Cuba’s Intelligence Thwarted 640 Plots to Kill Fidel Castro – Ex-Security Officer
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The FBI was already involved in plotting Fidel Castro’s assassination before the Cuban Revolution, and later the CIA picked up where it left off, former state security officer Carlos Serpa Maceira tells Sputnik on the 100th anniversary of the revolutionary icon.
Between 1959 and 2000 roughly 640 attempts were planned to kill Fidel Castro -167 of them particularly dangerous – yet none ever succeeded, he notes, thanks to the work of Cuban intelligence and its close cooperation with ordinary citizens.
“Every single one was detected in time and foiled,” Serpa says.
🚨🇨🇺THROWBACK: Fidel Castro’s 269-minute UN speech – longest & boldest in history
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 23, 2025
As the 80th UN General Assembly unfolds, let's remember the day Fidel Castro took the podium and spoke for nearly four and a half hours—a record that still stands.
In his address, Castro… pic.twitter.com/PHskuoR7NE
The would-be assassins planned to use a remarkable range of methods, including using ice cubes, a diving suit, a box of contaminated cigars, and firearms.
The history of these plots, says the ex-officer, falls into three distinct phases:
In 1958, before the revolution triumphed, US citizen and FBI agent Alan Robert Nye was caught in the Sierra Maestra carrying a scoped Remington rifle. The US had handed him to dictator Fulgencio Batista’s military command with orders to assassinate Castro
Killing Castro became part of a larger scheme to topple the revolutionary government, with foiled plots by CIA agent Allen Robert Meyer and pro-Batista militia leader Rolando Masferrer (1959), notorious Operation Mongoose - a failed CIA effort authorized by JFK (1961)
After 1970, the planning and preparation of assassination attempts largely moved outside Cuba itself
“For more than fifty years the US government allocated funds and resources specifically to assassinate Fidel Castro and destroy the Cuban Revolution,” says Serpa.
5 February 2025, 16:56 GMT
