The CIA, Poison Pills and a Confrontation in Havana: The Marita Lorenz Story In 1960, at the height of Cold War tensions, a young German American woman named Marita Lorenz found herself entangled in one of the most dramatic alleged assassination plots of the era. Lorenz had been romantically involved with Fidel Castro after meeting him shortly after the Cuban Revolution. Their relationship, by her later accounts, was intense and complicated. When she returned to the United States, she said she w