The CIA had 638 assassination plots against Fidel Castro, including an exploding cigar and a pen with a hidden needle. One attempt involved his ex-lover, Marita Lorenz, but failed. Another involved putting a chemical in his boots to make his beard fall off. The CIA also planned to lace his cigars with LSD.
After Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, his longtime security officer, Fabian Escalante, told CNN that the Central Intelligence Agency had hatched precisely 638 assassination plots against the dictator, including an exploding cigar, a cigar laced with botox and a pen with a hidden needle that would poison him. After Castro gained control of Cuba in 1959 and joined the Soviet Union in installing missiles on Cuban soil that were aimed directly at the United States, the dictator became the CIA’s number 1 enemy. “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal,” Castro once said.
A femme fatale and other crazy ideas:
One of the more famous attempts involved his ex-lover, Marita Lorenz, who was hired to spike his drink with a poison pill. Castro found out and the plot failed.
One of the more outlandish plots involved trying to put a chemical in his boots that would cause his beard to fall off. They had hoped to discredit Castro when he spoke at the United Nations in 1960, Escalante said.
According to Escalante, the CIA had also planned to laced a box of his cigars with LSD, so that he would laugh uncontrollably during a televised interview.
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