



Sibel Edmonds speaks with the former CIA operative, Verne Lyon, who was involved in Operation Chaos, in addition to covert operations in Cuba. Lyon gives details about one of CIA's numerous sabotage strategies, which was actually to make milk in Cuban schools undrinkable!





As Lyon explains:





After the October crisis - October of 1962 - President Kennedy pulled off a naval blockade around Cuba and told the Soviets to remove their nuclear weapons that could attack the United States. And in exchange, he said he would remove our missiles from Turkey and we would never again invade Cuba like we did in 1961 at the bay of pigs.





Since the CIA could no longer operate and implement an invasion program to retake the island, their objectives and their goals then turn to causing dissension in the island.





There were rotating blackouts for three hours a day. They were scheduled. In fact, on the radio, every morning in Habana, they would say that the lights would go out in Vedado between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. and in another area between 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. This was a constant thing.





There were food shortages, there were clothing shortages, there were transportation shortages, there was a shortage of everything. And the Cuban people were still dedicated to the Revolution. They actually believed things were going to get better. So, the CIA's task then was to convince the average Cuban that they should demand a change in the style of government, otherwise they would slowly starve to death. Make the average Cuban worker frustrated. Make him so frustrated that when he came home at night, his house was dark, there was no cooking gas to cook supper. His children couldn't get milk.





All the milk was diverted to the schools in the countryside, so families would give up their children and send them to these schools in the country. And maybe the kids could come home one weekend a month. So, the state was removing the children from parental guidance and care and upbringing. Anything the CIA could do, like bringing a swine food to kill half a million pigs on the island. And you got to remember, the Cuban diet consists of pork, rice and beans. So when you eliminate the pork they're left with rice and beans and a fried egg, or glass of sugar water for breakfast in the morning. That's not much.





In the secondary schools, the milk supply for the week was delivered one day a week in a big tank truck. An agent who worked for me said that he knew a truck driver who delivered milk to a particular secondary school in the country. And that he knew what day the milk would be delivered. And he thought what could we do to sabotage the milk, make it undrinkable. Not poisoned, but undrinkable. And it was decided that cement powder would be poured into the tanker truck.





He also knew where this truck driver stopped to have breakfast - a piece of bread and a cup of thick, sweet Cuban coffee. And it would take him maybe twenty minutes, maybe half an hour to do that, which gave the operatives time to go dump two, or three bags of cement powder into this tanker truck of milk.





When he got to the school and they unloaded it, I guess the instructors at the school noticed that the milk had a funny consistency to it. And when they tested that, I don't think they ever really decided exactly what it was, but they knew it was undrinkable, unpalatable. So, the children in that school didn't have any milk for a week.





There was that kind of thing that the agency did. You know, it wasn't to win hearts and minds and make friends. It was to increase the frustration level of the parents of those children. This thing 'we give you our children and you can't even feed them'. So, anything that would make the Cuban angry at his job, angry at his government angry at the system.



