Operation Mongoose 1962

When the CIA air-dropped infected ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers.

A tall, flat-topped, big-eared Texan in his mid-twenties started nodding off as he sat against the hull of a Fairchild C-123, a two-engine, propeller-driven transport aircraft. The ragtag crew was flying at night, almost skimming the surface of the Caribbean to avoid Cuban radar. This CIA-military project was headed up by Brigadier General Lansdale and the crew was “sheep dipped,” given false identities that couldn’t be traced back to the U.S. government. The Texan was the new guy, recruited by the CIA right out of college because of his aptitude in learning new languages. He was promised adventure.

The copilot leaned out of the dimly-lit cockpit and told the Texan, “We’re getting close.” Both pilots were dressed in uniforms adorned with a winged, red-white-and-blue Air America shield — the emblem of the sham airline run by the CIA for covert operations.

He moved two unmarked cardboard boxes up near the cabin door to the left of the cockpit. He didn’t know what was inside, only that he was supposed to dump its contents when the pilots told him to.

“It’s time,” said the pilot.

The door opened with a blast of air, and he saw lush vegetation below. He ripped open the first box and yelled: “What the f*ck!” It was crawling with thousands of ticks. In haste, he dumped out the contents of both, threw out the boxes, and slammed the door.

The motto of Air America, an airline secretly owned by the CIA, was “Anything, Anywhere, Anytime, Professionally”… including ticks.

The Texan returned to his wife and firstborn, a four-month-old son, shortly after the tick drop and a ground-based mission in Cuba. A few days later, his son came down with a mild fever. The parents erred on the side of caution and took him to the pediatrician, who said it was probably the flu, and told them to give the infant aspirin and plenty of fluids.

But his son’s fever kept rising, and when it hit 105°F, they couldn’t wake the baby. So, they rushed to a hospital emergency room and handed their limp-rag-doll infant to a triage nurse. When the child stopped breathing, the medical team performed an emergency tracheotomy, puncturing a hole in the front of his neck and snaking a breathing tube down his windpipe.

Back in the waiting room, a physician said to the parents, “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your son has a serious inflammatory brain disease. We don’t know what caused it, but even if he recovers, he’ll most likely have permanent brain damage.”

Now the only thing the Texan and his wife could do was wait. Teams of doctors filed past their son each day, looking at his chart, scratching their heads. They began mentally preparing for the worst, when a young resident with a Spanish surname approached and said, “I used to work in a tropical medicine clinic in Cuba and I’ve seen this disease before. I know how to treat it.”

The disease was bug-borne and had a long, hard-to-remember name. The baby recovered fully.

Later the Texan asked his CIA operations commander if the illness could be related to his Cuban mission, code-named Operation Mongoose, Subproject 33b.

The commander replied, “I can’t give you any details, but you really need to burn all the clothes you took to Cuba. Burn everything.”

Later he was told that future drops were cancelled because Cuba’s shifting winds made accurate payload delivery difficult.

“No time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared,” said Robert Kennedy, in a January 19, 1962, meeting as they discussed the long list of ideas for the Cuba Project. This program was directed by the U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy to “get rid of Castro and the Castro regime.” It began in late 1961 and ran through the Cuban missile crisis in late 1962.

Mongoose projects were known to very few people and were rarely written down. The preliminary list included plots to weaken the Cuban economy and to assassinate Fidel Castro. Fort Detrick’s Special Operations Division worked on many of the gadgets that supported these plots, such as cigars poisoned with botulinum toxin, a scuba-diving suit sprayed with the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, a booby-trapped conch shell placed on the sea floor, and an exploding cigar.

On March 13, the Defense Department provided a status report to Brigadier General Lansdale and the Special Group (Augmented) on “The Cuba Project,” later renamed “Operation Mongoose.” A status report on what appears to be the tick drop, which provided only the barest of details, said:

“Task 33b – Plan for Incapacitation of Sugar Workers – completed 2 February. Task as assigned was to develop a plan for incapacitating large sections of the sugar workers by the covert use of BW or CW agents. Study revealed the idea was infeasible and it was cancelled.”

***

Kris Newby is an award-winning medical science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN. Her book BITTEN: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons won three international book awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. Previously, Newby worked for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies.

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IMAGES

Illustration: Kris Newby; Source photo: General Edward Lansdale, leader of Operation Mongoose, a covert effort to topple the government of Cuba (Wikipedia).

Air America photo: https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbird-articles/air-america-anything-anywhere-anytime-professionally.html

CITATIONS

“consider non-lethal BW, insect-borne”: The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, Case#: NW 54214, CoID: 32424914, Released 09-13-2017, NARA-CP, https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk

The Texan’s story: Four interviews from 2010 to 2018 with an anonymous CIA covert operative.

“the crew was “sheep dipped”: The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, Case#: NW 54214, Record No. 178-10003-10318, 10, Released 09-13-2017, NARA-CP, https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk

“No time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared”: Legacy of Ashes, 212.

“directed by the U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy”: CIA Mongoose case officer Samuel Halpern, Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in their Own Words, 123.

“rarely written down”: CIA officer Ray S. Cline, Ibid, 123.

“assassinate Fidel Castro”: Misc. records of the Church Committee, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, Case#: NW 50955, DocID: 32423539, 27, 30, 510, NARA-CP, https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk

“inventions came out of Fort Detrick’s Special Operations Division”: CIA activities at Fort Detrick, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005444835.pdf. Accessed on Dec. 13, 2018.