Cuban leader Fidel Castro knew that President John F. Kennedy was about to be assassinated in 1963, a former CIA agent has claimed in his book.
Castro told his staff that he was going to murder then US President Kennedy to prove his allegiance to the communist cause, according to author Brian Latell, the US spy agency's former chief intelligence officer for Latin America.
In fact, on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed, Castro had ordered a senior intelligence officer in Havana to stop listening for non-specific CIA radio communications and concentrate instead on "any little detail, any small detail from Texas", Latell claims in his new book.
Four hours later, the airwaves came alive with news that Kennedy was dead, says the book, titled 'Castro's Secrets - the CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine', which is to set be released next month, the Daily Mail online reported.
Rumours about the former Cuban dictator's involvement in a plot to murder his fierce adversary have swirled for almost half a century since communist sympathiser Lee Harvey Oswald shot the then US president during a trip to Dallas.
Latell also claims that Castro was aware that Oswald, who had been denied a visa to visit Cuba at the country's embassy in Mexico City, told staff there that he was going to murder Kennedy to prove his allegiance to the communist cause.
"Fidel knew of Oswald's intentions and did nothing to deter the act," Latell claims in his book.
The author has based his book mainly on interviews with former Cuban intelligence officers, backed up by declassified US government documents.
"I don't say Fidel Castro ordered the assassination, I don't say Oswald was under his control. He might have been, but I don’t argue that, because I was unable to find any evidence for that," he told The Miami Herald.