MIAMI — One of Fidel Castro's sisters says in a memoir released today she collaborated with the CIA against her brother, starting shortly after the United States' failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

Juanita Castro, 76, initially supported her brother's 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship but quickly grew disillusioned. In a Spanish-language memoir published by Santillana USA and co-written by journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, she said the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba persuaded her to meet a CIA officer during a trip to Mexico in 1961.

By then, her house had already become a sanctuary for anti-communists.

Castro said in the book, "My Brothers Fidel and Raul. The Secret Story," that she traveled to Mexico City under the pretense of visiting her younger sister Enma. There she also secretly met a CIA officer who identified himself as "Enrique."

A spokesman for the CIA in Langley, Va., declined to comment on Castro's account.

Castro said during the meeting, she expressed her concerns that those who supported Batista's overthrow but were not communists were being pushed out of the new government. Castro writes she agreed to help the CIA gather information but refused to accept money and said she wanted no part in any violence.

"Enrique," whom Castro said she later learned was a CIA officer in Cuba named Tony Sforza, then asked her to smuggle messages, documents and money back into the country hidden in canned goods.

Castro said she remained on the island while her mother was alive, believing she was protected from the full wrath of Fidel. Her mother died in 1963 and she fled Cuba the following year.

By The Associated Press