The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959–1965 (review)

Abstract

Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959-1965. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006. 320pp.In this book, The Castro Obsession, the former Latin American editor of the Miami Herald, Don Bohning, provides a good, concise overview of the efforts by the United States to remove Fidel Castro from office in the period 1959-1965. While treading over ground covered by others such as Peter Wyden, Bohning nevertheless succeeds as an investigative reporter in writing a good synthesis of the efforts that began with the Eisenhower administration and finally subsided with the election of President Lyndon Johnson and the shifting of attention to southeast Asia.Bohning covers the traditional topics such as the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, and CIA activities in Miami, highlighting a cast of larger-than-life American and Cuban characters, ranging from those approximating James Bond to others more closely resembling Maxwell Smart. Ultimately, the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars and, according to the author, instead of ridding the hemisphere of Castro, the covert campaign undoubtedly contributed to maintaining and consolidating his control over (1).The book opens with a review of the Bay of Pigs invasion and its spectacular failure. Immediately, President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy figure prominently in the narrative, especially the latter, though both shared the obsession with Castro. Chastised by those who argued against the Bay of Pigs as well as those within the military and Cuban American community who felt the president should have used U.S. forces to help the invasion, the Kennedy brothers made me feud with Castro personal. To underscore the point, Bohning incorporates materials from interviews with Americans such as Jake Esterline and Jack Hawkins as well as Cuban perspectives provided by Erneido Oliva, Rafael Quintero, and Carlos Obregon.The subsequent section deals with Operation Mongoose and efforts to destabilize the Castro government through operations ranging from intelligence gathering to sabotage and finally several botched assassination attempts. Characterizing many of the attempts as nutty schemes (93), the author uses long-disclosed sources including the Church Committee hearings and National Security Archive materials to tell the familiar story of the Mafia's efforts to assassinate Castro as well as CIA efforts to provide poison to close confidants of the Cuban leader. The Cuban Missile Crisis effectively eliminated many of the operations when Kennedy promised no invasion of Cuba in return for the removal of missiles.Despite the promises, the U.S. government remained active in trying to depose Castro, and Miami became a hot spot in the cold war. The CIA and other government agencies worked out of the University of Miami's South Campus in a series of front companies such as Zenith Technical Enterprises. …