Cuban Issues

Assessing the U.S. Bioweapons Allegations Against Cuba

January 10, 2005

Introduction

On October 3-7, 2004, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) co-sponsored a mission to Cuba, the third in a series of visits to biotechnology facilities on the island. CDI launched this initiative in late 2002 in response to allegations by Under Secretary of State John Bolton that Cuba posed a military and terrorist threat to the United States because it had "at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort" and had "provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states."[1]

In order to assess the credibility of the U.S. allegations, CDI requested the Cuban government to host visits by U.S. experts at several biotechnology institutes, some of which had been implicated by various sources (such as Cuban émigrés) in illicit biological weapon (BW) activities. The Cuban government agreed to this request, on the condition that the visits would not resemble the UN weapons inspections in Iraq, which were highly intrusive and became confrontational when Iraqi officials denied access to sensitive sites. Instead, the visits to Cuban biotechnology institutes would be in the framework of a voluntary transparency exercise in which scientific delegations organized by CDI would be allowed to tour any facilities of interest. From the Cuban perspective, the purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate its compliance with the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), to which it is a state party, and to refute the U.S. government allegations.[2]

For the third CDI mission, in October 2004, I accompanied Glenn Baker on visits to four Cuban biotech facilities that had not been seen by previous delegations, and made repeat visits to three other sites. Because this was my first trip to Cuba, I found the experience fascinating but at times frustrating because the short duration of the site visits precluded us from viewing the facilities in more than a cursory fashion.

The Cuban government has clearly made a huge investment in biotechnology for a variety of purposes, including enhancing the country's international standing and prestige, improving the public health of the Cuban population, and obtaining a potential source of foreign exchange. The dozens of institutes and production plants that make up the Cuban biotechnology complex do not compete among themselves but function as an integrated system, with extensive interactions and supplier relationships among the various centers. Many of the biotech facilities belong to the West Havana Scientific Pole, which comprises a total of 52 different institutions, 19 of which are considered "core" facilities.

Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB)

Our first visit was to the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), a five-story modern building in West Havana that is considered the flagship of the Cuban biotechnology industry. In addition to conducting research and development, CIGB is involved in vaccine production. We were greeted at the center by Dr. José Miyar Barruecos, known familiarly as "Chomi." He is Secretary of the Council of State, personally close to Fidel Castro, and holds a high position in the Cuban Ministry of Science and Technology, where he is responsible for overseeing the entire Cuban biotechnology industry. Our hosts at CIGB were Dr. Luis Herrera Martinez, director- general of the center, and  Dr. Francisco Machado Ramirez, vice director-general.  They introduced us to the directors of several other leading biotech institutes, who had been brought together around a conference table to brief us. After lengthy presentations by the facility directors, we were given a brief tour of a new and highly modern vaccine production facility currently under construction at CIGB.

Vaccine Production Plant, Finlay Institute

Our next visit was to a new vaccine production facility currently being built under the auspices of the Finlay Institute. We were shown around the plant by the institute's Director-General, Dr. Concepción Campa Huergo. At the time of our visit, the vaccine plant was not yet operational; although the building and the air-handling system had been finished, the production equipment was still being installed. We saw stainless steel fermenters, separators, and other equipment that had been imported from foreign suppliers such as Chemap in Switzerland and Sartorius of Bangalore, India. Everything at the plant appeared to be consistent with the intended purpose of vaccine production.

National Center for Biological Preparations (BIOCEN)

BIOCEN is located in Bejucal, 30 kilometers west from downtown Havana, and is part of the West Havana Scientific Pole. The facility sprawls over 11.6 hectares and employs 800 people. It includes a quality-control lab, animal facility, warehouse, and four production plants. Investment in the facility began in June 1984, and vaccine production began in February 1992.

