Praise be to
Barnes and Noble - I just
received
The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time in the
post, so to
celebrate, how about a little
knowledge culled from that
tome?
We're probably all aware of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. One possible explanation for that humiliation is that the Cuban people were more pro-Castro than dogmatic U.S. government officials believed; so, it was reasoned, why not bypass the people of Cuba entirely and just kill Castro ourselves? One bullet, no more problems, right?
Of course, it isn't that simple. There really are no Martin Blanks out there, no cool uber-professionals who never flub a line or fumble a weapon. There's just a bunch of guys, not much more skilled than you or I, trying to find a way to slip some bearded lug a Mickey Finn. It's insane, really, the ideas that they seriously considered - some of the assassination schemes are so crazed and madcap, you expect to see them in cartoons or Pink Panther movies. So, here's the canonical list of ways that the CIA tried to overthrow Fidel Castro...
Find a way to either poison his cigars with some strange toxin, or, God
forbid, cunningly hide high explosives inside the cigars themselves.
BLAM! Just like Elmer Fudd.
Or maybe just inject the fruits of the recent MK-ULTRA
project into the cigar - specifically,
LSD or BZ.
Sneak thallium salts into his clothing, so
all of his hair would fall out, depriving
him of his virile, muy macho image. The Cubans
would surely revolt then!
Follow the Trojan Horse method - give Castro a scuba diving
suit with tuberculosis-contaminated
airtanks. The diplomat that was supposed to hand off the gift refused.
Some people never play along.
Or, better yet, hide explosives down at Fidel's favorite diving spots!
He gets too close to a rigged conch shell, BLAMMO!
Simplify, simplify, simplify. A CIA operative
testified before the U.S. Congress that he was sent three times
to assassinate Castro the old-fashioned way -
with a prayer to God
and a really nice hunting rifle.
And, finally, foment revolution by spreading propoganda that Fidel
was actually the Antichrist.
Giggle while the righteous and upstanding
citizenry of Cuba rise up en masse and
destroy the Beast.
The scuba-diving idea and, of course, the guy with the gun are the only ones believed to have been tried; the rest were ideas that were bandied about seriously enough to leave a paper trail open to anyone with knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act and a few years to blow off to follow.