United States Senate, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This document is a report by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This committee was tasked with investigating abuses by federal law enforcement agencies and found that there were at least eight recorded attempts made by the U.S. to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1960 and 1965. Created in 1975 but declassified in 1994, this report was based on the CIA’s own internal investigation into the subject in 1967.
The assassination attempts varied in nature and scale, involving an array of methods from poison cigars to mafia hits. Some CIA agents involved in the early attempts noted that such a brazen attempt at destabilization was not something they were accustomed to. The quick succession with which these plots escalated in scope and the amount of them in such a short time frame indicate that the U.S. was rapidly souring on Castro and Cuba.
“We have found concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965. Although some of the assassination plots did not advance beyond the stage of planning and preparation, one plot, involving the use of underworld figures, reportedly twice progressed to the point of sending poison pills to Cuba and dispatching teams to commit the deed. Another plot involved furnishing weapons and other assassination devices to a Cuban dissident. The proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders, and other devices which strain the imagination.
The most ironic of these plots took place on 22 November 1963—the very day that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas—when a CIA official offered a poison pen to a Cuban for use against Castro while at the same time an emissary from President Kennedy was meeting with Castro to explore the possibility of improved relations.
The following narrative sets forth the facts of assassination plots against Castro as established before the committee by witnesses and documentary evidence. The question of the level and degree of authorization of the plots is considered in the sections that follow.”
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. “The Assassination Plots.” In The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, 487–91. Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smxrz.105.