[southnews] Cuba: 1960 CIA plot to kill Castro reflects current US policy
 
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:19:20 -0500 (CDT)

 Cuba's parliament said Friday that a 47-year-old plot to assassinate 
Fidel Castro still reflects the reality of U.S. policy toward the island.

CIA documents made public this week described the agency's recruitment 
of a former FBI agent in August 1960 to use mobsters and poison pills to 
kill Castro.

"What the CIA recognizes is not old history. It is present-day reality 
and the facts show it," stated a resolution approved unanimously by 
Cuba's National Assembly.

Cuba: 1960 CIA plot to kill Castro reflects current US policy

The Associated Press
Friday, June 29, 2007

HAVANA: Communist Cuba's parliament said Friday that a 47-year-old plot 
to assassinate Fidel Castro still reflects the reality of U.S. policy 
toward the island.

CIA documents made public this week described the agency's recruitment 
of a former FBI agent in August 1960 to use mobsters and poison pills to 
kill Castro.

"What the CIA recognizes is not old history. It is present-day reality 
and the facts show it," stated a resolution approved unanimously by 
Cuba's National Assembly.

Acting President Raul Castro, seated next to the empty chair of his 
recuperating older brother Fidel, presided as the legislature passed a 
declaration that "the CIA documents reveal part of the efforts to kill 
comrade Fidel Castro and bring death and pain to our people."

"The conduct of the Bush government clearly shows its intention to keep 
employing the worst possible tactics against Cuba."

Revelations about the CIA plot were among hundreds of pages of CIA 
internal reports, known as "the family jewels," released this week.

The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited an ex-FBI 
agent to approach mobster Johnny Roselli to take part in a plot against 
Castro, who took power in January 1959.

The agency gave him six poison pills, which they tried unsuccessfully to 
have other people put in Castro's food. The plot was scrapped after the 
failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961, and 
U.S. authorities retrieved the poison pills.

U.S. law has forbidden official assassination attempts since the 
administration of Gerald Ford, and Washington denies it has attempted to 
kill Castro since then.

Still, Havana officials say there have been more than 600 documented 
attempts to kill Castro over the decades. Now 80, Cuba's "Maximum 
Leader" has not been seen in public since handing power to a provisional 
government headed by his younger brother while recovering from 
intestinal surgery last July.

In a statement published in official newspapers Friday, Castro quipped 
that divine intervention may have spared him from the U.S. attempts on 
his life.

He was sarcastically referring to Bush's statement Thursday that "one 
day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away."

"Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and those of presidents 
who ordered my assassination," Castro wrote. "The good Lord protected me."
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