Whatever we may or may not think about Fidel Castro and his long era in Cuba (all of which is difficult, complex and debatable), it has to be said that there is something poetically pleasing about the fact that he survived some 634 assassination attempts, outlasted nine US Presidents and became the third longest- serving head of state in the world.
Only Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Thailand have lasted longer than Castro as head of state. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who was a friend and ally of Castro’s and also somewhat a student of Castro’s early accomplishments, managed to last over forty years himself: but though Gaddafi too was subject to assassination attempts by the CIA and others, it wasn’t nearly as many as Castro.
Most of these assassination plots originated with the CIA, and they were comically diverse in their details, ranging from toxic or exploding cigars, poisoned pills, booby-trapped fountain pens, femme fatale honey traps, mafia hit-men, and powders to make his beard fall out. I assume there were also secret ninja squads and strategically placed banana skins – but we haven’t heard about those ones yet.
I have no real interest in portraying Castro as either a hero or a villain, as either could be true, depending on which types of criteria you base it on or depending on which period of history you’re looking at, through which ideological lens you’re looking through and from where in the world you’re looking from.
The entire exercise would become pointless: someone could compile an entirely valid thesis for why Fidel Castro is a legitimate international hero figure and how much good he did, and then someone else could compile an equally legitimate essay on why he was a terrible person who brought terrible results.
But the fact that he held to power for so long, through all of those plots, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the failed US-orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion and four decades of economic sanctions, kind of stands as a prolonged middle-finger directed at all those who wanted him gone for so long.
I mean, he literally could’ve built a statue of himself on the Cuban coast permanently giving the US the finger and it would’ve amounted to the same propaganda victory.
The multiple assassination plots and coup attempts targeting Castro had already become popular legend decades ago; but this idea of Castro as the unkillable target was more recently immortalised again by 638 Ways to Kill Castro – a documentary film made by Channel 4 in the UK and broadcast in 2006. It provides an insight into how long this operation to remove Castro went on for and how many turns it took, and the film tells much of the story through the recollections of people who were actually involved in the plots.
There were all kinds of desperate, lunatic ways the intelligence community tried to cook up to get rid of Castro. But one particular plan – which was never put into action (and which isn’t actually referenced in the film) – is especially fascinating.
It centered on establishing the idea that Castro was the Anti-Christ… and then simulating the Second Coming and having Jesus take down the Cuban dictator.
Within the pages of a document from November 20th 1975 (titled ‘Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities’), there was an extraordinary statement from someone by the name of Thomas A. Parrott, who had served with the CIA for over two decades and at that time held the title of Assistant Deputy Director for National Intelligence Programs.
In the document, he refers to “a wonderful plan for getting rid of Castro. This plan consisted of spreading the word that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent and that Christ was against Castro who was anti-Christ. And you would spread this word around Cuba, and then on whatever date it was, that there would be a manifestation of this thing. And at the time – this was absolutely true – and at the time just over the horizon there would be an American submarine that would surface off of Cuba and send up some star-shells. And this would be the manifestation of the Second Coming and Castro would be overthrown…”
The idea being explored centered on a US Navy submarine projecting holo images of Jesus Christ onto low-lying cloud formations off the Havana coast. This would’ve been combined with US military planes, hidden behind the clouds, using powerful transmitters to broadcast messages from ‘Christ’, calling on the Cuban people to overthrow Castro.
This may all sound like a plot from The X-Files, but this is precisely the kind of wacky, inventive thinking the intelligence community has been known to indulge in, and mass deceptions and false-flags are a stock-in-trade.
Beyond various complex plots to overthrow Castro, this kind of Project Bluebeam-style thinking also found its way into other international plots.
An article from Activist Post a year or so ago, for example, managed to find a Washington Post report from 1999, revealing an alleged plan to ‘project holograms of Allah over Iraq’. Military physicists had allegedly established the feasibility of holographically projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air.
I’m not going to pass judgement: and, to be fair to those wacky, fucked up intelligence guys, it is essentially their job to come up with ideas and options – many of which will never be put into action.
Also, the idea of characterizing Castro as the ‘Anti Christ’ was later echoed in propaganda strategies to depict Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as a kind of embodiment of super-villain evil. It is known there were intelligence ploys to fabricate, for example, images of Saddam sexually molesting young boys in order to discredit him within the Iraqi population.
I recall reading a number of books in the mid-to-late nineties – some of them by fairly well-regarded authors – which were insisting Saddam Hussein was the Biblical Anti-Christ too, which prompts me to wonder whether a lot of these books were intelligence-guided psy-ops to create a certain image of a foe in order to make Western populations more amenable to the inevitable US invasion of Iraq that was going to happen sooner or later.
