Subject:      AIDS and Dengue Fever
From:         Tom Keske (trkeske@yahoo.com)
Date:         1998/01/04
Newsgroups:   gay-net.aids


DENGUE FEVER AWARENESS DAY


You cannot understand the possibilities and probabilities of
how AIDS and other strange diseases have emerged, unless you
have a firm foundation in the larger political context.

Dengue fever outbreaks, it would seem on the surface, are
nothing suspicious.  It is a common disease, affecting
millions of people around the world, mostly in tropical
climates, every year.  In one sense, it is not a serious
disease, because most infected people recover.  It causes
severe flu-like symptoms.  More serious is the hemorrhagic
version of the disease, which is potentially fatal.

It has no treatment, at present.  The World Health
Organization calls it "the most important and rapidly
increasing arbovirus in the world".

The more that you research the history, however, the more
murky the issues become.

I knew for years that there were biowar allegations concerning
dengue fever and Cuba, but I had never researched them, until
this year.  I found it extremely difficult to locate any
information, but after feverish investigation (no pun
intended), I managed to find at least at least a little.

In 1956 and 1958, declassified documents have revealed, the US
Army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitoes in Georgia and
Florida to see whether disease-bearing insects could be
weapons in biological war [1].  The mosquitoes were of the
Aedes Aegypti type, the precise carrier of dengue fever.

In 1967, Science magazine reported that at the US government
center  Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue fever was among those
diseases that were "objects of considerable research and that
appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological
warfare] agents".

In 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York testified that in
the latter part of 1980, a ship traveled from Florida to Cuba
with "a mission to carry some germs to Cuba to be used against
the Cuban economy".

CIA documents released in 1977, as reported in the Washington
Post, disclosed that the Agency "maintained a clandestine
anti-crop ware' research program"- a revelation giving
credence to Cuba's allegations about extensive crop and
livestock biowar attacks.

In 1985, dengue fever struck Managua, Nicaragua shortly after
an increase of U.S. reconnaissance missions [2].  Nearly half
of the city's population was stricken.  It was the first such
epidemic in the country.

Similarly, the first known outbreaks occurred in Cuba during
1978-1979 and in 1981, the very same time that gay men were
being inoculated with experimental vaccines in New York and
San Francisco, immediately before AIDS appeared in each city.
Nearly half a million dengue fever cases hit Cuba in the first
epidemic.  In 1981, there were some 300,000 cases of dengue
hemorrhagic fever.

The Covert Action Information Bulletin, which tracks the
workings of various intelligence agencies around the world,
suggested that this outbreak was the result of a release of
mosquitoes by Cuban counterrevolutionaries. The magazine
tracked the activities of one CIA operative from a facility in
Panama to the alleged Cuban connections.

From CIABASE, a database maintained by a 25-year CIA veteran,
I found the following:

  BIOLOGICAL WAR, CUBA, 78-87 CIA contacted Dr.
  Eduardo Sagaro Gonzalez while he was taking a medical
  course in Mexico in '78.  Sagaro traveled to Mozambique
  in '79 where we recruited Douglas James Smith, the COS
  in Maputo.  The CIA wanted info on Fidel's health and
  on pesticides reserved to combat the dengue epidemic.
  The CIA also had asked another agent many questions
  relating to bio and chemical warfare.  The CIA convinced
  a manufacturer of containers for fumigating to make them
  without heads, rendering them useless.

Such reports illustrate the blurred line between what is
"natural" and what is possibly man-made.

The dengue fever outbreaks would not have been genocide
attempt, but could easily have been part of an extensive
campaign to demoralize and destabilize countries whose
political systems did not agree with ours.  Of course, just as
the open-air germ war tests in American cities were supposed
to be "harmless", these harassment campaigns could also have
been exceedingly unwise, producing any number of unintended
effects, ranging from biowar retaliation, to the inadvertent
production of new viral variations.

The climate stinks.  It makes quite plausible the concerns
that unwise experiments, dirty tricks, negligent accidents, or
outright attacks in all probability have something to do with
the birth of HIV, as well.

Governments who wish to hide such deeds will not stand idly
by, when anyone tries to speak the truth. Perhaps this
explains the unreasonable amount of shrill resistance to such
discussion.  In time, though, the probable truths will gather
too much momentum to be denied any longer.

Tom Keske
Boston, Mass

REFERENCES:

[1]  "The CIA, a Forgotten History", William Blum.  Blum is a
        founder of the Washington Free Press, and a freelance
        journalist who has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle
        and Los Angeles Times.

[2] "Germ Warfare- The Hall of Shame" (available on web
      via search engines)


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[Keske]