DID FIDEL PUSH THE BUTTON?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040054-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: March 16, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040054-7
STAT
6RT I CT-" AFP -a3 TIME
024 P~'c " 16 March 1981
C C/~a ommunists like their leaders to be larger than life and
to have accomplishments to match. For example, Chi-
na's Chairman Mao Tse-tung made a big splash in 1966,
when at age 72 he reportedly swam nine miles down the
Yangtze' River. Then Rumania's Party Boss Nicolae Ceau
gescu made hunting history in 1978by bagging the largest
bear ever shot in Europe. Now it appears that Fidel Cas-
tro too can boast of a fancy feat.-During the 1962 Cuban
missile crisis, he is said to have shot. down singlehanded
an American U-2 plane.
That is what Carlos Franqui, a Cuban emigre
writer living in Italy, contends in Family Portrait,
a chronicle of the Castro years to be published in
Spain next month. According to Franqui, an old
over Moscow's increasing .influence, the incident
occurred Oct. 27, 1962, at the height of the U.S.-
Soviet confrontation over the presence of Soviet
missiles in Cuba. On that day, the Cuban President
was visiting a Soviet missile base in Pinar del Rfo,.
southwest of Havana. When a U-2 appeared on the
base's radar, Castro asked the Soviets how to shoot
down an attacking plane. The officers obligingly
showed him the button that would fire off an SA-2 ground-to-
air missile. Suddenly, Castro pushed the button. A missile
went up and, Franqui writes dryly, "the plane came down
amidst the consternation of the generals." The U-2's pilot,
have hit the plane unless the Soviets had already
been track-
U.S. combat casualty of the ' six-day crisis.
Why would Castro have fired the missile?
F.ranqui writes that Castro went to the base "with
intent" to create an incident that would tell him
if "there was going to be a war or not." While the
U-2 downing was no secret; there has never been
any hint before that Castro fired the missile, nor
any corroboration now of the Franqui version. U.S.-intel-
ligence officials find Franqui's account "intriguing' b u t~ point
out that it Castro did push the button, the - would not
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201040054-7