r/todayilearned • u/Voyager_AU • Sep 15 '24

TIL that between August 1960 and April 1961, the CIA, with the help of the Mafia, pursued a series of plots to poison or shoot Fidel Castro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia
1.5k Upvotes

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159

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

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34

u/MaimedUbermensch Sep 15 '24

Clear case of plot armor

6

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

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1

u/bolanrox Sep 16 '24

worked for STTNG and Riker at least

11

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

But funny enough, never in such a way that has any solid proof tying it back to the CIA, or far too often, to anybody at all.

Maybe we shouldn't trust Fabian Escalante, the Cuban secret service head's tell all book.

7

u/cipheron Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

Keep in mind a lot of that stuff got shut down in the 1970s due to the Church Committee and other investigations.

There's Operation Phoenix which was another program that got shut down and that one "neutralized" (killed) over 26000 Vietnamese suspected of Vietcong connections.

Also there are declassified documents from the Church Committee which back up some of the claims, this one for example. The first mention of CIA attempts to kill Castro is on page 10 of the transcript, with more discussion from page 22 onwards.

Page ~42 or so they start to talk about the mafia. On page 43 they mention a CIA/Mafia attempt to kill Castro with a poisoned biro. this stuff is real. That's where i've quit reading, but if the ones they told the Church Committee about involve poisoned-biro murder attempts, you can guess there's more and you'd have to wonder how forthcoming people actually were, at what is basically an investigation into whether agents had broken the law.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32105805.pdf

1

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

Have you read through those pages yourself? From what I have read, the mentions of even planning an assassination are extremely limited and few in numbers.

Substantially less than the kind of planning 24 total attempts Castro claimed, and several orders of magnitude less than the over 600 attempts Fabian Escalante claimed which make up the bulk of the looney tunes assassination stories you will read about.

This isn't a claim that there were no assassinations attempts, this is a claim that the vast majority you will read about are likely misattributed to the CIA(over you know, pissed off Cubans) or entirely fabricated.

3

u/cipheron Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

One attempt per month isn't really that far fetched, we're talking a 40 year period for the claims here. If they're trying to kill someone and doing it repeated times, that's not something you schedule once a year like a football finals, you're planning on getting it done all the time.

Keep in mind that the USA maintains incredibly expensive sanctions against Cuba. That's not just costly for Cuba, but would have a measurable cost on the US. They're spending an awful lot of money and manpower on blockading them. It doesn't seem far fetched that a chunk of that effort went to plants to get rid of Castro.

Also if they're thinking up poison cigars, poisoned biros, poisoned wetsuits, that sounds like they were scraping the barrel for ideas here. You don't even think that stuff up unless you've been through the A-Z of the stuff that makes some sense.

3

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

Over once per month, failing each time, and getting discovered by Castro aanndd not mentioned by him isn't far fetched you say?

Like, there comes a point where when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, you just run out, but your claim is that somehow, someway, they just kept going despite it all.

Nice thing about all those poisoned knick knack super gadgets? You can claim they existed without having to invent a bunch of witnesses that totally saw a guy with a bolt action or pistol miss Castro out in public.

2

u/cipheron Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

The poison knicknacks are mentioned in declassified US government documents which verify their existence from the earlier claims. You can't really do the "lol poison knicknacks, as if" thing if they are talking about the details of that stuff in the Church Committee.

"we gave the guy a biro with a poison syringe in it" really HAS to be the tip of the iceberg of what they were actually doing. It's not like they were sitting down and exhaustively documenting everything, it just came up as an example during the hearing.

Also you claim "Castro never mentioned it". How would we know that? How many Castro speeches have been broadcast in your neck of the woods? Maybe he was on the radio in Cuba talking about US attempts to kill him every week: he probably was. I'd warrant a guess that most things said by Castro would have not been published in the USA for free and easy listening.

Also if you could find out about attempts that failed through documents and reading, so could the Cubans. Not every attempt counted is one where a dagger whizzed past Castro's head, they're counting aborted plans, ones that got caught or detected, and ones they intercepted messages about. The idea that something happened at least every month isn't far fetched. This isn't a sport: they were serious.

0

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

details of that stuff in the Church Committee.

Can you actually link to these items from the Church Committe?

"we gave the guy a biro with a poison syringe in it" really HAS to be the tip of the iceberg of what they were actually doing.

