The Poison Pen
Meyer Liebowitz/Getty ImagesCuban president Fidel Castro eats an ice cream cone as he rides in the Bronx Zoo train in New York City. April 2, 1959.
Between 1963 and 1966, plotting in the Fidel Castro assassination attempts was idle speculation, and what little got off the drawing board was mostly schoolyard-prank tier.
The subject of lethal poison again came up with the idea of rigging a fountain pen to inject a toxic compound into Castro’s hand via a needle so fine he (in theory) wouldn’t feel it. The first version of this plan seems to have developed around the summer of 1961, then gone on hiatus for an extended period.
Previous Fidel Castro assassination attempts through poison had not worked well. In March 1961, CIA officer Richard Bissel had managed to smuggle a vial of poison to a restaurant employee in Havana, with the idea he would pour it into Castro’s ice cream the next time the dictator stopped by for a cone, which he frequently did. As it happens, Castro didn’t show for a few months, after which Cuban security police found the poison vial frozen to the cooling coils of the restaurant freezer.
Accountability
FlickrFidel Castro giving a speech. 1979.
By 1974, the national security apparatus in the United States had gone completely berserk on several fronts. The FBI’s COINTELPRO operation, which had – like the anti-Castro operations – begun under Eisenhower, had by this point turned from domestic spying into provoking riots and even assassinating left-wing agitators.
The Pentagon may have taken an anti-Cuba project, dubbed Operation Northwoods, (also approved by Ike) that was supposed to include Cuban gunboats attacking an American destroyer at night and transferred it to Southeast Asia, where it had managed to spark the Vietnam War, which “ended” in 1973 with nothing but casualties to show for it.
Meanwhile, President Nixon had recently been caught running a burglary/freelance spy ring out of the Oval Office, and Congress had had enough. In addition to nearly impeaching President Nixon over Watergate, Congress formed the Church Committee on Assassinations, with the brief of investigating where it had all gone so wrong.
The committee began hearings in 1975, and it was immediately astounded by what came out under oath. The Fidel Castro assassination attempts had only been the tip of the iceberg; going back to 1952, the CIA had used escaping Nazis to study torture and brainwashing methods under MKULTRA, overthrown multiple governments, killed off anybody they wanted to call a communist, and smuggled heroic amounts of heroin out of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
The Church Committee didn’t air all of this dirty laundry in open session, of course, but the feeling had grown that something had to change. In 1976, in response to heavy pressure from Congress, President Ford signed Executive order 11905, banning U.S. government employees from plotting murder and terrorism against the country’s enemies, no matter how annoying their existence was.
EO 11905 was eventually replaced by President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333, strengthening the provisions of Ford’s order. The mid- to late-70s are about the time when the Cuba Project got canceled, though rumors persisted for decades after.
For the record, the coroner’s report states Fidel Castro’s cause of death was “heart failure.”
Enjoy this article on the many Fidel Castro assassination attempts? Read these Fidel Castro quotes to get a better understanding of just how intense he was. The check out these photos of Fidel Castro visiting New York City.
