by Fidel Castro Ruz*
14 SEPTEMBER 2007
From
La Havane (Cuba)
On the 6th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, the Cuban television has broadcast a Venezuelan documentary about Thierry Meyssan’s work. During the following debate, a message from President Fidel Castro was read to the audience. As Hugo Chavez had done the year before, he points the incoherencies of the Bushians’ story around the events. Furthermore, explaining how a U.S. lobby had attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, he explains how such crimes and lies are rife within the Empire. Fidel Castro Ruz is the fifth current head of state to take this stand.
It was Reagan who created the Cuban American National Foundation, whose sinister involvement in the blockade and in terrorist actions against Cuba would be revealed years later, when the United States declassified secret documents, albeit full of information that had been shamefully crossed out. Had these documents come to light earlier, our conduct would not have been different.
When, on March 30, 1981, we received news in Cuba that Reagan had been shot with a low-caliber weapon in an assassination attempt, we sent him a message condemning the act. The 22-caliber lead bullet lodged in one of his lungs was causing him pain and putting his life at risk. The message is contained in the conversation that, following precise instructions, our then minister of foreign affairs, Isidoro Malmierca, had with Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in Havana.
What follow are excerpts, quoted verbatim, of the conversation between the two:
ISIDORO MALMIERCA: We summoned you to this meeting on the express request of President Fidel Castro. He asked me to begin by expressing our appreciation for the information on the assassination attempt on President Reagan that you provided us with through director Joaquín Más. On behalf of President Fidel Castro, we also wish to express how deeply we regret this event and our sincere hope that President Reagan will recover from this attack as quickly as possible.
“WAYNE SMITH: Thank you, very much.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: We have been receiving information about the medical attention the President is receiving. Initially, you had also received information that the consequences of the attack did not appear to be that severe, but it seems the situation is more complicated and he is undergoing surgery.
“WAYNE SMITH: Yes. Our impression is that he has been operated on already, but over the radio they are now saying that the operation is to begin now. It is likely to be over in, say, an hour. A 3-hour surgery, I mean, is nothing simple, especially for a 70-year-old man. They say there’s no danger. My interpretation of this is that there’s no immediate danger. But, for a 70-year-old man, a 3-hour surgery is a serious matter. They say he is not in serious condition, that his condition is stable. We hope everything goes well. I thank you for your best wishes, your concern and President Fidel Castro’s message.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: In Washington, Mr. Frechette also approached the Cuban Interests Section and conveyed us information on this situation. He explained that you had also received information on this. Again, President Fidel Castro personally asked me to meet with you and to express our sincere hope that President Reagan recover promptly from the consequences of the attack.
“WAYNE SMITH: Thank you, very much. My God! This is a difficult situation. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and it looks as though the person responsible for the assassination attempt on Reagan is from Dallas. He currently lives in Colorado, but he’s from Dallas. I don’t know...
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: In some cables, I read that he was born near Denver, 30 kilometers from Denver.
“WAYNE SMITH: I don’t know. One of my consuls here in the Interests Section told me he had heard on the radio that it’s a guy who studied in the same school he did. I don’t know, he may have lived a number of years in Dallas. I don’t know what’s in the air people breath in Dallas.
"ISIDORO MALMIERCA: They say they’re three brothers, the sons of a man who’s in the oil business.
“WAYNE SMITH: His dad, yes. He’s 22 years old. He was a student at Yale University, but he had recently abandoned his studies. He may feel bitter, a young man who has failed, who acted out of resentment. To be completely frank, I’m glad it’s a guy like that and not, say, a Puerto Rican or something like that, which could have political implications.
"ISIDORO MALMIERCA: You mean speculations about the political motivations behind that.
“WAYNE SMITH: Yes, that could, undeniably, prompt, encourage political readings. An attack by a white man from Colorado, Texas does not lend itself easily to political interpretations.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: There have even been a number of police reports which say that he acted alone, that he has no ties to any groups...
“WAYNE SMITH: Yes, it must have been an insane or fanatical person. He got so close to the President...He was captured immediately. He took out his weapon and fired…
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: Brady died?
“WAYNE SMITH: No.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: They were saying he died.
“WAYNE SMITH: Yes. There were reports to that effect, that he had died. But the latest news is that he didn’t, that he’s in very serious condition, but that he hasn’t died. I imagine that that a 45-calibre round would have been deadly, but a 22-calibre certainly gives him possibilities... It seems the shot hit him on the head, apparently in the head...That’s not good news, there isn’t much hope.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: A shot to the head, no matter what the caliber, is something very serious.
"WAYNE SMITH: Brady is in critical condition. He may survive, but he’d be a vegetable.
“ISIDORO MALMIERCA: I do regret that we should meet because of such an unfortunate event.
