Fidel Castro gave alms to the beggar. The most unusual, but real attempts of the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. Why is he invulnerable

It is known that Fidel Castro survived more than 600 assassination attempts by the United States during his entire term of office as Prime Minister and then Head of Cuba. Many of the assassination attempts were well-thought-out operations, and some are so ludicrous, one would think, the child invented them.

Wetsuit


Many of the CIA conspiracies against Castro revolved around his hobbies, including scuba diving, which he did extensively. Documents released on behalf of President Donald Trump showed that the CIA had manufactured a wetsuit riddled with a debilitating fungal disease known as Madura's leg, along with a tube rubbed with tuberculosis bacteria. The plan was to give it to Castro in the hopes that he would use it and get sick. However, for some reason, the diplomat in charge presented Castro with a completely different suit.

Mistress Conspiracy


Almost everyone around Castro knew he got along well with ladies, and it is estimated that he slept with over 35,000 women in his life. Even if this figure is somewhat exaggerated due to propaganda from all sides, the truthful reports of the time show that this is not too far from the truth. The CIA decided to take advantage of this. They convinced one of Castro's former lovers, Marita Lorenz, to travel to Havana, meet him again, and put poison pills in his food. When she was alone with Castro, he casually asked her if she wanted to kill him. She replied, “Yes.” Then he gave her his loaded pistol and said, “You cannot kill me. Nobody can kill me. " The CIA did not realize how good Castro was with women. Lorenz didn't kill him. Instead, she continued to have sex with him that night (as she did several times in subsequent years).

Mafia


The CIA decided to use the services of the Sicilian mafia to assassinate Castro.
According to declassified 1960 documents, the CIA contacted Momo Salvatore Giancana, the leader of the Sicilian mafia, and worked with him to come up with ways to kill Castro. Many potential methods were discussed, including the involvement of another member of the mafia shooting Castro at a rally or giving him deadly pills. Unfortunately for them, the plan failed.

Beard


Even if Castro was hated by many around the world, there is no doubt that he was very popular in Cuba. His rallies attracted unprecedented crowds even before the revolution, and much of this was attributed to his oratory skills.
One of the most ridiculous conspiracies was splattering thallium salts in his shoes, as he used to leave them outside his hotel room when traveling abroad. Thallium is a powerful depilatory and can completely remove body hair.
Why would the CIA want to do something like this? They decided that Castro's rating to a greater extent because of his stately beard, and getting rid of it will lead to a decrease in popularity among the people. They even tested thallium salts on animals in the laboratory. However, due to Castro's erratic travel schedule, this plan never materialized.

Seashells


If you thought the contaminated wetsuit was the only ridiculous conspiracy against Castro based on his love of diving, you really aren't familiar with just how tenacious the CIA is. This time, however, they aimed to kill him, not just make him sick. According to declassified reports of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the CIA wanted to plant explosives in attractive seashells at Castro's favorite diving site. The idea was that Castro would not be able to resist picking up a graceful shell, it would instantly explode and kill him. It is unclear why this plan never came to fruition, although some reports suggest it would have been too obvious. Our guess? Perhaps they realized how stupid it was.

Cigars

Castro could be seen holding a cigar in almost all of his publicly available photographs. It's not because the photographers asked him to do it. He truly loved Cuban cigars. In fact, some of his closest aides claimed they never saw him without a cigar. The head of the CIA's Office of Medical Services, Dr. Edward Gunn, wanted to use a toxin known as botulin to kill Castro, since it left no trace.
When Gunn realized that the toxin could not easily dissolve in water and could not be added to Castro's drinks, Gunn personally hemmed a box of Castro's favorite cigars with botulinum. Gunn rewound them for hours, making sure there were no signs of falsification. The cigars never made it to Castro, although Gunn kept them ready in a safe.