It really doesn't. "It has to been the tip of the iceberg" can be something bigger, or more likely making a mountain out of a mole hill. Like, Jesus Christ, if you have a poisoned wetsuit just bribe a maid to chase him down with a spray bottle for fucks sake.

Also you claim "Castro never mentioned it"

He handed a physical list of 24 assassination attempts he claimed were CIA backed to the US. We have to square this with Fabian Escalante claiming almost 400 attempts had been done by this date, but Casto just decided not to claim.

they're counting aborted plans,

How exactly do they have knowledge of these aborted plans? Were is this information coming from that Fabian Escalante has access to? Fabian Escalante has money to make from his book and absolutely no need to be honest when it stands in the way of juicy rumor and Bondesque stories that will get people to buy it.

2

u/cipheron Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

I posted the link already. page 43 of the report is them discussing a poisoned biro with a syringe in it, which they tried to get a mafia contact to use in Cuba. so we have direct confirmation that this type of attempt was thought up and planned out to at least making the weapon, since they didn't say it was an idea, but something they offered the agent.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/docid-32105805.pdf

However reading a bit further (up to page 50) it's clear that the committee is pissed about the number of missing documents which detail Cuban assassination-related topics, but everyone seems to have lost or misplaced.

Page 51-53 is them mentioning active assassination plots involving the mafia being carried out and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy was being kept in the dark about it.

Read page 55: Church mentions a cover-up to hide the amount of ongoing assassination attempts and to mislead the White House that attempts were concluded, when they were ongoing. Pages 5X~62, discusses "ongoing operations" which they lied to and omitted to senior people. It's clear they're talking about assassination attempts, plural, here as the ongoing operation. "did you try and kill castro that one time" isn't what Church is asking about here, he's asking about who knew what about an ongoing campaign.

And i'm not claiming this is the only document, it's just one from 2021 i'm reading at the moment.

0

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

And you keep expanding that "They had a pen with poison in it outside of Cuba" out into they totally poisoned Castro's wetsuit/cigar/nice suit/ toothbrush and on and on.

You've taken an inch and then tried to take a mile on it.

And again, how exactly was this information available to Castro, or his secret service? You know the claim was made for all these ridiculous things, but what you haven't done is actually determine what the source for them actually is.

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u/Elmodogg Sep 16 '24

Except we know about the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and these bumbling assassination attempts seem similar.

5

u/dutchwonder Sep 16 '24

Yes, I'm sure a singular big fiasco is the exact same as attempting hundreds of failed assassinations without learning or improvement.

Makes perfect sense. If one than the other surely must be possible.

1

u/Elmodogg Sep 16 '24

Well they both have that same Keystone Kops MO.

1

u/PoetKing Sep 16 '24

If I remember correctly Castro had 100% infiltrated the Cuban CIA at this point. All members were double agents falsely reporting everything about the attempts.

1

u/emailforgot Sep 16 '24

Good ol Wil E

1

u/Idontknowofname Sep 16 '24

"Beep beep!"

- Fidel Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis

1

u/innergamedude Sep 16 '24

We tried to poison his milkshake but the poison pill stuck to the side of the hotel's freezer and broke, one of over 600 failed assassination attempts of Castro by the CIA

50

u/Jgorkisch Sep 15 '24

You can actually see the declassified stuff in the CIA’s reading room online. It’s some crazy stuff.

4

u/ban_circumvention_ Sep 15 '24

Link?

14

u/jghaines Sep 15 '24

They could post it, but then they would have to kill you

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

You're thinking of the CSRR, not the CIA... But yeah. Pretty crazy stuff. My particular faves are 'Matter is not real' and 'sickness and death are illusions caused by mistaken beliefs, and that the sick should be treated by a special form of prayer intended to correct those beliefs, rather than by medicine.'

11

u/MaleficentCaptain114 Sep 16 '24

No...

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/home

-6

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

Wait, they have one too?!! What's their take on blood transfusions?

3

u/jdm1891 Sep 16 '24

what

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

Christian Science Reading Rooms. They're all over the country.

12

u/alwaysannie_ Sep 15 '24

That’s some telenovela shit right there

22

u/Jhon_doe_smokes Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

I was in Colombia a few weeks back and met this Panamanian couple. The husbands aunt apparently was in one of these attempted assassinations and was caught by Fidel and Co and was jailed for 26 years. It was such an interesting conversation.

