Assassination plots

The CIA discovered Castro was the man who couldn’t be killed

There is a safe somewhere in the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., that very likely contains a sort of tribute to Fidel Castro. It’s a Cohiba, the cigar favored by the Cuban leader, dusted with one of the world’s most lethal poisons — botulin toxin.

“Merely putting one in the mouth would do the job,” John Earman, an inspector general of the CIA, wrote in 1967. By “job” he means assassination. Under orders from Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, the CIA devised numerous plots to kill Castro. The revolutionary turned communist survived White House enmity for half a century.

The Cohiba was uncovered after CIA Director Richard Helms ordered Earman to get the truth behind rumors in the press of the assassination attempts. Earman’s little-noticed 1967 report was finally made public in 1998.