Did the CIA, under the Nixon administration, deliberately infect Cuba with the swine flu virus?

too bad he didn’t

that would be pretty sad.

I would believe lots of things about Nixon, but that one is pretty far-fetched. Anything that might have been done against Castro would have gone through the expatriate community, most of whom still had family on the island. I’ve heard of numerous botched plots to kill Castro during the Nixon years and beyond, but not with a flu virus.

Believe it or not, I believe it. I’m not sure I believe that Nixon would explicitly authorize it. These were the years when the CIA was acting pretty much on its own against what the U.S. saw as the near-unstoppable onslaught of Communism, “taking the gloves off” in a way that we’ve begun to see again. I’d say it’s 50/50… the CIA put out a lot of crazy-ass plans during the Cold War that never got off the ground, and sponsored a lot of groups that went off on their own and did more crazy shit. This was done, arguably, with the best of intentions. Bottom line, though, I doubt the President (even Nixon), or anybody high-ranking in the intelligence community would knowingly unleash a plague on an innocent population.