BuzzFlash Reviews

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Written(and published in 2007)by the man who headed Cuban Counter-Intelligence, this book needs to be read with the understanding that it has a pro-Castro bias. But that doesn't matter much, because so many of these plots against Castro's lives by the the CIA and pro-Batista Cuban exile community have been confirmed by them.

The book was written in the author's native Spanish and made into a dark-comedy documentary in 2007, shortly after the book was published by an Australian firm.

Given that Castro is on his last legs, the attempts on his life have diminished over the years, with most of them occurring before 1975, when a senate committee head by the former Frank Church exposed some of the more egregious plots to assassinate Fidel.

Given the counter-productive obsession with Castro by successive American administrations -- and the vitriolic hatred and terrorist acts against Cuba by the aging exile community in Florida -- this book has received little publicity in the United States.

It is a timely reminder that American "wet" operations did not begin with Iraq, although Bush and Cheney legitimatized offing and torturing leaders and their followers, if they get in the way of the White House "American Victory Culture" express.

Of course, from the perspective of the CIA's goal to kill Castro, it also reveals, in an ironic way, how ineffectual they are. They apparently made dozens, even hundreds of efforts, either by themselves or through the fanatical expatriate community with whom they made a strategic alliance. (Remember that even Watergate had a Cuban connection -- and that the Kennedy assassination may have had a Cuban anti-Castro connection, rather than a Castro-Russian conenction.)

Whatever's Castro faults -- and there are plenty -- the U.S. executive branch obsession with glorifying the grossly corrupt Batista regime (essentially run by the American mob who had gambling and prostitution interests there) in comparison to Castro is one of the gross travesties of our foreign policy.

Since the Russian abandonment of Cuba, Castro has posed no military threat to the U.S. whatsoever. The embargo of Cuba (which even Congress wants to extensively lift now) only hurts American business and the possibility for a more swift transition to some form of socialized democracy in Cuba.

Like the war in Iraq, the War in Vietnam, the Cuban embargo and the past attempts on Castro's lives were efforts to achieve fantasies of empire that were counterproductive to establishing long-term stabilization in these nations.

From the Publisher:

"Cuba's former head of counterintelligence Fabian Escalante reviews the CIA's 630 plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, code-named 'Executive Action.' Although melodramatic and at times comical, these CIA plans were deadly serious-and unconstitutional-as subsequent US government inquiries discovered, including the 1975 Senate Commission headed by Senator Church. Published as part of the "Secret War" series written by Fabian Escalante."



BUZZFLASH REVIEWS