Milkshake


Even if all the ridiculous conspiracies on this list were carefully thought out and planned, none of them hurt Castro. Well, except for one thing, when the CIA was very close to assassinating the Cuban leader.
The plan included conspiracy with American bandits who controlled gambling establishments in Cuba. They had to add a potent poison to Castro's milkshake that would kill him instantly without leaving any evidence. They almost succeeded, as the poison got into the freezer of the hotel in which Castro was at the time. Unfortunately for them, the pill stuck to the sides of the freezer and fell apart as they tried to pick it up.

Tribune


You might think that the CIA, after several unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro, left him alone.
In fact, they never gave up and tried to kill him until 2000. In 2000, Castro was scheduled to give a speech in Panama. It was the perfect scheme, as no one would have suspected the US government because it was foreign territory. Cuban terrorist (and, unsurprisingly, former CIA agent) Luis Posada Carriles was hired to work for the CIA. He was instructed to equip the rostrum where Castro was supposed to speak with explosives.
Although Carriles did so, he grossly underestimated the competence of the Cuban security forces. They easily found the explosives and thwarted another CIA attempt to assassinate Castro.

Fake Second Coming of Christ


Obviously, the CIA was using its imagination to try and assassinate Castro. As we all know, none of their schemes have been successful as Castro died of natural causes at the age of 90. However, one agency conspiracy was more ridiculous than all the others.
According to testimony from CIA veterans on the Senate Church Committee (which was set up to investigate misuse of intelligence), the agency was involved in a particularly bizarre conspiracy to falsify the Second Coming of Christ in Cuba. The idea was that Cubans were deeply religious people and would rebel if there was a divine sign against Castro's rule. The CIA even planned to fire projectiles from a submarine to “divinely” light the sky, because just telling people that Christ has returned would be a little silly. Although the person responsible for this categorically denied the existence of any such plan, documents from the time prove otherwise.

Former revolutionary and leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro was a true lucky and legendary survivor. According to Cuban officials, more than 600 assassination attempts have been made on his life. The man spent most of his long life in the spotlight, surviving half a century of murder conspiracies. But despite desperate attempts by ill-wishers, Fidel died of natural causes at the age of ninety.

Fidel Castro's activities

Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist after taking over leadership of Cuba. Even before that, the staunch anti-communist US government had suspicions about Fidel's political beliefs based on the content of his fiery speeches. The suspicions were confirmed in the first year of the new Cuba, as the country developed more and more relations with the Soviet Union.

Indeed, Castro's philosophy gravitated towards Leninist Marxism as his rule progressed, although his beliefs differentiated in some key aspects, such as his identification with non-aligned countries and the celebration of the guerrilla-style revolution. The best way to understand castroism is to study a system that sought to combine the economic and political elements of Marxism with those of Simon Bolivar, whose anti-imperialist orientation is clearly visible in Fidel's own philosophy.

How many times have Fidel Castro been assassinated?

Fabian Escalante, formerly the head of the Cuban intelligence agency and the man who was responsible for protecting the Cuban president for half a century, claims that Cuban agents are aware of six hundred thirty-eight conspiracies and attempts on Fidel's life.

List of assassination attempts

According to Cuban agents who have chronicled abuses by the United States intelligence services since the mid-1970s, Fidel was attempted to be assassinated in the most sophisticated ways. Here is some of them:

• Poisoned ice cream.
• Exploding shellfish.
• Poisoned wetsuit.

• The murderer lover.
• Poisoned pen.
• Poisonous drugs based on LSD.
• Poisoned cigar.

Why did Fidel Castro have so many ill-wishers?

For all his advances in social policy, Fidel Castro's forty-nine-year rule was characterized by a brutal suppression of freedom of expression. Amnesty International has documented the human rights situation in the island nation for over fifty years. During this time, they collected hundreds of testimonies from prisoners of conscience, people detained by the government simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and assembly.

The state of free speech in Cuba, where activists continued to be arrested and harassed for speaking out against the government, is Fidel Castro's darkest legacy.

