Castro:
Cuba provided info that saved Ronald Reagan
from assassination in 1984
By Anita Snow.
HAVANA, 12 sep (AP) - Cuba once saved the
life of U.S. President Ronald Reagan by
giving American officials information about
an assassination plot, President Fidel Castro
wrote in an essay published Wednesday.
The essay, in the Communist party newspaper
Granma, appeared to be Castro's first public
description of the matter.
Castro wrote that a Cuban security official
stationed at the United Nations told U.S.
mission security chief Robert 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. Several days after
that, Muller expressed America's thanks
to the Cuban official over lunch in a UN
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 friend, Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, has also promoted the idea that
U.S. government officials were involved
in planning the terrorist attacks against
their own country.
Conspiracy theorists have suggested New
York's World Trade Center was brought down
with explosives after hijacked airplanes
crashed into them in 2001 and that the Pentagon
in Washington was struck by a missile, not
a jetliner.
Castro has not appeared in public since
mid-2006, when he underwent intestinal surgery
and ceded power to his younger brother Raul.
In late March, he began writing occasional
essays, most on international themes.
Clarification: Cuba-Castro-Reagan
Story
In a Sept. 12 story,
The Associated Press reported about Fidel
Castro's claim in a newspaper essay that
Cuba had saved President Ronald Reagan's
life in 1984 by alerting U.S. officials
to an assassination plot. The AP story said
it appeared to be the first time Cuba made
the claim. Subsequent research showed Castro
had mentioned the episode in a 1989 speech
to Cuba's Council of State, without providing
details.
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