Nov. 27, 1963 - Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba said tonight that the Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby probably killed Lee Harvey Oswald “to make sure that the supposed assassin would not talk” about the slaying of President Kennedy. Castro called Ruby “that gangster” and said “not even the worst gangster acts so viciously and badly. That demonstrates that the ones who are guilty of Kennedy’s death were in a hurry to eliminate the accused man for some reason, possibly so he would not talk, and so they tranquilly eliminated him,” Castro went on. The Premier, speaking over a nationwide radio and television network from Havana, reiterated the Communist propaganda line that President Kennedy was killed as part of a mysterious plot. He offered no evidence of such a plot. In a speech last Saturday night, Castro took the line of other Communist-bloc nations that “ultra-reactionaries” of the far right were responsible. “Once Oswald was eliminated,” Castro said, “authorities in Dallas called the case closed, as if the President of the United States was not involved.”
