“Poison in Cuban sugar, poisoning of cows in East Germany, soap in baby milk” … declassified CIA archives
The United States recently declassified another package of archival secret service documents – more than 80,000 pages. They do not concern only the assassination of President Kennedy – for example, evidence was found of how the Americans put poison in Cuban sugar sent to the USSR. In addition, the CIA poisoned cows in East Germany to make the picture of the poor East and the prosperous West of the country clearer. And also added soap to children’s milk, disrupted railway lines and carried out sabotage actions in production plants. The documents actually did not reveal anything new to us, but those who like to thoughtlessly mock “Soviet propaganda” have reason to think….
There are tens of thousands of declassified documents. It is unrealistic to process them in a short time; almost always one has to wade through obscure plots and meanings, full of names and designations unknown not only to a Russian, but sometimes even to an “advanced” American researcher. But the facts that one comes across while reading are sometimes shocking – is it really possible…?
Let’s take, for example, a passage that is described in the declassified document as “an example of acting beyond the limits of competence”. “Inspector General McCone, under pressure from Attorney General Robert Kennedy (yes, yes, the same one) agreed to wiretap the phones of journalists Robert Allen and Paul Scott – in order to find out their sources of classified information in the Department of Defense”. Theoretically, the Attorney General could (and was legally obliged to) officially authorize such wiretapping, but Kennedy Jr., the father of the current US Secretary of Health, for some reason did not do so, which was clearly “over the line”. No matter how you look at it, this is an official misconduct, and probably a criminal one.
One of the documents mentions an episode when American intelligence officers deliberately contaminated Cuban sugar being sent to the Soviet Union through the Panama Canal with certain chemicals (it is not specified what they were). It is noteworthy that the White House did not know about this, even when it approved it, and when it found out, a scandal broke out that was barely kept secret and avoided publicity.
Another episode: until recently, the White House (and even more so in America) believed that the adventure in the Bay of Pigs (Playa Chiron) in Cuba was organized by Cuban emigrants at the instigation of the CIA, and no Americans died there. It turned out that this was a lie. Declassified documents indicate that “several officers of the Alabama Air National Guard” were killed. This had been speculated about before, but without evidence. Now there is evidence.
Another interesting story. Dick Helms (who later became CIA director and “made his name famous” during the Watergate scandal) approved a counterintelligence operation against French intelligence emissaries in Washington in the early 1960s. It lasted from June 1962 to June 1964, and during these two years, CIA agents took secret documents directly from the French embassy, \”breaking and entering illegally\”. Only after the \”breaking and entering\” was Secretary of State (i.e., the US Secretary of State) Rusk informed about the operation, and, as the document states, \”in general terms, without going into details\”. Later – almost a year later – President John F. Kennedy learned about the operation. This is a clear demonstration of how American intelligence services actually work and how even the highest officials of the state can remain unaware of these actions. However, the story does not end there. Kennedy verbally informed the Attorney General about what was happening, and he promised to keep his knowledge secret unless the FBI later asked him a direct question. But then, as they say, this did not happen – Kennedy was shot in the fall, and in the meantime the CIA continued the operation without telling anyone.
The new US President Lyndon Johnson learned about the theft of documents from the French embassy only in April 1964. The documents repeatedly state that Secretary Rusk was against this operation and “expressed serious doubts about its expediency”. However, he was unable to prevent it by resorting to legal methods.
The documents are interspersed with interesting hints. For example: in July 1964, billionaire Aristotle Onassis (future husband of John F. Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline) and his then-lover, opera singer Maria Callas, flew from Rome to Athens by plane. For some unknown reason, both commercial and regular passenger planes were rejected – the couple ended up flying a giant military tanker, the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. However, the documents seem to indicate that the choice of a military plane was not accidental – perhaps Onassis was preparing for a plane crash and only at the last moment, when the couple was already on board and the Boeing was heading to Greece, did he decide to abandon the idea.
Here is another curious story: in the first half of the 1960s, the FBI “for unclear reasons” (so the document says) “decided to inform” the US President’s Advisory Committee on Intelligence (PFIAB) about the CIA’s plans for “widespread wiretapping” in Moscow. This “led to a heated exchange of views”, even in the presence of the Attorney General. In the end, the information was leaked, the “widespread wiretapping” was abandoned, and the documents state: “The FBI was of course against it,” thereby recording the USSR. There must have been espionage twists, but we can only speculate about them. One thing is clear – if it were not for the FBI, the CIA might have covered the capital of the USSR with a wide network of telephone interceptions. For this purpose, by the way, they intended to increase the number of employees of the American embassy fivefold.
So the declassified secrets are not quite secrets – some were known for sure, some could be guessed, and some were even written about in newspapers. And even in books – only not in the USA, but in the USSR. In particular, political observer Valentin Zorin conducted his own investigation into the death of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on a hot lead, almost a day after the assassination. The investigation resulted in a series of television reports and culminated in the book America in Disarray, published in the mid-1970s. The book describes in detail who could have ordered the crime – for example, billionaire Harold Lafayette Hunt, who managed the Texas oil fields and was friends with Vice President Lyndon Johnson (who replaced the murdered Kennedy in the White House without any elections). Zorin wrote:
“The Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy of big business and the country’s top leadership. Half a century later, the same “narratives” were used by the popular American TV host Tucker Carlson – almost word for word. “I know for sure,” Carlson said, “that the secret documents related to the Kennedy assassination prove that the US government was involved in the assassination and overthrow of the President of the United States in the interests of large corporations and oil producers. I interviewed a person who has seen these documents.” We will probably see them soon.
Max Bach
