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MORI DocID: 1451843

The Washington Merry-Go-Round THE WASHINGTON POST Monday, Jan. 18, 1971 B7

6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid to CIA

By Jack Anderson

Locked in the darkest recesses of the Central Intelligence Agency is the story of assassination attempts against Cuba's Fidel Castro.

Only a few key people have known the details. They've sworn never to talk. Yet we have learned the details from sources whose credentials are beyond question.

We spoke to John McCone, who headed the CIA at the time of the assassination attempts. He acknowledged the idea had been discussed inside the CIA but insisted it had "rejected immediately." McCone "vigorously denied" that the CIA had ever participated in any plot on Castro's life. Asked whether the attempts could have been made with his knowledge, he replied: "It could not have happened."

We have complete confidence, however, in our sources.

The plot to knock off Castro began as part of the Bay of Pigs operation. The intent was to eliminate the Cuban dictator.

[tor before the motley invaders landed on the island. Their efforts were expected to touch off a general uprising, which the Communist militia would have had more trouble putting down without the charisma of Castro to lead them.

After the first attempt failed, more assassination teams were sent to Cuba. The last team reportedly made it to a rooftop within shooting distance of Castro before they were apprehended. This happened around the last of February in the first month of March, 1963.

Two months later, President Kennedy was signed Oswald, a tragicomic would-be assassin for Castro in New Orleans and had made a mysterious trip to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.

Among those privy to the CIA conspiracy, there is still a nagging suspicion supported by the Warren Commission's findings—that Castro located a waiver of the plot upon his life and summoned one to his aid.

The full story reads like the script of a James Bond movie, complete with secret trails at glittering Miami Beach hideaways and midnight powerboat dashes to secret landing spots on the Cuban coast. Once, No-sell's post said it was a woman from the U.S. furnished Roselli with specially-fabricated poison (capsule to slip into Castro's food. The poison was supposed to take effect days to act. By the time Castro died, the system would have all off all traces of the poison, so he would appear to be the victim of a natural if mysterious ailment.

Roselli arranged with a . Cuban, related to one of Castro's intimate, a pilot to plant the deadly poison in the dictator's food. On April 24, 1961, Roselli delivered the pilot to a glamorous Miami Beach's glamorous Fontainebleau Hotel. It must have been quite a scene—a report just about the right time for Castro to have been carried our report out of Havana and covered before the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17th.

Four more attempts were made on Castro's life,]

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