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Smoking Out Castro · Operation Midnight Climax

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  Speaker 1: We've reached the halfway point in the series, and we'll
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  Speaker 1: be back with a new episode next Wednesday. Today, we
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  Speaker 1: wanted to share a bonus mini episode, Smoking Out Castro
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: for I Heart Radio. This is Operation Midnight Climax. I'm
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: your host, Noel Brown. George White's adventures and LSD experimentation
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  Speaker 1: had serious consequences for national security. If he was successful
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  Speaker 1: in proving LSD could be used as a bioweapon, it
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  Speaker 1: could change the intelligence game forever. The end goal was
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  Speaker 1: always to be one step ahead of the nation's enemies,
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  Speaker 1: and for a time it seemed like LSD would be
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  Speaker 1: the solution to America's problem with Fidel Castro. But White
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  Speaker 1: was occupied with espionage of his own, which will hear
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: about an upcoming episodes, and so Sidney Gottlieb and the
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  Speaker 1: CIA mounted a campaign involving acid and other drugs designed
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  Speaker 1: to topple the Castro regime. Actually killing Castro, however, was
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  Speaker 1: another matter. Entirely to do it, Gottlieb would think about
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  Speaker 1: poison cigars, homicidal mistresses, and exploding seashells. If you don't
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  Speaker 1: know a lot about Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, you probably
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  Speaker 1: know his iconography, green fatigues, a forest of a beard,
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  Speaker 1: an ever present cigar clamped between his teeth. From the
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  Speaker 1: time he seized power in nineteen fifty nine, he was
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  Speaker 1: the most worrisome kind of communist for the CIA, Powerful, charismatic, and,
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  Speaker 1: at least in his native Cuba, revered. He was a firebrand,
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  Speaker 1: a symbol of defiance. In short, he had to go.
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  Speaker 1: That realization brought about years of increasingly bizarre assassination attempts
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  Speaker 1: on the part of the CIA. One of Gottlieb's earliest
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  Speaker 1: plans was to dip cigars in a lethal poison and
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  Speaker 1: slip the fatal stokeies to Castro. The poison was the
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  Speaker 1: easy part. Gottlieb had chemists working like Santa's elves on
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  Speaker 1: a variety of dangerous chemicals, including baculinum toxin, the same
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  Speaker 1: kind of neurotoxic protein found in spoiled canned goods and
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  Speaker 1: the faces of aging entertainers. But gottli wasn't looking to
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  Speaker 1: improve Castro's looks. Inhaled, the toxin would cause difficulty breathing, paralysis,
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  Speaker 1: and death of Castro and maybe communism itself. The hard
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  Speaker 1: part was getting a deadly cigar into his hands. To
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  Speaker 1: accomplish that, the CIA turned to experts in the matter
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  Speaker 1: of international criminality. They met with the Mafia. A CIA
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  Speaker 1: memo uncovered years later described quote a sensitive mission requiring
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  Speaker 1: gangster type action end quote. With the approval of CIA
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  Speaker 1: director Alan Dulles, the agency paid Mafia member Johnny Roselli
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in nineteen sixty to
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  Speaker 1: arrange for Castro's death. The mob had a personal score
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  Speaker 1: to settle with Castro, who had seized mafia properties in Cuba.
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  Speaker 1: Roselli enlisted fellow organized crime figure Santos Traficante. The CIA
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  Speaker 1: then delivered baculinum pills and some dosed cigars to Trafficante,
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  Speaker 1: who passed them along to a man named Jorge Orta,
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  Speaker 1: who worked on Castro's executive staff and was a cooperative
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  Speaker 1: co conspirator or to like to gamble and owe the
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  Speaker 1: mob of debt. This was how he'd repay it. The
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  Speaker 1: CIA held their collective breath, waiting to hear whether Orta
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  Speaker 1: had succeeded in poisoning Castro. Not long after, reports out
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  Speaker 1: of Cuba said Castro had suddenly fallen ill. This was it.
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  Speaker 1: The US stood ready to send troops into the country,
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  Speaker 1: but Castro recovered. If he had been poisoned, it wasn't enough.
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  Speaker 1: More likely, Orta was more scared of Castro than the mafia,
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  Speaker 1: and he couldn't bring himself to do it. The illness
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  Speaker 1: was likely a coincidence. Roselli had a plan B. He
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  Speaker 1: got more of the pills and used Dr Manuel Antonio
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  Speaker 1: de Verona, leader of the anti Castro Democratic Revolutionary Front.
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  Speaker 1: Verona passed them on to a waitress who worked at
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  Speaker 1: a restaurant Castro loved. The idea was that he'd get
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  Speaker 1: some very poor service in the form of a deadly
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  Speaker 1: toxin mixed into his milkshake or ice cream. Accounts very
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  Speaker 1: on what happened next. It's possible Castro suddenly stopped visiting
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  Speaker 1: the business and the pill is when unused. Other declassified
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  Speaker 1: documents state that the poison pills had been hidden in
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  Speaker 1: a freezer and broke open, rendering them useless either way.
