Hit the beard

The CIA asked Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli to whack Castro. Giancana and Roselli asked Santo Trafficante to kill him.
According to Jimmy Fratianno it was very easy to kill Castro, in his early days. But Santo decided he wouldn't do it (according to jimmy frattianno).

My question: Why didn't Santo do it? Castro kicked all the mafiosi out of his island (out of the casinos). A big racket was gone..

I could be wrong here but wasn't there more than 1 mafia family with casinos in Batista's Cuba? I think there was and I honestly believe the reason no one killed Castro is that they thought after he kicked all of the families out of Cuba that one family would be able to "get on his good side" and operate ALL casinos.

Yes there were more than 1 family active in the casinos of Cuba.

According to one theory it was Giancana that decided that it would be too hard to recruit assassins when their chances of survival and escape would be dim at best. According to reports Giancana instead recommended a lethal pill could be slipped into Castro's drink.

The pills were hidden inside a pencil and passed on to Johnny Roselli, who then gave them to Joe Trafficante, who passed them on to one Juan Orta in Cuba, who was supposed to use them to poison Castro. But before the pills could be put into Castro's drink, Orta was fired from his position in the Prime Minister's office and ended up fleeing to Florida.

The CIA and the mob supposedly found a replacement in Cuba to carry out the job. After several more failed attempts to poisin Castro, the plot was ditched becuse the CIA needed to focus their attention on the Bay Of Pigs situation that had developed.

Again, this is just one of many stories surrounding the attempeted assassination plot between the governement and the mob to kill Castro.


Don Cardi

Just goes to show you that the government in many ways is no different from the mob. They will do things with the mob when its good for them. Just like making a deal with gangsters about Lucky Luciano.


DS

I've never trusted the stories about the Mob trying to kill Castro. I just don't see them figuring the advantages. And I don't see them wanting revenge so bad that they were willing to accept the consequences. Afterall, Castro ran a government. Despite similarities with a mob, governments have tremendous resources that are far reaching.

It's really hard to get at the truth of the Mob's supposed involvement in attempts to whack Castro. The CIA still had plenty of Cuban operatives on its payroll in the early Sixties. At most, IMO, they might have wanted Mafia operatives to bring to Cuba the poisons, depilatories, etc., aimed at Castro, so that, if the plots were exposed, it'd look like the Mob, not the CIA, was trying to get rid of Castro in order to regain their pre-Castro Cuban rackets. You can also see where it'd be to the Mob's advantage to exaggerate their role in the Castro plots--to hype their own importance, to embarrass the hated Kennedy Administration, and to make enemies fear them.
Whoever was involved, those plots against Castro had few equals for sheer idiocy.