April 20, 1961.p. 1.
By Sam Pope Brewer
Special to
The New York Times
MIAMI, April 19—A Cuban firing squad executed two Americans early today in Pinar del Rio on charges of counter-revolutionary activity. Seven Cubans were executed with them on similar charges.
The United States forwarded a stiff protest to the Cuban Government against the executions of the Americans, declaring they violated “the elementary standards of justice practiced by the civilized nations of the world.”
The American victims were Howard F. Anderson, 41 years old, owner of a string of service stations in Havana, and Angus McNair, 25, whose parents live in Coral Gables, Fla.
Mr. Anderson’s brown-haired wife, Dorothy, 38, spent the night in frantic efforts by telephone to get intervention by the Mexican Government on her husband’s behalf. She said she thought United States intervention would cause only harm at this point. She learned of her husband’s death sentence through a Havana broadcast last night.
She and their four children have been living in Miami since tension began to build up in Havana last June. Before that she had spent her life in Havana.
Mrs. Anderson said she had never been told what the charges against her husband were except for the public announcement of counter-revolutionary activity. She had five letters from him, but they referred entirely to personal matters, she said. The last one contained separate notes for each of his four children.
“Supposedly he had a trial,” she said. “But who knows what it was like or whether he had any defense? I think the sentence was decided in advance.”
Mrs. Anderson was born in Cuba of American parents. Her husband met her while serving there as a chief petty officer in the United States Navy. They were married in 1944 and returned to Havana in 1947 when he finished his naval service and went into partnership with his father-in-law, Alexander H. Stauber, now dead.
The Andersons spent last Christmas together in Miami. He returned to Havana Feb. 16 and on March 16 he was arrested. In spite of his arrest and trial, his property had not been seized up to last week.
“He was not acting against the Castro Government,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I knew Andy was innocent. I appealed to everybody, but Castro ignored me.”
She added: “Both of us loved the country and the people and never thought of leaving Cuba.”
Three of their children have been told of their father’s death. They are Gary, 15, Marc, 11, and their sister, Lee, who is 8. Five-year-old Bonnie had not been told tonight.
Mr. McNair was arrested last month when he landed a boatload of arms about thirty miles from Havana. He had no apparent ties in his past with Cuba. Born in Philadelphia, he grew up in Miami and after four years in the Army worked for the Dade County tax assessor’s office for a time.
His family’s home in Coral Gables was closed today and neighbors would say only that the family was away and could not be reached. In the past his parents had denied to local reporters that their son was in Cuba.
It was reported so many arrests had been made that a hotel and the Palace of Sports, Havana’s Madison Square Garden, had been converted into temporary jails. However, reports on Americans held there were rumors rather than sound information.
Americans who worked in the United States Embassy in Havana until the breach of diplomatic relations said that about 200 Americans, possibly 300, had remained in Cuba after the Embassy staff left. That did not include naturalized citizens who had returned to live there permanently.
United States citizens living in Cuba have considered themselves in a precarious position for many months. Those who remained had work to keep them there.
One former embassy official asserted that it had been known for a long time that Premier Castro’s militia had a group assigned to the task of seeking out and shooting all United States citizens if the order was given.
The measure was supposed to be taken if the United States invaded Cuba.
WASHINGTON, April 19—The White House and State Department joined today in condemning the Castro regime for its execution, without fair trial, of two United States citizens.
A stiff protest to the Cuban Government was forwarded through the diplomatic channels of Switzerland, now the protective power for the United States since diplomatic relations with the Castro Government were severed in January.
The protest declared that the execution of Howard F. Anderson of Yakima, Wash., and Angus McNair of Miami violated “the elementary standards of justice practiced by the civilized nations of the world.”