During our visit to BIOCEN, we toured a hepatitis B vaccine production plant that manufactures 30 million doses per year. The facility was reasonably modern, with standard equipment purchased from European suppliers and rooms maintained under positive atmospheric pressure to prevent contamination of the product by contact with the outside air. (In contrast, the air-handling system in a biocontainment facility creates negative atmospheric pressure to prevent dangerous pathogens from escaping the laboratory.) The vaccine production process was fairly labor-intensive. Although a machine loaded the vaccine automatically into small vials, we saw groups of women packaging the vials by hand and checking the sealed vials for defects-activities that would probably be automated in the United States.

In a second production plant, we looked through a sealed observation window at two 2,000 liter fermenters. We were told that these fermenters were used to produce two recombinant-protein biopharmaceuticals in E. coli bacteria for use in humans: streptokinase and granulocyte colony stimulating factor. BIOCEN also manufactures a natural anti-anemia drug called Trofín, as well as 119 different types of culture media for laboratory microbiology, clinical diagnosis, and other biotechnology facilities in Cuba. The facility supplies 100 percent of the Cuban domestic market for culture media and also exports to Latin American countries.

The Director-General of BIOCEN, Alberto Agraz Fierro, was cooperative but at times seemed impatient or irritated when we asked to see additional parts of the facility, perhaps because of concerns over the possible compromise of proprietary information. (Indeed, U.S. pharmaceutical companies tightly restrict access by outside visitors on the grounds of protecting valuable trade secrets.)

National Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals (CENPALAB)

Each year CENPALAB produces over a million laboratory animals belonging to 10 species for research purposes, and supplies these animals to other facilities in the Cuban biotechnology complex. According to the Director-General, Leonardo Cabezas Rodríguez, CENPALAB also conducts toxicological assays and animal tests of various drugs, manufactures 56 types of concentrated feed formulations for 33 different species, and makes several biological products derived from animals, including mouse ascetic fluid for production of monoclonal antibodies, blood and specific antisera, animal organs and tissues, and animal vaccines.

CENPALAB comprises a main building and several animal houses, which are scattered over an extremely large expanse of rolling hills. We visited the breeding areas for beagles and monkeys, and drove past a penned area containing a flock of ostriches, which the facility is considering breeding as a source of meat. We were then served lunch and given gifts, including carved ostrich eggs and Cuban coffee. While this show of hospitality was much appreciated, it significantly reduced the amount of time available for touring the facility.

National Center for Agricultural and Livestock Health (CENSA)

CENSA is a 30-minute drive east of Havana on the main east-west highway. It was founded in 1969 as the National Center for Animal Health, and the current complex was opened in 1980. Although the facility had been visited by a previous CDI delegation, we requested to see it again because one of the team members, Terence Taylor, had noticed some puzzling inconsistencies that he felt required more explanation. For example, he believed that the layout of the labs did not fit the declared purpose and that some research activities appeared to be staged.

The Director-General of CENSA, Dr. Lydia Tablada Romero, was extremely lively and dynamic but also appeared to be quite ideological. For example, she requested that we be photographed with her in front of a white board bearing a statement written by Fidel Castro at the time of the center's opening, stressing the importance of "men of science" for Cuba's economic development. We were given a series of lengthy PowerPoint presentations on various research projects under way at CENSA that lasted about three hours, leaving very little time for a walk-through of the sprawling facility. Although we were told that CENSA has 390 employees, most of the laboratories we passed did not appear to be in use and the spacious halls and corridors of the main building were nearly empty.

Our request to visit the on-site production plant was denied, on the grounds that it was in operation and that entering would break the sterility of the process. We were therefore left staring at the locked door. At this point, our official "minders" from the Cuban Ministry of External Relations (Minrex) stressed with some urgency that we were already late for our next appointment. I therefore left CENSA feeling dissatisfied, having been unable to gain a clear understanding of the activities under way at the site.

