Bobby Kennedy's war on Castro - CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1995 by Evan Thomas

In fact, on November 19, 1963, FitzGerald approved of "telling Cubela he would be given a cache inside Cuba. Cache could, if he requested it, include . . . high power rifles with scopes." The memorandum for the record also noted that "C/SAS [FitzGerald] requested written reports on AMLASH operation be kept to a minimum." A second meeting between Cubela and his CIA case officer was set up at the Paris safe house to convey this message. At the last minute FitzGerald decided to throw in another offering to Cubela: a poison pen.

Cubela was looking for some small "exotic" weapon--a dart gun, perhaps--he could use with deadly effect in close quarters. Cubela, a medical doctor, told the CIA he was sure they could come up with some clever "technical means." The elves in the Operation Division of the Office of Medical Services worked through the night and produced a ball-point pen--a Paper Mate--rigged with a hypodermic syringe. The needle was "so fine," Dr. Edward Gunn of Medical Services later boasted to the inspector general, "that the victim would hardly feel it when it was inserted--he compared it with the scratch from a shirt with too much starch." Cubela was to be told that he could load the pen with Blackleaf 40, a fatal nicotine-based insecticide available at the time on the shelves of hardware stores.

Retribution?

On November 22, 1963, Des FitzGerald had just finished hosting a lunch for an old friend of the CIA, a foreign diplomat, at the City Tavern Club in Georgetown, when he was summoned from the private dining room by the maitre d'. FitzGerald returned "as white as a ghost," recalled Sam Halpern. Normally erect and purposeful, FitzGerald was walking slowly, with his head down. "The President has been shot," he said. The lunch immediately broke up. On the way out the door Halpern anxiously said, "I hope this has nothing to do with the Cubans." FitzGerald mumbled, "Yeah, well, we'll see."

In the 15-minute car ride back to Langley, FitzGerald just stared straight ahead. FitzGerald knew that, in September, Castro had threatened to retaliate against assassination attempts. "United States leaders should think that if they are aiding in terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe," the Cuban leader had publicly declared. The warning that Cubela might be a "dangle," that he might be secretly working for Castro, took an ominous new meaning. Now FitzGerald had to wonder: Had Castro killed Kennedy before Kennedy could kill him?

In Paris, Cubela had just finished asking for 20 hand grenades, two high-powered rifles with telescopic sights, and 20 pounds of C-4 explosive, to be dropped on a friend's farm, when he was told that President Kennedy was assassinated. He was "visibly moved," according to the case officer's report. "Why do such things happen to good people?" he asked. Within a few hours the case officer received a cable from FitzGerald in Washington telling him, he later recalled, that "everything was off." The case officer was told to break off contact with AMLASH and return immediately to Washington.