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Defector: Cuba Preparing Biological Weapons
The former head of Cuba’s military medical services says the communist government is stockpiling biological warfare agents like the plague, botulism and yellow fever at a secret underground lab near Havana. Roberto Ortega ran the Cuban military’s medical services from 1984 to 1994 and defected to the U.S. in 2003. He said he told the CIA nearly two years ago about the secret Cuban facility, and is speaking publicly now because he did not see the CIA take action on his information and wants international inspections of the lab. The Cubans "can develop viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses that are currently unknown and difficult to diagnose,” Ortega told the Miami Herald. "They don’t need missiles or troops, they need four agents, like the people from al-Qaida or the Taliban, who contaminate water, air conditioning or heating systems.” According to Ortega, Cuba was prepared to use the biological weapons "to blackmail the United States in case of an international incident” such as the threat of an American invasion.
Story Continues Below Ortega told the Herald he visited the lab, called Labor One, in 1992 when he accompanied a high-level Russian military delegation. "I saw it,” he said. "I lived it.” Russian defector Ken Alibek, who was deputy director of the Soviet Union’s bioweapons program, told the Herald: "If you ask whether the Cubans are capable [of developing bioweapons], I’d say easily.”
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Castro/Cuba Inside Cover Stories
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