La Fabriquita

Because of an apparent misunderstanding, we unexpectedly made a visit to La Fabriquita, a small factory located next to the Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital, which was the site we had actually requested to visit. Operated by the Cuban military, La Fabriquita produces a nutritional supplement derived from shark cartilage that is used to treat arthritis and other diseases. The visit proved to be worthwhile, however, because the chief of the medical services of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Colonel Calixto Gonzáles Gómez, and the plant director, Lt. Col. Armando Hernandez Leira, invited Glenn Baker to videotape the interior of the plant, reversing their decision during a previous visit to deny him permission to do so.

Inside the plant, we saw workers removing cartilage from shark jaws and spines, cleaning and air-drying the cartilage, and milling it into a fine powder, which is packaged into gelatin capsules at an off-site location. Although La Fabriquita has an advanced "pulse-jet" milling machine, this piece of equipment is not configured to generate particles less than 63 microns in diameter and hence is not suitable for producing biological warfare agents, which must be in the range of one to five microns to create a respirable aerosol cloud. The location of the factory building and its lack of effective biocontainment also preclude work with dangerous pathogens.

Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital

At our request, the Cuban military arranged a visit to the Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital for our last morning in Havana. Although run by the uniformed military, the hospital serves civilian patients as well as active-duty troops and veterans. Accompanied by three military officers-Colonel Gonzáles, hospital director Col. Pelagio Delgado Villamar, and laboratory director Lt. Col. Mireida Rodríguez Acosta-we toured the research and clinical laboratories. Both areas were warrens of small rooms in which technicians were conducting experiments with basic lab equipment or processing dozens of patient specimens of blood, urine, feces, and other clinical samples. The labs were poorly equipped, with limited supplies of materials and obsolete analytical equipment. Much of the clinical testing was being performed by hand.

The laboratory directors and staff at the Naval Hospital appeared somewhat embarrassed to disclose their limited capabilities to foreign visitors, but they were clearly proud of their ability to keep their antiquated equipment running. (This is a common theme in a country where many of the cars on the road date from the 1950s.) At one point, we were introduced to a man who maintains the analytical machines, who was affectionately termed "the soul of the laboratory." During the tour, we saw no signs of high-level biocontainment, specialized ventilation and air handling systems, or other features that might indicate work with dangerous pathogens.

Cuban Allegations of U.S. Biological Warfare

Several times during our visit, Cuban government officials made allegations about U.S. government-sanctioned biological attacks against Cuba's agriculture and population over the past forty years. According to these statements, more than a dozen covert releases of infectious-disease agents have purportedly been carried out by the CIA, beginning with Operation Mongoose during the 1960s, and by Cuban exile groups such as Alpha 66. We were told that these attacks have been responsible for a devastating disease of sugar cane in 1962, an outbreak of African swine fever in 1972 that almost wiped out the swine population in Cuba, and an epidemic of hemorrhagic (Type II) dengue fever in 1979-1981 that sickened about 100,000 people and killed 158-101 children and 57 adults. At that time, Type II dengue was not circulating in any other country in the Caribbean region, only Type I.

All of the Cuban officials who repeated these allegations appeared convinced of their veracity. For example, retired General Jesús Bermúdez Cutiño, the president of the Center on Studies for Defense Information, told us that "Cuban scientists have proved that the strains responsible for these outbreaks had been artificially modified in the laboratory, or were not indigenous to the Americas, indicating that they had been artificially introduced." This conclusion differs from that of a 1999 study by microbiologist Raymond A. Zilinskas of twelve unusual outbreaks of infectious disease or infestation in Cuba. He concluded that all of these events "were caused by nature or were accidentally brought about by human activity such as trade and commerce. None of them was likely to have resulted from biological attack by the U.S."[3]

Regardless of their veracity, the Cuban allegations of covert biological warfare reflect a pervasive paranoia on the island about U.S. intentions-one that is arguably justified by the long history of CIA efforts to destabilize the Castro government and undermine the economy. Cuban officials are clearly frightened of the colossus to the north, a fear that has been exacerbated by the Bush administration's policy of preemptive war. For this reason, the allegations of U.S. biological warfare against Cuba that were repeatedly stated by our Cuban hosts, often with considerable vehemence, may reflect deep-rooted anxieties and the current poor state of U.S.-Cuban relations.