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  Speaker 1: Following the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco in nine, when
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  Speaker 1: Castro's forces beat back CIA funded exiles, Verona wanted out
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  Speaker 1: of the scheme entirely. Goli wasn't about to give up.
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  Speaker 1: The CIA's plans grew bolder. During intelligence meetings, the agency
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  Speaker 1: discussed something other than assassination. What if Castro could be humiliated.
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  Speaker 1: The leader often gave rousing speeches. Maybe a cigar dipped
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  Speaker 1: an LSD would cause him to lose his mind in public,
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  Speaker 1: shaking their confidence. Then the CIA had an even better
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  Speaker 1: idea Castro broadcast some of his speeches from a radio station.
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  Speaker 1: A plot was hatched to deliver an aerosolized version of
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  Speaker 1: l s D to directly into the broadcast booth in Havana,
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  Speaker 1: with Castro inhaling the odorless hallucinogen. If Castro started tripping
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  Speaker 1: on national radio, he'd be discredited on you know. But
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  Speaker 1: the CIA could never figure out how to enact the plot.
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  Speaker 1: Getting to Castro was always the problem. Then they discovered
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  Speaker 1: he'd soon be in New York City to visit the
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  Speaker 1: United Nations. They began mulling over thallium salt, a deadly
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  Speaker 1: substance once he used in rat poisons. They didn't necessarily
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  Speaker 1: want him to ingest it. Once exposed to his skin,
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  Speaker 1: it would force Castro's iconic beard to fall out as
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  Speaker 1: though he were Samson, and his facial air gave him
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  Speaker 1: his powers the CIA planned to spread the thallium over
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  Speaker 1: his shoes and nightstand at a New York City hotel,
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  Speaker 1: but the trip was canceled. There was another idea to
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  Speaker 1: construct a fountain pen with a deadly tip that one
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  Speaker 1: got as far as being given to a CIA contact
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  Speaker 1: named Rolando Cubella that same day. In nineteen sixty three,
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  Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Cubella lost his nerve.
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  Speaker 1: The CIA looked at Castro's habits. He liked to go diving,
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  Speaker 1: so a scuba suit and breathing apparatus contaminated with tuberculosis
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  Speaker 1: and a deadly fungus was designed. The CIA believed that
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  Speaker 1: could offer the scuba suit as a gift to Castro
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  Speaker 1: when negotiating for the release of prisoners in the Bay
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  Speaker 1: of Pigs Aftermath. When that proved difficult, the CIA started
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  Speaker 1: looking into exploding seashells. If the CIA could find one
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  Speaker 1: so spectacular, so beautiful that Castro would have to pay
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  Speaker 1: get up then It never happened, but the CIA did
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  Speaker 1: eventually find someone to get close enough to Castro to
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  Speaker 1: expose into the CIA's chemical ingenuity. They recruited a woman
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  Speaker 1: named Marita lorenz A lover of Castro's who intended to
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  Speaker 1: slip poison into his drink. She hid the poison and
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  Speaker 1: a container of cold cream, but had trouble fishing it out,
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  Speaker 1: which made Castro suspicious. Castro began questioning her and then
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  Speaker 1: handed her a gun to use instead. He told her
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  Speaker 1: that no one could kill him, and well he wasn't wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Years after the fact, a CIA agent who kept one
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  Speaker 1: of the botulinum talks and cigars brought it out of
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  Speaker 1: storage to test its remaining potency. It was still lethal
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  Speaker 1: even to the touch. But what got even the CIA
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  Speaker 1: learned was that it didn't matter how dangerous the weapon
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  Speaker 1: was if he didn't have the right person for the job.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe all they were missing was George White. A happy
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  Speaker 1: and healthy Castro busied himself allowing the Soviet Union to
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  Speaker 1: build nuclear testing sites in Cuba, leading to a standoff
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  Speaker 1: between the US and Russia that flirted with war. He
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  Speaker 1: accused the United States of sabotage in Cuba's crops and
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  Speaker 1: introducing dangay fever to its population, claiming it was biological warfare.
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  Speaker 1: He went on to rattle the nerves of eleven U
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  Speaker 1: S presidents, reigning for nearly fifty years before old age
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  Speaker 1: began to mimic the effects of the CIA's plans. The
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  Speaker 1: speeches became less coherent. He passed away in twenty six
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  Speaker 1: of what one assumes were natural causes. During his life,
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  Speaker 1: Castro was not only aware of the CIA's foiled plots,
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  Speaker 1: he was delighted by them. He ordered a Havana museum
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  Speaker 1: to create exhibits about the failed attempts. Their Cubans could
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  Speaker 1: visit and get a tour of the CIA's inability to
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  Speaker 1: eliminate their target. Castro thought there were over six hundred
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  Speaker 1: attempts on his life, roughly thirty by the CIA. In
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  Speaker 1: sent an investigation, the CIA swore it had only been
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  Speaker 1: five or six. No matter how many times he tried.
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  Speaker 1: Sidney Gottlieb never got his man. As it turns out,
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  Speaker 1: he was more effective and hastening the demise of the
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  Speaker 1: CIA's own employees, and that would make George White's life
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  Speaker 1: very difficult. Indeed, that's next time on Operation Midnight climax
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  Speaker 1: S