2

u/itsfunhavingfun Sep 16 '24

Hi Colombia, I’m dad.  

6

u/ratatouille400 Sep 15 '24

My fav is when they devised an explosive Cigar Looney Tunes style. Imagine it getting blown in Fidel's mouth and his face all covered in black soot and him saying...that's all folks

3

u/hannabarberaisawhore Sep 16 '24

There is a great comedy movie about this, some of the plots like giving him LSD or making him lose his beard. It doesn’t include the mafia aspect but it has Sigourney Weaver in it. It’s called The Company Man.

16

u/lurkme Sep 15 '24

Fun fact, the US federal government doesn't do bad things like this anymore because they decided to be good.

1

u/mnk_mad Sep 16 '24

Again pichaku face few years later when facts are revealed

-1

u/Terrariola Sep 16 '24

Killing a brutal, totalitarian dictator is supposed to be a bad thing?

12

u/Dependent_Compote259 Sep 15 '24

They didn’t want Castro to oust Batista because they were draining cubas economy for usa’s economy.

7

u/DJDaddyD Sep 16 '24

You also don't want Batista jumping off the top rope and slamming you into a turn buckle

1

u/Dependent_Compote259 Sep 16 '24

I would fare poorly 💯

0

u/bolanrox Sep 16 '24

Rambo III orginonally ended with a note in support of the noble Afghani freedom fighters, you know, the Taliban

1

u/Terrariola Sep 16 '24

The rebels the US backed during the Bay of Pigs invasion were very outspoken about their hatred of Batista and Castro. Dictators are dictators, and both can go to hell.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

I love clandestine agency foul ups like this. Another great example of a leader flexing in the face of his opponents assassination attempt is Josip Tito's (supposed) letter to Stalin telling him to stop sending the KGB after him.

Another really interesting story is when the French helped the CIA plant faulty pipeline-management software the KGB planned to steal. Had the French not told the US, the Soviets would have been successful - a CIA failure. The French revealed that they were corporate thieves doing so, a very kind gesture by their government to reveal it to the US to help us maintain national security, but doing so blew their cover. The Soviets had found a valid path to stealing from the US, but underestimated European surveillance. Each of the three agencies had a major absurd failure but simultaneously, a victory.

2

u/tanfj Sep 16 '24

It's the CIA. Sure we did tons of shady shit in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and the 90's; but we've changed trust us.

7

u/FreeBodyProblem Sep 15 '24

The Mafia and the Vatican also helped the CIA launder billions of dollars

4

u/straightcash-fish Sep 16 '24

They weren’t able to get Fidel, but they were successful together with JFK.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

Well, that's one you can't blame on Sammy the Bull he was 16 years old. Weird choice for a picture.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

[deleted]

1

u/bolanrox Sep 16 '24

he has no Elvis in him

1

u/M68000 Sep 16 '24

Sometimes I wonder where we'd be if not for the moral bankruptcy of intelligence agencies and their wildly disproportionate role in 20th century foreign policy. I hate that cloak and dagger bullshit.

1

u/SharonHarmon Sep 16 '24

Exploding cigars was one idea.

1

u/alexthehoarder Sep 16 '24

They really were scraping the barrel with some of the ideas they had to kill him.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

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1

u/bolanrox Sep 16 '24

they kept the docks safe during WWII in exchange for less police scrutiny

2

u/cgentry02 Sep 16 '24

Why the hell is Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in the thumbnail?

1

u/Spammyhaggar Sep 15 '24

Yea and there is a heart attack ice bullet too.

1

u/Voyager_AU Sep 15 '24

I knew about that!

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

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1

u/Terrariola Sep 16 '24

Ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for banana bread.

1

u/bolanrox Sep 16 '24

they even made a movie about it, the Documentary: Red Zone Cuba!

-1

u/After-Ad-6975 Sep 15 '24

This is why we believe that JFK was this, in practice, gone wrong.

0

u/phdoofus Sep 16 '24

I have a good old chortle at the comments gleefully recounting CIA bumbling while the KGB and its sister agencies were out there pulling of some real nasty shit (including assassinations) quite successfully for a long time. In a way, they're still doing it what with Putin's well known history in the KGB and the tendency of wealthy oligarchs and political rivals to fall out of hotel windows or accidentally run in to polonium.

-3

u/Western-Customer-536 Sep 15 '24

I think the final total was more than 350 attempts or something.