Military leaders in John F. Kennedy’s government proposed a bounty system in 1962 that would pay Cubans to kill or capture Communists on the island and valued Cuban leader Fidel Castro at just 2 cents.
The plan was revealed in a document released Thursday by the National Archives, one of several thousand released as part of the files that still remained secret.
According to the document, a representative of Kennedy’s Joint Chiefs’ proposed “Operation Bounty,” which was aimed at giving Cubans on the island an incentive to “overthrow the Cuban Communist Regime.”
The plan was outlined in six points, and said financial rewards would be given out “commensurate with position and stature, for killing or delivering alive known Communists.”
The plan proposed rewards ranging from 2 cents to $1 million. It envisioned the dropping of leaflets by air into Cuba that described the names of Communist leaders, their positions in the Cuban government, and how large the reward would be for each kill or capture.
“One final leaflet may be deemed advisable and that one announcing a 0.02 ¢ reward for the delivery of Castro,” the memo said.
The plan outlined the following proposed price list:
It also encouraged U.S. agents to start capturing Cuban officials once the operation started, to give Cubans confidence that people were acting on the U.S. offer.
The plan was outlined in a 37-page intelligence report on Cuba that said most U.S. officials at the time believed Castro’s leadership was incompatible with U.S. democratic goals in the hemisphere. Parts of that report said overthrowing Castro was a preferred outcome but was risky in light of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
