Operations Mongoose? 🐇🐰

It’s truly sad what our government has been doing for decades! And I am one of their casualties. 😮‍💨

I’ve run across this story several times. Always coming up when doing investigative work on Lyme Disease 🦠.

So I plugged it into Grok. I don’t know if we will ever have definitive answers but most conspiracy theories, seem to ring a lot of truth!

The story 👇🏻😰

The claim about poisoned ticks being dropped on Cuban sugarcane workers in 1962 appears to stem from allegations tied to Operation Mongoose, a covert CIA program aimed at destabilizing Fidel Castro’s regime following the Cuban Revolution. However, there is no definitive, well-documented evidence in the historical record to confirm that this specific event—air-dropping poisoned or infected ticks onto Cuban sugarcane workers—occurred as described. Let’s break down what we know, what’s speculated, and where the gaps lie.

Operation Mongoose, officially launched in November 1961 under the Kennedy administration, was a multifaceted campaign of sabotage, propaganda, and paramilitary actions intended to undermine Castro’s government. Declassified documents show it included plans to disrupt Cuba’s economy, which heavily relied on sugar production, through measures like contaminating sugar shipments or inciting labor unrest. The operation was overseen by figures like Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and involved CIA operatives working alongside Cuban exiles. Some of the more outlandish proposals included bizarre assassination plots—like exploding cigars or poisoned wetsuits—but these were either never executed or remain unproven.

The poisoned ticks story seems to emerge from a blend of conspiracy theories, anecdotal accounts, and broader discussions about biological warfare. Posts on X and some secondary sources, like interviews with researchers or former operatives, allege that in 1962, a CIA black ops agent claimed to have dropped ticks laced with pathogens (possibly linked to Lyme disease or other illnesses) on Cuban sugarcane workers to sicken them and disrupt production. The idea is that this would have been a low-cost, deniable way to weaken Cuba’s labor force and economy—supposedly killing thousands for a mere $1.33 per life, as one X post dramatically asserts. However, these claims often lack primary source backing, such as CIA memos, eyewitness testimony, or Cuban government records from the time.

Historically, Cuba’s sugar industry was indeed a prime target in 1962. That year, Industrial Minister Ernesto “Che” Guevara publicly acknowledged a poor sugar harvest, though he attributed it to internal inefficiencies rather than external sabotage. The industry was already strained by the shift toward industrialization and the U.S. trade embargo imposed in 1960, which cut off Cuba’s main sugar market. Could biological sabotage have played a role? It’s not impossible. The U.S. had explored biological agents during the Cold War—Fort Detrick, Maryland, was a hub for such research, including weaponizing insects like mosquitoes and ticks. Declassified records from the 1950s and 60s show experiments with ticks as vectors for diseases like tularemia or Q fever, though these were aimed at livestock or enemy troops, not specifically Cuban workers.

On the Cuban side, there’s little to corroborate the tick story. No official reports from 1962 mention a sudden epidemic among sugarcane workers tied to ticks or unusual illness patterns beyond typical labor-related ailments. Ticks are present in Cuba—species like Amblyomma mixtum are known to bite humans and animals—but studies of tick-borne diseases there, like a 2018 paper on equine piroplasmosis, don’t hint at a 1962 anomaly. If a mass poisoning occurred, one might expect Cuban propaganda to seize on it as evidence of U.S. aggression, yet no such outcry appears in the historical record.

The narrative may have been amplified by later speculation about Lyme disease’s origins. Some, like researcher Kris Newby, have suggested (without conclusive proof) that ticks weaponized at Fort Detrick accidentally or deliberately spread Lyme disease, with Cuba as a possible testing ground during Mongoose. This theory gained traction in fringe circles but is dismissed by mainstream scientists, who trace Lyme’s natural emergence to Borrelia burgdorferi in North America, not a Cuban bioweapon plot.

So, what’s the verdict? The poisoned ticks tale is intriguing but shaky. Operation Mongoose’s documented sabotage—like burning cane fields or contaminating fuel—didn’t require exotic bioweapons to hurt Cuba’s sugar output. The tick-dropping story could be a distorted memory from a retired operative, a misunderstanding of broader biowarfare experiments, or an outright fabrication that snowballed online. Without declassified files or Cuban health data from 1962 showing a spike in tick-related illnesses, it remains an unverified anecdote—fascinating, but not fact. If you’re digging deeper, I’d suggest looking into Mongoose’s declassified archives or Cuban agricultural records from that year for any subtle clues. What do you think—does it sound plausible, or too wild to be true?