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
United States involvement in regime change Sarit. It also deployed the CIA-sponsored Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit (PARU) to operations within Laos. With the help of CIA front organization Air America to airlift war supplies and with other U.S. military assistance and covert aid from Thailand, General Phoumi Nosavan's forces captured Vientiane in November 1960. The CIA orchestrated a force composed of CIA-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba with support and equipment from the US military, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States.