Smoking Out Castro

could change the intelligence game forever. The end goal was always to be one step ahead of the nation's enemies, and for a time it seemed like LSD would be the solution to America's problem with Fidel Castro. But White was occupied with espionage of his own, which will hear about an upcoming episodes, and so Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA mounted a campaign involving acid and other drugs designed to topple the Castro regime. Actually killing Castro, however, was

another matter. Entirely to do it, Gottlieb would think about poison cigars, homicidal mistresses, and exploding seashells. If you don't know a lot about Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, you probably know his iconography, green fatigues, a forest of a beard, an ever present cigar clamped between his teeth. From the time he seized power in nineteen fifty nine, he was the most worrisome kind of communist for the CIA, Powerful, charismatic, and,

at least in his native Cuba, revered. He was a firebrand, a symbol of defiance. In short, he had to go. That realization brought about years of increasingly bizarre assassination attempts on the part of the CIA. One of Gottlieb's earliest plans was to dip cigars in a lethal poison and slip the fatal stokeies to Castro. The poison was the

easy part. Gottlieb had chemists working like Santa's elves on a variety of dangerous chemicals, including baculinum toxin, the same kind of neurotoxic protein found in spoiled canned goods and the faces of aging entertainers. But gottli wasn't looking to improve Castro's looks. Inhaled, the toxin would cause difficulty breathing, paralysis, and death of Castro and maybe communism itself. The hard

part was getting a deadly cigar into his hands. To accomplish that, the CIA turned to experts in the matter of international criminality. They met with the Mafia. A CIA memo uncovered years later described quote a sensitive mission requiring gangster type action end quote. With the approval of CIA director Alan Dulles, the agency paid Mafia member Johnny Roselli a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in nineteen sixty to

arrange for Castro's death. The mob had a personal score to settle with Castro, who had seized mafia properties in Cuba. Roselli enlisted fellow organized crime figure Santos Traficante. The CIA then delivered baculinum pills and some dosed cigars to Trafficante, who passed them along to a man named Jorge Orta, who worked on Castro's executive staff and was a cooperative co conspirator or to like to gamble and owe the

mob of debt. This was how he'd repay it. The CIA held their collective breath, waiting to hear whether Orta had succeeded in poisoning Castro. Not long after, reports out of Cuba said Castro had suddenly fallen ill. This was it. The US stood ready to send troops into the country, but Castro recovered. If he had been poisoned, it wasn't enough. More likely, Orta was more scared of Castro than the mafia, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. The illness

was likely a coincidence. Roselli had a plan B. He got more of the pills and used Dr Manuel Antonio de Verona, leader of the anti Castro Democratic Revolutionary Front. Verona passed them on to a waitress who worked at a restaurant Castro loved. The idea was that he'd get some very poor service in the form of a deadly toxin mixed into his milkshake or ice cream. Accounts very on what happened next. It's possible Castro suddenly stopped visiting

the business and the pill is when unused. Other declassified documents state that the poison pills had been hidden in a freezer and broke open, rendering them useless either way. Following the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco in nine, when Castro's forces beat back CIA funded exiles, Verona wanted out of the scheme entirely. Goli wasn't about to give up. The CIA's plans grew bolder. During intelligence meetings, the agency

discussed something other than assassination. What if Castro could be humiliated. The leader often gave rousing speeches. Maybe a cigar dipped an LSD would cause him to lose his mind in public, shaking their confidence. Then the CIA had an even better idea Castro broadcast some of his speeches from a radio station. A plot was hatched to deliver an aerosolized version of l s D to directly into the broadcast booth in Havana,

with Castro inhaling the odorless hallucinogen. If Castro started tripping on national radio, he'd be discredited on you know. But the CIA could never figure out how to enact the plot. Getting to Castro was always the problem. Then they discovered he'd soon be in New York City to visit the United Nations. They began mulling over thallium salt, a deadly substance once he used in rat poisons. They didn't necessarily

want him to ingest it. Once exposed to his skin, it would force Castro's iconic beard to fall out as though he were Samson, and his facial air gave him his powers the CIA planned to spread the thallium over his shoes and nightstand at a New York City hotel, but the trip was canceled. There was another idea to construct a fountain pen with a deadly tip that one got as far as being given to a CIA contact

named Rolando Cubella that same day. In nineteen sixty three, John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Cubella lost his nerve. The CIA looked at Castro's habits. He liked to go diving, so a scuba suit and breathing apparatus contaminated with tuberculosis and a deadly fungus was designed. The CIA believed that could offer the scuba suit as a gift to Castro when negotiating for the release of prisoners in the Bay of Pigs Aftermath. When that proved difficult, the CIA started

looking into exploding seashells. If the CIA could find one so spectacular, so beautiful that Castro would have to pay get up then It never happened, but the CIA did eventually find someone to get close enough to Castro to expose into the CIA's chemical ingenuity. They recruited a woman named Marita lorenz A lover of Castro's who intended to slip poison into his drink. She hid the poison and a container of cold cream, but had trouble fishing it out,

which made Castro suspicious. Castro began questioning her and then handed her a gun to use instead. He told her that no one could kill him, and well he wasn't wrong. Years after the fact, a CIA agent who kept one of the botulinum talks and cigars brought it out of storage to test its remaining potency. It was still lethal even to the touch. But what got even the CIA learned was that it didn't matter how dangerous the weapon was if he didn't have the right person for the job.

Maybe all they were missing was George White. A happy and healthy Castro busied himself allowing the Soviet Union to build nuclear testing sites in Cuba, leading to a standoff between the US and Russia that flirted with war. He accused the United States of sabotage in Cuba's crops and introducing dangay fever to its population, claiming it was biological warfare. He went on to rattle the nerves of eleven U S presidents, reigning for nearly fifty years before old age

began to mimic the effects of the CIA's plans. The speeches became less coherent. He passed away in twenty six of what one assumes were natural causes. During his life, Castro was not only aware of the CIA's foiled plots, he was delighted by them. He ordered a Havana museum to create exhibits about the failed attempts. Their Cubans could visit and get a tour of the CIA's inability to eliminate their target. Castro thought there were over six hundred

attempts on his life, roughly thirty by the CIA. In sent an investigation, the CIA swore it had only been five or six. No matter how many times he tried. Sidney Gottlieb never got his man. As it turns out, he was more effective and hastening the demise of the CIA's own employees, and that would make George White's life very difficult. Indeed, that's next time on Operation Midnight climax S