Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a legendary survivor -- besting what Cuban officials say were more than 600 attempts to kill him. He l...
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a legendary survivor -- besting what Cuban officials say were more than 600 attempts to kill him. He lived much of his long life in the spotlight -- and much of it in the crosshairs -- surviving a half century of assassination plots.
Castro died Friday, his brother Raul Castro announced.
In a column titled "The Birthday" that was published in Cuban-state media on his 90th birthday August 13, Castro wrote that his younger brother Raul would have replaced him had "the adversary been successful in their plans of elimination. I almost laughed at the Machiavellian plans of the US Presidents."
His would-be assassins are alleged to have plotted to kill him in a variety of ways, including poisoning him, dosing his dive suit with fatal botulism and blowing him up during a speech. Many of the plots were spectacular failures. More Wile E. Coyote than Jason Bourne.
"More people have tried to murder the world's most famous socialist than any man alive," according to the 2006 British documentary "638 Ways to Kill Castro."
Today, Cuban officials claim Castro survived more than 600 attempts on his life, a figure that is impossible to confirm.
"If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal," Castro liked to tell interviewers.
His reputation as a cheater of death took hold early. As a young revolutionary he was reported dead twice by Cuba's press -- "perishing" once when he led a failed uprising against a military barracks and again when he returned from exile by boat with a guerrilla force.
The number of people wanting Castro dead -- or at least gone -- rose after he seized power in 1959, took over US property on the island, embraced the Soviet Union and forced thousands of Cubans into exile.
Few had as much reason to want Castro dead as the American mafia. Before the revolution, US mobsters paid off Cuban officials to let them operate hotels, casinos and brothels on the island, just 90 miles from Florida but well out of US jurisdiction.
Castro brought the party to a crashing halt, seizing the mobsters' casinos and hotels and sending them scurrying back to the States.
And that led to an unusual partnership.
A CIA agent met with mobster Sam Giancana in Miami in 1960. Giancana agreed to help the American government kill Castro and even said the mob would waive their usual fee, according to declassified CIA reports.
"Sam suggested they not resort to firearms, but if he could be furnished with some type of potent pill, that could be placed in Castro's food or drink," according to a "Secret - Eyes Only" CIA cable that was released in 2007 as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Cyanide pills were delivered via the mob's contacts to the former Hilton hotel in Havana, now nationalized and renamed the Hotel Habana Libre, the CIA documents show. It served chocolate milkshakes that Castro adored.
But on the night that Castro turned up, it all went wrong for the mob assassin, according to Fabián Escalante, a retired Cuban intelligence officer who looked after Castro for decades.
"They ordered a chocolate milkshake, and in the rush and nervousness brought on by the moment for which he had prepared himself for over a year, he broke the capsule of poison while trying to pick it up, as it had stuck to the shelf of the freezer in which it was hidden," Escalante wrote in his book "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro."
Source: CNN
