Castro’s sister admits to collaborating with CIA

The younger sister of Fidel Castro has revealed a secret she has kept for nearly half a century - that she collaborated with the CIA following the Cuban revolution led by her brother in 1959. For three years she passed on information, before fleeing the island for exile in Miami.

Juanita Castro says in a book published in America yesterday that she initially supported Fidel's overthrow of the Batista regime. But she quickly became disillusioned by the executions, the expropriation of private property, and the exclusion from government of anyone who wasn't a committed communist, ever if they had loathed Batista.

In 1961, urged on by the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba, Juanita made a trip to Mexico City under the pretence of meeting her sister. Instead she kept a secret rendezvous with a CIA agent codenamed Enrique at the Camino Real Hotel. She agreed to help the Americans gather information but refused to accept money or do anything that would endanger her brother's life.

"I want to be very clear that agreeing to collaborate with you does not signify that I will participate in any violent activity against my brother, nor any official in the regime," she told the agent. "This is my most important condition. And moreover, I would say it is the only condition."

'Enrique' - who Juanita later learned was an agent called Tony Sforza - then asked her to smuggle messages, documents and money back into the country hidden in canned goods.

He told Juanita that, once back in Havana, she would receive information through shortwave radio communications. Juanita chose a waltz and an aria from Madame Butterfly as the signals her CIA handlers would use to let her know if they had information for her.

The Spanish-language memoir, My Brothers Fidel and Raul: The Secret Story, is published by Santillana USA and co-written by journalist Maria Antonieta Collins.

The CIA has declined to comment on the book and it is not known whether information passed on by Juanita was ever used in the more than 600 attempts by the agency to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In an interview with the Miami Spanish-language TV station Univision Noticias 23, Juanita said she remained in Cuba while her mother was alive, believing she was protected from the full wrath of Fidel, who was already warning her not to get involved with "gusanos" or worms, as those who opposed the revolution were called.

Her mother died in 1963 and she fled the island the following year, settling like many other Cuban exiles in Miami where, until two years ago, she ran a pharmacy.

Fidel, now 83, handed over the running of Cuba to his younger brother Raul last year because of ill health. Juanita said she was last in touch with Raul just days before she left Cuba in 1964 for the last time.