CIA tried to get Mafia to kill Castro: documents

[L. Coyote]

Source: Reuters

Tue Jun 26, 2007 4:58PM EDT
By Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2636255220070626?sp=true

---

Report has "multiple examples of covert domestic spying." Hell, I got that much at my own home! :rofl:

[fooj]

1. Poppy was in charge from 1976-1977.

I would LOVE to see those papers. Seriously.

[Judi Lynn]

2. First of all, you know it's a trick by the new guy to win over the slow ones among us,

by leaving the impression he's cleaning house and going to make sure they never do this again!

I'll bet one of the two reporters they bugged in the early 1960's was Lisa Howard, who worked for ABC, who had very open access to Fidel Castro. They appear to have trusted her immensely.



This information can be picked up from a program which gets run time after time on the Discovery Channel:

Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba

INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW

Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort

Posted - November 24, 2003

The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."
(snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Lisa Howard

~snip~
In April 1963 Howard arrived in Cuba to make a documentary on the country. In an interview with Howard, Fidel Castro agreed that a rapprochement with Washington was desirable. On her return Howard met with the Central Intelligence Agency. Deputy Director Richard Helms reported to John F. Kennedy on Howard's view that "Fidel Castro is looking for a way to reach a rapprochement with the United States." After detailing her observations about Castro's political power, disagreements with his colleagues and Soviet troops in Cuba, the memo concluded that "Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the US Government."

CIA Director John McCone was strongly opposed to Howard being involved with these negotiations with Castro. He argued that it might "leak and compromise a number of CIA operations against Castro". In a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy, McCone commented that the "Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner," and "that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time."

Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978 why the CIA did not want John F. Kennedy to negotiate with Fidel Castro during the summer of 1963: "The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba - an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence - which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded - it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy."

Howard now decided to bypass the CIA and in May, 1963, published an article in the journal, War and Peace Report, Howard wrote that in eight hours of private conversations Castro had shown that he had a strong desire for negotiations with the United States: "In our conversations he made it quite clear that he was ready to discuss: the Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil; compensation for expropriated American lands and investments; the question of Cuba as a base for Communist subversion throughout the Hemisphere." Howard went on to urge the Kennedy administration to "send an American government official on a quiet mission to Havana to hear what Castro has to say." A country as powerful as the United States, she concluded, "has nothing to lose at a bargaining table with Fidel Castro.
(snip)



http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhowardL2.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Although absolutely no one would believe it, she "committed suicide" while still a young woman. Imagine that! A hot reporter, wildly successful, suddenly believed she had to end it all, and did herself in.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Wouldn't surprise me one bit

I've always believed that the CIA was involved in the murder of President Kennedy. The fact that the facts will not be released till we're all gone makes it clear that something is being hidden.

[Duer 157099]

3. Man! Reuters is such a Conspiracy Theorist organization!

Publishing crap like this! :sarcasm:

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the recent release (and subsequent cricket-silence by the MSM) of Hunt's taped near-deathbed "confession" of the CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination? naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

[Tempest]

4. I just heard something on NPR I'd like to try to find information on

According to a segment on All Things Considered, the CIA trained Saddam's forces in terrorist techniques and those techniques are now being used on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Can someone help me find some information on this?

Thanks.

[MrPrax]

5. "the agency's worst illegal abuses"

Only way to prove that statement is by releasing ALL the records...or do we just take the reporter's word for it, who no doubt, HAS seen all the records, so he can make that objective statement? :eyes:

[demoleft]

7. CIA plot to kill Castro detailed

Source: Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) -- The CIA recruited a former FBI agent to approach two of America's most-wanted mobsters and gave them poison pills meant for Fidel Castro during his first year in power, according to newly declassified papers released Tuesday.

Contained amid hundreds of pages of CIA internal reports collectively known as "the family jewels," the official confirmation of the 1960 plot against Castro was certain to be welcomed by communist authorities as more proof of their longstanding claims that the United States wants Castro dead.

The papers released Tuesday were part of a report prepared at the request of CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973, who ordered senior agency officials to tell him of any current or past actions that could potentially violate the agency's charter.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CUBA_CIA_CASTRO_PLOT?SITE=TNMEM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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No news, indeed. But papers coming up from dark oblivion to light are always welcome to real democrats.
With no love for Castro at all, but all my love to Cubans and their independence.

[papau]

8. Will the media now say that Oliver Stone was close to the truth in his JFK movie? n/t

n/t

[bitchkitty]

9. This is not news to me, or to many here!

Hell, maybe I should resurrect bushbodycount.com

In the meantime, Hugo is painted as paranoid and silly for suggesting that Poppie's son is trying to assasinate him...

[gorbal]

10. Why did my socialist friends already know all this crap?

I was given all this info already, what is new?

[redqueen]

14. The only thing that's new is that they're fessing up to it.

I highly doubt they'll admit to anything people don't already know.

Ugh.

[ProudDad]

11. Posted at the Guardian site

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2112302,00.html

Don't you wish we really had an MSM?


On Edit: Fucking figures - In the article he called the Cuban Revolution against the fascist fuck Batista a "communist revolution". Bullshit, it was socialist until Ike decided to embargo Cuba -- then it became "communist" (whatever the fuck that is). :grr:

[Vidar]

12. Probably from the same bunch that offed JFK.

[L. Coyote]

13. I'd look under some white sheets and hoods for that bunch, MLK & RFK too.

Context is everything, and that was the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Killing for the cause was a simple, no-brainer with some segregationists.

[Vidar]

15. The underworlds of spooks, criminals & bigots frequently intersect.

[Lilith Velkor]

16. You mean they KNEW the Mafia wanted Castro dead for all the money he cost them?

Whaddaya know...guess they don't call 'em Central Intelligence for nothin'.

:eyes:

[MGKrebs]

17. I remember a pretty good book called "American Tabloid"

by James Ellroy that I think basically told this story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tabloid