Castro resigns: 638 ways they tried to kill the president

[CptSternn]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1811

Castro once said: "If surviving assassination were an Olympic event, I'd win the gold medal."

His bodyguard Fabian Escalante went back through his records and counted 638 attempts to kill the Cuban leader.

Many of them were confirmed in CIA files which were declassified last year.

President Kennedy was said to have asked James Bond creator Ian Fleming for tips on how to wipe out Castro - and many of the attempts to kill or discredit him seem more appropriate to a bad Bond spoof than real life.

They included:

•The exploding cigar - a scheme to pack one of his favourite Cohiba Esplendidos with enough explosive to blow his head off after a couple of puffs.

•The poisoned cigar - another Cohiba laced with botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest natural substances in the world.

•The infected diving suit - Castro was a keen undersea explorer and CIA agents arranged for Cuban exiles to dust the inside of his suit with powder containing a deadly fungus.

•The exploding sea shells - packed with booby traps and plastic explosives, they were placed in one of Castro's favourite dive areas.

•The femme fatale - Marita Lorenz, one of Castro's many mistresses, was persuaded by the CIA to try to smuggle a jar of cold cream containing poison pills into his room.

Castro rumbled the plot, thrust a pistol in her hand and told her to kill him face to face. Her nerve failed.

•The poison pen - a ballpoint containing a tiny, spring-loaded hypodermic syringe filled with poison.

It was supposed to prick Castro and kill him when he picked up the pen to write.

•The mind-bending radio studio - not so much an assassination as an attempt to humiliate Castro by pumping an LSD-type gas into a studio during a live broadcast so that he would make a fool of himself on air.

•The beard-wilter - Castro was always proud of his bushy facial hair so the CIA planned to make his beard fall out, again causing him to be ridiculed.

Bizarrely, the plot involved putting hair removal powder in his shoes.

Despite the ludicrousness of some of the operations against him (and his beard), Castro took the threats seriously.

Delphin Fernandez, his former personal assistant, says he regularly had all his underwear burned after wearing it, so it could not be laundered with deadly chemicals.


Viva Fidel!

I;m a fan of the man, and his people. One has to wonder though - how much did America spend trying to kill this man? Of the 638 ways the CIA has admitted to trying to end his rule, none of them included 'diplomacy' or sitting down for talks with the man.

America, the country that will spend 50 years and billions of dollars trying to kill someone they don't like, especially if it means they don't have to talk to the person and try and work things out.

Again, what message does this send to the youth?

[Renatus]

50 years and 638 attempts and they can't kill one old guy who is standing out in the open for everyone to see less than 100 miles away from American soil. Why even try to kill Osama if they can't even kill Fidel? Couldn't they they have saved billions of dollars and thousands of lives simply by bombing the basterd. Hell the stage Fidel fell off of came closer to killing him than the CIA ever did.

[blackwater1110]

We were just discussing this in Contemporary LA History today, and the most puzzling question of all seemed to be: why did we care so damn much about Castro? Back in the Cold War days, it kind of made sense. But now, it just seems like some sort of bizarre personal grudge, or fanaticism. I mean, Vietnam was much more disastrous to the US in terms of loss f life and economic detriment, yet today we have pretty diplomatic relations with them. What gives? The only theory we could come up with was, Florida is always an essential state come election time, and there's probably about a million conservative cuban constituents candidates can collect. Good alliteration, yesh?

Oh, btw Renatus, your Youtube link in your sig is broken. As your local friendly net traffic cop, I can't have you cruising the information superhighway like that. *issues fix-it ticket*

[Renatus]

Originally Posted by blackwater1110

Oh, btw Renatus, your Youtube link in your sig is broken. As your local friendly net traffic cop, I can't have you cruising the information superhighway like that. *issues fix-it ticket*

I refuse to recognize any governing body with jurisdiction over the internet. The internet has no boundaries and is owned by everyone with a connection to the internet.

[blackwater1110]

You WILL respect mah ATHORITAH!!

[Renatus]

Originally Posted by blackwater1110

You WILL respect mah ATHORITAH!!

Over your dead body!!