From Poison Tablets To Cigars: How CIA Tried To Assassinate Fidel Castro

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro died at the age of 90 from natural causes. However, not many know that the revolutionary leader survived not 10 or 20 but over 600 assassination attempts. For almost half a century, the attempts at Cuba's most iconic leader involved spies, Mafia hitmen, James Bond-style death devices, and other methods that may seem like something out of an Ian Fleming novel.

Now, a new docuseries, Mafia Spies, streaming on Paramount+, exposed the actual how the CIA cooperated with the mafia to organise Castro's assassination. It's based on a book, authored by Thomas Maier, of the same name.

The intricate storylines and large ensemble of politicians, mobsters, spies, revolutionaries, and entertainers feature in the six episodes of Mafia Spies.

Castro was the newly appointed prime minister of Cuba, and the CIA, then headed by Allen Dulles, intended to topple him.

To assassinate Castro, the CIA recruited organised criminal figures, Sam Giancana and John Roselli of the Chicago Outfit, through a middleman named Robert Maheu, who was an attorney and businessman.

Notably, the mafia had their own motivations for wanting Castro gone as Havana's casinos ceased to be a cash cow sanctuary for them when he took over in 1959.

The series sheds light on the unsuccessful 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.

In an attempt to accomplish its aim, the CIA and its mafia allies used everything from poison tablets to a deadly "honey pot" that involved enlisting a woman to murder and seduce.

Maier's book is based in large part on documents on Kennedy's assassination that the National Archives published in batches in 2017 and 2018.

The JFK records demonstrate that despite their deadly reputation, Giancana and Roselli, the Mafia duo, were unable to assassinate Castro.

A potential assassin in Havana was handed poison tablets by the CIA. However, he got cold feet before tampering with Castro's food.

The Church Committee, a Senate committee that documented abuses by intelligence services in the mid-1970s, claims that the cigar plot, perhaps the most well-known attempt on Castro's life, began in 1960.

According to the Committee's investigation, an official was handed a box of Castro's favourite cigars along with orders to inject them with deadly poison. The cigars were tainted with a botulinum toxin so strong that ingesting one would result in death. It is unclear from the record if there was an effort to give Castro the cigars.

Castro loved scuba diving, so it should come as no surprise that the CIA investigated the potential of creating an explosive seashell to assassinate him during one of his outings.

According to the Church Committee report, in 1963, Desmond Fitzgerald, the head of the [anti-Castro CIA] Task Force, ordered his assistant to find out whether it would be possible to place a seashell that could be set to detonate in a place where Castro frequently went diving.

Other unsuccessful Florida-based commando operations were attributed to misfortune or inauspicious timing.

Fighters with CIA training who were discovered invading Cuban coastlines during nighttime assaults were frequently imprisoned and occasionally put to death by firing squad. 

The JFK documents also show how Castro's own network of double agents and supporters in Florida thwarted CIA operations and assisted in protecting the communist leader. 

A few of the conspirators who were associated with the two gangsters betrayed them for personal gain.