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The Miami
Herald. Posted on Wed, May. 08, 2002.
Talk of germ weapons in Cuba jolts Congress
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's accusation that Cuba has developed a
limited offensive germ warfare capability rippled through Congress Tuesday,
generating sharp reactions that ranged from astonishment and satisfaction to
profound skepticism.
Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said he believes the charge may blunt congressional efforts to relax the U.S.
embargo of Cuba.
U.S. intelligence agencies declassified secret information to allow John
Bolton, a State Department undersecretary for arms control, to make his public
accusation against Cuba in a speech Monday, officials said. The assessment was
not based on new findings, they added.
The Cuban government, through its spokesman at the Cuban Interests Section
in Washington, has denied Bolton's charges.
''I was surprised, frankly, at what Mr. Bolton said,'' Sen. Graham told a
conference of business leaders. "We've known that Cuba, with its large
pharmaceutical industry, had had the capability to develop chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction. . . . But this is the first confirmation
that those actually matured into potentially militarily usable weapons.''
Some observers of U.S. policy toward Cuba said Bolton's unexpected
accusation is giving them pause.
''I must say that I was sort of shocked,'' said retired Army Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, a former White House drug policy director who recently returned from
Cuba, where he met with Fidel Castro, and has advocated greater cooperation with
the island. McCaffrey said Bolton's stature gives credence to the new charge.
Bolton said that U.S. officials believe ''that Cuba has at least a limited
offensive biological warfare research and development effort'' underway and
might be transferring the know-how to other countries.
''I'd be hard-pressed to think that he'd make it up,'' McCaffrey said.
Some voiced contentment that their long-standing concerns about Cuba have
been given credence.
''I am happy to see that the administration has finally come forth with an
acknowledgement of Cuba's capabilities,'' said Rep. Bob Menendez, a
Cuban-American Democrat from New Jersey. "Cuba's biotechnology industry is
not just for medical reasons. . . . I think they could be making a variety of
things, from anthrax to smallpox to other agents.''
Advocates of relaxing tensions with Cuba scoffed at Bolton's charges.
''Where's the evidence?'' asked William Delahunt, D-Mass., who is a leader
of the Cuban Working Group, an informal congressional bloc opposed to the
embargo. "Accepting what they have to say as fact is high risk.''
His Republican counterpart in the bipartisan bloc, Rep. Jeff Flake of
Arizona, said he did not doubt that Cuba may be working in devious warfare
capabilities but that he'll continue to push for all U.S. citizens to be able to
visit the island without breaking U.S. law.
In a sense, Bolton was returning to familiar ground with his speech at the
Heritage Foundation. A man of strong views, Bolton was an assistant attorney
general under Reagan. Later he was a senior vice president at the American
Enterprise Institute, another conservative think tank.
Both Bolton and Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for the Western
Hemisphere, asked intelligence agencies to declassify information that would
permit the announcement on Cuba, a State Department official said, asking to
remain anonymous.
Arms control expert Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the
University of Maryland, suggested that politics, more than concrete data, may
have played a role in Bolton's accusation.
''I'm skeptical,'' said Leitenberg. ''Bolton is a shooter from the hip.''
Leitenberg said the likelihood of new information emerging recently that would
implicate Cuba ''is probably small.'' He said he believes the Bush
administration may have looked again at intelligence data and decided "to
push the chess piece over the line.''
Suspicions about Cuba center on the massive Center for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology, a Havana installation inaugurated in 1986. It has received
more than $1 billion of funding from the Castro government.
One of its top scientists, José de la Fuente, who defected in 1999
and is now at Oklahoma State University, said scientists at the sophisticated
facilities have done ground-breaking research in recombinant genetic
engineering, leading to a hepatitis B vaccine and a clot-busting drug,
streptokinase, used against strokes.
''I heard no account of any effort for developing biological weapons in
Cuba,'' said de la Fuente, who oversaw some 350 scientists as the center's
research and development chief.
More worrisome, de la Fuente said, is Cuba's transfer of recombinant
technology to Iran, which has eagerly sought help from the Castro regime since
the early 1990s. ''Once that technology gets transferred, there's no control.
The Iranians can use that technology for what they want,'' he said.
A U.S. molecular biologist and close friend of de la Fuente, Harvey Bialy,
who now teaches in Mexico, said he has spent long periods in Cuban genetic
engineering labs and never ''heard a whisper'' about an offensive biological
program.
''What they [the Cubans] are doing is much worse. They sold to Iran all the
things that Bolton said Cuba is doing,'' said Bialy, the former editor of the
Nature Biotechnology academic journal. "What is going on in Iran is the
most serious bioterrorist threat to the United States at this time.''
