The most unusual, but real attempts of the CIA on Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro assassination attempt Fidel Castro assassination attempt full

There is a well-known phraseological unit "to be born in a shirt." We can safely say about this person that he was born in a suit made of a heavy-duty titanium alloy.

He headed the Island of Freedom for a period comparable to ten American presidents and five Soviet general secretaries. This famous Cuban revolutionary is undeniably an unprecedented example of how a strange, sometimes inexplicable, set of circumstances can be the determining force in the development of everything life path. Having become acquainted in more detail with the biography of Fidel Castro, I can no longer doubt the existence of such abstract concepts as fate, destiny and luck, and symbols for contact .

Even at the beginning of his revolutionary activity, during the fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains (1957-1958), F. Castro, who led the Rebel Army, was always in the first line of attack, each time risking his life. This continued until Castro's supporters wrote a collective letter asking their leader not to take part in the battles from now on. Perhaps in this case, the initiative of the people surrounding Castro helped prevent the premature death of the commandant, which at one time did not happen to Admiral Nakhimov, famous for his habit of going out into the area completely open to enemy bullets and looking into the distance for hours. This example is very significant.

Throughout later life Fidel Castro, there were cases when the breath of death was felt very close, events took place that postponed its triumph more and more for a longer perspective. F. Castro never consciously tried to escape from death, and perhaps that is why fate was favorable to him. However, even the Soviet leadership showed superstition in connection with the likelihood of the death of their ideological ally. There is a known case when, the day after the revolution in Cuba, the staff of the Russian Museum in Leningrad removed the painting of the artist Pavel Fedotov from 1844, just because it was called "The Death of Fidelka". Obviously, the picture was in no way connected with the events of the second half of the 20th century, but only depicted the grief of a woman over the death of her beloved dog. However, the US Central Intelligence Agency has repeatedly attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. Langley, the headquarters of the CIA, was determined to get the head of the Cuban leader.

One of the first plans for the assassination of F. Castro is more like the plot of a not very good melodrama. The former lover of Castro, Marita Lorenz, was involved in the case, on whose offended feelings they decided to play the “Fighters of the Invisible Front”, who persuaded her to avenge the gap that had happened. The idea was that M. Lorenz poisoned her former lover with the help of poisonous capsules. However, according to one version, the poison dissolved in a tube of cream, where the woman hid the ampoules, and according to another, she simply changed her mind at the last moment. The next attempt at poisoning is considered to be a case in a restaurant where F. Castro usually dined. The waiter was supposed to put poison on Castro's plate, but was unexpectedly fired from the restaurant. This crime was planned by American mafiosi, who suddenly lost their source of income from the operation of gambling and other entertainment establishments in Cuba, monopolized by the Cuban revolutionary. The elimination of Castro was entrusted to the gangster Santos Trafficante, who delivered the deadly poison to Havana. In April 1961, five machine gunners attacked Castro's car in one of the narrow streets of Havana. The car was riddled with bullets, but Castro himself miraculously survived. Then an attempt was made to offer the heavy smoker Fidel a box of cigars soaked in a potent poison. But, as you might guess, the plan didn't work. A poisoned automatic pen with a built-in microsyringe, the injection of which is not sensitive to humans - why not a means of killing from the pages of Agatha Christie's detective novels? Cuban official Rolando Cubelo, who was recruited by American intelligence services in the early 1960s, was supposed to kill Castro with his help. As a reward, he was promised political asylum in the United States. Cubelo was exposed by Cuban counterintelligence and went to jail. F. Castro in free time liked to spend time on the beach, and American intelligence prepared a plan according to which explosives were disguised in one large sea shell. However, the storm thwarted the attempt. In 1963, American lawyer James Donovan traveled to Cuba to negotiate with Castro for the release of a group of US citizens from a Cuban prison. The present that Donovan intended to give to the Cuban leader - scuba gear - turned out to be too cheap, according to the lawyer, and he bought a more expensive gift for F. Castro, and kept the scuba gear for himself. Of course, he could not have known that the scuba cylinders were known to be contaminated with the tubercle bacillus by the CIA official. After some time, Donovan died.

