Jeffrey Goldberg, the foreign affairs expert and columnist with The Atlantic magazine, writes that during an interview with Fidel Castro three years ago in Havana, the now-retired Cuban prime minister and revolutionary leader said he thought Harvey Lee Oswald - the man officially held responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened 50 years ago today - could not have acted alone. "There was the story of Jack Ruby, who was said to be so moved by the death of Kennedy that he decided to shoot Oswald on his own. That was just unbelievable to us," Castro said then.
Goldberg writes that Fidel went on to tell a "long and discursive story" about an experiment he ordered to be staged by members of his government to test whether it was possible for a sniper to have shot Kennedy in the way the US government's investigation says Oswald did. "We had trained our people in the mountains during the [1959 Cuban revolution] on these kind of telescopic sights," Castro told Goldberg. "So we knew about this kind of shooting. We tried to recreate the circumstances of this shooting, but it wasn't possible for one man to do. The news I had received is that one man killed Kennedy in his car with a rifle, but I deducted that this story was manufactured to fool people."
Goldberg then says he asked Castro to say what he thinks really happened, referencing a suggestion by director Oliver Stone (a friend of Castro's who interviewed him at length for his 2003 documentary "Comandante") that those responsible for Kennedy's assassination were really the CIA and a group of anti-Castro Cubans. Did Castro agree with Stone's theory? "Quite possibly," he said. "This is quite possibly so. There were people in the American government who thought Kennedy was a traitor because he didn't invade Cuba when he had the chance, when they were asking him. He was never forgiven for that."
RELATED:4 Fast Facts About Miguel Diaz-Canel, Raul Castro's Heir
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.