I read about a lot of different ideas the CIA came up with to try to assassinate Castro, most seemed as if they came out of a James Bond movie and were completely ridiculous. Here are a few that I thought were particularly interesting:
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| Castro scuba diving |
CIA officials thought they could use Castro's love of scuba-diving to get to him. They planned to hide explosives inside a large seashell and paint it with exotic, vibrant colors to lure the attention of the ocean-loving communist. The hope was that the shell would be so beautiful that Castro would pick it up and, by doing so, trigger the explosive hidden underneath. Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA's head of Cuban operations, went as far as to buy two books on Caribbean mollusks. However, Like many others, this idea was "discarded as impractical," according to the committee's report.
Contaminated Diving Suit
Again, an attempt to get Castro through his love of the ocean, this time the CIA came up with an idea to contaminate one of Castro's diving suits with a fungus that would produce a chronic skin disease. The diving suit, as well as the snorkel which would be infected, were meant to be given to Castro by the American lawyer James Donovan, who had been very involved in hostage negotiations with the Castro This plan also fell through however after Donovan gave Castro a different suit. Helms later called the plan "absurd" and said the suit never even left the laboratory.
The Poisoned PenAnother CIA plan was to kill Castro using a hypodermic needle concealed within a pen. The needle would be so fine that "the victim would not notice its insertion," according to the Church Committee. The needle was to be rigged with poison and injected into Castro by a "highly placed Cuban official" who was in discussions with the CIA. However, the Cuban official "did not think much of the device" and complained that surely the CIA could come up with something more sophisticated than that. Perhaps this plan would have worked had the official not suffered from bad timing. He was offered the pen on Nov. 22, 1963, the same date as John F. Kennedy's assassination. The agency withdraw its support of the attempt on Castro's life and the official never took the pen to Cuba.
The Exploding Cigar
Lastly, and perhaps most famous of all the attempts was the exploding cigar. In 1960 the CIA poisoned a box of his favorite cigars. Just a year after Castro rose to power in Cuba, the agency spiked the cigars with a toxin strong enough to kill anybody who put it in their mouth. The cigars were delivered to an "an unidentified person" in 1961, but it's unclear what happened to them after that. This seemed to happen very frequently, some how the plan would fall apart just at the end.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fidel-castros-death/fidel-castro-cia-s-7-most-bizarre-assassination-attempts-n688951
I loved your blog post Belen! Super insightful and a fun read. Just as you said in the beginning reading the blog post feels less like history and more like the plot of a James Bond movie, yet all were actually documented by the CIA. Looking at the NBC article you used I found the one about the fatal lover to be equally as funny as the rest. Probably the most James Bond-esc, the plan was that the CIA recruited Castros lover Marita Lorenza trying to coax her into giving him poisoned pills which upon ingesting he would die in 30 seconds. However this plan like the rest apparently feel through because of a case of cold feet.
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I really liked this post, it was super interesting and you can really see the emphasis that the government put on Cuba and Castro during the Cold War. I think the actions they tried to take against Castro are a good commentary on America's economic and political interests in the Cold War, for Castro was united with the USSR, and Cuba had a lot of American economic value. Another source I would check out about the "Castro obsession" would be the CIA's take on the event. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no4/Castro_Obsession_10.htm
ReplyDeleteHere they mention some of the conflicting interests about the plans, as well as the pressure to make these assassination plans coming from the administration.
Belen, I thought that your post was awesome. I liked how you addressed a topic not necessarily covered in history textbooks. The examples that you gave really showed how tense the relationship between the United States and Cuba, and how weary we were about the threat of communism in our hemisphere. There are two general opinions about Castro: one was that he was a violent dictator who used violent means to get what he wanted. Or, people looked at him as an anti-imperialism hero, and supported his fiery speeches that denounced American intervention in the Caribbean. I also thought it was interesting that Castro was given the "Lenin Peace Prize". I think American media made out Castro to be much worse than he really was.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro#Retirement_and_final_years_:_2008%E2%80%932016
Belen I loved this post! I loved how you went into depth about the assassination plots from the planning to their inevitable failure. This was a very fun read and really helped illustrate how much the US wanted to get rid of Castro. Like Tanshi, I found the following article very interesting and helpful to understand the why behind these assassination attempts: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no4/Castro_Obsession_10.htm
ReplyDeleteOut of the same CIA files that these assassination attempts were released, I also found out that some on Kennedy's completed assassination were also made public. On the topic of assassinations, the USSR believed that Kennedy's death was part of a larger US-based conspiracy. The memo reads: "They seem convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part." If you want to learn more about the assassinations during the 1960s and the files that involve them, I highly recommend the following article (it talks about Castro and Kennedy): https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/jfk-file-release-highlights/index.html
This is such a fascinating post, which, like Anya mentioned, is not something that is usually discussed in history textbooks, and therefore is not extremely well-known by many people. I was really surprised at just how many ideas the CIA came up with to assassinate Fidel Castro, as I had not assumed there were actually hundreds of them when I first found out about this. One other assassination idea I found really bizarre was the Psychedelic Speech. This plan was concocted by the CIA in 1960, in which a broadcasting studio from which he would be speaking would be sprayed with a chemical with similar effects to LSD. Other similar plans included putting thallium salts on Castro's shoes to make his beard fall out, and using a chemical in his cigars, similar to the famous Exploding Cigar plot, but instead of to immediately kill him, to disorient him before a speech he had to give. These ideas, like all of the plans already discussed above, were not able to be followed through with.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fidel-castros-death/fidel-castro-cia-s-7-most-bizarre-assassination-attempts-n688951