Castro’s Dodgy Dive Suit

If you read and enjoyed our wetsuit piece in last month's Undercurrent, you may be amused to know there might be other pitfalls in choosing a suit if a government doesn't like you!

It's well-known that the CIA came up with some offthe- wall plots to assassinate former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, but this could just be the most unbelievable yet -- apparently Washington contaminated a diving suit with tuberculosis and tried to get Castro to use it.

The National Security Archive reports that the U.S. government contacted lawyer James Donovan to conduct secret negotiations with Castro. Given Donavan's connections to the Cuban leader, the CIA believed they could use this to their advantage to try to assassinate Castro.

"At some point during Donovan's negotiations with Castro," several officials in the covert operations division "devised a plan to have Donovan be the unwitting purveyor of a diving suit and breathing apparatus, respectively contaminated with Madura foot fungus and tuberculosis bacteria, as a gift for Castro," reveals a passage from the National Security Archive.

However, the plan was ultimately shelved. It has been previously reported that the CIA even tried to kill Castro by rigging a seashell on a beach he frequently visited with explosives.