New Delhi: New Delhi: Fidel Castro, the revolutionary politician who led Cuba from 1959 to 2008, was targeted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a series of bizarre plots involving gifting him a diving suit coated with a poisonous fungus, an insecticide-tipped hypodermic concealed in a ballpoint pen, cigars coated with the poisonous bacterium Botulinus, a vial designed to spray the hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide, and shellfish venom concealed in sugar-free sweeteners.
The plots are detailed in a newly-declassified 1977 internal investigation by CIA Inspector-General John Earman, which were published online on Thursday by George Washington University’s online National Security Archive project.
Earman’s investigation discovered that the hypodermic-fitted ballpoint pen, filled with Black Leaf 40 nicotine-based insecticide, was being handed over to an assassin at a meeting in Paris on 22 November 1963, at almost exactly the moment US President John F Kennedy was being murdered by an assassin in Texas.
The plots, which ran in five phases from 1959 to 1963, included a proposal to infiltrate Thallium salts in Castro’s boots, in the hope that they would lead his iconic beard to fall out and thus undermine his image of masculinity.
Even though several books and newspaper reports have provided significant details on the CIA campaign to assassinate Castro, the release of the original declassified documents provides significant new details.
According to Earman’s investigation, the first of the assassination attempts was subcontracted to Robert Maheu, a private investigator with connections to organised crime syndicates. Cuba had reopened casinos in 1959, hoping to attract foreign exchange, thus enabling the US gambling syndicates to infiltrate the country.
The key figures in the plot included the Chicago-based gangster Salvatore Giancana, the CIA’s head of western hemisphere operations, J.C.King, Deputy Director for Plans J.C.Bissell, as well as technical specialists Jake Esterline and Sidney Gottleib.
Efforts to execute the plots did not proceed smoothly, the documents show. Early editions of the poisoned sweetener, for example, failed to dissolve in liquid. To make things worse, guinea pigs to which the poison seemed unaffected, forcing CIA chemists to conduct further, successful tests on monkeys.
Juan Orta, Director General of the Office in Castro’s office, was recruited to slip the poisoned sweetener tablets into his boss’ tea. To the dismay of the CIA and its gangster subcontractors, though, Orta left office on 26 January 1961, and later took refuge at the Embassy of Venezuela in Havana. The CIA, interestingly, did not know of Orta’s political decline, and attributed his refusal to participate in the plot to “cold feet.”
Earman also learned, the documents show, that the CIA had administered LSD to “unwitting” American citizens. A 29 November 1963 memorandum recorded that the CIA director would have to personally authorise any further “unwitting testing on American citizens.” LSD was also administered to dogs, cats and rabbits by CIA chemists, the new documents show.
The drug was administered to inmates of psychiatric facilities for incarcerated criminals without their consent, testimony given by CIA chief chemist Gottleib in 1975 has shown. CIA personnel also ingested the drug, claiming it was necessary to familiarise them with its effects in the event that it was used against them in the field.
In one case, a prisoner who had been secretly given a large dose of LSD suffered “severe classic paranoid reaction.” The individual was declared mentally ill by a psychiatrist, who also did not know about the LSD.
A related programme, code-named Artichoke, involved administering barbiturates to subjects. Artichoke tests had been carried out on non-consenting individuals across Europe, Gottleib told the Senate.
Gottleib told a Senate investigation that the “results of everything told us that the money expended, the effort expended, the security risk involved, when you add everything up—it was probably not a high pay-off program.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Fidel Castro advised Sheikh Mujibur Rahman against promoting pro-Pakistan officers
‘638 Ways to Kill Castro’ never gets old
Extremely interesting as also bizarre- the methods.