Fidel Castro | The Man Who Survived More Than 600 Assassination Attempts
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro died in 2016 at the age of 90 He was also known as The Legendary Survivor. As of the CIA, he was reported dead multiple times, only later to be found alive. But it was perhaps the 638 times that Cuban intelligence officials claimed the CIA tried to kill Castro that would earn him that survivor status. Castro liked to tell interviewers that "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal".
It's impossible to know if the specific number(638) is an exaggeration or not, but we have confirmation from multiple CIA reports, as well as the testimony of some prospective assassins, that the agency tried to kill Castro a multiple number of times. Not all the plots were carried out, and several attempts ranged from the most brilliant to the stupidest attempts were carried out. And the plots against Castro took into consideration killing him in various ways, including poisoning him, blowing him up in more ways than you could ever think off, At one point an ice cream was also used to try and finish the job.
Many attempts took place over the 60s decade. And Human Rights filed a complaint against the CIA stating misuse of power. And further investigation over the CIA motivated the President of the United States to ban political assassinations in 1976, but Cuban intelligence says the plots against Castro continued for 2 more decades, including some under President Clinton within the 1990s.
The Legendary Cigar of Castro
As early as 1960, U.S. officials set their eyesight on one of Castro's most stable figures: his cigars. Castro told Cigar Aficionado in a 1994 interview that he became a cigar smoker at the age of 15 when his father gave him his first Cheroot. For decades, Castro was seen in photographs with cigars and only with Cigar's, and the CIA took that as an opportunity. There was the instance of sneaking enough explosives into the cigars thereby blowing his head clean off.
This perhaps was the most famous attempt on Castro's life and was also charged with investigating abuses by the CIA and the FBI. "An official was given a box of Castro's favourite cigars and was instructed to poison them with botulinum toxin which could kill the consumer the minute he/she takes a puff. To date, there is no information on whether the cigars were delivered or not.
The Ice Cream Paradox
In March 1961, the CIA targeted yet another one of Castro's sinful behaviour. This time it was in the form of ice cream, and they turned to the mafia to carry out the mission of poisoning the ice cream. Tony the CIA's most notable and trusted Cubans were given tons of poison pills and hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the operation. All he wanted to do was poison the ice cream of Castro.
Tony managed to hand off the bottle of poison to a restaurant worker in Havana, who was instructed to slip it into Castro's ice cream cone. Cuban intelligence later found the bottle in an icebox. That moment was the closest the CIA could ever get near Castro.
Around the same time as the ice cream plot, the CIA contacted a senior Cuban official, who was called AM/LASH. AM/LASH was provided with a treasure (high-powered rifles "with scopes") for the operation. Which he planned to use for Castro's assassination. The CIA, however, preferred a more delicate way and offered him a ball-point pen that has a tip-filled with poison. For AM/LASH this was the stupidest thing he has ever heard, and advised the CIA to "come up with something more sophisticated than that." Well, you predicted it right, the attempt didn't go as expected and the attempt was also added to one of the stupidest assassination attempts ever happened in history.
Let’s Go Underwater
One of Castro's favourite hobbies was scuba diving, so the CIA looked into ways they could carry out yet attempt while he was underwater which was most probably gonna fail. They had two approaches. One was to place a large number of seashells, pack them with explosives, and paint them brightly to draw Castro's consciousness. Divers would drop them in Castro's diving areas. There's no evidence the plot was ever actualized.
The second diving plot involved a flesh-eating wet suit tampered with the oxygen tank. The suit would be powdered with a fungus that caused chronic skin disease. That plot failed, too.
The CIA tried one last kind of assassination: personality assassination. The plan was to so severely damage Castro's reputation and personality thereby forcing him to resign. One way they tried to do this was by spraying broadcast studios with an LSD-like chemical, so that he would fantasise on-air. The chemical was determined to be unreliable and was also abandoned.
In the end, Castro was forced to retire because of his own health issues, including a sort of botched medical operation. Maybe the CIA finally got one right.
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