I'm reading the last book by Robert Caro on the history of LBJ and he mentions that Robert Kennedy was the one who convinced JFK to forego a sneak attack on Cuba during the Missile Crisis, saying that the US is not the kind of country to do sneak attacks.
A few chapters later, Robert Kennedy is basically shouting at the CIA head to murder Fidel Castro.
And I was suddenly thinking that no way in hell would there ever be a written, signed order by a sitting US president to murder the head of another country. Am I wrong? Because from what I've read, even Obama today signs off on drone strikes. So I'm assuming that there are lists of names of foreign people condemned to death with Obama's signatures on them.
Do we have any executive order to kill Castro? Do we have any signed order by any US president to murder anyone?
There was never a signed "assassination order" of any kind that came from JFK's desk that directly said murder Fidel Castro. Instead, there were policy memos signed by JFK ordering operations to bring down the Castro government. These documents did not explicitly say that Fidel was to die but they implied that it was a likely possibility. And while there were CIA operations to kill Castro, the CIA never got actual executive orders to kill him. Instead, these operations were just generally a part of the overall mission to overthrow Fidel and rid Cuba of communism.
The source I am using are the documents of the JFK assassination records at the National Archives.