20 Jun These Are All the Insane Ways That the CIA Tried to Kill Castro

Cuban leader Fidel Castro was one of the most important and influential figures of the 20th century, responsible for a Caribbean revolution that changed the political landscape of Cuba forever. Along with Che Guevera, Castro established a one-party communist state, and subsequently ruled the island nation as supreme autocrat until the year 2008, when he officially stepped down due to old age and ill health.

Castro died in November of 2016, when natural causes claimed him in the end, but for most of the Cold War, the CIA had been attempting to off him via a number of convoluted assassination schemes, some of which sound almost too unbelievable to be true.

1. The exploding cigar 

This plan was for the CIA to plant a cigar about Castro’s person, packed with enough real explosives to kill him when detonated. In 1967, the Saturday Evening Post reported that a police officer from New York had been propositioned with the idea by government agents, and had hoped to carry it out during Castro’s visit to the United Nations in September 1960.

2. The diving suit

The CIA had also concocted a plan to contaminate one of Castro’s diving suits with a toxic strain of fungus. This fungus would have passed on a potentially lethal skin disease. The infected diving suit was meant to be given to Castro by the American lawyer James Donovan, who had been involved in hostage negotiations with the Cuban leader.

3. The femme fatale 

Marita Lorenz was a lover of Castro’s, who had been tasked by the CIA with assassinating the Cuban leader via seduction and subterfuge. Lorenz was given two botulism-toxin pills, which she was ordered to slip into his drinks. But in an interview with Vanity Fair, she stated that she was too nervous to carry the act out. “I knew the minute I saw the outline of Havana I couldn’t do it,” she said. Castro also worked out what she was planning to do, and offered her his handgun, telling her to shoot him in cold blood. She couldn’t manage it.

4. The poisoned pen 

One other madcap idea was for an ordinary-looking pen to be adapted, James Bond-style, into a deadly weapon. The disguised dart gun was fitted with a fine, sharp hypodermic needle, which he would have been jabbed with by a member of his entourage, which would have proved fatally toxic.

5. The drugged-up speech

This concept was more of a character assassination than a bona fide hit, but it’s weird enough to merit mention. In 1960 the CIA planned to tamper with one of Castro’s trademark cigars – lacing them with LSD, so that he would get high during one of his speeches and start rambling incoherently, something which they hoped would destroy his credibility.

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