There were also many CIA projects aimed at discrediting Castro. For example, there was an idea to treat the premises of the radio station where Fidel was supposed to speak with narcotic substances. In the future, F. Castro, having inhaled the vapors of the drug, spoke, to put it mildly, not quite what he planned to convey to the audience from the very beginning. From the same series - cigars stuffed with a powerful hallucinogen. They were intended to be offered to the Cuban leader before a public speech. There was even a treacherous plan to strip Fidel Castro of his famous beard. American experts decided that the bald leader would no longer be taken seriously by anyone, and planned to treat the insoles of Fidel's shoes with thallium salts, a potent hair remover. Fortunately for Castro, none of the above ideas were put into practice. November 1971 F. Castro paid a friendly visit to Chile. This is where the "Chilean pursuit" of the CIA for their constantly elusive victim begins. It was planned to kill Castro during a press conference. An automatic rifle was mounted on the TV camera, with the help of which two CIA agents intended to "click" the Cuban leader during his speech. However, an hour before the start of the operation, one of the killers had an attack of appendicitis, and the second did not dare to act alone. Then, along the route of Castro's cortege, a truck filled with four tons of dynamite was installed, but the time bomb mechanism rusted and failed. On the way back from Chile to Havana, the plane of the Cuban leader was supposed to make a transit stop in Lima. A detachment of armed mercenaries was already waiting for him at the airport. It seems incredible, but at the last moment the Comandante decided to land at another airfield. A total of 638 (!) attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro are known today. Their detailed description can be found in the book by former Cuban intelligence chief Fabio Escalante, 638 Ways to Kill Castro. Unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro cost US taxpayers $120 million. Of all the American presidents during the reign of F. Castro, only Jimmy Carter did not attempt to assassinate him because of his religious beliefs. Now in Cuba they like to remember such a case: when Fidel was presented with a Galapagos tortoise, he asked how long she lived. “400 years,” they answered him. Comandante joked: "That's how it always is with pets - once you get used to them, they die in your arms."

Image copyright AP Image caption None of the assassination attempts on Castro were successful.

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

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

The CIA and Miami-based Cuban exiles have been plotting for nearly half a century, plotting ways to get rid of a leader who, in the words of former US 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 had been included in the Olympics program, he would certainly have won a gold medal.

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

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

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

However, as early as 1975, a US Senate committee published details of at least eight plans to assassinate Castro using devices that, the report said, were "astonishing."

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

Almost at the same moment that President Kennedy was shot dead in an attempt to overthrow the Castro regime during the landings in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, a CIA agent handed a poisoned fountain pen equipped with a thin needle to a Cuban he had recruited.

However, as stated 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 poison pills, which she had to dissolve in a glass of water and give to the Cuban leader.

However, Castro found out about this plot and, according to the would-be assassin, handed Marita his gun with the words: "I cannot be killed. No one can kill me."

According to Marita, who told this story to a New York Daily News reporter many years later, “he was smiling and chewing his cigar. I felt that life was leaving me. He knew me so well. Then he grabbed me, and we made love."

The last assassination attempt on Castro was made in 2000, when during the visit of the Cuban leader to Panama, it was planned to plant explosives under his podium. This plan was uncovered by the Cuban president's bodyguards.

Four members of the conspiracy were then arrested, including a CIA agent and an old Cuban émigré, Luis Posada. He ended up in prison, but was later released under an amnesty.

Other plans were also developed - 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 while on a foreign visit with thallium salt applied to his shoes. It was assumed that during the trip Castro's beard would thin or fall out completely, but Fidel canceled the visit and the plan failed.

Another failed plan was to spray an aerosol with LSD in the TV studio, from where Castro was going to address the people - in the hope that Fidel would become insane.

