FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:
July
12, 2002 Wayne
Smith, Anya Landau
(202)
232-3317
CIP
SPECAL REPORT ON CUBA AND BIOWEAPONS:
Groundless Allegations Squander U.S. Credibility on Terrorism
Introduction
On
May 8, 2002, CIP challenged the May 6 statements of Under Secretary of State
John Bolton suggesting that Cuba was somehow involved in the development of
technology for the manufacture of biological weapons. We noted that in fact
there was not a shred of evidence to substantiate those claims. On May 24,
CIP also took issue with the State Department’s May 21 Overview
of State Sponsored Terrorism, which again listed Cuba as a terrorist state.
Point-by-point, CIP demonstrated each of the State Department’s bases for
so describing Cuba to be false. For the convenience of the reader, links to
the slightly updated versions of those publications can be found at this end
of this report, and can also be found at http://ciponline.org .
The
focus of the present paper is on subsequent developments which point up again
the mendaciousness of the State Department’s efforts to describe Cuba as a
terrorist state with hostile intentions toward the United States.
Indeed,
not since Iran-Contragate back in the mid-80s has a foreign policy been
accompanied by such a barrage of blatant misrepresentations. And no wonder! Our
Latin American policy today is in the hands of many of the same people who were
running it then: Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, et al.
But
in this post-September 11th world, such conduct is simply
unacceptable. In the context of our war on terrorism, and especially at a time
when the President is speaking of preemptive strikes against those listed as
terrorist states, it is vital that our credibility be unquestioned. And yet,
that credibility is being undermined by allegations against Cuba which other
governments can see are groundless and made for domestic political reasons,
i.e., for the benefit of the hard-line Cuban exiles in Miami, thus, the
President calculates, enhancing his brother’s chances for reelection in the
coming gubernatorial elections in Florida. But are the elections in Florida
more important than the war against terrorism?
Castro Statement
in Tehran a Fabrication
In
its efforts to demonstrate Cuba’s hostile intentions toward the United States,
Bolton played up a statement Fidel Castro supposedly made at Tehran University
last year. Allegedly, Castro said: “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with one
another, can bring America to its knees.”
In our May 8 response to Bolton, CIP assumed
that Bolton was basing himself on the text of the Castro speech. Thus, we
did not question the accuracy of the quote; rather, we took issue with the
interpretation of its intent. But it now turns out that the quote itself was
a fabrication. Professor Nelson Valdes of the University of New Mexico has
acquired and carefully analyzed all the transcripts of all Castro’s public
statements while in Iran and has confirmed that the Castro quote does not
appear in any of them.
[1]
Valdes also notes that with one highly questionable exception,
none of the wire services represented in Iran carried such a statement. According
to Valdes, “Neither the Iranian news service (IRNA)
[2]
, nor the Cuban media carried the alleged Castro statement.
Nor could it to be found in the files of the BBC, or in the U.S. government’s
Foreign Broadcasts Information Service.”
[3]
The
single exception was a mysterious Agence France Presse (AFP) story dated May
10, 2001, i.e., just after Castro’s visit to Iran. But AFP cannot produce the
text on which the story was based nor explain where the quote came from.
Interestingly, the AFP version was at first only picked up by El Nuevo Herald, an anti-Castro exile
newspaper in Miami. As Valdes notes, “it then made the rightwing press circuit,
” as others picked it up from El Nuevo
Herald.
However
the alleged quote got into the AFP story, it was a phony. Castro himself has
categorically denied ever saying such a thing, and in fact any analyst familiar
with his rhetoric can see that it is not his style. Castro frequently criticizes
the U.S. government and its policies toward Cuba – sometimes in the most acerbic
terms – but he just as often expresses his sympathy, even affection, for the
American people and assures them that Cuban territory will never be used to
launch hostile acts against them.
[4]
Indeed, this past 4th of July, the
Castro government staged a cultural event at the Karl Marx Theatre to honor
the “noble” American people.