By the way, whenever you see someone branding some world figure or another as the prophetic ‘Anti Christ’ (and they do it all the time: it’s been Obama, Saddam and a whole bunch of others), you’d do best to immediately discard everything else they’re saying, as it’s a sure-fire sign that they’re stuck at the child-level of Christianity (complete with parental lock-out).
As for Fidel Castro (pictured above with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi) and the fact that, despite every one of those assassination or coup attempts, he lived all the way to age of 90 – you can’t help but imagine that every one of them was a badge of honour that simply reinforced and underlined his stature and sense of defiance.
Quite what would’ve happened if the Jesus-in-the-clouds operation had gone ahead is anyone’s guess – it would’ve been fascinating though.
As an exiled Cuban National I will say it is is very possible that Fidel was taken off life support to appease the Cuban American Lobby (which mostly resides in South Florida) and the incoming newly elected POTUS. Such a strategy could arguably satisfy US concerns that Fidel was still considered mentally sound and still calling the shots from behind the scenes.
As for him getting “offed” by the mob or other… i can tell you from personal knowledge of several incidents that were either shipwrecked or intervened upon by US authorities. The later as a handshake agreement between US and USSR (and later Russia) as part of the diffusing of the Cuban Missle Crisis. One allegedly state sponsored mission ended with a mechanical breakdown on a little known US territory in the Carib hours from off the coast of Cuba known as Navassa Island.
Cuba was a major “company” recruiting ground since then 1950’s and Op Mongoose was already in play under Ike and the same players were active in many operations during Kennedy, Johnson, and Tricky Dick up until when Forrest Gump got Liddy got busted with the Cubans (Musculito among them [still alive]) for their burglary on the Potomac.
As for the Jesus’ Return plot against Castro, I hadn’t heard of that one. But I would strongly suspect that the technology didnt exist until very recently to animate a halogram that could look half decent. I would also suspect that such a plot has been reserved to deceive the Evangelical masses that have bought into the Rapture hoax. It is know for a fact that the desert states in the US host vast FEMA Camps and incinerators that youncan drive buses or semis (lorries) into and burn them to an ash.
Christ warned his followers against falling for fake appearances of him and said that if they say he is in the desert… do not go! (Matthew chapter 24). In our age of technology it would take something very convincing to lure the masses.
Back to Castro… I’ll say that he has always been venerated as a Saviour by all the masses of Latin America. He also did a lot for his people but the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Trade Embargo put such a strangle hold on the Island that forced the people to embrace a criminal culture of petty thieving just to get by day to day… but Casto:s Cuba has had it’s well documented achievment though they came at a very high cost of freedom to her people.
Thanks truthisstrangerthanfiction; that’s a lot of interesting insight and theory.
On the technology to deceive masses of people like that, I’m pretty sure it’s at a workable level by now; and I suspect it’s been put to use once or twice already, albeit on a small scale. In terms of the ‘Rapture’ and the evangelicals, I suspect you’re close to the truth of the matter – they would be a logical group of people to try to manipulate.
Thank you! Pardon another long-ass response… Two more things that would have failed the using of a Return of Jesus plot as a viable strategy against Castro:
For all practical purposes, under the Castro regime, Cuba is an Afro Vodoo nation; since Catholicism and church attendance were widely suppressed and made taboo by the regime; while Santeria (Afro-Catyolic Vodoo) became the more adaptive and less cumbersome belief that more easily proliferated secretly on the island. Also the patron saint of the Island is St. Lazarus with his crutches and his entourage of dogs to lick his leprous wounds (as per the Bible parable), so a halogram of him would have been more appropriate – but challenging, albeit very amusing to watch.
Second, it is interesting to observe that when the Iron Curtain fell and Cuba lost it’s Soviet ally, that it was ironically none other that the Catholic Pope John Paul who extended his hand in friendship to Fidel Castro and to the people of the all-but-forgotten island nation. This shocked the world and likely played against the ploys of the corridors of power in the US and the Cuban Lobby’s ramped up efforts to heckle Castro.
Another interesting twist that is little known is that during the Clinton years, China also indirectly demonstrated support for Cuba when a crises was under way and talk of attacking the Island was resurrected. This occured when a Miami sponsored plane left the Florida Keys to litter propaganda leaflets over Havana and the private plane was shot down over Cuban waters.
At the behest of the Miami based anti-Castro Cuban-American Lobby (aka CANF), Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Law and also deployed F-16 fighters out of Homestead and Key West AFB to buzz the Island’s international waters along the Florida Straights threshold;
Interestingly, said flights came to a sudden stop when China started firing “test missles” across the Straight of Taiwan and ramped up it’s rhetoric about taking back Taiwan. It is also interesting and wothy to note the geographical and geo-political parallels that exist between the US and Cuba and between China and Taiwan.
