Cohosted by the Smithsonian Associates and the International Spy museum in washington, d. C. Good morning, everyone. It is a good morning. It is a great day. After that, i think it goes downhill. Irc executive director. We are delighted to have all of you here with us. Let us look again thank the smithsonian volunteers for being with us for this event. Toyou would be kind enough turn off your cellphones and so forth. As a c. I. A. Officer who went through the church pike hearings , part of which will be discussed today by vince , attempted assassinations, none of which succeeded, which reflects incompetence or a lack of commitment. Charges almosthe seem quaint because today there is little hesitation by successive administrations of both parties in knocking off the heads of terrorist groups and the leaders right and left. As you know, on a couple of occasions, taking out an american citizen. Looking back on that, it almost seems quaint. However, it will be fun to revisit with my colleague, this who has aghton, phd in diplomatic and military history. The area of his research with scientific was scientific and technological issues or worldpments during the war ii and the early part of the cold war. Vince also got a masters in relations between the soviet union and the United States. You may get questions on that. That is a lively topic today. I should say vince has also taught extensively, both at the university level, high school level, and middle school. I would think middle school would have been the most challenging. [laughter] the worst . Ok. Good for you for being a teacher. He is a u. S. Army veteran and served in the balkans and worked in several capacities with both civilian and military intelligence. It is my pleasure to introduce my colleague, dr. Vince hou ghton. [applause] mr. Houghton thank you, peter. When we planned this series, we talked about doing these four great assassinations with one not so great assassination. Like, it wont really matter that castro is still alive, because we planned these back in october. Things have changed a little bit, but the basic idea behind this is killing fidel, or not killing fidel. For a lot of younger people, castro or the mystique of fidel castro is not as wellknown as it would be for other generations. He had not been in charge for a while. He was not this mean ogre of a , person who was leaving cuba. He was for a lot of people that remember the cold war. A lot of people that lived through that time. For the most part, castro was somewhat of a caricature of himself at the end. I love this cartoon. To me, it really spelled out the end of castros career when he had been retired. [laughter] so when he died, it was a big deal a lot of places. Many college aged students were like, ok. Some old guy who used to be a bad person died. He really did not matter a whole lot when it came to the relationship between the United States and cuba, or the broader world. Here we are going to talk a little bit differently. We will look at the c. I. A. Attempts on castros life. The number 638 is according to castros retired chief of cuban counterintelligence who in an interview said we counted 638 different attempts by the c. I. A. On castros life. The next 638 slides, we will systematically go through each i am just kidding. I included this quote on here that was great. This is from castro. If surviving assassination attempts were an olympic event, i would win the gold medal. We tried 638 times. 639 is the charm. This is a spy museum exclusive. You are all hearing this first before anybody else. I now have acquired the name of the topsecret operation that finally finally got fidel , castro. [laughter] dr. Houghton the name is a little on the nose, they are not as creative as they used to be. This is not an Operation Overlord kind of thing. But we finally paid off. Mission accomplished. [laughter] dr. Houghton we finally got fidel. There is a really funny story for me, and my mom will never let me live this down. My fascination with fidel castro started at a very early age. Fascination is the right word in this case. I grew up in miami. I am not cuban, the blonde hair, green eyes, transparent skin did not give that away. But everyone i knew, all of my friends were. Many of their fathers, mothers, grandparents were refugees from cuba. One of my best friends grandfather was a colonel in the army. These are people who came over because they had to, to miami. The funny story behind this is, my mom still lives in miami, my whole family lived down there for many years. I have lived in washington for the last 10 years. Every thanksgiving i went home to miami. That is where the family was. My wifes family is in miami as well. Every thanksgiving except for this year. The one year i said, i have done a lot of traveling, we have been out of town, lets just stay in washington this thanksgiving. And of course, fidel castro dies two days after thanksgiving. When i would have been in miami for the greatest party in the history of the universe. My mom will never let me live it down. She is like that is what happens , when you dont come home for thanksgiving. [laughter] houghton horrible dictator dies and you miss a good party. It really was, from the very beginning, a question that i had to deal with. The idea of who was this man . , he was somebody i could not reconcile the image of castro that i got from my friends families, the image of this monster with a lot of , information i read from more objective sources. The real problem you run into is there is not a lot of objective sources when it comes to fidel castro. You have people that knew him best, and many were procastro. You cannot get inside the mans head because they are skewed in certain ways. And the other people who knew him best are his arch enemies. You will not get a straight story from them either. How do you learn this . You look at things and say this is a man with an incredible following, incredible charisma who got a lot of people to follow him and do things they probably would not have otherwise. You hear all these stories about cuban education and cuban medicine being the best in the world. About how everything is free. Later in life, i would learn the stories were half true nonsense. , half cuba has some of the greatest medical schools. The doctors are not there because they have been shipped overseas. They were sent to venezuela and traded for oil. The medical care in cuba is not very good for most people. The doctors are the best in