As the sometime hero, sometime petty dictator, and always extraordinary Fidel Castro moves closer to taking his place in history, it may be appropriate to re-examine some of the efforts there have been, during his life, to hasten his departure from it.
And, according to Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuba's Department of State Security, one of the main functions of which was to maintain Castro's longevity, there have been an estimated 638 attempts on El Command ante's life; some of them have bordered, in their absurdity, on desperation. Among the most notorious were:
The CIA's Operation Mongoose. Begun in 1961, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Operation Mongoose paid a lot of CIA employees too much money to hatch plots which would dispose of Castro. Among them were such sophomoric suggestions as an exploding cigar designed to relieve Fidel of his face, and a large exploding seashell, which would have been one of a number of seashells brightly painted by CIA operatives, loaded with explosives, and located where Castro, enjoying one of his beloved Scuba diving excursions, would be sure to pick it up as a souvenir.
Then there was the idea of secretly exposing Castro's wetsuit to a fungus which, if it did not prove fatal, would give him such a skin infection that he could not longer function as Cuba's leader.
But perhaps the most slapstick of all the CIA's attempts at "Fiddling with Fidel" was the "If-you-can't-remove-the-man-remove-his-beard" suggestion that if Castro's beard could somehow be exposed to a hair-removal powder, it would fall out and the Cuban people, beside themselves with laughter, would see him for the frail human being that he is. End of dictatorship.
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True assassination attempts, however, have also abounded. The Bay of Pigs invasion was one such; had it succeeded, the invading forces were commissioned to assassinate not only Castro, but his brother Raul and comrade-in-spirit Che Guevara.
And in one of the great ironies of the 20th century, on November 22, 1963, when an assassin's bullet snuffed out the life of U.S. President--and would-be Castro nemesis-- John F. Kennedy, a CIA agent, with the approval of then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was equipped with a special syringe disguised as a pen and sent from Paris to dispatch Castro. He failed.
One of Castro's former lovers was reportedly recruited to bring Fidel down with poison pills which the CIA had her conceal in a jar of cold cream. The cold cream, very effective in dissolving cosmetics for easy cleansing, unfortunately had the same effect on the pills. The lover in question, at a loss as to how to persuade Castro to swallow the poison-saturated cold cream, abandoned the project. Legend has it that Fidel, suspecting that she was up to no good, offered her his pistol so that she could finish the job, to which she responded, "I can't do it, Fidel."
And in 2000, a group of four men led by former CIA operative and Cuban exile Luis Posada were apprehended after planting explosives beneath a podium at which Castro was to deliver a speech in Panama.
The CIA, also attributed with approaching Mafia hit men to kill Castro, has openly renounced its intention to commit any further attempt on his life.
It's not surprising, really: Fidel Castro, in his lifetime, has outlived five American Presidents, some of whom who sought his downfall. He seems to have survived due to a combination of an exceptionally vigilant Department of State Security, and, as in the case of his former lover, an unquenchable sense of loyalty among those whom he allowed to become close.
So it appears that, when Castro finally does surrender his life, he will do it, as he lived, on no one's terms but his own.
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