The reason to overthrow the Cuban president was his dictatorship, as well as his connections with the government. Soviet Union... Fidel's communist and anti-imperialist views did not approve of the United States. When the revolutionary allowed the Soviets to place missiles on his island, the States began to actively seek ways to eliminate the external threat in the person of Castro.

Conclusion

Fidel Castro's peaceful death has prompted many respectful public statements by heads of state and leading politicians around the world. Notable personalities such as Russian Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev, British Teresa May and Jeremy Corbin, Canadian Justin Trudeau, american president Obama and Hillary Clinton called the late President Castro "an important historical figure", "a major figure" and "a defender of social justice." His reputation as a trickster of death was entrenched at an early age. As a young revolutionary, he was killed twice by the Cuban press - “killed” once while leading a failed uprising against military barracks, and again when he returned from exile in a boat with partisan forces.

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Image copyright AP Image caption Not a single assassination attempt on Castro was successful

It is known that during the long life of Fidel Castro, more than 630 assassination attempts were planned against him. The most famous case is a conspiracy in which they were going to send him to another world with the help of a cigar filled with explosives.

But there were other, no less exotic assassination attempts. These include a poisoned diving suit, poisoned shaving cream, and mined seashells.

The CIA and Miami-based Cuban émigrés have conspired for nearly half a century to find ways to get rid of a leader who, according to former American diplomat Wayne Smith, acted on them like a full moon on a werewolf.

Castro himself once remarked that if the art of surviving assassination attempts were included in the program of the Olympics, he would certainly get a gold medal.

A book by former Castro security guard Fabian Escalante recounts many of these conspiracies, most of which have remained at the level of fantasy.

Image caption Marita Lorenz did not live up to the confidence of the CIA and could not bring herself to raise her hand against Castro

It was known that Fidel Castro was fond of scuba diving, so it was decided to put him an exotic shell filled with explosives, which was supposed to explode in his hands.

In addition to this category is the plan to create a wetsuit infected with a fungus that can cause a dangerous disease. Both plans were found to be unproductive and were never implemented.

Back in 1975, however, a US Senate commission published details of at least eight plans to assassinate Castro using devices that the report said were "amazing."

Twice Cuban gangsters were sent poison in the form of pills to Cuba with proxies, which they had to deliver to Fidel in some way.

Image copyright AFP / Getty Image caption Castro remains popular with many Hispanics

Almost at the same time that President Kennedy was shot dead, who attempted to overthrow the Castro regime during the landing in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, a CIA agent handed a poisoned fountain pen equipped with a fine needle to the Cuban he had recruited.

However, as indicated in the report, the recruited agent was not impressed with the idea and asked for something less obvious.

At the same time, the CIA recruited Castro's former lover Marita Lorenz: she was given pills with poison, which she had to dissolve in a glass of water and give to the Cuban leader.

However, Castro found out about this conspiracy and, according to the failed killer, handed Marita his pistol with the words: "I cannot be killed. No one can kill me."

According to Marita, who after many years told this story to a reporter for the American newspaper New York Daily News, “while he smiled and chewed his cigar. I felt that life was leaving me. He knew me so well. Then he grabbed me, and we made love. "

Image copyright AFP / Getty Image caption Former CIA agent Luis Posada (right) was convicted of attempted assassination attempt on Castro in 2000

The last attempt to assassinate Castro was made in 2000, when during the visit of the Cuban leader to Panama, it was planned to plant explosives under his rostrum. This plan was disclosed by the Cuban president's security personnel.

Then four members of the conspiracy were arrested, including a CIA agent and an old Cuban émigré, Luis Posada. He went to jail but was later released under an amnesty.

Other plans were also developed - with the aim not to take away Castro's life, but to put him in an awkward position and make him a laughing stock.

One such plan was to strip Castro of his famous beard during an overseas visit with thallium salt applied to his boots. It was assumed that during the trip, Castro's beard will thin or completely fall out, but Fidel canceled the visit and the plan failed.

