Campfire Tales
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Roast the s'mores. It's time for a fable:
Fidel Castro claims Cuba's government saved the life of President Reagan by giving American officials information about an assassination plot in 1984.
The essay published Wednesday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma appeared to be the first time Cuba has made the claim. It seemed aimed at showing Cuba has cooperated with the United States in the past.
Castro, who has not appeared in public for more than a year, wrote that a Cuban security official stationed at the United Nations told the then U.S. mission security chief about an extreme right-wing group that was planning to kill Reagan during a trip to North Carolina.
"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.
He did not say how Cuba obtained the information.
Newsom Summerlin, a special agent with the FBI in Charlotte, N.C., said late Wednesday that he had no immediate information pertaining to Castro's claim.
Doubtless, he also has no information on verified sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. And perhaps that's a related fact.