Other members of CORU included Guillermo Novo, who unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Che Guevara at the United Nations in 1964. Novo participated in the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1976. Julio Labatut was a professional florist who was also an important member of CORU. Labatut had close ties to the Puerto Rican police. In an interview in 2001, he was asked if he had ordered the assassination of Carlos Muñiz Varela, a Cuban exile who worked as a travel agent. In response, he said "Don't call it an assassination, it was an execution and it should have been carried out before he was born." Perez Franco, who later became the president of Brigade 2506, another anti-Castro organization, was also a founding member of CORU, along with Lopez Estrada, who became its military chief.