Heart attack guns and custom umbrellas that fire ricin-filled pellets, the cloak and dagger weapons used by governments past and present represent the secretive assassinations carried out whenever dissidents and detractors became a problem. Besides specialized guns, another more inconspicuous method was devised to take out the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Knowing how much the rebel-turned-dictator enjoyed a good stick, it seemed perfectly plausible to equip a harmless smoke with a more permanent finish, an explosive implanted in it. Look inside the CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar.
Don’t think the Cubans had anything to do with the JFK assassination? Read about the man behind the man, Lee Harvey Oswald’s Communist leanings uncovered.
KGB’s Anthrax Umbrella
The CIA in a 1975 congressional hearing responded to claims about classified devices that were reportedly created to carry out government-sanctioned assassinations that might have been politically-motivated. Of the supposed death devices, one that was confirmed was a strange item indeed, the heart-attack gun. The idea behind it being creating a method of hiding a murder by disguising it as a heart attack, the secret weapon opened up scrutiny to what governments may have been doing behind closed doors. In light of these public hearings, in an international context, the strained relations between the United States government and that of the Cuban revolutionary dictatorship served as a perfect scenario of these covert assasinations.
In less than 3 years of the public CIA hearings on covert weaponry, a murder was reported in London. The murder brought covert government operations to the mainstream. This event would forever be known as the KGB’s riacin assasination through the use of an umbrella. The murder itself was carried out in broad daylight upon the unsuspecting victim, Georgi Markov of Bulgaria. Now, Georgi most likely had an idea of the danger he was in, being a dissident writer, one critical of the Soviet Union. On September 11, 1978 while waiting at a bus stop in Bulgaria, Georgi felt a sharp painful sensation on the back of his right thigh. He had been injected with a carefully crafted ricin-filled pellet, fired from an umbrella. Georgi noticed a bump had formed on the site of his wound. Four days later Georgi died from his injury. The hit was carried out reportedly by an assassin nicknamed, “Piccadilly”. Undoubtedly it was the KGB that had instructed the Bulgarian Secret Service on how to carry out the covert operation.
In 1978 Soviet dissident Georgi Markov met a horrible death by a household staple, an umbrella. In other words common objects, throughout the history of secret assassinations, have been used to eliminate targets.
A Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution of July 1953 began as a movement led by the 26 of July Movement led by Fidel Castro against the United States-backed totalitarian dictator President Fulgencio Batista. In 1959 President Batista was forced from his position and he subsequently fled the country. The date, July 26 1959 is celebrated as the date of the revolution which resulted in the formation of the socialist Cuban government. By 1965 it was clear the Communist party of Cuba was in complete control of the newly formed revolutionary state.
As the revolution carried on the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raúl were captured by President Batista’s soldiers and imprisoned. Fidel received 15 years while Raùl 13 years. During the public trial Fidel claimed in his defense that “History would absolve [me].”. However, the pair were released in 1955 after Batista faced pressure to release all political prisoners. It was during this time after his release from political imprisonment that Fidel met the young rebel Ernesto Che Guevara.
Guevara was an Argentine revolutionary who would later play a large part in helping the Castro brothers take Havana. Che Supposedly Guevara’s last words were “what is the big deal it is just killing a man!”.
After a series of battles and including a cease-fire Fidel managed to secure his revolutionary forces control of Havana. One of his first actions was to put Batista’s police and military forces on trial for so called human rights abuses. They were then executed by firing squad, nearly 200 of them. It is said that under order of Fidel’s brother Raùl that as many as 70 POWs, made up of the ex-President Batista’s Army forces, were executed in a single day. In April of 1959 Fidel made a trip to Washington, D.C. upon invitation.
A Cuba Under Castro
As often is told by history of similar revolutionary movements, one of Fidel Castro’s first actions was to introduce land reform. As one of the tenants of communism is the separation of land ownership from citizens, so too did Castro eliminate foreign and domestic land ownership. All land belonged to the communist state government and as such it could not be owned by citizens. Castro’s promise to up-end American and otherwise foreign ownership of Cuban properties and businesses had come true. However this also meant that noone could own land, to the detriment of Cuban land owners which made up around 25% overall.
Besides land ownership, education and established religion became the subject of Castro’s reformation efforts. By 1961 Fidel officially declared Cuba to be an atheist state. He removed the Roman Catholic officials in order to bring his declaration to full effect. Additionally all private schools were disbanded and replaced by an adherence to expansion of public schools, these became extensions of the official Cuban communist party rhetoric.
Fidel Castro remained President of Cuba until February 2008. He was replaced by his brother Raùl Castro.
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