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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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Latest search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains joins long list of fruitless attempts

The FBI announced in July that it did not find any sign of the body of former Teamsters Union leader…

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Latest from popular crime novelist Don Winslow delves into 1980s Mafia drama

Don Winslow, an author known to many in recent years for stories about cartel violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, has…

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‘Godfather’ castmates remember James Caan

James Caan, the versatile actor who achieved lasting fame as hot-headed Sonny Corleone in the 1972 Mafia movie The Godfather,…

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Seventy-five years later, debate over Bugsy Siegel murder still rages

As Americans opened their newspapers on June 21, 1947, they saw large headlines about the murder of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel,…

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HBO Max series ‘Tokyo Vice’ explores Japan’s criminal underworld

A new television drama series, available in its entirety on HBO Max, focuses on organized crime in Japan, featuring a…

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Three charged in Hells Angels shooting of rival Vagos riders during Memorial Day weekend

It was supposed to be a peaceful motorcycle ride near Hoover Dam in honor of America’s war dead, followed by…

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Stuffing murder victims in barrels a common practice since mid-19th century

In April 1858, workers at the Hudson Valley Railroad’s freight house smelled an awful stench coming from a wooden barrel…

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