CASTRO SAID TO BE USING CANCER INSTIGATING WEAPONS OF WARFARE

by Jonathan T. Stride

MIAMI - Many Cuban exiles and a few others fluent in Spanish spent their holidays discussing biological warfare weapons being used by Fidel Castro in his lifelong war on his enemies-friends of "Yankee imperialism." Ironically, if army officials inside Cuba can be believed, the Commander in Chief himself has had part of his lung removed to slow down the pace of a death-dealing biological agent which has metasticized.

Under such circumstances, of obvious significance is the fresh report that Ricardo Alarcon, one of Castro's trusted younger aides, has announced that, if elected, he would be willing to serve as the next president of Cuba. A few years ago, such remarks would have resulted in his arrest but now they merely signal that Communist Party leaders are planning for the aftermath of 39 years of the destruction of a once prosperous economy and the brainwashing of a once much freer nation.

Within a few weeks, the Castro-Communist-monopoly party will hold an election, and it may well follow the death--or retirement to a bed--of the self-sainted caudillo who avoids use of a caudillo's military dress cap like the plague. (Only during the early years did anyone catch Castro wearing an officer's cap like those used by the preceding dictator, Fulgencio Batista.)

The smoke of rumors is flying so thick and fast from Miami to Havana and back that observers believe it must indicate the fire of reality in Cuba: Castro has been preparing germ warfare for years and may well have been applying it for years.

A few people know about the "little factory" (La Fabriquita), the new biological warfare weapons plant in East Havana--discussed in the WASHINGTON INQUIRER Aug 11, 1997, mentioned in EL NUEVO HERALD, Spanish language daily published by the MIAMI HERALD, and described in some detail on the Internet earlier this year.

Now they learn from Carlos Alberto Montaner, a prominent writer in Spain, of other major biological weapons factories in another part of Havana, the Siboney sector, near Miramar, where Cuban presidents used to live.

They also noted a menacing letter to the editor of DIARIO LAS AMERICAS, Miami's No. 2 Spanish language daily, on December 11, which, as roughly translated, said:

"If somehow I can be useful, I wish to point out that I was a member of a communist party in South America.

"I wish to make it known that in the laboratories of the Communist Republic of China, Chinese scientists have created a deadly formula, the color of water and which has neither chlorine nor other flavor, and which if ingested will, within about six months, cause a disease which may linger from two to two-and-a-half years before it kills. That disease is an incurable cancer.

"I want to warn those who head anticommunist organizations to cease holding banquets and if they must go some place to speak, please drink only bottled water and know from whose hand it came to you. This (liquid) is the weapon that is being used by the Castro dictatorship against its adversaries.

"Attentively, Lucero Marte, New York, NY"

Even before the arrival of that letter, reports were flitting about Miami that Jorge Mas Canosa, the hardworking 53-year-old businessman and key exile leader (see Dec. ___ issue of the WASHINGTON INQUIRER) was killed this winter by a cancer induced by Castro agents. The rumor also says several other leaders in his Cuban American National Foundation, pro-freedom group he founded, have learned they have incurable cancer.

A related rumor circulating says the 1997 World Series star pitcher of the Florida Marlins, Livan Hernandez, a Cuban defector, and his mother who was allowed to visit him, never ingest food or water presented to them away from home. The rumor says they fear they will be poisoned by Castro agents.

Somewhat easing such fears is the fact that few people here who have seen Castro recently on television--with a gaunt face, strange grimaces, and occasional difficulty getting out his words--believe he will survive his own cancer very long. They only hope his end happens before he can unleash his biological weapons en masse, and they say they keep their fingers crossed.

They realize that Fidel, 72, has designated his younger brother, Raul, 66, as his successor. They know Raul has just toured China to get ideas to help him in his leadership with economic decisions to be made by the Party's Central Committee. With the one-party-monopoly election due in Cuba next month, observers expect Raul will get the backing proposed by Fidel, since the cards for 39 years have been stacked the way Fidel has wanted.

Spanish-speaking Miamians also have heard radio reports from Col. Alvaro Prendes (ret.), Cuban dissident who was given political refuge in 1994, that Raul has a long history of alcoholism and probably has cirrhosis of the liver, a prelude to eventual cancer if he lives long enough.

Raul also is known as even more of a cold-blooded killer than his older brother; so nobody expects him to ease up on the dictatorship controls. And nobody believes Raul is a Gorbachev who would foster an economic opening. Yet he also is known as a pragmatist who might make a deal with President Clinton quicker than Fidel.

Augmenting the rumors are reports of untold numbers of bottles picked up along the East Coast over recent years. The bottles contained stamped cards for mailing to Cuba. The cards said the bottles were part of a scientific experiment and asked finders to write down the exact time and location of the finding and send them to a government agency in Cuba.

The current expansion of that report holds that some of the bottles were found by or given to the U.S. Coast Guard, and that the bottles are part of a Castro plan to disseminate diseases such as Anthrax along the U.S. coast. A Coast Guard spokesman said he had not heard of it through official channels but heard of it on a recent local television broadcast here.

Meanwhile, former ace Cuban pilot Prendes, who was released from Batista's prison and assigned by Castro to organize his first air corps in 1959, recalls here that after it became known in Cuba in the 1990's that he had dared defy Castro, he became ill and had to be hospitalized. Thereupon he had three heart attacks, which he miraculously survived. He said he never had been known to have heart trouble before.

