CIA, Mob team up to topple Fidel Castro in Paramount Plus docuseries ‘Mafia Spies’
The CIA’s alliance with the Mafia during the Kennedy years to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro is at the center of a new Paramount Plus original docuseries called Mafia Spies. Using historical footage and contemporary interviews, the six-part series brings viewers inside 1950s wide-open Havana, when mobsters controlled the Cuban capital’s casinos, and then examines Castro’s takeover of the island nation and the U.S. government’s clandestine efforts to kill him. Among other schemes, including the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, attempts to eliminate Castro included poison pills and a scuba-diving wetsuit laced with a deadly substance. None of this was successful, ...
Learn MoreArtifact Spotlight: Frank Calabrese Sr.’s handmade dictionary
“PRISON: IS WARE I AM AT,” reads an entry in the handmade dictionary of Frank Calabrese Sr., former boss of…
Learn MoreClassic Mob drama ‘The Sopranos’ first aired 25 years ago
When the groundbreaking HBO series The Sopranos debuted in 1999, it was an instant hit and a critical success. It…
Learn MoreThey don’t just kill each other
Innocent victims of Mob violence are one of the most underreported aspects of organized crime. This is due in part…
Learn MoreThe Buffalo Mafia’s ill-advised art thefts
“Art Collection Is Looted; Loss Put at $1.3 million,” read a headline in the August 22, 1968, edition of the…
Learn MoreArtifact Spotlight: Alternative liquor products from Prohibition
When Prohibition started on January 17, 1920, beer brewers, liquor distillers and winemakers were in a predicament. The 18th Amendment…
Learn More‘The Green Felt Jungle,’ published 60 years ago, rattled Las Vegas
When The Green Felt Jungle was published 60 years ago, the book created a stir by detailing Mob influence and…
Learn MoreColombian drug lord Pablo Escobar killed 30 years ago this month
Warning: This blog contains graphic images that some readers may find disturbing. Thirty years ago this month, the bloody reign…
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