[5]
In describing the event, Granma, the Communist Party daily,
said, “The cultural and moral legacy of the American people is also the patrimony
of Cuba and the Cuban people.”
[6]
Bolton
Fails to Appear before Congress on June 5
Senator
Christopher Dodd called for a hearing of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 5 to discuss the statements
made by Under Secretary of State John Bolton the previous month. As the hearings
opened, however, Senator Dodd reported that Secretary of State Powell had
decided that Bolton was not the proper official to testify and thus the latter
would not be present; rather, the State Department would be represented by
the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, Mr. Carl Ford,
Jr. Senator Dodd expressed his puzzlement and unhappiness over this decision
since Mr. Bolton was the official who had made the statements in the first
place.
[7]
Indeed, the fact that Bolton would not come – or was
prevented from coming – to defend his earlier statements is yet another indication
of their improbity. One must wonder why Powell would not allow Bolton
himself to defend his statements if they were in fact defensible and legitimate.
Hearing Produces No Evidence
During
the hearing that followed, both in the open hearing and (according to a number
of sources who were there) the closed session, it became clear that Mr. Ford
did not have any hard evidence to back up the suggestion that Cuba was working
on the development of biological weapons and passing technical data to other
rogue states which could possibly be used by them in developing such weapons.
As Mr. Ford himself said, “We never tried to suggest we had a smoking gun.”
In
fact, it became clear that they have nothing at all – except their own
suspicions. It is well-known fact that Cuba does have a highly sophisticated
bio-tech industry which manufactures medicines and a number of advanced
vaccines. The industry is indeed sufficiently advanced technically that it
would be capable of producing biological weapons. There is not a shred
of evidence, however, that it has done so or is in the process of doing so. Nor
could Mr. Ford point to any evidence to indicate that Cuba even has such
intentions.
A Matter of Defending Themselves Against a U.S. first strike?
On
the question of Cuba’s intentions, Mr. Ford suggested that if the Cubans are
indeed trying to develop biological weapons, it could be in order to defend
themselves against us. “They have…clearly have a capability…and they don’t like
us….The fact is that they are worried about the United States. They are afraid
that we are going to use a weapon of mass destruction [against them],
biological they’ve argued, or more likely in their minds probably some sort of
nuclear weapons, and that gives them cause – that gives them a reason why they
might want to use this capability as a weapon.”
Going
on in the same vein, he said: “Indeed, we think that if you want to talk about
intentions, that it has to do with their fear of the United States and wanting
to have a deterrent, wanting to have something in their capability [with which]
they could strike back at us. I certainly see no indications that there is
a first strike capability or effort to attack the United States.”
Following
Ford’s rationale, Senator Chafee asked the obvious question as to why, then,
more wasn’t being done to reassure the Cubans that none of that is necessary,
that we have no aggressive intentions against them.
Mr.
Ford had no answer to that. All he could say was that as the question had to do
with policy, it should be directed to Secretary of State Powell.
One
can only ask, is this only Mr. Ford’s personal assessment of Cuban intentions,
or is it the assessment of the State Department as a whole, and beyond it, the Administration?
If the latter, it becomes even more difficult to understand the logic behind
the Bush Administration’s policy toward Cuba – the most hostile and threatening
towards Cuba in many years. If it is the Administration’s belief that Cuba may
be trying to develop biological weapons in order to deter a U.S. attack against
them, perhaps even a nuclear attack, then surely a policy which further
stimulates that fear is decidedly counterproductive. Or is it that the Bush
Administration wants to goad them into developing biological weapons?
Unexplained Discrepancy Between Bolton’s
Statements of Nov.
19, 2001 and May 6, 2002
Mr.
Ford could not even answer the question as to why Under Secretary of State
Bolton, while ringing alarm bells over the possibility of Cuban biological
weapons in his statements of May 6, 2002, had not even listed Cuba as a state
over which we were concerned in a speech he gave to a meeting in Geneva on
November 19, 2001.