Gunboat reportedly neared exiles
By Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com
KEY WEST - As Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez
and two other men sped without authorization into Cuban territorial waters last
July, six Cuban naval vessels appeared to be waiting for them, a U.S. Coast
Guard commander said Tuesday.
One of the Cuban gunboats began advancing toward the 23-foot speedboat
carrying the Cuban exiles -- prompting Coast Guard officials to consider whether
they should ready to use firepower to ''defend'' the small vessel, Cmdr. Joseph
Sinnett said.
Sinnett was called to testify Tuesday in the federal trial of Sánchez,
Alberto Pérez, and Pablo Rodríguez, who are charged with
intentionally violating Florida Security Zone rules that require boaters to
obtain permission from the Coast Guard before entering Cuban waters. The men
were in a boat -- My Right To Return Home -- that broke off from a five-vessel
flotilla that held a ceremony on the edge of Cuban waters July 14.
Senior U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger is presiding over the Key West
trial, which is expected to last at least through this week.
Sinnett said the Coast Guard spotted the Cuban naval vessel break off from
an unusual formation of about six other Cuban government boats that radars
indicated were off the Cuban coast as My Right to Return ventured about 2 ½
to three miles into Cuban waters.
''One of those [Cuban] vessels left its position and started on an intercept
course toward My Right To Return,'' Sinnett said.
As the cat-and-mouse game unfolded, the Coast Guard waited at the edge of
Cuban waters, frantically trying to reach Sánchez and the others on
radio, Sinnett said. For between 15 and 20 minutes, the Coast Guard was out of
contact with the fiberglass boat and had difficulty even plotting it on radar,
he testified.
Meanwhile, radars showed a Cuban gunboat moving to within 4 ½ to six
miles of the unarmed speedboat.
Coast Guard officers again took to the radio, this time to warn the Cuban
exiles that ''something was coming toward them,'' Sinnett said.
Suddenly, My Right to Return stopped -- as did the Cuban vessel that was
headed straight at it, Sinnett told jurors. At that point in his testimony,
Sinnett's detailed description of the near-confrontation came to a halt: Defense
attorneys objected strenuously to his statements, requesting a mistrial which
Roettger immediately denied.
Former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, who is representing Sánchez,
said the tale was not relevant to the government's prosecution. ''Why are they
now portraying this drama on the high seas?'' Coffey said. "What they are
doing is trying this case on the high seas, some event with a patrol boat which
is dramatic.''
Roettger handed a victory to attorneys for Pérez and Rodríguez
on Tuesday -- ruling that prosecutors could not introduce a report by an
investigator who stated that Pérez said the men had planned to enter
Cuban waters before they ever left the Keys.
The decision will likely focus the trial more squarely on Sánchez --
whose past words to the media regarding the Security Zone may provide ammunition
to prosecutors.
Sánchez's attorneys are likely to argue that he rashly decided on the
high seas to venture into Cuban waters when he noticed that a Coast Guard cutter
was not blocking his path.
In his opening statement, defense attorney Benedict Kuehne called Sánchez
the ''picture of an innocent man'' whose personal convictions and motherless
adolescence prompted him to protest Cuban President Fidel Castro's policies.
''He's a fascinating man. He is a man whose life is dedicated to peaceful,
nonviolent change of Castro's tyranny in Cuba,'' Kuehne told the 12-member jury.
''Family reunification,'' Kuehne said later, was "something that was denied
Ramón.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Greenberg, who is prosecuting the case with
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eileen O'Conner, contended that Sánchez and his
co-defendants planned to violate Security Zone rules because they didn't approve
of them.
''This is a case about three men who knowingly and willfully broke the law
because they don't like the law,'' Greenberg said. "Three men who broke the
law to get attention.''
A group of Cuban exile religious leaders in Miami added their support to the
three defendants Tuesday, appealing to the U.S. government to respect the right
of Cubans to return unhindered to the land of their birth.
The group, which calls itself Spiritual Guides in Exile, issued the appeal
to express its solidarity with the Democracia Movement activists.
The appeal is signed by 75 Catholic priests, 25 Protestant ministers, six
Episcopal bishops and two Catholic bishops. It justifies the action of the three
activists as "a right given by God to all Cubans because He allowed us to
be born on our island.''
The Rev. Martín Añorga, a Presbyterian minister, said ''the
right of Cubans to enter their homeland's territorial waters should not be
restrained if the American authorities allow others to go fishing [in Cuba] or
visit'' the island.
El Nuevo Herald reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla
contributed to this report.
