truthout | It appears highly unlikely that any "detective work"
performed by the CDC and Florida health officials will unearth evidence
of dengue fever being imported into Florida, but that evidence certainly
exists. Prior to the recent Key West findings and still today, the CDC
has consistently reported that there have been no outbreaks of dengue
fever in Florida since 1934 and none in the continental US since 1946.
This report is incorrect.
Unknown to most Americans is that dengue fever has
been the intense focus of US Army and CIA biological warfare researchers
for over 50 years. Ed Regis notes in his excellent history of Fort
Detrick, "The Biology of Doom," that as early as 1942 leading
biochemists at the installation placed dengue fever on a long list for
serious consideration as a possible weapon. In the early 1950s, Fort
Detrick, in partnership with the CIA, launched a multi-million dollar
research program under which dengue fever and several addition exotic
diseases were studied for use in offensive biological warfare attacks.
Assumably, because the virus is generally not lethal, program planners
viewed it primarily as an incapacitant. Reads one CIA Project Artichoke
document: "Not all viruses have to be lethal ... the objective includes
those that act as short-term and long-term incapacitants." Several CIA
documents, as well as the findings of a 1975 Congressional committee,
reveal that three sites in Florida, Key West, Panama City and Avon Park,
as well as two other locations in central Florida, were used for
experiments with mosquito-borne dengue fever and other biological
substances.
The experiments in Avon Park, about 170 miles from
Miami, were covertly conducted in a low-income African-American
neighborhood that contained several newly constructed public housing
projects. CIA documents related to its top-secret Project MK/NAOMI
clearly indicate that the mosquitoes used in Avon Park were the Aedes
aegypti type. Specially equipped aircraft, in one of the larger
experiments, released 600,000 mosquitoes over the area. In one of the
Avon Park experiments, about 150,000 mosquitoes were dropped in paper
bags designed to open upon impact with the ground. Each bag held about
1,000 insects. Besides dengue, some of the mosquitoes were also carrying
yellow fever.
Avon Park residents, still living in the area, say
the experiments resulted in "at least 6 or 7 deaths." One elderly
resident told Truthout, "Nobody knew about what had gone on here for
years, maybe over 20 years, but in looking back it explained why a bunch
of healthy people got sick quick and died at the time of those
experiments." Interestingly, at the same time experiments were conducted
in Florida, there were at least two cases of dengue fever reported
among civilian researchers at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
A 1978 Pentagon publication, entitled "Biological
Warfare: Secret Testing & Volunteers," reveals that the Army's
Chemical Corps and Special Operations and Projects Divisions at Fort
Detrick conducted "tests" similar to the Avon Park experiments in Key
West, but the bulk of the documentation concerning this highly
classified and covert work is still held by the Pentagon as "secret."
One former Fort Detrick researcher says the Army "performed a number of
experiments in the area of the Keys," but that "not all concerned dengue
virus."
In 1959, Fort Detrick launched its largest mosquito
experiment called Operation Bellwether, consisting of over 50 field
experiments. Some of these experiments, designed to ascertain the "rate
of biting" and "mosquito aggressiveness," were conducted in partnership
with scientists with the Rockefeller Institute in New York, where
scientists bred their own strain of mosquitoes. Some of the Bellwether
experiments were conducted in Florida, as well as in other states,
including Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Arizona.
The 1978 Pentagon publication, along with two other
Chemical Corps reports, reveal the identities of a number of the
companies and institutions that assisted the Army in its offensive
biological warfare experiments: Armour Research Foundation (1951-1954);
the Battelle Memorial Institute (1952-1965); Ben Venue Labs, Inc.
(1953-1954); University of Florida (1953-1956); Florida State University
(1951-1953); and the Lovell Chemical Company (1951-1955).
In the spring and summer of 1981, Cuba experienced a
severe hemorrhagic dengue fever epidemic. Between May and October 1981,
the island nation had 158 dengue-related deaths with about 75,000
reported infection cases. Prior to this outbreak, Cuba had reported only
a very small number of cases in 1944 and 1977. At the height of the
epidemic, over 10,000 people per day were found infected and 116,150
were hospitalized. At the same time as the 1981 outbreak, covert
biological warfare attacks on Cuba's residents and crops were believed
to have been conducted against the island by CIA contractors and
military airplane flyovers. Particularly harmful to the nation was a
severe outbreak of swine flu that Fidel Castro attributed to the CIA.
American researcher William H. Schaap, an editor of Covert Action
magazine, claims the Cuba dengue outbreak was the result of CIA
activities. Former Fort Detrick researchers, all of whom refused to have
their names used for this article, say they performed "advance work" on
the Cuba outbreak and that it was "man made."
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