Castro's sister: My work with CIA didn't threaten brothers' lives

Posted on Monday, 10.26.09
Castro's sister: My work with CIA didn't threaten brothers' lives
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA AND JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Juanita Castro began cooperating with the CIA in 1961 but only in
operations that did not involve attempts to assassinate brothers Fidel
and Raúl or any loss of Cuban lives, according to her book.

Released Monday, the book identifies her CIA contact as Tony Sforza, one
of the spy agency's Cuba experts and a member of the post-Bay of Pigs
U.S. campaign against the Castro government known as Operation Mongoose.
He had been in Cuba passing himself off as a gambler named Frank Stevens.

Under the code name Donna, her first task after her recruitment in
Mexico City was to return to Havana carrying food cans that contained
messages and money for the CIA's contacts on the island, according to
the book, Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers. The Secret History.

The book also claimed that Juanita Castro passed information to the U.S.
spies that Soviet missiles were being installed on the island and that
each day more and more Russians were being seen on the island. The Cuban
missile crisis exploded in October 1962. Juanita Castro spoke about her
cooperation with the CIA in an interview with Maria Antonieta Collins --
who also co-authored the book -- broadcast Sunday by the
Univisión-Noticias 23 television channel. The program said more details
would be revealed in further broadcasts this week.

In the book, Juanita Castro says she was approached on behalf of the CIA
by Virginia Leitao da Cunha, wife of the then-Brazilian ambassador in
Havana, Vasco Leitao Da Cuhna, who would later go on to serve as
Brazil's foreign minister.

The Brazilian couple had helped Fidel Castro's revolutionaries during
the fight against dictator Fulgencio Batista, and initially supported
the post-1959 government but later became critical of its turn toward
communism.

Juanita Castro's first direct contact with the CIA came just weeks after
the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by the Cuban exiles' CIA-backed Brigade
2506, when she traveled to Mexico in June 1961, according to the book.

She met the CIA man at the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City and agreed
to cooperate as long as none of her work was linked to efforts to
assassinate brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro or other operations that
could cause any deaths, Juanita and Collins revealed in the book.

At the time, the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in dozens of
plots to kill Fidel Castro, topple his government and sabotage the
island's economy. Castro has repeatedly put the total number of plots to
assassinate him at well over 600.

Juanita Castro left the island in 1964, after her brother Raúl told her
that Cuba's domestic security agencies had opened a file on her because
of her counter-revolutionary activities, according to the book. Raúl
Castro approved her exit permit to visit a sister in Mexico City, hoping
that she would return to Havana after Fidel Castro's anger over her
counter-revolutionary activities had subsided.

Instead, she publicly denounced the revolution and settled in Miami.

Castro's sister: My work with CIA didn't threaten brothers' lives -
Afternoon Update (stories) - MiamiHerald.com (26 October 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/1374/story/1300821.html