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Given that they tried pretty much anything... There were 600+ attempts on Castro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro https://en.wikipedia.or

by groby_b 10y ago

Given that they tried pretty much anything... There were 600+ attempts on Castro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro Granted, that's a figure from Cuban counterintelligence, so maybe slightly too high ;) But most of them are documented. And not only 'weird' ideas like exploding cigars - the last one, in 2000, involved 90kg of explosives: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38121583 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38121583

logfromblammo 10y ago
The method seemed to be specifically selected to implicate only one person, without any direct evidence that could prove that he ordered it. It's already bad enough to execute political rivals in your own territory, but when you go and do a public "message" assassination in another country, people might start to think you may be too dangerous to be a head of state--even those in your nominally allied states. The best that can be said about it is that at least it was a plan that actually worked. The infamous "Operation Mongoose" attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, including the exploding cigars, seem more like episodes of a reality show about trying to assassinate Castro than actual murder plots. In this episode, Felix Leiter puts tuberculosis in Castro's scuba wetsuit. In this episode, Jack Ryan convinces Castro's ex-girlfriend Marita to poison him. In this episode, Tamara Knight tries to shave off Castro's beard and draw a dickbutt on his forehead. In this episode, Sam Fisher puts a gigantic snap trap on Castro's palace patio, and baits it with a can of New Coke. In this episode, Sterling Archer steals Castro's "World's Best Dictator" coffee mug, and replaces it with a poisoned red Solo cup. In this episode, Maxwell Smart removes the non-slip strips from the bottom of Castro's bathtub and gives him a basket of scented bath oil beads. In contrast, North Korea's plan is "wipe military-grade nerve agent all over his face." Maybe setting it up to look like an episode of a prank-based reality show was an attempt to frame the CIA?
- groby_b 10y ago
  600+ attempts to frame the CIA? Some involving large amounts of explosives, and snipers? That's what I call dedication!
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I think you misread my post. 1. CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro resemble episodes from a long-running prank-based reality show. 2. The Kim assassination got some participants to believe the op was part of a prank-based reality show. It could only have been done by a state actor. 3. (Donning tin foil hat) CIA connection! Looking like a prank show is their calling card!
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  But this sort of thing happens all the time. The opinion that Kim is a dictator who really ought not to be allowed to have his own country is already widespread, but here is why he and other practitioners of assassination hang on: In any state, ideas flow upward while authority flows downward. Let's consider a dictatorship for simplicity: it's not realistic to expect the dictator to think of everything other than for propaganda purposes. The dictator is presented with an endless supply of conflicting demands and requests, with different cost/benefit ratios. For any given idea, including his own, he needs to know roughly what the consequences are for implementing it. For that to happen, junior intelligence and policy officials have to buy into and invest their political capital in an idea, and so on down the organizational pyramid of government. And the lower you get to the bottom of the pyramid, the more accessible you are to malefactors. So if you're a minor cog in the Chinese foreign ministry whose brief is to monitor North Korean affairs, North Korea might well take an interest in you and your extended family. And if you were to develop a reputation within the ministry for disliking Kim, it might become risky for your relatives to take foreign holidays, so you are incentivized to be cautious rather than prompting your boss to prompt their boss to Do Something about the Kim regime. The messiness and made-for-TV aspect of it are the means of leveraging sustained attention. A simple shooting not have garnered anywhere near the same level of attention. It's high-precision terrorism as opposed to the mass casualty variety.

by groby_b 10y ago

logfromblammo 10y ago

The method seemed to be specifically selected to implicate only one person, without any direct evidence that could prove that he ordered it. It's already bad enough to execute political rivals in your own territory, but when you go and do a public "message" assassination in another country, people might start to think you may be too dangerous to be a head of state--even those in your nominally allied states. The best that can be said about it is that at least it was a plan that actually worked. The infamous "Operation Mongoose" attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, including the exploding cigars, seem more like episodes of a reality show about trying to assassinate Castro than actual murder plots. In this episode, Felix Leiter puts tuberculosis in Castro's scuba wetsuit. In this episode, Jack Ryan convinces Castro's ex-girlfriend Marita to poison him. In this episode, Tamara Knight tries to shave off Castro's beard and draw a dickbutt on his forehead. In this episode, Sam Fisher puts a gigantic snap trap on Castro's palace patio, and baits it with a can of New Coke. In this episode, Sterling Archer steals Castro's "World's Best Dictator" coffee mug, and replaces it with a poisoned red Solo cup. In this episode, Maxwell Smart removes the non-slip strips from the bottom of Castro's bathtub and gives him a basket of scented bath oil beads. In contrast, North Korea's plan is "wipe military-grade nerve agent all over his face." Maybe setting it up to look like an episode of a prank-based reality show was an attempt to frame the CIA?

groby_b 10y ago
600+ attempts to frame the CIA? Some involving large amounts of explosives, and snipers? That's what I call dedication!
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I think you misread my post. 1. CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro resemble episodes from a long-running prank-based reality show. 2. The Kim assassination got some participants to believe the op was part of a prank-based reality show. It could only have been done by a state actor. 3. (Donning tin foil hat) CIA connection! Looking like a prank show is their calling card!
anigbrowl 10y ago
But this sort of thing happens all the time. The opinion that Kim is a dictator who really ought not to be allowed to have his own country is already widespread, but here is why he and other practitioners of assassination hang on: In any state, ideas flow upward while authority flows downward. Let's consider a dictatorship for simplicity: it's not realistic to expect the dictator to think of everything other than for propaganda purposes. The dictator is presented with an endless supply of conflicting demands and requests, with different cost/benefit ratios. For any given idea, including his own, he needs to know roughly what the consequences are for implementing it. For that to happen, junior intelligence and policy officials have to buy into and invest their political capital in an idea, and so on down the organizational pyramid of government. And the lower you get to the bottom of the pyramid, the more accessible you are to malefactors. So if you're a minor cog in the Chinese foreign ministry whose brief is to monitor North Korean affairs, North Korea might well take an interest in you and your extended family. And if you were to develop a reputation within the ministry for disliking Kim, it might become risky for your relatives to take foreign holidays, so you are incentivized to be cautious rather than prompting your boss to prompt their boss to Do Something about the Kim regime. The messiness and made-for-TV aspect of it are the means of leveraging sustained attention. A simple shooting not have garnered anywhere near the same level of attention. It's high-precision terrorism as opposed to the mass casualty variety.