Image copyright Keystone Image caption Castro had the nickname "Beard", so his beard was attacked separately

Another failed plan was to spray an LSD aerosol in the television studio, from where Castro was going to address the people - in the hope that Fidel would fall into a deranged state.

To avoid these assassination attempts, Castro took careful precautions. But in 1979, when he took part in the UN General Assembly in New York, he could not help joking.

Answering the question of journalists flying with him whether he wears a bulletproof vest, Castro unbuttoned his shirt and bared his chest.

“I wear a moral vest,” he replied.

One of the most outstanding personalities in history is the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Just think of this person, 638 attempts were made. Most of them are backed by the US intelligence services. We will try to tell you about the most famous and insidious plans to assassinate the Cuban commander.

Two snipers

Fidel Castro made active visits to various countries. In 1971, on one of his trips to Chile, an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, in which 2 killers were supposed to be involved, to be sure. But this did not help the instigators: a few days before the murder, one of the snipers was hit by a car, and the second was struck by an attack of appendicitis.

Insidious women

The commander was very fond of female attention, and the special services could not help but take advantage of this. So one of Fidel's former mistresses was recruited, who was entrusted with poisoning the Cuban leader by giving him poisonous pills. The woman arranged a meeting with Castro, and did not think of anything better how to hide the pills in a tube of cream, where they simply dissolved. Nevertheless, Castro exposed the lady, after which he handed her a pistol so that she would shoot him if she so wanted. According to eyewitnesses, the lady could not do this and begged the commandant for forgiveness.

Cigars for Comandante

Fidel Castro is an inveterate smoker, like a real Cuban he smoked only cigars. Through dummies, the CIA special services handed him cigars with explosives as a presentation. By the will of fate, the security service of the leader of Cuba suspected something was wrong and saved the life of its leader.

Dangerous tribune

Cigarettes are not the only bomb-related assassination attempt on Fidel. In 2000, when Castro was on an official visit to Panama, about 90 kilograms of explosives were hidden under the rostrum from which the leader of the revolution was supposed to deliver a fiery speech. The guards during the inspection of the territory did not reveal explosive elements, but again a miracle saved the commander, the explosives simply did not detonate. If luck hadn't smiled on Fidel again, there would have been no chance of surviving the explosion of so many explosives.

Fatal clams

More insidious assassination attempts were made on Castro. Since he was a great lover of diving, the intelligence officers scouted the place where the commander would dive. They planned to hide a large amount of explosives under water, while, in order to attract Castro's attention, the killers planned to paint the shellfish in bright colors. The assassination attempt was planned down to the smallest detail, and when the entire mechanism of the assassination was planned and ready for implementation, a storm began at sea.

Lawyer's Gift

Another failed CIA scheme was the secret use of the famous lawyer Donovan. An unsuspecting lawyer was supposed to give Castro a scuba gear, inside which a tubercle bacillus was brought. The lawyer appreciated the gift and found it not too worthy for the Cuban leader and decided to buy him a more expensive and high-quality model. And so it happened: the lawyer presented a new, expensive model of scuba gear to the commandant, and kept the "scuba gear from the CIA" for himself. Fidel survived, but the lawyer - alas ...

Even a pen

During a meeting between Kennedy and Castro, a CIA officer had to hand over the poisoned pen to a Cuban, whose task was to plant it on the commandant. For unknown reasons, the assassination attempt failed.

Favorite restaurant

Castro had a favorite restaurant and visited it regularly. The CIA attempted an assassination attempt on the commandant in this restaurant. It consisted in the fact that a gangster from Chicago receives capsules with deadly poison, which should be thrown at Fidel. When the assassination attempt was planned and prepared, the commandant suddenly stopped going to this restaurant.

Fidel Castro will soon be 90 years old, he is alive in spite of his enemies, and with a high degree of probability it can be argued that he survived them.