Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro was the Cuban revolutionary who took control of the government of Cuba in January 1959 and held the country's highest office in the decades that followed.¹ The CIA planned and attempted to kill him from 1960 onward, using organized-crime figures recruited through Robert Maheu.

Mexico, 1956

In June 1956, agents of the Mexican Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) arrested Castro and other members of a group preparing a revolution against Fulgencio Batista. An account of the case quotes a two-page DFS report, prepared three days after the arrest by Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, chief of DFS Control, that describes the detentions.² The account gives the arrest date as June 21, 1956, on Mariano Escobedo street in Mexico City, and says the men were taken to the DFS building on Miguel Shultz street.

Washington visit, 1959

Castro visited Washington, D.C. in April 1959. On April 19, Richard Nixon, then vice president, met him in the Vice President's formal office in the Capitol. Nixon's draft summary of the conversation, which he sent to John Foster Dulles on April 24, read in part: "He seems to be sincere" and "He is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline."³ A State Department memorandum recorded a Latin American newspaperman's account that Castro said Nixon had reprimanded him for revolutionary activity against the governments of Nicaragua and Panama.⁴

Assassination plots, 1959 to 1965

The Senate Select Committee's chronology records that on December 11, 1959, Allen Dulles approved "thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro."⁵ The Church Committee's 1975 interim report summarized the Cuba plots in these words: "United States Government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965."⁶ The report also stated that the committee had "concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965."⁷

According to the Church Committee, Richard Bissell asked Sheffield Edwards, director of the Office of Security, to locate someone who could assassinate Castro. Edwards and the operational support chief decided to rely on Maheu, a former FBI agent who had become a private investigator, to recruit someone "tough enough" for the job. The support chief testified that the CIA had used Maheu in earlier sensitive operations in which "he didn't want to have an Agency person or a government person get caught."⁸ The committee reproduced a summary, sent by J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General Robert Kennedy on May 22, 1961, of what Edwards told the FBI: that he contacted Maheu in the fall of 1960 "for the purpose of using Maheu as a 'cut-out' in contacts with Sam Giancana, a known hoodlum in the Chicago area."⁹ Cheri Seymour wrote that Maheu served as the cut-out between the CIA and the organized-crime figures, and that they in turn enlisted Cuban exiles in the plots.¹⁰

The Inspector General's report of 1967 states that Edwards and Maheu agreed that Maheu would approach Johnny Rosselli "as the representative of businessmen with interests in Cuba who saw the elimination of Castro as the essential first step to the recovery of their investments," and that Maheu "was authorized to tell Roselli that his 'clients' were willing to pay $150,000 for Castro's removal." The same report places James P. O'Connell and Maheu with Roselli in New York City on September 14, 1960, where Maheu "made the pitch," and records an Edwards memorandum for the record of May 14, 1962: "No monies were ever paid to Roselli and Giancana."¹¹ Rosselli recalled meeting Maheu in Beverly Hills in early September 1960, and the Inspector General's report placed a meeting of Maheu, Rosselli and the support chief at the Plaza Hotel in New York on September 14, 1960.¹² The committee wrote that Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, Jr. entered the operation under the names "Sam Gold" and "Joe," and that the support chief identified them from an article on the attorney general's ten-most-wanted criminals list.¹³

A CIA memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence dated November 1970, included in the Agency's 1973 "Family Jewels" compilation, begins: "In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards to determine if the Office of Security had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro." It records that "Sam" suggested that they "not resort to firearms but, if he could be furnished some type of potent pill," that could be placed in Castro's food or drink, and that he proposed as a "nominee" Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from the gambling interests. The memorandum states that the Anthony Verona project "was canceled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" and the pills were retrieved.¹⁴

According to the Church Committee, Edwards rejected the first batch of poison pills prepared by the CIA's Technical Services Division. The Inspector General's report records that four pills were given to the support chief on April 18, 1962, passed to William Harvey, and then given to Rosselli.¹⁵

The Inspector General's report records that Dr. Edward Gunn, chief of the Operations Division of the Office of Medical Services, had a notation that on August 16, 1960 he "received a box of Cuban cigars to be treated with a lethal material," which he understood to be "Fidel's favorite brand." Edwards did not recall the incident. A Technical Services Division officer (name redacted in the released copy) was "positive" that he had contaminated a full box of fifty cigars with botulinus toxin, and Gunn's notes show that he reported the cigars as ready for delivery on October 7, 1960; the report states that the notes do not show actual delivery until February 13, 1961. The report's comment states that others recalled the cigar scheme "only as an idea that was considered and then discarded."¹⁶ The Church Committee reported the same episode in these words: "The record does not disclose whether an attempt was made to pass the cigars to Castro."¹⁷ The committee's summary said the plans to assassinate Castro "using poison cigars, exploding seashells, and a contaminated diving suit did not advance beyond the laboratory phase."¹⁸

The CIA regarded AM/LASH, the cryptonym for Rolando Cubela, as an important "asset" inside Cuba.¹⁹ The Church Committee recorded that Desmond FitzGerald and a case officer assured AM/LASH of support on November 22, 1963, the day of the Kennedy assassination. The committee also recorded that a ball-point pen rigged to deliver poison was offered to AM/LASH.²⁰

Operation Mongoose, 1961 to 1962

In November 1961 President John F. Kennedy issued a memorandum to begin Operation Mongoose, directing the government to "use our available assets * * * to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime."²¹ Richard Goodwin advised the President that Robert Kennedy "would be the most effective commander" of the operation. The President instead gave Edward Lansdale the task of coordinating it, and Robert Kennedy sat on the Special Group (Augmented) that oversaw it.²² The Church Committee stated that Harvey was put in charge of the CIA's Task Force W in late 1961 or early 1962, a unit that employed about 400 people at headquarters and at the Miami Station.²²

A memorandum for the record in the Taylor report file of the Kennedy Library records Allen Dulles's reply that "we did have a policy, which was to overthrow Castro in one way or another."²³

Inspector General report and the Church Committee

A CIA Inspector General report on the plots, signed by John S. Earman and dated May 23, 1967, ran 143 pages including its cover memorandum.²⁴ The Church Committee cited the report throughout as the "I.G. Report."

