Cuban Project by late August, the Soviet military build-up in Cuba disgruntled the Kennedy administration. The fear of open military retaliation against the United States and Berlin for the US covert operations in Cuba slowed down the operation. By October, as the Cuban Missile Crisis heated up, President Kennedy demanded the cessation of Operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose formally ceased its activities at the end of 1962. The first assassination plots began in the late summer of 1960, according to the Church Committee’s documentation. Some of the plots and ideas ranged from “poisoned pills, an exploding seashell, and a planned gift of a
Cuban Friendship Urn it stood in Cuba, and in 1928 the urn was sent by Cuban President Gerardo Machado to the United States and presented to President Calvin Coolidge. Some reports say the urn stood for many years outside the Cuban Embassy on 16th Street, N.W., in Washington. After relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated following Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba in 1959, it disappeared from public view. It may have been stolen by "xenophobic vandals .. during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis", or it may have been removed for a construction project. According to the National Park Service,