The CIA’s first attempt to assassinate Raúl Castro dates back to 1960, when an agent offered the pilot who brought him to Prague $ 10,000 to “orchestrate an accident,” according to documents published Friday by Washington-based National Security. Archive.
The plan was to offer Cuban pilot José Raúl Martínez a payment so that he would “run the risk of orchestrating an accident” on the return flight from Prague.
Martínez was informed of the mission by his contact with the CIA in Cuba, William J. Murray, during a drive to the airport.
In the conversation, they discussed the “limited possibilities of the accidental incident” and doubts about the agent’s technical ability to sustain an accident “without endangering the lives of all people on board”.
The pilot, who was already working for the CIA, “tried to ensure that in the event of his own death, his two sons received university education,” to which Murray agreed, according to a cable quoted by the National Security Archive.
Another published document indicates that the Washington office in Havana was ordered to cease the mission after the trip began, but they were unable to contact the pilot.
On his return, Martinez informed Murray “that he had not had an opportunity to resolve an accident as they had discussed.”
These documents have been published along with the resignation of Raúl Castro from political life in Cuba, who is retiring as first secretary of the Communist Party.
The “plot of an accident” was described in a 1976 report by a Senate committee that dealt with alleged conspiracies to assassinate foreign leaders, following an investigation into the CIA’s covert operations promoted by Senator Frank Church.
But the National Security Archive noted that important details were omitted, such as whether the killer was a pilot or whether the “accident” involved a civil aviation.
This plot precedes several plans to assassinate Raúl’s brother, longtime leader Fidel Castro, and the failed CIA-funded anti-Castro Invasion of Bay of Pigs on April 16, 1961.
To National Security Archive historian Peter Kornbluh, “these documents are a reminder of a dark and sinister past of the United States’ operations against the Cuban Revolution.”
“At a time when the Castro era is officially coming to an end, those in charge of the United States have the opportunity to leave this historic burden behind and work towards a future of a post-Castro Cuba”, he told AFP.