With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff .
NewsMax.com. Monday, July 2, 2001 9:11
a.m. EDT
Fidel Castro is grooming 7-year-old Elian Gonzalez to be his successor, says
one prominent American official who visited with the murderous Cuban dictator
and listened to him obsess over the one-time refugee boat boy.
"Castro is always going to make sure the kid gets whatever he needs to
advance himself," said Oakland mayor and former California governor Jerry
Brown. "I think he's grooming Elian to be his successor."
Brown tells Talk magazine that he met with Castro last year, just after the
Clinton administration snatched Gonzalez from his American home at gunpoint and
returned him to Cuba.
"Come out to Santa Clara and take a look. I'd like you to ... meet
Elian and his father," Brown says Castro told him.
Brown was favorably impressed by what he saw, according to excerpts of the
TM interview that appeared in Monday's New York Daily News.
"So I drove out there," he recalled. "Elian was playing
outside with his cousin."
Later, during a dinner the former California governor shared with the family
and Castro, Elian's father Juan Miguel was "quiet."
But Fidel seemed "very focused on Elian," Brown said.
"There was a lot of conversation about Elian and what this meant in
America and shifting public opinion against the Miami critics. He feels good; it
almost feels [to him] like [Elian] was providential, and he ... sees him as a
remarkable little boy."
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