The Obvious Questions About De Gaulle:

According to the C.I.A., Fidel Castro of Cuba has survived 638 assassination attempts. - tremas-1

The Central Intelligence Agency should know, as it engineered enough operations against Cuba, including Operation 40 and Operation Mongoose, as soon as Castro came to power in 1959, with the abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs operation becoming the most high-profile action although covert operations against Cuba, largely run from the CIA's JM-WAVE station near Miami, continued throughout the decade.

Unfortunately, though, during the CIA hearings of the 1970s, what got the most press were the wacky suggestions: Giving Castro "exploding" (or poisoned) cigars; slipping him a depilatory so that his beard would fall out(!)*; or dosing him with LSD so that he would ramble even more incoherently during his marathon speeches and thus turn off the populace. That led to the CIA being dubbed "the gang that couldn't shoot straight," a bloody awful misperception in every sense of the term but one that fits with the disinformation model the CIA helped to perfect in the post-World War Two world.

* I've always wondered whether, internally, they called that "the Sampson Option."

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"Build high for happiness." - Red Kangs. Red Kangs are the best Kangs.

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