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CIA, Mob team up to topple Fidel Castro in Paramount Plus docuseries ‘Mafia Spies’

July 29, 2024

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, ...

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The Las Vegas misadventures of Russian Louie

By the time he was 11 years old, he was arrested for burglary in San Francisco. By the time he…

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Fearless Las Vegas journalists Jeff German, Ned Day left lasting legacies

Las Vegas reporters Jeff German and Ned Day had more in common than a dogged approach to digging out major…

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Frank Costello, Vito Genovese feud is focus of upcoming Mob movie

Mob movie veterans Robert De Niro and Nicholas Pileggi are teaming up again, this time for a drama about two…

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The law finally catches up with Tom and Gramby Hanley after murder of Culinary boss

Read the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Last of four parts. Authorities located Tom and Gramby…

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Hanley enjoyed winning streak in criminal courts

Read the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Third of four parts. Just before his planned murder…

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Labor corruption was centerpiece of Tom Hanley’s criminal aims

Read the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Second of four parts. In 1955, the national AFL…

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Father-son crime team tormented Las Vegas over four decades

Editor’s note: Las Vegas outlaws Tom and Gramby Hanley were never members of a traditional organized crime group, but the…

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