House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1978

On April 3, 1978, staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations met Castro in Havana. The committee's record states that Castro "assured the Committee that neither he nor his government had any involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."²⁵ In its March 1979 staff report on the CIA-sponsored plots, the committee quoted Castro's interview of that day. On the question of whether his government would have killed the President, Castro said: "We just tried to defend our folks here, within our territory." On Kennedy's speech of September 7, 1963 he said: "For 3 years we had known there were plots against us," and "all these plots or attempts were part of the everyday life."²⁶

Marita Lorenz and Frank Sturgis

A Review Board research memo on Marita Lorenz describes her as a woman who allegedly was involved in a plot to poison Castro, and states that she was reported to have hidden poison pills in a jar of cold cream with the intention of killing him, and that the pills dissolved.²⁷ The memo lists Frank Sturgis as also involved. It records that New York Daily News articles from 1975 and 1976 provided the basis for an independent account of the plot, and that Drug Enforcement Administration files described Lorenz as unreliable and not credible. The memo also records Lorenz's account, as told in Gaeton Fonzi's book The Last Investigation, of a meeting at the home of Orlando Bosch before November 22, 1963, where, she said, the talk was of "take another armory."

Escalante's count

Fabián Escalante, who had responsibility for Castro's security, calculated a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life.²⁸

Bolivia, 1967

Felix Rodriguez took part in the capture and execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia in October 1967. Rodriguez wrote that on October 9, 1967, at 2:15 p.m. local time, he was in a helicopter above the Bolivian jungle with Guevara's dead body tied to a stretcher on the skid, and that earlier that day he had spoken to the wounded Guevara in a small dark room, opening with the words "Che Guevara, I want to talk to you."²⁹ A Director of Central Intelligence memorandum of October 11, 1967 reports that the Bolivian Second Ranger Battalion captured Guevara on October 8, that at 11:50 a.m. on October 9 the battalion received orders from Bolivian Army headquarters in La Paz to kill him, and that the orders were carried out at 1:15 p.m. A footnote to that document quotes a message sent by an officer on the scene (name not declassified) that Guevara's fate would be decided on October 9 by the highest Bolivian military authorities: "I am managing to keep him alive," he reported, "which is very hard." The volume's editorial note states that CIA contract personnel assigned to the battalion as advisers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the execution.³⁰ Gary Webb wrote that Rodriguez had been "in on the capture and execution of Che Guevara" among other paramilitary operations.³¹

Central America and the Contra war

The independent counsel's report on the Iran-Contra affair identifies Rodriguez, also known as "Max Gomez," as active at the Ilopango air base in El Salvador, near San Salvador. The report describes meetings there among Oliver North, Salvadoran Air Force general Juan Bustillo, Colonel James J. Steele and Rodriguez, which resulted in agreements on use of the base as a transshipment point for humanitarian assistance to the Contras.³² Former CIA official Alan Fiers testified in 1992 that Rodriguez "was put into" El Salvador, in early 1985, "to work in the areas where we had left a void," and Webb wrote that Rodriguez, by his own account, "eventually became the overseer" of North's Contra resupply operation at the base.³³

Webb wrote that in the build-up to the Contra war in Central America the Contra recruiting in Miami joined the Nicaraguan and Cuban exile communities, that Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs operation put up training camps for the Contras' recruits, and that Castro "had been giving the Sandinistas aid and comfort since the mid-1970s," with Cuba providing advisers to the Sandinistas on building up their army and intelligence services.³⁴ Webb also wrote that the CIA director William Casey gave Congress the halting of Sandinista arms shipments to the Salvadoran guerrillas as the reason for the Reagan administration's decision to turn the CIA loose in Nicaragua, and that the Sandinistas had admitted supplying the guerrillas with arms.³⁵ In 1999, according to Webb, Donald Winters, the former chief of CIA operations in Panama, told the judge hearing Manuel Noriega's appeal that Noriega "brokered deals with South American leaders, acted as a liaison to Cuba's Fidel Castro, provided details on guerrilla and terrorist activities, and even gave the former Shah of Iran a safe haven."³⁶

Cocaine charges and the 1989 trials

Julia Preston reported that General Arnaldo Ochoa was arrested in Havana on June 12, 1989, and that at an honor tribunal he confessed to the charges against him. She quoted his testimony that "one pays for treason with one's life." A summary court-martial began June 30, and four men convicted of high treason, including Ochoa and Antonio de la Guardia, were shot on July 13, 1989.³⁷ Preston wrote that the treason charge "was not shown by the facts." She also reported that the Cuban government charged that de la Guardia's group had arranged for six tons of cocaine to be sent from Colombia through Cuba to the United States in the two years after April 1987. Castro said that he and Raul Castro learned of the drug activity only after the June arrests, and Preston noted that many observers doubted this.³⁷

Preston also described a separate federal case: Reinaldo Ruiz and his son Rubén were indicted in Miami in February 1988 for smuggling cocaine supplied by the Medellin Cartel through Cuba. The two pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences for cooperating. U.S. reports said they had worked with Cuban officials but did not publicly name de la Guardia.³⁷