But the suit never left the laboratory. Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro's one-time lover, has said that she was recruited by CIA-funded anti-Castro groups in late and tasked with slipping him botulism-toxin pills.
Her CIA contact, she claims, was E. Howard Hunt, a then-agent who would later go to jail for his role in the Watergate break-in. As soon as her plane reached Havana, however, Lorenz was having doubts about killing Castro. Vanity Fair's Ann Louise Bardach writes :. Even if she had had the will to go through with her mission, she had already botched it, having stashed the capsules in a jar of cold cream.
I fished them out and flushed them down the bidet. I tried to play it cool. The most nervous I have ever been was in that room, because I had agents on standby and I had to watch my timing.
I had enough hours to stay with him, order a meal, kill him, and prevent him from making a speech that night, which was already pre-announced. I was standing at the edge of the bed.
I wanted to see you. Castro asked if she was working for the C. I work for myself. I flipped the chamber out and hit it back. Nobody can kill me. All they needed to do now was get Castro to put it on. It was decided a high-profile American lawyer who had been leading negotiations with Castro would become their unwitting accomplice, and present the suit to the Cuban leader. The plan fell apart when the man was tipped off by a CIA lawyer.
How: The idea was to undermine Castro's public image by making him behave strangely while he was speaking to the nation. To do this, they would spray the radio broadcasting studio with a chemical similar to LSD, so that he would hallucinate on air. Another idea was to give him a box of cigars that would temporarily disorient him while he was giving a speech on television. Yet another scheme was to dust the inside of Castro's shoes with a chemical that would make his iconic beard fall out.
Hack Home Podcast Contact. How Castro survived very cunning assassination attempts. Posted Mon 28 Nov , pm. Its report said the needle was to be rigged with poison and injected into Castro by a "highly placed Cuban official" who was in discussions with the CIA. However, the Cuban official "did not think much of the device" and complained that surely the CIA could "come up with something more sophisticated than that?
The official also suffered bad timing. He was offered the pen on Nov. Kennedy's assassination. The event saw the agency withdraw its support of the attempt on Castro's life and the official never took the pen to Cuba. Not all of the attempts were on Castro's life: America's intelligence services initially tried other methods to undermine the leader's public image as a charismatic strongman.
In , the CIA planned to sabotage Castro's speeches by spraying his broadcasting studio with a chemical that would make him suffer similar hallucinations to LSD. Other plots included spiking the dictator's cigars with a chemical that would disorientate him, hoping he would smoke one before delivering one of his marathon oratory performances. They also tried dusting his shoes with thallium salts — which would have made Castro's iconic beard fall out.
The LSD-like substance was abandoned because it was too unstable, the cigars were never smoked, and Castro canceled the overseas trip that would have given spooks the opportunity to dust his shoes. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Castro with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains.
Guevara, Castro and Castro's brother Raul organized a group of Cuban exiles that returned to Cuba in December and waged a guerrilla war against government troops. Castro and his revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January after overthrowing Batista. Crowds cheer Castro on his victorious march into Havana in Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech.
Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces. During a visit to New York in , Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children. American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in That month, a group of about 1, Cuban exiles, armed with US weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro.
Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of the Cuban blockade by President John F Kennedy in October Castro raises arms with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May Castro in July Castro plays baseball in Castro addresses thousands of Cubans in Havana in Castro visits Paris in March It was the first papal visit to Cuba.
Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint while giving a speech in Cotorro, Cuba, in June He returned to the podium less than 10 minutes later to assure the audience he was fine and that he just needed to get some sleep. In July , Castro talks with Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who was the focus of a bitter international custody dispute a couple of years earlier. He held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union's end and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was an idea whose time had passed.
Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a session of the Cuban parliament in July Castro speaks in Havana in February Castro in Havana in September Several surgeries forced him to relinquish his duties temporarily to younger brother Raul in July That July, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery.
Castro resigned as President in February , and his brother Raul took over permanently. Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September
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