[net.bizarre] Why tab "A" won't fit into slot "B"

nrh@inmet.UUCP (08/01/85)

I'm reading "Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World", by 
Jonathan Kwitny.  In it, he recounts the following story in a list
of things that the US government has done to Cuba:

	A CIA team entered a warehouse in Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1966 and
	sabotaged a mechanical sugar cane harvester on its way to Cuba.
	The $45,000 machine, which could do the work of 300 men, had
	been built in Thibodaux, Louisiana.  A man bought it there for
	shipment to Mexico, not revealing that he was a Cuban agent, or
	that the machine would be transshipped to Cuba to evade the U.S.
	trade embargo.  The CIA learned of the deal, and intimidated the
	Thibodaux factory manager into letting operatives take apart an
	identical machine and copy the operating manuals.

	With what they learned in Thibodaux, the CIA team was able to go
	to Vera Cruz, reverse all the gears on the machine, and
	substitute forged operating manuals for the real ones, to insure
	that any attempts to get the machine to work would be futile.
	When the machine reached Cuba, the Cubans--unable to buy
	machines in the U.S.--sent it as a prototype to the Soviet Union
	where twenty-six copies were reproduced, and shipped back to
	Cuba; none of them worked.  All this infuriated Edward Lamb, of
	Toledo, Ohio, who owned the Thibodaux factory.  A believer in
	free trade, Lamb figured the embargo had just cost $2 million in
	sales of his harvester.  He traveled to Cuba and the Soviet
	Union to piece together the above story.