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Man's tower climb protests brother's '62 disappearance

MIAMI - A man who believes his brother disappeared four decades ago while on a secret anti-Castro mission climbed a radio tower behind the Miami Herald building Thursday, demanding that the government release information about his sibling.

Robert Annable, 62, left a statement at the base of the tower pleading with federal officials to provide any information they have on his brother Harrison, who disappeared from a fishing boat on Nov. 17, 1962.

"This is simply an act of civil disobedience in the hopes that my government, the media, or the people of Miami will help me learn the truth of what happened to Harrison," he wrote.

Annable spent more than four hours perched 60 feet up the tower, which is owned by a radio station. He climbed down just before noon and was led away peacefully by authorities.

The Scottsmoor resident was charged with a misdemeanor count of trespassing and taken to Miami-Dade County Jail.

Miami police and the Coast Guard had spent nearly five hours trying to talk him down.

Annable docked a boat at the base of the tower on Biscayne Bay shortly after 7 a.m. and climbed the structure, hanging an upside-down American flag alongside a POW MIA flag.

At one point, he threatened to burn the U.S. flag by 5 p.m. if the government didn't respond.

Annable's brother and two other men disappeared shortly after leaving Miami on what was supposed to be a lobster fishing expedition in the Bahamas. Annable claims his brother's disappearance was connected to the United States' anti-Fidel Castro policies. Their boat was discovered days later, but their bodies were never found.

[Last modified January 20, 2006, 01:46:11]