Plots Against Castro: Outlasting His Enemies
BLITZER: Two years ago today, people over at the White House were ordered to run for their lives. The Senate and the House were evacuated as a stray aircraft threw Washington into a panic. These days, the U.S. Coast Guard is stepping in to try to help secure the skies. Our homeland security correspondent, Jeanne Meserve, has an exclusive look at what's going on. And she's joining us live to tell us what it's all about -- Jeanne.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, behind me, the U.S. Capitol. Around me, some of the most restricted airspace in the world. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters are ready to launch and intercept and identify any aircraft which might intrude on this security envelope. And since September, they've had to do it 32 times.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scramble. Scramble. Scramble. Target, 215, .06 miles, altitude 4,000, airspace, 100 knots.</s>MESERVE (voice over): A Coast Guard helicopter crew sprints to its chopper. In three minutes they are in the air. An aircraft has intruded on restricted airspace, and they must find it -- fast.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  1: 00 high. Get him into it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.</s>MESERVE: The chopper relays the plane's tail number to the military and swoops down for a closer look. In a maneuver so complicated, both pilots must work the controls.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirty knots closure.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Copy.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty knots closure.</s>MESERVE: There is only one thing the pilot can compare it to.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Riding a roller-coaster.</s>MESERVE: Eventually, only 200 to 300 feet separate the chopper and the Cessna.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There he is. Boy, he's tight.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I count three inside the cockpit. Two forward, one after.</s>MESERVE: This is not the real thing, but a high-risk training mission over Atlantic City, New Jersey, with volunteer volunteers from the Coast Guard auxiliary flying the plane.</s>JON BUCK, U.S. COAST GUARD AUXILIARY: Well, we know what he's going to do. If you were just up in the air flying and somebody came that close to you, it would probably wet your pants. It would really scare you.</s>MESERVE: In a real incident, the motions would be the same. The pressures would be even greater.</s>LT. ZACHARY MATTHEWS, U.S. COAST GUARD: Any time that you launch on a scramble, you don't know what you're going to encounter. You treat it as the real thing.</s>MESERVE: The Coast Guard role is to identify these aircraft and communicate either by radio or with an electronic billboard on the side of the helicopter that can tell a pilot where to go and what to do. If the aircraft does not respond, it would be up to NORAD to make the decision on whether to shoot it down and then do it -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Are they able to get to the aircraft in time, Jeanne?</s>MESERVE: Well, there's a debate about that. Some officials say that they are tracking aircraft long before they enter the restricted space, and so they do have time to get these helicopters up in the air and to the intruding aircraft. There are others, however, who are arguing that this restricted space should be enlarged so that the helicopter pilots would have more time to do their job -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right. Good report, Jeanne. Thank you. There are a number of places where aircraft are either barred or restricted. These include continuous bans on flights over power plants, dams, refineries and military facilities. Other flight restrictions apply to scheduled events such as Major League Baseball, college and professional football, and motor speedways. Temporary restrictions are established over forest fires to avoid interference with firefighting aircraft and to protect other planes from hazards such as smoke. And temporary restrictions are usually placed around traveling dignitaries, including the president and the vice president. He's outwitted and outlasted enemies dating back to his days as a young revolutionary half a century ago. He's elderly and ailing now, but no one is counting out Fidel Castro yet. CNN's Morgan Neill is in Havana -- Morgan.</s>MORGAN NEILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, President Fidel Castro has been out of sight for more than nine months now, recovering, we're told, from intestinal surgery. When he first handed over power, some analysts gave him just months or weeks to live. But as we learned in the course of this story, this is a man with a real knack for survival.</s>NEILL (voice over): For nearly 50 years, all sorts of people have been trying to kill Fidel Castro. In Havana's Interior Ministry Museum, Cuba documents what it says is evidence of the plots. From a straightforward plan to pitch grenades at the Cuban leader in a baseball stadium, to an exploding cigar, to a botched attempt to jab him with a poisoned pen, Castro's enemies have been persistent. Former Cuban spy chief Fabian Escalante (ph) gives Cuban security much of the credit for the president's survival, but he says that doesn't explain everything. "Fidel has a rare sixth sense," he says, "that's allowed him to sense ambushes and danger." Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive at George Washington University says CIA attempts to assassinate Castro started soon after his 1959 revolution.</s>PETER KORNBLUH, NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE: There was an office in the CIA called Technical Services Division, TSD. And this office, just like in a James Bond movie, worked on all these cockamamie devices, some of which were very sinister and some of which were simply crazy.</s>NEILL: For example, he says, the office tried to mount a bomb inside a seashell to explode when the scuba diving Castro drew near. The problem, they couldn't figure out how to draw the president to their bomb. In a separate CIA plot, according to Kornbluh, that the Cubans themselves say nearly succeeded, two poison pills were given to a restaurant worker in Havana who stored them in a freezer. But, says Escalante (ph), when the workers started to prepare the milkshake, he went to get the plastic bag with the poison in it and the bag broke, spilling out the poison. That, he says, was in 1963. A U.S. Senate committee later identified at least eight different CIA plots against Castro in the early 1960s.</s>NEILL: But Wolf, this isn't just Cold War history. In fact, Cuba's outraged that one of Fidel Castro's arch enemies, Cuban exile Luis Posada, has just seen charges against him thrown out in Texas. He's now back on the streets.</s>BLITZER: Morgan Neill reporting for us in Havana. Morgan, thanks. Up ahead, it's not exactly symphony etiquette as usually. Jeanne Moos puts her special spin on a brawl -- yes, a brawl -- at Boston's concert hall. But first, why do you think the divorce rate in the United States has fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years? Jack Cafferty with your e-mail when we come back.