Human rights violations by the CIA Patrice Lumumba. In yet another category was noninterference in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) coup in which President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed. A distinction has been drawn between political assassinations and "targeted killing" of leaders of non-state belligerents. Perhaps the best-documented account of CIA-sponsored assassination plans were against President Fidel Castro of Cuba. According to columnist Jack Anderson, the first attempt was part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, but five more teams were sent, the last apprehended on a rooftop within rifle range of Castro, at the end of February or beginning of March 1963. Anderson
CIA activities in Iraq recipient of the handkerchief, as CIA officials would likely have remembered an attack on the Iraqi head of state. While Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general and did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq, the pro-Soviet head of Iraq's "People's Court," Colonel Fahdil Abbas al-Mahdawi, fits the above description perfectly. Qasim effectively banned the ICP in January 1960, but Mahdawi remained a crucial conduit between Qasim's government and several communist-front groups—including the "Peace Partisans," which was allowed to operate in public despite being formally outlawed in May 1961—and was known for his outspoken praise for Fidel