To avoid these assassination attempts, Castro took careful precautions. But in 1979, when he attended the UN General Assembly in New York, he couldn't help but joke.

Asked by journalists flying with him if he was wearing body armor, Castro unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his chest.

"I wear a moral vest," he replied.

If you believe the biographers of Fidel Castro, then the Cuban leader, for his long and eventful life, was attacked 637 times. It is known that all these attempts failed and the Comandante died in bed from old age, surrounded by family and friends. At the same time, Fidel survived several American presidents and countless other serious enemies. Let's remember the strangest ways that the enemy intelligence agencies resorted to in order to deprive the Cuban people of their permanent leader.

Before delving into the history of assassination attempts, it is worth mentioning the person who owns the most unusual ideas for eliminating Castro. US Office of Strategic Services officer Edward Lansdale led Operation Mongoose, the goal of which was to change political system in Cuba by any possible way, starting from the economic blockade and ending with the physical elimination of the leader of the country and his inner circle.

Lansdale was an extraordinary person - extremely purposeful and possessing an incredible imagination. It is to him that we owe the fact that we can enjoy a real bondian around the Cuban leader. Some of the methods of murder invented by the American intelligence officer cause laughter today, but do not forget that behind them, in fact, was the serious work of dozens, or even hundreds of professionals, a solid investment of money, time and effort.

Unlucky Poisoner

The Americans, not yet taught by bitter experience, organized the first attempt using the classic method - the femme fatale. To do this, CIA agents recruited in 1960 the lovely brunette Marita Lorenz, who had had a fleeting but passionate affair with a Cuban revolutionary the year before.

The plan was simple - Marita, who was given a potent, tasteless poison in pills, was to go to Havana, seduce Castro again and, during a romantic dinner, put the poison in her food. Initially, everything went like clockwork - Lorenz managed to arrange a meeting with Fidel, and he was glad to have the opportunity to remember the past at dinner with a former mistress.

But already in the bedroom of the Comandante, Marita saw with horror that the poisonous pills hidden in a jar of face cream had become unusable, having lost their gelatinous shell. This unsettled the fatal beauty so much that she did not notice how Castro approached.

This was followed by a female hysteria, during which the potential victim of the assassination even gave the unlucky killer a gun so that she would complete her mission or finally calm down. As a result, Lorenz confessed her love to the commandant, was graciously forgiven and immediately expelled from the island of Liberty. This is where it all ended - without casualties and tragedies.

poisoned cigars

In the same 1960, another attempt was made to kill Castro, which, only by a lucky chance, did not end successfully. In 1975, in one of the memos of the CIA Medical Division, information appeared that in February 1960, a box of poisoned Cohiba cigars, which was beloved by Fidel, was made to assassinate the commander.

The cigars were treated with botulinum and it was enough to put one of them in your mouth to get a lethal dose of the toxin. The fate of this product is unknown, but there are memories of Fabian Escalante, who headed the Cuban intelligence services. The officer wrote in his memoirs that one poisoned Cohiba cigar was found on Castro's desk during his speech to the UN Assembly. Despite all efforts, it was not possible to find out who planted her policy.

unusual shell

Realizing that Castro was protected not only by his environment, but also by fate itself, Edward Lansdale decided to switch to more extravagant methods of murder. He developed a unique plan to undermine the commandant in the sea while scuba diving. It is known that the Cuban leader was an avid diver and the CIA decided to use this passion to the maximum.

Fidel Castro liked to dive in the same picturesque bay, enthusiastically exploring the bottom and its colorful inhabitants. Lansdale decided to fill one of the shells powerful explosives and provide a remotely controlled detonator. It was decided to use a bright and unusual shell, which the diver will certainly want to take a closer look at. The undermining was supposed to be carried out by CIA agents, located on board a submarine lurking nearby.

