Florida Senate candidate says yes
Posted: February 2, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Klayman, running in Florida, says
he wants to see Fidel Castro overthrown because the Cuban dictator has
biological weapons and shelters international terrorists.
Klayman called Castro "a master terrorist" and a primary threat to U.S.
security.
Klayman is seeking the seat of retiring three-term U.S. Sen. Bob Graham,
a Democrat.
"It's time to remove Castro once and for all, by force if necessary,"
said Klayman, a former Justice Department attorney. "He's had free reign
for too long."
Klayman, who said last week that if elected he'd file legislation to
oust Castro, said the U.S. has stood by too long while the Cuban
dictator "tortures, maims and rapes" his own people.
"All the politicians go around talking about how bad the situation is,
but they don't do anything," Klayman said. "If we can do it for the
Iraqis, create democracy there, can't we do it for the Cubans who have
done more for this country?"
There was no comment from Havana on Klayman's comments.
The two Cuban-Americans in the Senate race, Republican Mel Martinez of
Orlando and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas support Castro's removal, but
not by force.
"I am totally for a regime change in Cuba, but we must do it by peaceful
means unless it's apparent that Castro is a more obvious threat than he
appears to be today," said Martinez, who came to the U.S. from Cuba at
15 to live with foster parents until his family was able to rejoin him.
"The notion of taking a collective military action in Cuba without any
specific evidence of imminent threats to America I would not support,"
said Penelas, who also spoke Spanish on two occasions to differentiate
himself from his Democratic opponents.
Gov. Jeb Bush later said he would not comment on suggestions the U.S.
should invade Cuba to overthrow Castro.
WorldNetDaily reported last summer that Castro cooperated with Iraq's
Saddam Hussein in an active chemical and biological weapons program. The
report originated in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an online intelligence
newsletter published by WorldNetDaily. Some intelligence analysts
believe Castro may have unleashed that program on the U.S. in the form
of West Nile Virus.
West Nile was first identified in New York City in 1999. By the end of
2002, there were 4,156 laboratory-diagnosed human cases and 284 deaths,
the largest arboviral meningo-encephalitis outbreak ever recorded in
North America, according to a report by Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.
About 85 percent of human infections occur in August and September, and
the mosquito is by far the most common route. It is, however, possible
to contract WNV through breast milk, blood contact and organ transplants.
Symptoms include stiff neck, photophobia, depressed states, altered
consciousness and personality change. Movement disorders, including
tremors, gait disturbance and Parkinsonism may occur.
While it is well-known that WNV is of Middle East origin, what is less
well-known is the New Yorker report dating back to 1999 in which Saddam
Hussein was quoted by a defector referring to "his final weapon,
developed in laboratories outside Iraq ... free of U.N. inspection, the
laboratories will develop strain SV 141 of the West Nile Virus." There
is also a report that the Centers for Disease Control actually sent WNV
samples to Iraq in 1985.
Is it possible one of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has actually
been deployed against the U.S. already?
There is increasing suspicion that one of his labs was not in Iraq at
all – but less than 50 miles from the Florida coast.
Cuban defectors say that Fidel Castro's Biological Front studied ways of
using migratory birds to spread infectious diseases to the U.S. Saddam
Hussein was also known to have close ties to Castro. And, according to
Soviet defector Ken Alibek, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and other countries
simultaneously received transfers of Soviet biotechnology.
Last year, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Cuba's biological
weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns. He told an audience
at the Heritage Foundation the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical
laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology
to Iraq, Syria and Libya – all countries that Castro visited the
previous year.
Earlier, in 1998 Clinton administration Defense Secretary William S.
Cohen wrote a letter to Armed Service Committee Chairman Sen. Strom
Thurmond, R-S.C., stating that he was "concerned about the use of Cuba
as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United
States" and "Cuba's potential to develop and produce biological agents,
given its biotechnology infrastructure."
Cohen's letter concluded by telling Thurmond that the Department of
Defense "remains vigilant to the concerns posed by Castro's Cuba."
Attached to the letter was the defense secretary's classified report,
"The Cuba Threat to U.S. National Security." The report's publicly
released summary read: "Cuba's biotechnology industry is one of the most
advanced in emerging countries and would be capable of producing
biological warfare agents."
That same year, the CIA released a report that warned of the dangers of
a biological terrorist attack on the U.S. The report explained that such
an assault, if launched by a country with sophisticated means, could go
undetected and be erroneously attributed to natural causes. The report
listed a little over a dozen smaller nations as suspected of possessing
biological weapons. Included high on the list was Cuba.
But it was a July 12, 1999, article in The New Yorker magazine by
Richard Preston, a best-selling author, that perhaps laid the groundwork
for the concerns about a Cuba-Iraq connection to West Nile.
Preston stated that the U.S. government "keeps a list of nations and
groups that it suspects either have clandestine stocks of smallpox or
seem to be trying to buy or steal the virus." That list is now known to
include Cuba.
Preston's article also laid out suspicions that the recent, and now
spreading, outbreak of West Nile Virus on the East Coast may have come
from a deliberate terrorist act and not from naturally occurring causes.
Initially, some scientists scoffed at Preston's claim, but things have
now changed.
One entomology expert who maintains an open mind on the West Nile
outbreak, Dr. Jonathan F. Day of the University of Florida, said last
year: "The sporadic appearance of WNV is disturbing, especially its
appearance in the Florida Keys. It really appears that WN has been
seeded throughout the eastern half of the United States. I guess the
question is, by whom?"
Day continued, "The Florida and East Coast situations relative to human
cases are remarkable. In some places, Atlanta, the Florida Keys, WNV
appeared in humans without any other indication that the virus was
present. In some cases, humans are acting as sentinels for the sentinel
(animal carriers). This is unlike any other mosquito-borne virus in
North America."
Dr. Manuel Cereijo, a professor at Florida International University,
wrote in an October 1997 paper, titled "Castro: A Threat to the Security
of the United States": "To conduct a bacteriological attack, a country
or a terrorist group does not need to have any sophisticated means of
delivery, such as a missile. A container the size of a five-pound sugar
bag can bring bacteriological materials capable of causing over 50,000
casualties in an urban area, depending on the flow of air and
atmospheric conditions."
In the same paper, Dr. Cereijo states, "Many Cuban engineers and
scientists have been trained by former East Germany, the Soviet Union,
North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam and China."
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