CIA assassination attempts on Fidel Castro
The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made numerous unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There were also attempts by Cuban exiles, sometimes in cooperation with the CIA. The 1975 Church Committee claimed eight proven CIA assassination attempts between 1960 and 1965. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order banning political assassinations. In 2006, Fabián Escalante, former chief of Cuba's counterintelligence, stated that there had been 634 assassination schemes or attempts. The last known plot to assassinate Castro was by Cuban exiles in 2000.
Fidel Castro visiting Washington, D.C., in April 1959, shortly after the Cuban Revolution
Sam Giancana, head of the Chicago crime syndicate
CIA Director George H. W. Bush meeting with President Gerald Ford in the Oval Office in December 1975
CIA Director Richard Helms with President Lyndon B. Johnson in July 1969
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.
Castro c. 1959
Castro, second from left, at Colegio de Belén, Havana, 1943
Castro intended to overthrow the presidency of General Fulgencio Batista (left, with US Army Chief of Staff Malin Craig, in 1938).
Castro under arrest after the Moncada attack, 1953