This idea failed at the design stage. Lansdale, choosing a typical caribbean shell, realized with chagrin that the mollusks common in the area are too miniature to fit enough explosives in their shell for sabotage.

"Lazar" with a rifle

The charismatic and principled Cuban leader simply generated enemies and ill-wishers. One of these dangerous enemies was Felix Rodriguez, whose father held a high government post under the overthrown dictator Batista Castro. After fleeing Cuba at the age of 17, the guy came to the attention of CIA agents and did not have to be persuaded to take part in the assassination attempt on Fidel.

In 1961, before the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Felix arrived in Cuba as part of a secret mission, the purpose of which was to prepare a counter-revolutionary uprising. On one of the difficult days for the detachment, Rodriguez, tired of hiding in the wooded mountains, picked up a sniper rifle and told his colleagues that he would immediately go to Fidel and finish him off, completing the operation.

It will sound strange, but the assassination attempt failed due to the vanity of Felix's associates, who said they wanted to take part in the coup and personally avenge the commander for numerous insults. The attempt did not take place, the uprising failed, and most of its participants died. Rodriguez was miraculously among the few who survived and received the nickname "Lazarus" for the miraculous rescue.

Diving suit

Fidel's passion for diving obviously haunted Lansdale and he made another "sea" attempt to fulfill his deadly mission. In 1962, American lawyers, headed by James Donovan, managed to achieve some success in negotiations with the Cuban authorities.

The Americans returned 1113 hostages who ended up in Cuban prisons after the failure of the operation in the Bay of Pigs. To thank the Cubans for such an act of loyalty, the US government sent a shipment of humanitarian aid to Liberty Island, worth a huge sum of $53 million at the time.

Donovan himself planned to present Fidel Castro with a new model diving suit, knowing for sure that the gift would be to the comandante's taste. The CIA treated the gift with strains of two deadly bacteria at once - a tubercle bacillus was placed in the respiratory filters, and the lower part of the suit was treated with a drug from a rare disease called "Madure's foot".

And this time, Lansdale and his team were in for a failure. Specialists from the Medical Division were busy too long and did not have time to deliver the deadly gift in time. When the hour "H" came, Donovan, in order not to arouse suspicion, was forced to present Castro with an ordinary diving suit, which Fidel was delighted like a child.

poisoned pen

In 1963, one of the close associates in guerrilla war Raul Castro, brother of the Cuban leader. The man's name was Rolando Cubela and he claimed to have a personal score with the Comandante. According to the traitor, it will not be difficult for him to kill Fidel, since he is a member of the closest circle of the Cuban leader and even owns a beach house next to Castro by the sea.

For the assassination attempt, the Lansdale team designed and manufactured a syringe disguised as fountain pen. A capsule with the strongest poison was hidden inside the product, and the retractable needle was so thin that its injection could not be felt. And once again, Providence took up the rescue of Castro - at the moment when the CIA agent instructed Kubela how to use spy weapons, his phone rang.

The call brought bad news - US President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas and a temporary all-out was given for all special operations. Therefore, the deadly pen never fell into the hands of a traitor patriot, who had good potential.

frivolous mafia

In 2007, documents were declassified that contained information that not only the dreamer Lansdale, but also more respectable people were involved in the organization of assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. One of the organizers was the notorious Allen Dulles, the sworn enemy of all communist regimes on the planet.

Dulles decided that if the CIA agents could not cope with the task, then it was better to involve people who made death their profession. At the end of 1960, contact was made with the Chicago mob through agent Robert Mahew. On behalf of some "international companies" Robert offered the gangsters 150 thousand dollars for the murder of the Cuban leader in any way convenient for them.

The mafia also had its own interest in this enterprise - with the coming to power of the communists, numerous casinos, clubs and brothels, owned by the bosses of mafia families, disappeared from the island of Freedom. To implement the plan, the mafiosi brought in a retired Cuban official who was supposed to put one of the 6 poison pills in Castro's food.

