The Great Game in Cuba: How the CIA Sabotaged Its Own Plot to Unseat Fidel Castro
It is no secret that the CIA engaged in a variety of schemes, some bordering on farcical, and utilized a variety of unsavory individuals (or “assets”) to carry out the removal of Fidel Castro. After the brush with nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, those efforts were largely abandoned. But for die-hard anti-Castro Cubans and their American supporters, the efforts continued. Mellen, a journalist and professor of English at Temple University, has written an interesting but often confusing chronicle of some of these efforts centered around Robert Kleberg Jr. Kleberg owned the giant King Ranch in Texas and had owned ranches in Cuba, which the Castro government expropriated. He was aided by several Cuban exiles who had originally supported Castro’s efforts to topple the Batista regime. When Mellen sticks to their plots, her story is often absorbing, but she frequently veers off into diatribes against the supposed duplicity of the CIA, primarily because it kept Kleberg and his associates at arm’s length. Still, this is a useful, if uneven, examination of aspects of the long, futile campaign to oust Castro. --Jay Freeman