “They don’t need missiles or troops.  They need four agents, like the people from al-Qaeda or the Taliban, who contaminate water, air conditioning or heating systems.”

The Castro regime would use biological agents “to blackmail the United States in case of an international incident,” Ortega said.

Scientists at the laboratory reproduced and maintained stocks of germs and bacteria from Africa, he said.  Ortega said he visited the underground facility alongside a Russian delegation in 1992. 

“I saw it.  I lived it,’ said Ortega, who defected to the United States in 2003.

Ortega said that two years ago he informed the CIA about the facility, which he said operates underneath a civilian site, the Herald reported.   He went public with his claims after it did not appear the CIA was following up on his claim.

There was no comment from the CIA or State Department.

Cuba possesses an advanced biotechnology sector, which has produced and exported hepatitis and meningitis vaccines.  It has denied operating any bioweapons programs.

Then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in 2002 that Cuba “has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.”  State Department analysts are split on the question, according to a 2006 agency report.

“If you ask whether the Cubans are capable, I’d say easily,” said former Russian biological weapons official Ken Alibek.  “Are they doing it?  I can tell you when I was involved in the late 80s, we suspected so” (Frances Robles, The Miami Herald, Feb. 28).

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