Castro blasts CIA over spy papers
Campaign News | Sunday, 1 July 2007
Cuban President Fidel Castro has said recent CIA admissions of illicit Cold War activities disguise the fact the US is using such "brutal" tactics today.
Last week the CIA published documents called the "Family Jewels", revealing spy plots and assassination attempts.
The documents included plans to use Mafia help to kill Fidel Castro.
Mr Castro, still recovering after surgery last year, said in the official media the US was trying to pretend the tactics belonged to another era.
"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States," President Castro wrote.
In an editorial called the Killing Machine, he wrote: "Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction."
Lee Harvey Oswald
One of the key revelations of the documents was that the CIA tried to persuade mobster Johnny Roselli in 1960 to plot the assassination of the Cuban leader.
The plan was for poisoned pills to be put in Mr Castro's food, but it was shelved after the US-sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs failed a year later.
Mr Castro has long accused the US, including President George W Bush, of plotting to kill him.
In his editorial, Mr Castro also refers to the assassination of John F Kennedy, saying the US president was the victim of the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
Mr Castro says Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in killing the president.
"You lose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second," Mr Castro, himself an expert marksman, says.
Mr Castro underwent intestinal surgery in July last year but in recent weeks his writings have been appearing more frequently.
The abuses and illicit activities listed in the CIA report date from the 1950s to the 1970s.
On Friday Cuba's parliament passed a resolution stating that: "What the CIA recognises is not old history. It is present-day reality and the facts show it."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6259738.stm