Thanks for the article, it was a fun read!
More short on words times for me. Quite revelatory and the particular ‘Bluebeam’ application. And doubtless bringing pause on the pro, and anti Castro-ites. Will bother to read on and challenge what I thought I knew. And yes, the ‘ideological lens you’re looking through and from where in the world (you’re) looking from’. How easy to forget? This/him the anti-Christ, is as you say, locking out wiser thinking. Sits high on the list of discrediting pop-theology. The disconnect, to not at least admit when wrong is astonishing. So desperate to see ‘end-times’ this logic, has to find the pieces of the puzzle. And the outcome is an exodus from evangelicalism, knowing that something was plainly misinterpreted and fooled ‘me’ so-goes on to “maybe the whole experience is psyched up?”
The anti-Christ is obviously Hollywood and all the buzzing, bright screens. The beast is well throned up and drawing the deceived into fulfilments. Barely need one man to do this, why not a few? All down to meticulous full foreknowledge and for those into this theological framework – variations of interpretation aside – understandably looking for that ‘world leader’. And sure as, the script writers are at work; add lights, camera… Anti-Christ The Movie/Documentary, with Bluebeam in the skies to complete. Somehow of all the most outlandish what-ifs “aliens are here” c/o central casting, has for me, always held up as plausibly …quite likely. Would not, be surprised. Well, not until I see the quality of them ‘visuals’ eh. Seriously reckon, this is something held-ready, in case of emergencies. With false-flags, a prelude for monitoring the audience and dissenters. This Castro and clouds story reinforces the reality of how deep the faking is planned.
I tend to agree with you that, in regard to the Bluebeam are, this probably is something be held in waiting, being fine-tuned and prepped. Do you ever see the video footage of the ‘Alien City’ in the clouds in China a few months ago? It looked to me like a possible holographic projection/illusion – so maybe this shit’s being tested on people all the time.
Regarding the shelved intelligence plans to broadcast “hollograms” of Allah or Jesus:
1) What on earth do they think Allah or Jesus looks like? Do they think they would be able to inspire Catholic Afro-Cubans to revolt with images of a pale Jesus? If they had decided to broadcast Allah holograms, what would he look like? Would he be like George Clooney in traditional Bedoiun clothing? How about Lawrence of Arabia with a deeper tan?
2) I understand that intelligence agency folks don’t have any respect for the intellect of the masses, but WOW….this hologram idea makes it sound like they think plebes like me are drooling cretins. Yes, I’m aware that we all have the capacity for extreme stupidity, but getting goaded into revolution by holograms of people who may have never even existed…honestly, I think these intelligence agency folks regard the masses as a bunch of brain damaged sheep who need their thoughts spoon-fed to them. Describing these folks as highly paid sheepherders who hate their flock doesn’t even do it justice.
3) Regardless of how any of us felt about Castro, it’s important to remember that if he really was a “bad” man, there’s hypocrisy in making that claim, considering the record of Saudi Arabia (and all the other “our bastards” the Western Deep State has supported. As a tyrant, (body count included), Castro would be a hopeless amateur compared to some modern day political figures, and he’s definitely had his fair share of mistakes (he was VERY anti-gay until a decade or so ago, he only recently recanted his intolerance). In a heartless dictator contest, Castro would lose by a country mile–not that it’s the kind of contest he wanted to win anyway.
I have read in other sources that there were times that Castro really was almost asassinated…but the person couldn’t pull the trigger. His ex GF couldn’t do it, and he didn’t lock her up after the attempt. There were a few other Cuban operatives who had him right where they wanted him…and yet…they didn’t do it. Why? Was it Fidel’s “aura”? Even Nixon and Kissinger felt he had this aura about him. There’s some mystery regarding that…I honestly feel that he was surrounded by some sort of positive energy field that disarmed or neutralized those around him. I certainly don;t have the answer, but it is extremely interesting to know that he seemed “protected” somehow…like something decided that it was beyond the CIA’s power to take him. That when it was his time to go, it would be Mother Nature who would come calling.
Well, that’s enough unjustified mythmaking for now. Love him or hate him, no one can deny he was larger than life.
Yeah, I had that same question about what they’d make the hologram look like. Especially with ‘Allah’, who in Islamic tradition *has no image*. Maybe that’s why they scrapped the idea.
This idea of using holographic illusions and auditory illusions to carry out mass-scale psy-ops is interesting though: there’s a lot that’s come out over the years to suggest this sort of operation is still being fine-tuned and further developed to be potentially out into operation on a large scale at some point. I’ve actually been working on an article on that subject, but am still doing the research.
