CIA tried to get mafia to kill Castro: documents

Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan
Reuters
Tuesday June 26, 2007

The CIA worked with two of the country's most-wanted criminals in a botched "gangster-type" attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, according to documents released by the CIA on Tuesday.

The CIA aired its dirty laundry by declassifying hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detail some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.

CIA Director Michael Hayden ordered the documents released to try to lift the veil of secrecy on the agency's past, even as the Bush administration faces criticism of being too secretive now.

Much of the information has been released in various congressional investigations in past years, but the pages provide far more detailed accounts of agency activities, with multiple examples of covert domestic spying.

There was the case, for example, of two Washington reporters whose phones were tapped in 1963 to find out who was leaking to them. "The intercept activity was particularly productive," the documents said.

There is plenty on the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, which all started with a break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972.

A leader in that operation, ex-CIA operative Howard Hunt, that spring requested "a lockpicker who might be retiring or resigning from the agency." Hunt's name surfaces elsewhere in the pages.

The documents are known in the CIA as the "Family Jewels," and some describe the agency's efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Castro.

A CIA official at the time, Richard Bissell, in August 1960 approached Col. Sheffield Edwards of the agency's Office of Security to determine if Edwards "had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action," according to the documents.

"The mission target was Fidel Castro," one memo said.

Roselli was believed by the CIA to have been a high-ranking member of the Mafia crime syndicate and the person who controlled all the ice-making machines on the Las Vegas Strip.

He was approached by a go-between, Robert Maheu, who reckoned Roselli had connections to Cuban gambling interests.

The story Roselli was to be told was that several international business firms were suffering heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action and they were willing to pay $150,000 for his removal.

"It was to be made clear to Roselli that the United States government was not, and should not, become aware of this operation," a document said.

In documents that often read like a cheap detective novel, the story is outlined: The pitch was made to Roselli at the Hilton Plaza Hotel in New York and Roselli was initially cool to the idea. But the contact led the agency to two top mobsters, Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, who were both on a U.S. list of most-wanted men.

Giancana, who was known as Sam Gold, suggested firearms might be a problem and said using a potent pill that could be slipped into Castro's food or drink might work.

Eventually, six pills of "high lethal content" were provided to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests, who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.

"After several weeks of reported attempts, Orta apparently got cold feet and asked out of the assignment. He suggested another candidate who made several attempts without success," the document said.

One intelligence expert said the intelligence community should release more recent information that examined its counterterrorism capabilities at the time of the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks.

"If they really want to improve intelligence the executive branch would declassify those documents, not who was figuring out how to get Castro's beard to fall out," said UCLA professor Amy Ziegart, who has advised politicians on foreign policy and national security.