Despite their claim to have been the victim of covert U.S. biological attacks, Cuban officials insist that the country does not have a biodefense research and development program and does not work with highly dangerous pathogens such as the causative agents of anthrax, tularemia, or plague. According to Col. Gonzáles, although Cuban scientists do peaceful biomedical research on dengue and cholera, they use a recombinant version of dengue virus that is not virulent, and attenuated (weakened) variants of the cholera microorganism.

During a question-and-answer session, Colonel Gonzáles disclosed that Cuba's only high-containment (Biosafety Level 3) laboratory, located at the Laboratorios DAVIH (DAVIHLAB) on the campus of CENSA, is operated by the National Command for Civil Defense under the Ministry of the Armed Forces. In 1996, the civil-defense command created a special group at DAVIHLAB to identify exotic pathogens responsible for unusual outbreaks of human, animal, and plant disease on the island. According to Col. Gonzáles, "Once we had this lab, we became convinced that we had been attacked with biological weapons." Other activities at DAVIHLAB, which was visited by a previous CDI delegation, include AIDS research and the development of AIDS diagnostic tools.

Transfers of Dual-Use Technology

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton has accused Cuba of providing dual-use biotechnology "to other rogue states." There appears to be some truth to this allegation. Cuba views biotech as an important money-maker and has been willing to sell equipment and know-how to other countries that the United States considers unfriendly. For example, CIGB has negotiated contracts with Algeria, China, India, Iran, Syria, and Russia that involve the transfer of technologies for biopharmaceutical production, formulation, filling, and/or packaging. In addition, the institute operates a joint-venture vaccine production company called Panheber in Punjab, India.

CIGB's transfer of biotechnology to Iran involves equipment and know-how for three products: the manufacture of hepatitis B vaccine and the production in yeast and E. coli bacteria of two recombinant proteins (recombinant streptokinase and erythropoeitin), along with protocols for their large-scale purification. This deal has been criticized by Dr. José de la Fuente, a former director of CIGB (1991-98) who defected to the United States and is now on the faculty of Oklahoma State University. In an article published in 2001, de la Fuente charged, "There is no one who truly believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis, or treating their people with cheap streptokinase when they suffer sudden cardiac arrest."[4]

When I raised the issue of Cuban transfers of biotechnology to Iran during a meeting with Cuba's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rafael Dausa, he made the following points:

Given the Cuban government's implicit recognition of the risk that dual-use biotechnology equipment sold to Iran could be diverted for military purposes, and Cuba's stated respect for international law including the BWC, there appears to be an opening for creative diplomacy. Thus, the United States could probably exert more influence over Cuba's questionable exports to Iran through active engagement rather than continued confrontation.

Conclusions

As was the case with the two earlier CDI missions, the non-confrontational nature of the site visits and the tight schedule imposed on us by the Cuban government made it impossible to conduct more than cursory assessments of the facilities in question. The visits typically involved lengthy briefings by the institute director and other senior scientists in a conference room, followed by a relatively brief walk-through of a small portion of the facility.

At CIGB and particularly at CENSA, the introductory briefings dragged on for two or three hours. Because of the resulting time constraints, the subsequent tour of the facility was extremely abbreviated. It was unclear whether or not this was a deliberate strategy on the part of lab officials to limit access. Although none of the areas we visited appeared to have a high level of security suggestive of military or clandestine activity, we saw too little of each facility to draw a clear impression.

