CASTRO INFLUENCE WIDELY FEARED IN LATIN NATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040020-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: November 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040020-4
STAT
ARTICLE APPEARED
011 PAGE
Castro Influence
7
ide1', Feared
In Latin Nations .
WASHINGTON POST
1 November 1983
But businesses and individuals also
may be in danger, my sources say.
There is special concern about
Americans in Mexico City. CIA
sources told my associate Dale Van
Atta that terrorists from all over the
world gathered in Mexico City on
21 for an under
round conven-
Oct
g
.
Cuban President Fidel Castro,
over the U.S. invasion of ,tion. -Castro, of _ course, sent his del-
enraged egates.
Grenada, has' ordered .-:terrorists - ....-1n: this subterranean world, Cuba
under his discipline to."kill Amer- is regarded as the principal proxy for
icans." He directs an underground Soviet -subversion, terrorism and rev-
revolutionary network that is allied,, ~lu~n.,.~'he=.Cubans-get their fmanc-
with terrorist. groups throughouting, f aeourse," from the Kremlin:
Latin America. then -they,. in turn, subsidize and
The ominous words :"kill Amen- supply -terrorist grous up and down
cans" were used in a top-secret. warn- the - Western .'Hemisphere, such as
ing that. was flashed last Saturday to . the radical M-19 group in Colombia.
Chile.
STAT
An earlier, precautionary alert was
sent out the morning of the Grenada
invasion, warning that retribution
against Americans was possible..But
the second message was more explic-
it and urgent. -
My intelligence sources say that
Castro's secret instructions were in-
tercepted by U.S. monitoring sta-
tion:. Though there can be no ques-
tion that he ordered terrorist attacks
on,'Americans, some sources do ques-
tion how effectively the campaign
Will be implemented.
U.S.. embassies and consulates,
meanwhile. are taking no chances.
They have tightened security and
have strengthened their guard forces.
Castro has also brought a new
unity and cohesion to the terrorist
movement. He has established liai-
son between terrorist groups and has
coordinated their activities, Under
.Cuban'-. pressure, for example, four
small Honduran bands have been
united.
Castro's agents have infiltrated
most countries in this hemisphere,
including the United States. A con-
servati.'e count of his agents in
Miami' alone exceeds 200, intelli-
gence sources say.
The Cuban leader reacted to the
U.S. assault on Grenada as if it were
a Cuban province. He sent a dramat-
ic order to the Cubans on Grenada
to Tesist to 'the death. This hardly
squares with the communist line
that the Cubans were merely con-
struction workers who had been in-
vited to Grenada to help its peaceful
development. Visiting .laborers do
not normally fight to the death for
their host country.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040020-4