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CIA Project Nile Blue - Rain Embargo on Cuban Sugar Crops

“But the seeding near Cuba was to cause less rain, not more. It was supposed to squeeze rain out of clouds before they reached the island. You might say we tried to embargo rainclouds.” [1]
Did the CIA order weather modification to ruin the Cuban sugar crop in 1969 and 1970, or didn't it?

Lowell Ponte, former researcher for International Research and Technology Corporation, a Pentagon "think tank," says the CIA and Pentagon ordered seeding off the shores of Cuba, to "milk" rain clouds, at a time when Castro's fortunes seemingly depended on a successful harvest of sugar cane.

The CIA has categorically denied it practiced cloud seeding anywhere except in Vietnam during that time period.

Ponte says the Cuban experiment was part of "Project Nile Blue," carried on officially starting in 1970 by the Pentagon's Advanced Reseach Projects Agency (ARPA). ...

Ponte adds that "Nile Blue" was really aimed at "destabilizing" weather in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, to ruin harvests and create political unrest. [2]
Lowell Ponte claimed "...that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon cooperated in a program to seed clouds near Cuba so that they would drop their rain before reaching the island, thus causing a drought." The efforts allegedly took place "...in 1969 and 1970 in order to damage Cuba's sugar crop." (107) The US Department of Defense replied that "We have never conducted weather modification around Cuba." (108) [3]
The Nile Blue program made use of what was at the time the world's largest computer, ILLIAC IV, the construction of which had also been funded by ARPA. It would have to be considered of inestimable value if someone had decided for once to anticipate the environmental effects of a proposed very large scale man-made technological intervention. One can only hope that this is actually why the program was initiated. As already indicated, as early as 1961 a RAND report on weather modification emphasized the complexity of atmospheric processes and the interrelation of modification and prediction. Perhaps it is also of interest that the only two reports that deal with weather and climate prepared by the US Central Intelligence Agency that have been publicly released deal with similar broad considerations of weather, climate, food production,etc. (49) It is unlikely, however, that the program was quite so benign. In 1962, years before the Nile Blue Program was initiated, ARPA had contracted for a classified research project with the title Some Upper Atmosphere Aspects of Chemical Geophysical Warfare. [3]

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References

1.1.
"Another CIA plot: Cuba crops." The Harold Weisberg Archive, Beneficial-Hodson Library, Hood College. San Francisco Examiner. (June 27, 1976)
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/CIA%20Cuba%20Policy/Item%2014.pdf
2.2.
Segal, Betty. "CIA Are The Weathermen." The Harold Weisberg Archive, Beneficial-Hodson Library, Hood College.
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/CIA%20Clandestine%20Operations/Item%2042.pdf • https://archive.org/stream/nsia-CIAClandestineOperations/nsia-CIAClandestineOperations/CIA%20Clan%20Ops%2044
3.3.
Leitenberg, Milton. "Case Study 2 -- Weather Modification: The Evolution of an R&D Program into a Military Operation." Federation of American Scientists.
https://fas.org/man/eprint/leitenberg/weather.pdf
4.4.
"Ex-researcher Says US Seeded Clouds over Cuba." Geoengineering Monitor, The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida. (June 27, 1976): 14
http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/1976/06/ex-researcher-says-us-seeded-clouds-over-cuba/ • https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/132960374/
5.5.
"Weather Modification in North Vietnam and Laos (Project Popeye): Memorandum From the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Kohler) to Secretary of State Rusk." Department of State, Central Files, POL 27 VIET S. Top Secret. Drafted by Hamilton. (January 13, 1967): 274
https://1997-2001.state.gov/about_state/history/vol_xxviii/266_285.html
6.6.
deFlorez, Luis. "The Need For A Climate Control Study Program." CIA Reading Room, Declassified in Part. (November 22, 1960)
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-03425A002100020014-2.pdf
7.7.
"Interview of Gordon MacDonald by James Fleming on 1994 March 21." Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA.
http://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/32156

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