It was impossible on the basis of such superficial site visits to come to definitive judgments as to whether or not Cuba has an offensive BW development effort at either the visited facilities or at other locations. Because our mandate was to assess the U.S. allegations on the basis of factual evidence, we could not simply accept the Cuban government's denials at face value but had to maintain a skeptical attitude. Cuba clearly possesses the know-how and the technological infrastructure to produce biological weapons, but that is true of dozens of other countries, including the United States. Moreover, the fact that the Cuban government has been willing to host on-site visits by representatives of U.S. non-governmental organizations is deserving of praise and constitutes an important step toward greater transparency and confidence-building. Although it would be premature to give Cuba a clean bill of health with respect to the U.S. government's BW allegations, we found no evidence to support them. Moreover, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community is reportedly backing away from some of its earlier judgments about Cuba's BW activities suggests that the incriminating information may have come from human sources of questionable reliability, such as Cuban émigrés.[5]

More generally, true verification and confidence-building, especially in the particularly ambiguous BW area, cannot result from a few cursory site visits but requires a protracted process of interaction. Arms control verification has two essential dimensions: checking that a country's capabilities and activities on the ground match what it has declared, and assessing the host country's level of cooperation with the inspections process. Future CDI missions might therefore request to spend a full day visiting one large facility (such as CENSA or CIGB) from top to bottom in order to gain a clear understanding of its layout and operations. This approach would make it possible to confirm with a much higher level of confidence that the activities at the site are consistent with those described in the introductory briefings.

It is also clear that proving a negative-the absence of a BW development effort in Cuba-is an exceedingly difficult undertaking. The Cuban government's willingness to open its facilities to outside visitors is a valuable first step, but is not sufficient in itself to remove all residual doubts. That task will require a more extensive interaction, which may be possible only in the context of regular U.S.-Cuban scientific exchanges. Even when restrictions on scientific cooperation between the two countries were eased somewhat in the mid-1990s, biotechnology was excluded. The rationale was that any scientific collaboration that might enhance this field's economic importance to the Cuban government would violate the U.S. embargo, in effect since 1962.[6]

From the standpoint of verification and confidence-building, however, scientific exchanges could be an effective way to resolve the controversy over Cuba's alleged BW development effort. It is extremely difficult to hide a clandestine program from scientists who are working in the same building. Thus, a good approach to learning if illicit activities are taking place in Cuba, and building confidence that they are not, would be for U.S. physicians and scientists to have frequent close contacts with their Cuban colleagues. People who understand biotechnology will quickly pick up on indicators of illicit activity and may also develop relationships of trust with Cuban colleagues who may be willing to "blow the whistle" if they become aware of offensively oriented work. Conversely, given Cuba's strong suspicions that it has been the repeated victim of U.S. covert biological attacks, scientific exchanges would help to build Cuba's confidence that the United States does not threaten its security.

[1] John R. Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, "Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction," Speech to the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., May 6, 2002, p. 8.
[2] The BWC bans the development, production, stockpiling, and transfer of biological and toxin agents in types and quantities that are not consistent with peaceful purposes, but it does not cover basic research on disease agents and processes. The BWC was negotiated without any formal verification measures, and a six-year effort beginning in 1995 to strengthen the treaty by negotiating a Protocol to create a system of declarations and on-site inspections of relevant facilities was torpedoed by the Bush administration in 2001.
[3] Raymond A. Zilinskas, "Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence," Critical Reviews in Microbiology, vol. 25, no. 3 (1999), pp. 173-227.
[4] José de la Fuente, "Wine Into Vinegar: The Fall of Cuba's Biotechnology," Nature Biotechnology, vol. 19, no. 10 (October 11, 2001), pp. 905-907.
[5] Steven R. Weisman, "In Stricter Study, U.S. Scales Back Claim on Cuba Arms," New York Times, September 18, 2004, p. A7.
[6] Karen Young Kreeger, "Tied Up in Red Tape," The Scientist, vol. 10, no. 8 (April 15, 1996).

Jonathan B. Tucker, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher
Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies