JFK documents show CIA plots against Castro

The National Archives released another 13,213 records from the Kennedy assassination files on Thursday — mostly unredacted versions of CIA documents that had previously been kept partly classified.

The cache contains documentation of dirty tricks and plots. A CIA report dated April 14, 1967, discusses attempts to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro by use of poisoned cigars, targeting his regime with wiretaps and all manner of methods worthy of an espionage novel.

On Nov. 22, 1963 — the day president John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas — according to the report, a CIA officer in Paris gave “a ballpoint pen rigged as a hypodermic syringe” to a Cuban asset, with the intent to use it as an “assassination weapon” against Castro.

The handoff took place “at the very moment President Kennedy Was Shot.”

“We cannot overemphasize the extent to which responsible Agency officers felt themselves subject to the Kennedy administration’s severe pressures to do something about Castro and his regime. The fruitless, and in retrospect, often unrealistic plotting should be viewed in that light,” the CIA memo read.

In 1992, Congress set a 25-year deadline for release of all remaining documents related to the assassination. Most of the files were declassified in the 1990s. Oct. 26 was the deadline.

Agencies lodged objections before last month’s deadline, and President Donald Trump agreed that rather than risk harm to national security, he would delay release of the files. He also ordered agencies to review the records and release as many as possible ahead of a new deadline next April.