Cuba provided info that saved Ronald Reagan from assassination in 1984: Castro

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Cuba provided info that saved Ronald Reagan from assassination in 1984: Castro
2 hours ago

HAVANA (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.



Read more: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iOQ_hzqdYotH29rL7428k3cWU_2w

[shain from kane]

1. His astrologer told him not to travel that day, so there was no danger. n/t

[Bacchus39]

2. yet another reason to dislike Castro

n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. snarf

[Judi Lynn]

4. What was he thinking?

[PATRICK]

5. Keep Bush out

He knew where his real security threats lay and also quid pro quo or eliminating Cuban extremists? How else did he get that information unless he had an infiltrator or source that might even be linked back to him AFTER a successful assassination. All in all he had every reason to share besides being in his specific best interests to thwart as many assassins as possible.

The RW likes to get all warm and fuzzy about its friends and heros. The response here will liely be strong denial.

[Mika]

7. Yep. Castro didn't want Cuba (or himself) to take the fall for it.

They tried to pin the JFK assassination on Cuba.

Then, there's Operation Northwoods { http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662 } where the pentagon planned attacks and assassinations within the US and upon US interests with the intent being to blame Cuban agents as a premise to attack Cuba again.

Identifying the assassins intending on killing Saint Ronnie Reagan was out of national preservation interests.

===

Operation Northwoods
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

[Judi Lynn]

9. It's a shame the radical reactionaries in Miami don't really GRASP the fact

the Joint Chiefs were absolutely fine with the idea of using a number of Cubans as sacrifices in order to stoke the fires for an invasion, claiming Cuba was blowing up boats of Cubans trying to get to "freeeedom" in Miami!

Of course, it has never bothered them too much to worry about the people they have harmed in their own raids on the island, either, has it?

Sheesh.

~~~~ click for photo ~~~~

Rodolfo Frometa, Commandos F-4
"counter-terrorist" from Miami
formerly "Alpha 66"

Born in 1945 in Cuba.

His personal record, dedicated to crime and terrorism against Cuba, doesn't differ from that of other terrorists. Add to this a few other attributes, deceit, ambition, treachery and cowardliness.

Frometa left the country illegally in 1968 when he was 23 years old. He jumped the fence that borders the illegally occupied territory of the Guantanamo Naval Base. Some years earlier, terrorist Jose Basulto Leon had done the same, remaining at the Base for only one day, after which he was transferred to the United States on board a military airplane together with other Cubans there.

He spent four days in the city of Miami and then went to New York, where six months later, still in 1969, he was recruited by a leader of the terrorist organization Alpha-66 in a restaurant on 180 Street. That same day he signed an agreement committing himself to participate in military training with Alpha-66 and to infiltrate Cuba.

By mid 1969 he moved to Miami to the "Los Indios" training camp in the Everglades to the south of Miami. During 45 days he was trained in armaments, explosives and irregular warfare at the Alpha-66 camp. During this background on Frometa, it’s opportune to point out some important data on the nature of the terrorist organization Alpha-66.

Alpha-66 was created in 1962. From its inception Alpha 66 classified as an "autonomous operation of the CIA,” known, since its inception, for its terrorist acts against Cuba.

Among its various criminal activities, which have been openly denounced several times, are the 1960s murder of 2 fishermen and a coastguard officer; pirate attacks on Cuban vessels and coastal economic facilities including a May 19, 1963 machine gun shooting at a boarding school in Tarara, to the east of Havana. The perpetrators of these acts were never prosecuted in the USA, despite having openly claimed responsibility for such criminal acts.

Assassination plots against president Fidel Castro; pirate attacks on fishing boats and the three attacks in recent years against the Cayo Coco Guitart Hotel.

Between 1992 and 1993 there were repeated bomb threats against Cuban diplomatic missions in Mexico, U.S., Ecuador, Brazil, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Alpha-66 set six counter-revolution armed terrorist groups, usually made up by the dregs of society, people who have been pushed to carry out suicidal acts of propaganda, while the main leaders hide in a farm in the outskirts of Miami spending the money collected in fund raisers living it up. During Elian Gonzalez’ kidnapping in the U.S., Nazario Sargen, head of Alpha-66 from 1968 onwards and some of his followers participated in counter-revolutionary demonstrationss in front of the Cuban diplomatic headquarters in Washington and in front of the Cuban mission in New York playing an active role in the surveillance of the house in "Little Havana" where Elian was kept.

On February 17, 2001 the counterrevolutionary Elizardo San Pedro Marin was arrested in Cuba for carrying out threats against the Mexican ambassador in Cuba and against some press agencies following instructions of Alpha-66 and its so-called representative in Canada, Antonio Tang Baez.

Some consider that Alpha-66 is also related to organized crime, given the criminal nature of its main leader including Nazario Sargen, and their links to drug trafficking. One of its members openly admitted on Channel 51 in Miami to having participated in operations of this sort saying that in February 1995 members of the organization had been on the Andros Islands to smuggle drugs into Florida.

These are but a few examples of the crimes in which this organization has been involved. Alpha-66 remains a very dangerous organization which counts on the support of the terrorist Mafia in Miami and on the complicity of the US authorities.
(snip/...)

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:YorNmFWysXwJ:www.terrorfileonline.org/en/index.php/Rodolfo_Frometa_Caballero+Rodolfo+Frometa&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

[Wilms]

10. Good 'Ol Operation Northwoods...Blue Print for Plane Swapping and 9/11

No. No! Americans would never kill Americans. Noooo.

:sarcasm:

[Bacchus39]

11. Gospel according to Fidel

n/t

[Demeter]

13. Castro Must Really Hate the US

On the other hand, it would have given Bush Sr. carte blanche, if Reagan had been eliminated.

Maybe he did the best for us that was possible at the time....

My head hurts.

[bemildred]

6. No good deed goes unpunished. nt

[Octafish]

8. 'Extreme right-wing group.' Heh heh heh.

More friends of Neil's, I'm sure.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Clarification: Cuba-Castro-Reagan story (AP)

Clarification: Cuba-Castro-Reagan story
Posted on Fri, Sep. 14, 2007
The Associated Press

HAVANA -- 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.

http://www.miamiherald.com/915/story/237714.html

[Judi Lynn]

14. Photo of Cuban doctors with backpacks filled with medicine, waiting to come to the U.S. to help

victims of Hurricane Katrina.



9 / 16
Havana: Doctors with backpacks loaded with medicines meet in the Karl Marx theatre, ready
to be dispatched to assist survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Cuba's offer to send physicians to
the US to help in the relief went unanswered by Washington, Photograph: Jorge Rey/AP

From an article, First world results on a third world budget
According to Michael Moore's latest film Sicko, Cuba's medical care puts America's to shame. Rory Carroll investigates
Wednesday September 12, 2007
The Guardian

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2167459,00.html