ONCE A CASTRO COMRADE, HE PLOTTED WITH CIA TO KILL THE LEADER

•1933-2022

In March 1966, Rolando Cubela stood before a Havana military tribunal accused of leading a plot to kill his former comrade, Fidel Castro. During the two-day proceedings, Cubela never denied he sought to assassinate Cuba's “maximum leader,” but reportedly blamed himself for falling “into the hands of the enemy.”

That contrition, carried by Cuba's state-controlled media, gave Castro what he needed. Sending Cubela and four other convicted plotters to face firing squads could have created powerful martyrs to further rally opponents of his rule. Instead, Castro made a public display of saying he wouldn't condemn Cubela and other former allies to death.

Cubela, who died Aug. 23 in Doral, Fla., at 89, would spend the next 13 years in prison — closing one of the more intrigue-filled footnotes from the turbulent years after Castro's guerrillas overthrew Fulgencio Batista's U.s.-friendly regime in 1959.

Cubela's turn against Castro was a particularly harsh blow for the Cuban leader. During the revolution, an alliance between Castro's guerrillas and factions led by Cubela avoided rivalries among anti-batista forces and proved pivotal in critical battles against government troops in the final months, said Arturo Lopezlevy, a research fellow at the University of Denver Korbel School's Latin America Center.

Cubela, who studied medicine in Havana, gained prominence in stunning fashion: taking part in the slaying of a top military intelligence officer, Col. Antonio Blanco Rico, in a Havana nightclub in October 1956.

The next year, members of Cubela's group, known as the Student Revolutionary Directorate, or DRE, tried to storm Batista's presidential palace, but were driven back after clashes left heavy casualties on both sides.

Fearing arrest, Cubela stowed away on a merchant ship bound for Florida. He returned to Cuba by boat in February 1958, later uniting the Directorate units with Castro in a pivotal win over government troops that December. Batista fled Cuba on New Year's Day 1959.

Cubela was solidly in Castro's inner circle after he took power. Yet, as Castro consolidated control, Cubela became increasingly dismayed by his embrace of communism and strongman rule.

A 1967 Inspector General's report on plots to assassinate Castro, released to the public in 1998, sketched out Cubela's overtures to the CIA.

A January 1965 CIA memo, released as part of the Inspector General's report, called Cubela “a representative of an internal military dissident group, which is plotting to overthrow Castro.”

In July 1962 Cubela met with CIA contacts at a Helsinki nightclub. His demand in return: to be "given a really large role to play" if Castro was removed.

Cubela wanted weapons, including a sniper rif le with a scope and silencer, the report said. The CIA arranged for Cubela to meet in Madrid in 1964 with Manuel Artíme, a leading anti-castro militant based in the U.S. Artíme agreed to provide the rifle and a handgun, which Cubela managed to smuggle back into Cuba in early 1965.

Soon, however, rumors began to circulate in Cuba about brewing conspiracies against Castro.

On Feb. 28, 1966, Cubela was arrested in Havana. At the same time, Cuban secret police were rounding up others who would join Cubela at trial, including Ramon Guin Diaz, another former top commander in Castro's forces.