On this day in 1977, the San Francisco Chronicle reported allegations that the CIA assisted anti-Castro terrorists in spreading the African Swine Fever virus in Cuba, causing the disease's first outbreak in the Western hemisphere. The allegations were first published in the New York based magazine "Newsday".

The virus's spread resulted in the slaughter of 500,000 Cuban pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic and was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.

Newsday's reporting cited an anonymous U.S. intelligence source, who claimed that he was given a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in the Panama Canal Zone, with instructions to turn it over to an anti-Castro group.

Although the allegation has never been confirmed, the account was corroborated by a Cuban exile involved in the operation, who said he was on the trawler when the virus was put aboard at a rendezvous point off Bocas del Toro, Panama.