In the hospital, Dr. Rodrigo Alvares Cambra and others proposed a heart by-pass procedure, but another Cuban physician warned Prendes surreptitiously that by all means he should avoid an operation, because he would not be allowed to leave alive. Prendes, having known Castro well for many years, took the warning seriously and was happy later to receive U.S. protection that enabled him finally to leave Cuba in 1994.

Prendes continues to be very careful about where and what he eats or drinks and tries always to be prepared to counter any surprise attack. He told the WASHINGTON INQUIRER that he has unpublished details about the murder in Miami of Manolito Ramirez and his wife a couple years ago as they left a Spanish-language radio station in Coral Gables. Their one or more killers put 25 bullets into each, not a common type of assassination here. Prendes said Ramirez had mysteriously and suddenly grown rich after having been close to Patricio and Antonio de la Guardia, two of the Cuban army officials found guilty of drug smuggling in the highly publicized court martial involving General Arnoldo Ochoa in 1989. Antonio de la Guardia consequently was shot to death by a Cuban firing squad and his brother Patricio remains in a Cuban cell which hardly anybody expects him to leave alive.

Prendes says Ramirez once was a highly trusted member of the bodyguard- troops caring for Castro and had been very close to the de la Guardia brothers in drug smuggling activities when their activities were protected by Castro. There were reports that the brothers somehow had managed to get a batch of money to Ramirez before he escaped to Miami.

The couple's murderers, who were sent by Castro, Prendes believes, have never been found. "This city is fully of Castro agents," Prendes says, "and the paranoid schizophrenic running Cuba is cable of anything!" He has no doubt that Castro has biological weapons that can cause cancer.

Columnist Montaner, writing from Spain, finds it "very probable" that not only Mas Canosa but Sebastian Arcos Bergnes and others were killed by lethal diseases caused by Fidel Castro.

Arcos, one of the relatively recent batch of heroes of the Cuban resistance under Castro's control, died here last month after being allowed to leave Cuba only when his cancer reached an irreversible stage.

Castro, say both Prendes and Montaner, just as much as his chum, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, has a great quantity of deadly viruses and bacteria which can be used against the enemy. The two dictators are close friends. Saddam also has sent Castro several missiles, one of which has been disarmed and made into a statue in Cuba. And Castro sent Dr. Alvares Cambra, an orthopedic surgeon, to Iraq to perform an operation on Saddam. That's why Dr. Alvares' Havana home is filled with expensive Iraqi furniture.

Montaner writes that the Castro jailers love to torture their prisoners and often tell another of the heroic resisters in prison for political "crimes," Leonel Morejon Almargo, "We are going to put you in Sebastian's cell so you, too, can get cancer."

When Arcos first became ill, his jailers' doctor told him the problem was nothing but bone fatigue. The pains he suffered gradually grew worse. Then Castro decided Arcos was beyond the possibility of cure but did not want him as a martyr inside prison. So Arcos was allowed to come to Miami to receive final respects from his family and admirers before the cancer took him.

Montaner writes that 19 years ago, a young Cuban biologist--called "David" by Montaner--asked for asylum after his escape from the Barajas, Spain, airport, on a flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Cuba. The next day, David approached Spanish police and told his story, which was relayed to correspondents, including Montaner. He obtained permission to interview David.

David told Montaner that in Sofia, he learned how the Bulgarian Communists induced cancer among adversaries they wished to destroy with as little notice as possible. He said they called it "the Bulgarian treatment."

The simplest way was to plant a radioactive isotope in the chair in which an enemy regjularly sat, or in an often-worn jacket, or in a sofa cushion, or even in an automobile seat. After a few months, there was a great likelihood that a cancerous growth would be under way with fatal results.

Montaner said most hospitals have such radioactive isotopes which they ordinarily use to combat certain types of cancer. These isotopes consist of tiny metal fibers easily concealed.

"The ideal way to cause a cancer is to plant the isotope and then leave the scene so as to be far away when the cancer is discovered," David told Montaner.

Montaner asked if David had ever carried out such as deadly task. The youth told Montaner, "No, but I have thought of doing it if I am not allowed to defect."

"To some dissident?" Montaner asked, somewhat alarmed. "No," the young biologist told him with a seriousness Montaner found absolutely convincing, "I thought of using it on my mother-in-law, a hateful `hispanic soviet' (hispanosovietica) who destroyed my marriage."

Fortunately, Montaner said, "David met a splendid Spanish lass, whom he soon married. Today he lives in the United States totally removed from the ignoble `profession' that he learned from the Bulgarians."

Montaner said that today in Siboney are two "supersecret" laboratories, each with decontamination chambers, in the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center. Among other things, they produce aflotoxin, which if breathed can induce lung cancer, and a variety of other biological and chemical weapons, similar to those apparently being concealed in Saddam's palaces.

Then Montaner added another rumor. He said he has heard of a Cuban ornothologist who is studying and experimenting with birds that fly between Cuba and Florida. The experiments are being used to determine the effectiveness of birds in the spread of disease to people. At some time even the migrating ducks and geese may be used to spread lethal bacteria, Montaner speculated, possibly wondering if the dangerous new "bird flu" in Hong Kong was begun by Red Chinese biologists.

Montaner recalls some Castro allies or adversaries who died in unusual circumstances: Commander Aldo Vera, shot to death in a Puerto Rican street; Jose Elias de la Torriente, shot in Miami; Manuel Artime, found dead 38 years ago with his lungs mysteriously destroyed; Rafael Garcia, disappeared at age 41, years ago. Prendes also adds the name of Rolando Mas Ferrer, killed by a car bomb in Miami.