Plot to kill Ford reported

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34107, 20 March 1976, Page 15

Plot to kill Ford reported

t.\ Z Press Assn—Copyright CHICAGO, March 19.

The “Chicago Tribune” reported in its editions today that United States Government agents had learned that a Cuban spy took part in discussion about an alleged assassination plot against President Ford and the Republican presidential nomination challenger, Mr Ronald Reagan. In a copyrighted story from San Francisco, the "Tribune” said that allegations of the Cuban involvement were made to Government agents by Gregg Daniel Adornetto. aged 27, a former member of the Emiliano Zapata unit now under protective custody after turning informei. The newspaper says that Adornetto is reported to have said that the Cuban was known by the code name of Andres Gomez, and to have identified Gomez’s picture from a file of photographs of suspected Cuban agents.

The “Tribune” said that Latin-American intelligence experts had identified the same picture as being that of a member of a Cuban spy apparatus known as the Directorate of General Intelligence.

C.I.A. check Adornetto. a former mein her of the Youth International Party, was arrested some time after a shoot-out between policemen and suspected members of the Zapata unit near Lagunitas, California. While in custody. Adornetto reportedly told agents about an alleged plot to kill Mr Ford and Mr Reagan at the Republican national convention in Kansas City in August. The “Tribune” indicated that the Justice Department had not determined the authenticity of Adornetto’s report, and said the Central Intelligence Agency was reported to be attempting to discover whether Gomez could have been in the United States at the time Adornetto said that he had seen the Cuban.