FIDEL IN ANGOLA AND OTHER COUNTRIES IN AFRICA — Africa Oye!! During the 1975 independence struggle, Fidel Castro sent Cuban troops to assist the Angolan MPLA in it’s revolutionary mission after repeated requests to the USSR were ignored. The MPLA was successful with Cuba’s military and technical assistance, and the People’s Republic of Angola was proclaimed on November 11th 1975. Castro became a Third World liberation hero throughout Africa, confirming his status as one of the most charismatic and successful revolutionary leaders of all time, while the US became increasingly frustrated! Some archive footage is presented here of the revolutionary war, of Angola’s first Marxist president Agostinho Neto, Castro visiting Africa at the time and his impassioned defense of his internationalist intervention at the UN.
DE-CLASSIFICATON OF CIA DOCS ON CUBA
Castro’s head worth 150,000 dollars, say CIA files
Published on Wednesday, June 27, 2007
WASHINGTON, Cuba (AFP): The CIA offered 150,000 dollars to Mafia figures to
kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, just one of several CIA plots against
foreign leaders detailed in 693 pages of classified US documents released
Tuesday.
Other targets of CIA targets, long alleged but only now revealed in the
intelligence agency’s own documents, included Congo independence leader
Patrice Lumumba as well as dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael
Trujillo.
The documents also detail apparently illegal government spying on US
citizens opposed to the Vietnam War and on prominent journalists in the
1970s, as well as experiments using drugs on unsuspecting subjects.
Among the CIA files is a lengthy memo which exposes the agency’s recruitment
of top mafia figures already wanted for crimes in order to assassinate
Cuba’s communist leader.
“The mission target was Fidel Castro,” said the 1973 document.
According to the memo, the man chosen for the “sensitive mission requiring
gangster-type action” was one Johnny Roselli — in reality Santos
Trafficant, head of mafia Cuba operations.
He recruited a second man for the mission called Sam Gold, whom the CIA
discovered was actually Salvatore “Momo” Giancana, head of the Chicago mob
and “successor to Al Capone.”
Both were on the US attorney general’s ten most-wanted fugitives list,
according to the memo.
“It was to be made clear to Roselli that the United States Government was
not, and should not, become aware of this operation,” it said.
The mafiosi recommended against the use of firearms to kill Castro, it said,
and suggested instead “some type of potent pill that could be placed in
Castro’s food or drink.”
“Sam indicated that he had a prospective nominee in the person of Juan Orta,
a Cuban official who had been receiving kick-back payments from the gambling
interests, who still had access to Castro, and was in a financial bind,” the
memo said.
Roselli gave Orta the pills, but “After several weeks of reported attempts,
Orta apparently got cold feet and asked out of the assignment.”
“Roselli made it clear he did not want any more for his part and believed
Sam would feel the same way.
“Neither of these individuals were ever paid out of Agency funds,” the
document said.
The assassination was meant as a prelude to the disastrous invasion of
Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.
The documents declassified Tuesday were dubbed the CIA’s “family jewels,”
denoting the importance of their secrecy.
They detail surveillance of Americans who opposed the Vietnam War; opening
personal mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, including four letters
to actress Jane Fonda; break-ins on the properties of former CIA employees;
wiretapping of journalists’ telephones and experiments using drugs on
unsuspecting subjects.
These acts were all part of the CIA’s snooping in the 1970s, even though the
agency is forbidden to conduct intelligence gathering on US soil.
Also revealed are plans to assassinate the Congo’s anti-colonial Lumumba,
who was overthrown in a 1960 coup long believed backed by the CIA, and
Dominican Republic strongman Trujillo, who was shot dead by political
opponents in 1961.
The files were assembled by then-director of the CIA James Schlessinger,
after the agency was implicated in the Watergate scandal that led to the
resignation of president Richard Nixon in 1974.
“The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very
different agency,” said CIA director Michael Hayden announcing the release
last week.
“Much of it has been in the press before, and most of it is unflattering,
but it is CIAs history,” he said.
The documents are available at http://www.gwu.edu/ nsarchiv/
haiti-cuba-venezuela 