Oct 26, 2009 7:51 pm US/Eastern
Fidel Castro's Sister: I Worked With The CIA
Juanita said she collaborated with the CIA while in Cuba. The same year, she fled the island and continued to work with the agency.
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
In a book released Monday, Juanita Castro, sister of Cuban leaders Raul and Fidel, has claimed she worked with the CIA in 1964. That was when the U.S. agency was plotting to assassinate Fidel and overthrow his revolution.
In an exclusive interview with Univision's WLTV-23, Juanita Castro, 76, said she initially supported her brother's overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in 1959. However, she reportedly quickly became disillusioned and opened her home as a sanctuary for anti-Communists.
In the Spanish-language memoir published by Santillana USA and co-written by journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, she says the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba persuaded her to meet a CIA officer during a trip to Mexico in 1961.
By then, her house had already become a sanctuary for anti-communists, and Fidel Castro had warned her about getting involved with the "gusanos," or worms, as those who opposed the revolution were called.
Castro said in the book, "My Brothers Fidel and Raul. The Secret Story," that she traveled to Mexico City under the pretense of visiting her younger sister Enma. There she also secretly met a CIA officer who identified himself as "Enrique" at the elegant Camino Real hotel.
A spokesman for the CIA in Langley, Va., declined to comment on Castro's account.
Castro said that during the hotel meeting, she expressed her concerns that those who supported Batista's overthrow but were not communists were being pushed out of the new government. Castro writes she agreed to help the CIA gather information but refused to accept money for her efforts and said she wanted no part in any violence.
"I want to be very clear that agreeing to collaborate with you does not signify that I will participate in any violent activity against my brother, nor any official in the regime," she told the agent. "This is my most important condition. And moreover, I would say it is the only condition."
"Enrique," whom Castro says she later learned was a CIA officer in Cuba named Tony Sforza, then asked her to smuggle messages, documents and money back into the country hidden in canned goods.
He told Castro she would receive information through shortwave radio communications. Castro chose a waltz and a song from the opera Madame Butterfly as the signals her handlers would use to let her know if they had information for her.
Castro said she remained on the island while her mother was alive, believing she was protected from the full wrath of Fidel. Her mother died in 1963 and she fled Cuba the following year, eventually settling into a quiet life in Miami, where she ran a pharmacy until 2007 and is generally well regarded by other Cuban exiles.
Fidel, she wrote, was not initially a hard-line communist like their brother Raul and fellow revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, but that Fidel turned to communism to maintain power. Juanita Castro said she tried to help many people who initially supported the revolution only to be ousted in the new regime's initial purges.
"My brothers could ignore what I did -- or appear to ignore it -- so as not to hurt my mom, but that didn't mean I didn't have problems ... everything was becoming more dangerously complicated" after her mother's death, Castro writes.
Juanita Castro had to get help from Raul -- to whom she was much closer than Fidel -- in getting a visa to leave Cuba. They have not seen each other since June 18, 1964, the day before she left the country.
When she first arrived in the U.S., many exiles considered Castro a communist spy. She later helped found a CIA-backed nonprofit organization that worked against Cuba's government.
Under President Richard Nixon, CIA officers told her they were no longer going to support the underground fight against Castro because it negatively affected U.S.-Soviet relations. Castro said the CIA wanted her to start making statements that communism in Latin America was no longer a threat.
At that point she broke off with the agency.
The book, titled
Fidel and Raúl, My Brothers. The Secret History., was released simultaneously in the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Spain.
A segment of the interview is scheduled to air Wednesday on Univision. Throughout the week, seven other segments of the interview will air.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Fidel Castro's Role In History
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