LSD Experiments, Castro Death Plot, Home Break-Ins Among CIA Secrets Exposed In Files [View All]

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Some Examples of CIA Misconduct

June 26, 2007 08:09 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — Some examples of CIA misconduct described in 693 pages of documents released by agency Tuesday:

One plot against Fidel Castro:

CIA Office of Security Director Howard Osborn described a plot begun in August 1960 to kill the Cuban dictator. Ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, was recruited to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations who wanted Castro killed because he'd caused financial losses for their Cuban operations.

Roselli was to be told the U.S. government should never hear of the plot. Roselli introduced Maheu to "Sam Gold" and "Joe," who were actually 10-most wanted mobsters Salvatore Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago, and Santos Trafficante. The mobsters turned down $150,000 and worked for free. CIA gave them six poison pills; they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in the Cuban leader's food. This particular plot was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but other plots continued against Castro although they are not detailed in these documents.

At one point, Giancana asked Maheu to bug the Las Vegas hotel room of entertainer Dan Rowan to see if Giancana's girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire, was sexually intimate with Rowan. The technician, however, was arrested planting the bug and Osborn's office eventually had to tell Attorney General Robert Kennedy how the episode came about in order to get the Justice Department to drop charges against Maheu and the technician.

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Studies of U.S. radicals:

The documents reflect the CIA's interest in Students for a Democratic Society. The radical left-wing group had chapters on major college campuses around the country.

In a document entitled "SDS and other student activist groups," the CIA said that it produced a 30-page study of the organization "and its foreign ties."

The agency produced another paper entitled "Restless Youth," including a "most sensitive section" that "was a philosophical treatment of student unrest, its motivation, history and tactics.

"It drew heavily on overt literature and FBI reporting on SDS and affiliated groups," the document said. Another section of the report comprised "19 chapters on foreign student dissidence."

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