As for Fidel, I agree with you – Western leaders can’t really talk, given the people they’ve supported. It’s all relative; which is why there’s no point calling him a hero *or* a villain.
I do agree that for psyops purposes, holographic and auditory illusions have promise, and I wouldn’t doubt that they tried it in specific circumstances already. If they can use unsuspecting American citizens as test subjects for biological warfare, and slip psychotropic substances on the non-consenting, there’s no way these people would let “ethics” stop them from carrying out holographic and auditory experiments for the “greater good”.
As for Fidel, while there is no need to lionize or demonize him, we can at least agree on some amazing facts:
1) he managed to create a real revolution in Cuba, where the old oligarchy has been completely expelled. Sort of like a former cancer patient who has successfully removed all tumors from the body. Of course the old oligarchy will be salty about it, but the revolution was never for them, and it never wanted them, which is why they are still bitter after all these years. An aside, Fidel took money from a wealthy married woman to help fund his revolution. He was also sleeping with her, which produced a daughter. This daughter now lives in Florida, having written a book about their relationship, and her feelings of abandonment.
2) most cubans LOVE LOVE him. Not to mention many people over the world. To get that many people to love you, it goes without saying that he did SOME things right.
3) he was a tough, battle tested SOB. He has real battlefield experience. He packs heat. The typical gun toting american might actually like him on a personal level if they actually met him. this is a leftwinger who knows how to fight and win. another reason rightwingers hate his guts—he’s the not pansy-ass peacenik liberal in their mind that is easy to beat up because he won’t hit back. he won, stayed in power, and died in peace surrounded by loved ones.
4) his love life is the envy of many men, on all sides of the political divide. i’m not here to excuse his failures as a family man, how he alienated some children–most notably his daughters. Clearly, that is its own punishment (he was extremely furious when his daughter managed to leave Cuba using a fake Spanish passport). But as you can see from old photos, his “tribe” of children from 4 different women that we know of (my guess it’s closer to 12 or 13 kids with 6 women), the ladies really did adore him. IN fact, the former ex who was supposed to kill him and changed her mind is still mooning over him after all these years, several relationships and 2 children later (actress Jennifer Lawrence will be playing her in a movie). He was never a rapist, never coerced women into being with him, as he never had to. Yes he’s a player, but he managed to get these ladies to consent. And no matter what, we gotta respect his game. Remember, Bill Clinton was accused of sexual harrassment and rape—Fidel is accused of being a twotimer (4 timer may be more accurate) by furious wives and ex gfs. While Fidel was no angel, rest assured you know your sister or daughter won’t be harrassed or raped. Hell, she might even be the one to approach him.
5) he mainly stuck to his principles, even when the going got really rough. How many countries are able to withstand sustained American agression like that for so long, and not be on their knees? This isn’t to insult the other countries who buckled (i’m not going to blame the victim here), but it does show why Castro is so damn special, and why most Cubans and people from the global South really do love him.
6) While Cuba may not be “free” (whatever that means these days considering how Western countries today have descended into fascism), was it ever free before Castro? During the Batista regime, Cuba was known as the Las Vegas of the carribean, filled with casinos, gangsters, and bordellos. does that sound like “freedom”? what asshole would say that Cuba was a bastion of freedom then? Do they really mean that they miss the freedom of rich people being able to do whatever they please, no matter how much it hurts the majority Cuban population? the freedom to use and abuse poor cubans, and then to hop on a boat or plane back to america like nothing happened? was this the freedom that today’s miami cubans are missing? if it was so great then, why can’t they get any political support from the majority of people actually living in cuba? is it because these exiles are simply full of shit, and only want to fight for their right to rape the poor as they see fit?
7) There is almost no homelessness. As a tourist, you won’t have to avert your eyes when you see someone camped out or wandering on the street, pushing a shopping cart of all their belongings. Compare to what a tourist will see in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and London. there are no Gucci or Louis Vitton stores though, if that sort of thing really bothers you.
8) how many western leaders today can hope to leave even 1/10th of the impression on the world on the same scale as Fidel? you think david cameron, tony blair, or theresa may will go out to the same fanfare as fidel did? how about barack obama or george w bush? bill clinton, sarkozy, or angela merkel? does donald trump even stand a chance as the first reality tv star elected as president? i highly doubt it. they can call fidel whatever they like, but we can all agree on this: they will be relegated as footnotes in history, as one of the many public servants of a shadow ruling class. Fidel stands as a free man, servant of NO ONE except the cuban people, highly flawed, and completely real. All the propaganda in the world can never wash that away.
I absolutely don’t disagree with any of that, M.