Editing Conspiracy BBS Archive/cia info (section)

===[[Operation Mongoose]]===

In order to get a better idea of the kind of planning
that went into the assassination schemes devised by the CIA,
we will look at the case of Fidel Castro.  In addition, at
the end of this work appears a number of messages that were
transmitted between the CIA station chief in Leopoldville and
headquarters in Washington regarding the CIA attempts to
assassinate Patrice Lumumba (Appendix II).  Now let us look
at the story behind [[Operation Mongoose]], the CIA plan to
eliminate Fidel Castro.
     
When Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, U.S. leadership
made it a top priority to remove him.  According to Ray
Cline, former Deputy-Director of the CIA,

The CIA had advocated the 'elimination of Fidel
Castro' as early as December 1959, and the matter
was discussed at Special Group meetings in January
and March of 1960.  At an NSC meeting on March 10,
1960, terminology was used suggesting that the
assassination of Castro, his brother Raul, and Che
Guevara was at least theoretically considered.


Describing the political climate by the time Kennedy took
office, Cline comments in his book Secrets, Spies, and
Scholars, "There was almost an obsession with Cuba on the
part of policy matters" and it was widely believed in the 
Kennedy Administration "that the assassination of Castro by a
Cuban might have been viewed as not very different in the
benefits that would have accrued from the assassination of
Hitler in 1944."  It should also be noted that after the
failure at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the pride of the United
States was hurt and U.S. leaders wanted more than ever to
dispose of Castro.
     
The number of strategies devised by the CIA to carry out
the deed and the diversity of their applications illustrates
the creativity and shrewdness of planners within the agency. 
Johnson points out a number of ingenious plots that were at
least considered by planners within the agency at one time or
another.  This brief excerpt from his book is by no means an
exhaustive list.

The several plots planned at CIA headquarters
included treating a box of Castro's favorite cigars
with a botulinum toxin so potent that it would
cause death immediately upon being placed to the
lips; concocting highly poisonous tablets that
would work quickly when immersed in just about
anything but boiling soup; contaminating a diving
suit with a fungus guaranteed to produce a chronic
skin disease called Madura foot and, through and
intermediary, offering the suit as a gift to
Castro; constructing an exotic seashell that could
be placed in reefs where Castro often went skin-
diving and then exploded at the right moment from a
small submarine nearby; and providing an agent with
a ballpoint pen that contained a hypodermic needle
filled with the deadly poison Black-leaf 40 and had
so fine a point it could pierce the skin of the
victim without his knowledge.


     
Perhaps more frightening than any of the above plots was
the revelation that the CIA also attempted to launch a plot
against Castro through its contacts with underworld figures
with connections in Cuba.  The fact that the agency was
willing to resort to such desperate action illustrates the
desire of the men in charge in Washington to eliminate
Castro.  One source told a reporter in 1962 that then
Attorney-General Robert Kennedy had stopped a deal between
the CIA and the Mafia to murder Fidel Castro.
     
The CIA asked a mobster named Roselli to go to Florida
on its behalf in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination
teams of Cuban exiles who would infiltrate their homeland and
assassinate Castro.  Rosselli called upon two other crime
figures, Sam Giancana, a mobster from Chicago, and the Costra
Nostra chieftain for Cuba, Santos Trafficante, to help him. 
Giancana, using the name "Sam Gold" in his dealings with the
CIA, was on the Attorney General's "Ten Most Wanted
Criminals" list.
     
Castro was still permitting the Mafia gambling syndicate
to operate in Havana, for tourists only, and Trafficante
traveled back and forth between Havana and Miami in that
connection.  The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000
to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support
the Agency could yield.  Giancana was to locate someone who
was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his
food while Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba,
helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island. 
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the
participants in the plot.     
     
Fortunately for the CIA, the Attorney General intervened
before the plan was carried out.  Had the plan succeeded and
it then become public knowledge that the CIA and the Mafia
worked together intimately to murder Castro, the startling
revelation might have been too much for the American public
to stomach.  It most likely would have done serious damage to
the credibility of an agency which was already beginning to
rouse public suspicion.