This plan failed, as the performer unexpectedly refused to carry out the task, citing the fact that Castro was too well guarded. The mafia had no second chance since it began fighting in the Bay of Pigs. After a while, already in 1963, Dulles returned to the plan with the involvement of criminal elements.

Another former Cuban official dissatisfied with Fidel was found, who was given poison pills through Chicago mafiosi. At the last moment, the performer also demanded small arms with a solid ammunition load. Having received what he wanted, this man disappeared without a trace, leaving the American intelligence “with a nose”, and the mafiosi at a loss.

Narcotic nonsense on the air

American intelligence agencies also made attempts to discredit Castro in front of his people. In 1961, the CIA's Technical Division was seriously developing a plan to spray a drug similar in effect to LSD in a radio studio, from where Castro liked to address the Cubans.

Comandante was a born orator and could speak passionately for several hours. At the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1986, Fidel Castro "pushed" a speech for 7 hours and 10 minutes, and his speech at the UN, lasting more than 4 hours, remained in the history of the organization as the longest.

The CIA hoped that inhaling drug fumes, Castro would start to stray or talk nonsense. According to the Americans, this should have caused irreparable damage to the image of the head of Cuba. The LSD project remained on paper, as the technical specialists of the intelligence department were unable to create an effective narcotic aerosol.

Handkerchief

It just so happened that 1960 was the most productive year for Castro for assassination attempts. Another secret development designed to bring the invulnerable Fidel to the grave was a handkerchief infected with deadly bacteria. They planned to throw the accessory to the Cuban leader in the office or on the podium, and the result would not be long in coming.

It is not known for sure whether there was an attempt to slip the handkerchief to the Comandante, but it is obvious that if there was, then it was not successful. Like the second attempt to eliminate the objectionable politician - the same handkerchief, decorated with spectacular embroidery, was sent as a gift to Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Kerim Kasem. Oddly enough, at that time the package simply did not reach the addressee.

In addition to these cases, there were many other attempts to eliminate Castro, such as toxic thallium in shoes, a botulinum milkshake, and a booby-trapped podium. As you can see, luck did not accompany the CIA and the commandant did not become a victim of a political assassination.

A man of the era has passed away - Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. After surviving 638 assassination attempts, he died peacefully at the age of 90. He will remain a symbol of the Island of Freedom - Cuba, as the first person who radically changed the life of a whole generation of Cubans, and not only them. History will change attitudes about him more than once, probably from a variety of angles - the memory of even contemporaries is changeable. But he will remain an iconic figure in world history.

“Cuba is far away, Cuba is near” - the lines from the song of the Soviet era were dedicated specifically to Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban revolution. It was understood that the distant island was almost the sixteenth republic of the USSR. In addition to the fact that we received almost a third of Cuban cane sugar, which was sold “by weight” in almost every rural store, exotic Havana Club rum, which even Siberian men hung over, Cuban cigars, which were a little more expensive than shag and Prima cigarettes , Cuba was the same outpost of the Soviet Union off the coast of a completely non-peaceful America, which made it possible to maintain the fragile balance of peace.
During the Caribbean crisis, it was the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba that prevented a global world crisis. And the most significant role in this confrontation was played by Fidel Castro, who played on the side of Moscow, not Washington. It is very difficult to assess the role of Fidel Castro in world history. Many are now mourning his death, there are those who openly rejoice at the death of the Comandante (comrade-in-arms and friend of the no less legendary Che Guevara). In Russia, those who remember Fidel not only from their pages on social networks are sincerely sorry, those who do not remember shrug their shoulders indifferently. Nevertheless, it was Fidel Castro who played a huge role in establishing friendly relations between our countries. Then, in the sixties and seventies of the last millennium, it was not just friendship and assurances of loyalty, it was a guarantee of maintaining nuclear parity, when every advantageous position, like in the United States and the USSR, provided the likelihood of a retaliatory strike. NATO was based in Europe, then only Western. Soviet Union, thanks to Cuba, could deliver a retaliatory and inevitable blow right in the stomach of the United States. And this could not be ignored. “In the series of events and actions of the heroic epic of Fidel Castro and Cuba, I highlight the last 25 years,” notes Alexander Zimovsky, an international journalist who personally met with Castro. - After the disappearance of the USSR from the map of the world, Fidel Castro and Cuba were left alone with the United States and their satellites in the Western Hemisphere. And Fidel managed to save the country, practically without changing anything either in ideology or in the economy. While the former allied countries of the USSR went into oblivion, and various pro-Western regimes appeared in their place, Fidel continued to be a model of a principled and unchanging foreign and domestic policy.

