Operation Mongoose

Operation Mongoose was the covert CIA–Mafia plot to kill Fidel Castro, described in the book as relying primarily on poison. Its significance lies not only in the proposed assassination but in the alliance it exposed: mob figures and the U.S. government had intersected over Cuba, and the operation later became the subject of Senate investigation and restrictions on CIA activity abroad.

A covert alliance over Cuba

The plot belonged to a wider conflict following the Bay of Pigs invasion. In Frank Sheeran’s account, Castro had taken valuable property from mob figures and driven them out of territory where they had operated. Sheeran presented this as a criminal boss’s territorial logic: Castro was treated as a rival who had seized assets and violated boundaries, making him a target in the eyes of the people who had lost them.

Sheeran recalled flying to the Gold Coast with Russell Bufalino to meet Santo Trafficante and others. He said he never heard any of them, including Bufalino, discuss a plot with the Kennedy government to kill Castro with poison or a bullet. He learned of the alleged arrangement only when details appeared in newspapers about a decade later. His recollection thus places him near the people later associated with the operation while carefully distinguishing proximity from direct knowledge of its plans.

The 1975 investigation

In the summer of 1975, the Senate Church Committee held closed-door hearings on mob involvement in both the Bay of Pigs invasion and the effort to assassinate Castro. At the hearings’ outset, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged mob assistance in the invasion and the existence of the CIA–Mafia plot. The committee identified the assassination effort as Operation Mongoose and gathered testimony and evidence about the suspected relationship.

The inquiry’s account emerged amid the deaths of two central figures. Sam Giancana was assassinated a few days before he was scheduled to testify, so he never appeared before the committee. His lieutenant Johnny Roselli did testify, giving lengthy sworn testimony in closed session. A few months later, Roselli was also assassinated; his body was found stuffed in an oil drum. Their deaths marked the investigation with a stark contrast between testimony brought into the hearing room and witnesses who were silenced before or after appearing.

Public exposure and consequences

While the hearings remained closed, Time reported in its June 9, 1975, issue that Russell Bufalino and Sam Giancana were the crime bosses behind the mob’s connections to the CIA, the anti-Castro invasion, and the plan to poison Castro. The report connected Sheeran’s remembered meeting with the later public account, although his own recollection remained that no plot had been discussed in his presence.

The Church Committee’s findings and the CIA’s admission informed legislation restricting the agency’s involvement in the affairs of sovereign nations; the legislation passed. The committee’s work and reforms remained contested: after the September 11, 2001 attacks, some commentators argued that the restrictions had gone too far. Operation Mongoose therefore carried consequences beyond its secret objective, becoming part of a continuing argument over covert action, oversight, and the limits of intelligence power.