CIA tried to get Mafia to kill Castro

By Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA worked with three American mobsters in a botched "gangster-type" attempt to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, according to documents released by the CIA on Tuesday.

The CIA hauled the skeletons out of its closet by declassifying hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detail some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.

CIA Director Michael Hayden released the documents to lift the veil of secrecy on the agency's past, even as the Bush administration faces criticism of being too secretive now.

Hayden told agency employees in a statement the trove included "reminders of some things the CIA should not have done" and a glimpse "of a very different era and a very different agency." The documents had been requested 15 years ago by a watchdog group.

Much of the information had been released in various congressional investigations in past years, but the pages provide detailed accounts of CIA activities, much of it against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Some of the CIA's "Family Jewels" describe the agency's initial efforts to get rid of Castro, whose 1959 revolution ushered in communism to the island. Despite the U.S. campaign against him, Castro remains Cuban leader at age 80, although he handed over temporary power to his brother Raul after surgery last July.

The agency's leaders determined "a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action" was needed. "The mission target was Fidel Castro," the document said.

The CIA contacted Johnny Roselli, believed to have been a high-ranking member of the Mafia and the person who controlled all the ice-making machines on the Las Vegas strip.