First, Cuba, having lost the economic support of the USSR, developed its own domestic economic program.

Secondly, Castro was able to use the weakening of the US geopolitical position in Latin America. That is, Fidel lived to see the Latin American “left turn” and a full-scale restoration of relations with states south of the Rio Grande.

Thirdly, the domestic political situation in the United States has changed, where Latinos have become one of the most influential groups of voters. Internal pressure also led to a change in US policy towards Cuba, and Obama made his moves.

Thus, it was Fidel's political longevity and enormous political authority that turned modern latin america, the former only " backyard» United States, to a region open to other great powers. Simply put, if it were not for Fidel, we would not have seen the Russian flag and Russian business on this continent for a very long time.

And, of course, this will be the glorious historical trace of the Comandante. About the longevity of Fidel, who survived almost all political leaders from the camp of both opponents and allies (Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev died back in 1982), legends and anecdotes circulated during his lifetime. One of them said that when the commander, having received a parrot as a gift and learning that he had been living for three hundred years, said sadly: “It will be a pity to leave.” Even after transferring political power in Cuba to his brother Raul, Fidel remained not just a symbol of Cuba, but also an active participant in the events in the country. And when American President Barack Obama flew to Cuba, he ignored this fact and did not even comment on this event. Like Raul Castro, who defiantly did not shake the outstretched hand of the American president, Cubans do not forgive old grievances.

The resentment of the Cubans remained in relation to Russia. When, in the early 1990s, Moscow disowned Havana and curtailed both its military and commercial presence in Cuba, the Cubans bluntly announced their betrayal. They sincerely believed in us and hoped for help. Now relations have returned almost to their previous course, and Cuba is ready for them on a full scale. On the island of Liberty, they are ready to accept not only Russian tourists, but also the Russian military as a guarantor of their own security. And this was precisely the will of Fidel Castro, who always believed that partnership and alliance with Russia would provide Cuba with prosperity. “It was a real disaster when Russia, under American pressure, turned away from Cuba,” says a former correspondent for the Cuban government newspaper Granma ( Granma). “But we knew perfectly well that this was not the will of the Russian people, but only short-term circumstances. And our leader Fidel Castro did not allow himself then a single negative word about your country, only a certain regret. Even when the representative office of our newspaper in Moscow was closed, the tone of the publications regarding Russia did not change. And the work of the Cuban embassy in Moscow has never stopped. And now, after the death of Comandante Fidel, I am sure that our relations will not worsen. Havana and Moscow are nearby!” As a brief and almost lyrical digression about the Cuban journalist, who once graduated from the military journalism department in the Soviet Union, one can recall his personal participation in strengthening friendly ties between Russia and Cuba. When in 1992 there were problems with the sale of tobacco products in Moscow, Pedro Prado brought his friends to the editorial office of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper ... Cuban cigars. As a "retaliatory move", he was invited on an excursion to the Moscow plant "Crystal", where they could not do without a light tasting. However, the tone of his publications about Russia did not depend on such contacts - like most of the Cubans who studied with us, Pedro Prado always believed that friendship is a round-the-clock concept. Cuba will deviate from its path, says Pedro Prado. “Life goes on and our country will not lower the flag of Liberty Island.”