[8]
He had listed virtually every other country that posed
anything resembling a problem in the field of biological weapons, but had
not included Cuba on the list. How was it, then, that just six months later,
Cuba seemed to have become a top-priority threat? Certainly it was not because
Cuba had developed some overnight capability; not even Mr. Bolton had suggested
that. And several days after Bolton’s speech in May—which was given just days
before Jimmy Carter was to arrive in Cuba—Secretary of State Powell stated
that the administration was “not breaking new ground” with these allegations.
So
perplexing were the charges that former President Jimmy Carter revealed that
he had asked the high level White House and State Department intelligence
experts who briefed him before his May trip to the island about any “possible
terrorist activities that were supported by Cuba….I asked them specifically
on more than one occasion is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved
in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used
for terrorist purposes. And the answer from our experts on intelligence was
no.''
[9]
Mr.
Ford had no explanation for the discrepancy and suggested that the committee
should put that question to Mr.Bolton—which of course Senator Dodd had wished
to do, if only Mr. Bolton had been present.
Violation of Biological Warfare Convention
In
earlier statements, the State Department had suggested that Cuba might be in
violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and had called on it to
honor its commitments. But when asked by Senator George Allen if Cuba was in
fact violating the BWC, Mr. Ford said he was simply the wrong person to ask; he
had only a hazy knowledge of what was in the Convention. But this was obviously
deceptive. If Cuba were in fact violating the BWC, one can be sure that Mr.Ford
would be fully aware of it and would not have hesitated to say so. The fact is
that no evidence has been presented that Cuba is in violation and so far
as CIP has been able to ascertain, no other government believes that it is.
What
is clear is that were there any concern in the international community that
Cuba is not honoring its commitments under the BWC, the United Nations could be
called upon to inspect Cuban facilities as necessary. During President Carter’s
visit to Cuba, Fidel Castro invited him to visit any laboratory or biotech
facility he wished and, further, said they were open to inspection by any
appropriate international agency. This position has been subsequently confirmed
by the Cuban Foreign Ministry. If the State Department were truly concerned
about alleged Cuban violations of the CBW, one can only wonder why it does not
ask the United Nations to investigate the matter?
As
for the allegation that Cuba is helping other rogue states, Cuba has indeed
sold medicines and vaccines to a wide variety of states, including Iran. But
there is no evidence whatever that any of the compounds provided by Cuba have
been used for anything other than the humanitarian purposes intended. Cuba
maintains that its sales agreements strictly prohibit misuse of its
technologies.
Administration
officials fail to back up Bolton’s statements
As if Carl Ford’s testimony before Congress weren’t bad enough, when Senator
Dorgan recently questioned Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich about why
the bioweapons claims were omitted entirely from the latest State Department
report on global terrorism, Reich replied, “I do not know who publishes that
particular document.”
Dorgan,
incredulous, told Reich, “It’s your department that publishes it…..this is a
State Department publication.” Astonishingly, Reich’s response was simply, “It
must be incomplete.”
But
how could the U.S. Department of State have issued an incomplete report
on global terrorism—and following the worse terrorist strike ever against
the U.S.? Though Reich may wish the report were incomplete, the fact is that
the State Department was never prepared to follow up with any evidence of
Cuban bioweapons development. The day after Bolton’s speech, State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher declined to offer any evidence, saying only that
he would let Mr. Bolton’s words speak for themselves.
[10]
Secretary
of State Colin Powell backed away from the claims just days after Bolton made
them. “We didn't say it actually had
some weapons but it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research,”
Powell said.
[11]
But
Bolton had gone much further than suggest that Cuba had the capability
to conduct research. He had described Libya, Syria, and Cuba as “rogue states
intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction – particularly biological
weapons.”
[12]
He
was not simply suggesting that it had the technical capability to conduct
research; rather, he was saying that Cuba was intent on acquiring, i.e., producing,
biological weapons. That was clear also in his assertion that, “Cuba has at
least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.”
[13]
If
one has a “development effort,” then presumably one has gone beyond the
research stage. Who are we to believe? Mr. Bolton? Or the Secretary of State?