“WAYNE SMITH: I thank you for your best wishes. I will immediately send out a cable telling my government of our conversation. I kindly ask that you express my gratitude to President Fidel Castro.
No comments are needed. Malmierca’s version, written immediately after the meeting, speaks for itself. Wayne Smith is today a staunch opponent of the blockade and aggressions against Cuba.
But this is not the only example of our conduct towards the President of a country which, since the days of Eisenhower, has hatched hundreds of plots to physically eliminate me.
A highly confidential report submitted in the summer of 1984 to an agent responsible for the security of Cuban representatives in the UN warned of a possible assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by a far-right group in North Carolina. Upon receiving it, we immediately informed US authorities. Our official suggested that we deliver the information via Robert C. Muller, head of security of the US mission to the United Nations, with whom we maintained contact to ensure the protection of Cuban delegations visiting the international organization.
The assassination was planned for an imminent date, for Reagan’s visit to North Carolina, as part of his re-election campaign.
We had all of the information at our disposal. We had the names of those implicated in the plot; the day, time and place where the assassination was to take place; the types of weapons the terrorists had and where they were being kept. In addition to all this, we knew where the elements who were plotting this were meeting and had a brief account of what had been said at a meeting.
The information was given Muller at a meeting in a building located in 37 and 3rd Avenue, two blocks away from the Cuban mission.
We provided him with all the information, making sure the most important details, such as the names of those involved, the place, time and type of weapons to be used, were clear.
At the end of the conversation, our official informed Muller he had received instructions from the Cuban government to report the matter urgently and that we had selected him because we knew he was an expert on security matters.
Muller read out what he had written down to ensure he had not changed anything and that all of the important information was there.
He asked about the source and was told it was reliable. He said that the Secret Service would need to meet with the Cuban officials. He was told this would not be a problem.
At around four thirty in the afternoon that day, Secret Service agents met with the Cuban representatives.
The meeting was held in apartment 34-F, in the 34th floor of the Ruppert Towers building located in 92, between Third and Second Avenue, in uptown Manhattan.
The agents were two young, white men with brush haircuts wearing suits. Their chief aim was to verify what Muller had reported, as evidenced by the copy of the cable he had sent them they brought with them. When the contents of the cable were read, they were told no information was missing.
The Secret Service agents wanted to know who had provided the information and how it had come into our possession. They were told what Muller was told. They were also interested in knowing if we could elaborate on the information, and they were told that, if any new information were to arrive, they would be immediately informed.
They left their cards and asked to be contacted directly if any additional information was received, saying there was no need to use Muller as an intermediary.
The following Monday, we received news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had detained a group of people in North Carolina, against whom a number of charges had been brought, none, as is logical to assume, related to the plan to assassinate President Reagan, who traveled to that State shortly afterwards as part of his presidential re-election campaign.
Four or five days following the arrests, at the end of the week, Muller phoned the Cuban mission to invite the Cuban official to lunch. They had lunch at the UN delegates’ lounge. The first thing Muller did was ask that the official convey the United States’ gratitude to the Cuban government for the information provided, confirming that an operation against those involved had been carried out. A Cuban anti-terrorist activist had saved the life of a US President!
Some US press reports mention an intimate diary, over 700 pages long, kept by Reagan— from the time he entered office to the day he handed the presidency over to Bush Sr.— which tries to suggest that his government was not that aggressive towards Cuba.
However, according to some accounts, in his memoirs, Robert McFarlane, then Undersecretary of State under Alexander Haig, wrote that, of all the governments that had had dealings with Fidel Castro since 1959, Reagan’s seemed the least indicated to hold talks with Cuba’s communist regime.
Perhaps Reagan was grateful for our concern, when he was nearly assassinated in 1981, and for the warning that saved his life from imminent danger, and he expressed this gratitude through Robert C. Muller.
Reagan signed the first migratory accord with Cuba, but he could not rise above his milieu, for there were others, further to the right than he was, who would have physically eliminated him, as they did Kennedy after he faced the terrible risk of a thermonuclear war. To be sure, Reagan did change his policy towards Cuba in an electoral year, did not honor the accord he signed which guaranteed the granting of up to 20 thousand visas a year for safe trips by granting less than a thousand, and kept in effect the Cuban Adjustment Act, which has cost Cuba many lives.
On September 11, 2001, true chaos reigned in this neighboring country. For long, planes were forbidden to land at airports. A countless number of passenger planes were mid-flight somewhere. These were the news spread by the media in the United States. There were reports of thousands of victims in New York, including Twin Tower staff, firefighters and visitors. There were also reports of people on a passenger plane which was flown into the Pentagon. We offered to supply the United States with clean blood from regular donors if it was needed for any eventuality. Blood donations have long constituted a tradition of the Revolution.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Président de Cuba. Commandant en chef de la Révolution.
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