Washington – The United States had a long and at times colourful history with Fidel Castro that featured a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
But in addition to those highly publicized events that underlined the deteriorating relations between Washington and Havana, there were plenty of other acts that took place more quietly and included numerous plots by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill or humiliate the Cuban leader.
Not long after Castro came to power in 1959, after ousting dictator Fulgencio Batista at the height of the Cold War, the CIA began planning for the demise of the communist leader with methods ranging from poisonous cigars to a winsome sea shell.
Castro, who died on Friday (0329 GMT Saturday) aged 90, was a symbol of the end of the chapter of animosity between the world’s last remaining superpower and the tiny communist island, which taunted Washington for more than half a century just off its coast in the Caribbean.
Both nations effectively started to end that animosity in December 2014, under Fidel Castro’s brother and successor Raul Castro. They eventually restored diplomatic ties in July 2015. Before that, however, there were decades of infamous plots.
The CIA’s activities were mostly kept under wraps until exposed by a US Senate committee in 1975 that became known as the Church Committee, after Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
Head figures of the NSA, FBI, DNI, CIA, DIA testify during an open hearing held by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to examine worldwide threats on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Tuesday, February 9, 2016. The United States had a long and at times colourful history with Fidel Castro that featured a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Credit: Ron Sachs / CNP (Credit Image: © Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA Wire)
Church had set out to uncover the CIA’s covert attempts to assassinate opponents around the world, but none of them took greater priority than Castro, whose communist agenda and alliance with the Soviet Union 145 kilometres off the coast of Florida were viewed as a major threat.
The plots took place on the sidelines of two major confrontations with Cuba and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.
In 1961, then US president John Kennedy signed off on the Bay of Pigs invasion. The operation consisted of CIA-trained and backed Cuban exiles landing on the beach and launching a rebellion to oust Castro. The effort failed after Kennedy called off air support, worried it would raise the profile of the US role. The armed exiles were easily defeated by Castro forces, and most of them ended up captured or killed.
Castro responded by asking the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When US U-2 spy planes captured images of the deployment of the missiles in 1962, it sparked a major showdown between Washington and Moscow that most historians believe was the closest the Cold War adversaries ever came to the brink of nuclear holocaust. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles.
The Church Committee documented at least eight plots by the CIA on Castro’s life. Some of them were put into action, others never left the drawing board. Other accounts have alleged there were dozens more. The former head of Castro’s intelligence service wrote a book describing hundreds of plans to eliminate the Cuban leader, but they have not been confirmed by the US government.
One of the assassination plots involved the use of poisoned cigars. The Church Committee documented that in August 1960, the CIA instructed an official to lace a box of Castro’s favourite cigars with a toxin so potent it could kill simply by being placed in the mouth. CIA records showed they were passed on to an unidentified person, but it was unclear if they ever made their way to Castro.
The CIA also tried to use the criminal underworld to assassinate Castro, according to the Church committee. The CIA made contact through intermediaries with underworld figures in the United States, hoping they could make arrangements with gambling syndicates in Cuba.
Before the Bay of Pigs invasion, poisonous pills were passed on several occasions, via the shadowy figures, to individuals in Cuba who supposedly had access to Castro. Those plots never panned out and eventually agents tapered off their communications with Cuban operatives.
A post-Bay-of-Pigs operation was later launched that again involved use of the mafia, this time using pills and small arms.
But when it appeared the operation would not succeed, it was called off.
The CIA later explored the possibility of using an “exotic seashell” laden with explosives that could be placed in waters where Castro was known to go diving. The shell’s interesting appearance, according to the plan, was to have lured Castro to it, then blown him up. The plan was later dismissed as “impractical,” according to the Church Committee.
The CIA explored giving Castro a diving suit contaminated with a fungus that would cause an infectious skin disease. That suit, however, never left the laboratory. In another of the plots that went on until 1965, the CIA devised and passed on poison-tipped pens to agents in Cuba.
The CIA also weighed methods of humiliating Castro, including a poison that would cause his legendary beard to shed, and a chemical agent similar to LSD that would have sabotaged his speaking ability.
– dpa
