Posted on Wed, Sep. 12, 2007
BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press
HAVANA --
Fidel Castro says that Cuba once saved the life of U.S. President Ronald
Reagan by giving American officials information about an assassination plot.
The essay published Wednesday in the Communist Party daily Granma
appeared to be Castro's first public description of the matter. It
seemed to be aimed at showing that Cuba had cooperated with the United
States in the past.
Castro wrote that a Cuban security official stationed at the United
Nations told U.S. mission security chief Robert C. Muller about an
extreme right-wing group that was planning to assassinate Reagan during
a planned trip to North Carolina in 1984.
''The information was complete: the names of those implicated in the
plan; day, time and hour where the assassination could occur; the type
of weapon the terrorists had and where they kept their arms; and along
with all that, the meeting place of those elements planning the action
as well as a brief summary of what had occurred in said meeting,''
Castro wrote.
Castro wrote that Cuban authorities learned later that the FBI had
arrested several people in North Carolina and he said that several days
after that, Muller expressed America's thanks to the Cuban official over
lunch in a U.N. dining room.
The Cuban leader also wrote that when Reagan survived an assassination
attempt in 1981, Havana formally condemned the act during a meeting with
the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba.
Castro also accused the U.S. government of misleading the public about
the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington six years ago.
''It is now known there was deliberate disinformation'' about the
attacks, the Cuban leader wrote. ``We were tricked like everybody else
on the planet.''
Castro's ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, also has promoted the
idea that that the U.S. government was somehow involved in planning the
terrorist attacks, despite wide evidence to the contrary.
Castro has not appeared in public since mid-2006, when he underwent
intestinal surgery and ceded power to his younger brother, Raúl. In late
March, he began writing occasional essays, most on international themes.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/234979.html
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