1961–1966Primary sourceWell documented

The AM/LASH Files: Cubela's Long Plot

On the timeline · around 1961–1966 ·

What happened

For years the CIA cultivated the disillusioned Cuban major Rolando Cubela — AM/LASH — as an inside assassin. Beyond the 1963 poison pen, the agency offered him rifles with telescopic sights to shoot Castro. Cuban security eventually uncovered the plot, and Cubela was arrested in 1966.

Why it matters

The AM/LASH files document the CIA's most sustained and serious effort to have Castro killed from within his own government.

How we know

Detailed in the CIA Inspector General's 1967 report, later published in the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States series.

Sources

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Vol. XXXII — CIA Inspector General's Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro (1967) · Primary source

Part of a timelineThe Plots to Kill Castro32 events · Exploding cigars, Mafia hitmen, a poisoned milkshake, a booby-trapped seashell, a lethal pen handed over the day JFK died — and decades of exile plots after. The CIA's documented campaign to assassinate Fidel Castro, and the man who outlived it all.View all →