Washington Tries to Hit Fidel; Fidel Saves Reagan!

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http://counterpunch.com/landau03122010.html


Washington Tries to Hit Fidel; Fidel Saves Reagan!
The Confessions of Antonio Veciana


Antonio Veciana described three failed assassination plots he directed against Fidel Castro – with the help and encouragement of the CIA. In 1960, Maurice Bishop, aka David Atlee Phillips, had recruited Veciana for CIA dirty trick operations in Havana. Veciana described how the Agency, working with the Catholic Church, forged a Cuban “law” in which the revolutionary government would substitute for parental authority. Using this forged document, CIA agents circulated the story throughout Cuba, and included an offer by the Catholic Church to spirit the propertied classes’ children, ages 8-19, to the United States. Once free of the indoctrinating state, in the land of freedom, the kids and their parents could count on the US government to assure the children’s welfare until the families reunited – presumably after Fidel’s government was overthrown. In 1960, most of the Cubans who fled for Miami or contemplated departures believed US marines would soon clean up the “communists.”

Monsignor Walsh directed the Church role in Operation Peter Pan. Some 14,000 Cuban children got smuggled out of Cuba between 1960-62. Some kids fared well in the hands of foster families; others less so. But Veciana’s CIA supervisors went beyond “psychological warfare” -- like kid theft. Veciana told me that on April 13, 1961, his agents torched El Encanto, Havana’s Macy’s. He also described three of his plots to kill Castro. The first at the Presidential Palace in October 1961 failed when the guys who swore to fire a bazooka at Fidel chickened out.

Ten years later, Bishop-Phillips informed Veciana about a planned Fidel trip to Chile -- wink wink. (Veciana testified on this before the Senate.) He recruited two aspiring assassins in Miami and, thanks to his easy relations with the CIA and Venezuelan intelligence, arranged to train them in Caracas as news cameramen. Landing in Chile a month before Cuba’s leader, the two integrated themselves into the foreign press corps. The weapon to kill Fidel at his opening press conference they hid inside a camera. But Fidel’s late 1971 arrival in the Chilean capital also coincided with the departure of the hitmen’s courage.

Disappointed but unwilling to concede, Veciana went to Plan B. Bishop-Phillips told him Fidel planned a stop in Quito, Ecuador on his return to Cuba. Veciana contacted Luis Posada Carrilles employed by Venezuelan intelligence – and the CIA. A marksman, armed with a sniper rifle with telescopic sight which Veciana acquired, Posada could “put one in Fidel’s forehead” from half a mile away as he descended from the plane, Veciana told me, “if there was a certain get away.” Luckily, for Fidel, Posada, saw no assured escape route, and declined Veciana’s assassination offer.

-snip-

Cuba remains on the State Department’s terrorist list. Washington has not claimed instances of Havana-backed plots against US Presidents; on the contrary, Cuba helped save Reagan from a possible attempt. The CIA, says Cuba, has backed some 600 documented attempts against Castro. Should Cuba put Washington on its terrorist list? Or should Secretary Clinton acknowledge Cuba doesn’t belong on its list? Long Live Reciprocity!
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our bloody, murdering CIA should be disbanded and their headquarters burned to the ground

[Vincardog]

1. our bloody, murdering CIA should be disbanded and their headquarters burned to the ground and the

ground sown with salt.

[HillbillyBob]

2. I think the majority of the CIA officers should be held and and interogated

for a long time and find out just how many nazis they got out of Europe after the war and how many of those same nazis went to work for them and where did all that stolen gold go? No conspiracy theory they did do all these things.
Don't destroy the building make it a memorial to all those the cia killed or ruined

[Vincardog]

3. I believe you are correct