Talk of germ weapons in Cuba jolts Congress
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's accusation that Cuba has developed a
limited offensive germ warfare capability rippled through Congress Tuesday,
generating sharp reactions that ranged from astonishment and satisfaction to
profound skepticism.
Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said he believes the charge may blunt congressional efforts to relax the U.S.
embargo of Cuba.
U.S. intelligence agencies declassified secret information to allow John
Bolton, a State Department undersecretary for arms control, to make his public
accusation against Cuba in a speech Monday, officials said. The assessment was
not based on new findings, they added.
The Cuban government, through its spokesman at the Cuban Interests Section
in Washington, has denied Bolton's charges.
''I was surprised, frankly, at what Mr. Bolton said,'' Sen. Graham told a
conference of business leaders. "We've known that Cuba, with its large
pharmaceutical industry, had had the capability to develop chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction. . . . But this is the first confirmation
that those actually matured into potentially militarily usable weapons.''
Some observers of U.S. policy toward Cuba said Bolton's unexpected
accusation is giving them pause.
''I must say that I was sort of shocked,'' said retired Army Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, a former White House drug policy director who recently returned from
Cuba, where he met with Fidel Castro, and has advocated greater cooperation with
the island. McCaffrey said Bolton's stature gives credence to the new charge.
Bolton said that U.S. officials believe ''that Cuba has at least a limited
offensive biological warfare research and development effort'' underway and
might be transferring the know-how to other countries.
''I'd be hard-pressed to think that he'd make it up,'' McCaffrey said.
Some voiced contentment that their long-standing concerns about Cuba have
been given credence.
''I am happy to see that the administration has finally come forth with an
acknowledgement of Cuba's capabilities,'' said Rep. Bob Menendez, a
Cuban-American Democrat from New Jersey. "Cuba's biotechnology industry is
not just for medical reasons. . . . I think they could be making a variety of
things, from anthrax to smallpox to other agents.''
Advocates of relaxing tensions with Cuba scoffed at Bolton's charges.
''Where's the evidence?'' asked William Delahunt, D-Mass., who is a leader
of the Cuban Working Group, an informal congressional bloc opposed to the
embargo. "Accepting what they have to say as fact is high risk.''
His Republican counterpart in the bipartisan bloc, Rep. Jeff Flake of
Arizona, said he did not doubt that Cuba may be working in devious warfare
capabilities but that he'll continue to push for all U.S. citizens to be able to
visit the island without breaking U.S. law.
In a sense, Bolton was returning to familiar ground with his speech at the
Heritage Foundation. A man of strong views, Bolton was an assistant attorney
general under Reagan. Later he was a senior vice president at the American
Enterprise Institute, another conservative think tank.
Both Bolton and Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for the Western
Hemisphere, asked intelligence agencies to declassify information that would
permit the announcement on Cuba, a State Department official said, asking to
remain anonymous.
Arms control expert Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the
University of Maryland, suggested that politics, more than concrete data, may
have played a role in Bolton's accusation.
''I'm skeptical,'' said Leitenberg. ''Bolton is a shooter from the hip.''
Leitenberg said the likelihood of new information emerging recently that would
implicate Cuba ''is probably small.'' He said he believes the Bush
administration may have looked again at intelligence data and decided "to
push the chess piece over the line.''
Suspicions about Cuba center on the massive Center for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology, a Havana installation inaugurated in 1986. It has received
more than $1 billion of funding from the Castro government.
One of its top scientists, José de la Fuente, who defected in 1999
and is now at Oklahoma State University, said scientists at the sophisticated
facilities have done ground-breaking research in recombinant genetic
engineering, leading to a hepatitis B vaccine and a clot-busting drug,
streptokinase, used against strokes.
''I heard no account of any effort for developing biological weapons in
Cuba,'' said de la Fuente, who oversaw some 350 scientists as the center's
research and development chief.
More worrisome, de la Fuente said, is Cuba's transfer of recombinant
technology to Iran, which has eagerly sought help from the Castro regime since
the early 1990s. ''Once that technology gets transferred, there's no control.
The Iranians can use that technology for what they want,'' he said.
A U.S. molecular biologist and close friend of de la Fuente, Harvey Bialy,
who now teaches in Mexico, said he has spent long periods in Cuban genetic
engineering labs and never ''heard a whisper'' about an offensive biological
program.
''What they [the Cubans] are doing is much worse. They sold to Iran all the
things that Bolton said Cuba is doing,'' said Bialy, the former editor of the
Nature Biotechnology academic journal. "What is going on in Iran is the
most serious bioterrorist threat to the United States at this time.'' | 