the world, but they are not there they are somewhere else. , these are the pictures of castro before he became the dictator. He is playing basketball and baseball. He wanted to be a Major League Baseball pitcher and sort of tried out. The story of the orioles is more apocryphal than anything else. They say his fastball was pretty pedestrian. He was a great athlete, good at basketball. Somebody who was an avid reader , who understood history. It was very difficult to reconcile this with the monster aboutgrown up to think based on my friends and friends family. Lets tackle the broader question of who was fidel . , this will be a controversial topic. There is no one that has a blank objective opinion about this. , there are people who think he was the worlds worst dictator. There are people who think he was a great guy. I will come down somewhere in the middle. Was he a communist . In the end, yes. Did he start out a communist . That is up for historical debate. Ive even asked this question of cuban exiles. People who fought against castro for decades. Did castro start out a communist . Most of them hedge the question because they know it is very difficult to say yes. He came to power, and he worried because hestates started nationalizing companies that we have economic ties to. Or that we owned outright. You might say, this sounds like a communist to me. Couch this inn marxist terms. He catches it as bringing it back to cuba. More of a nationalist, more of what happened in egypt. The idea was we need to bring these Companies Back to the cuban people. Could he have been a potential partner . This is another wonderful counterfactual. Anyone know what country castro visited first when he took power . Yes, he came here. A lot of people are surprised. They think he went to moscow. No, he came to the United States to try to meet with president eisenhower and Vice President nixon. Neither of whom were available. Ike was playing golf. It was purposeful, they did not want to meet with him. It was so purposeful that when castro visited new york, he could not find a hotel except for in harlem. The United States made it very difficult for him to stay in a hotel. Do not get me wrong, i am not saying we pushed him into the hands of the soviets, but there is certainly that argument. The question is broader than that. The idea is, was he ready to embrace a soviet partnership from the very beginning . I think the answer is unknown. He would not have come to the United States if he did not think there was a possibility we could potentially work with him. You call this naive, many of his close advisers did call this naive. Because simultaneously, as he was trying to meet with the americans here in the United States, his brother raul, and che guevara was in moscow. They were in moscow meeting with khrushchev. They knew that we would not allow for the nationalization of the United Fruit Company and other organizations that were billions of for american dollars economics. They knew the writing on the wall before fidel did. One way or another, once fidel castro realized there was no possible way of any kind of relationship with the United States, he does reach out to the soviet union. He puts himself in direct lets call it a direct confrontational situation with the United States. We were not in a position where we would let a soviet satellite state be so close. This was not sort of reaching out to the soviets, this was a full embrace of soviet ideology. I would like to call castro a bornagain communist, in many ways he was. When he came back from his trip and realized he would have to reach out and embrace the other major power in the world, he very quickly started adopting a lot of these marxist and leninists terminology was not using before. It worked. He and khrushchev had a strong alliance, as we know from the missile crisis and the amount of weapons and aid that went to cuba. There is a lot of history here, we will not cover all of it. We will focus more on our attempts to get rid of him. We will get to the bay of pigs, that is one of the big stories. There were schemes that were brought up and thought of prior to the bay of pigs. Some are worth noting. Before 1960, castro takes power on new years day, 1959, if you have seen godfather part two, you know the story. Prior to the Eisenhower Administration, there were some basic schemes. Scheme is a good word here for trying to take castro out. One of them involved a Radio Station. Castro the broadcasts about once a week. He would give a stirring, patriotic, this is what we are doing in cuba to the people in cuba. One of the early ideas was to spray this Radio Station was with lsd so when castro gave his broadcast he would be tripping on acid and say crazy stuff and people would stop following him. Then there was an idea of taking his cigars and putting lsd inside of his cigars so that he would also trip whenever he smoked his cigars. There was an idea to put a substance inside a cigar that would make his hair fall out. And there is another thing here, salts inside his shoes that would make your hair fall out. The idea was that Cuban Society was very macho. People thought that within the United States, if his weird fell the mesh beard if his beard fell out he would lose his machismo, and his charisma. He was called the beard. If you have no beard and eyebrows people would refuse to , follow him. These were ideas that were thought up prior to the big idea. The big idea was the fullfledged invasion, the bay of pigs. In this is when the invasion april 1961, takes place. We could talk for hours about this, i wont because we have other things to talk about. The bay of pigs was designed to take castro out in one fell swoop. The flag you are seeing here is the flag of the assault brigade. Theres a great story behind this. 2506 was named that because each of the members of the brigade had a number. Not their name. It was kind of their codename. 2506 was the number of the first man who died during training so they renamed it after him. The interesting part is, there were not as many people in the brigade. There were about 1500 people. The idea was, to start the Number System higher so that if someone was captured, you say my number is 2605. They would say, my gosh, there are 2600 of you. It was thought up by the Eisenhower Administration. It was dumped on the Kennedy Administration because kennedy was a lieutenant during world war ii and eisenhower was a fivestar general. Eisenhower said this was a good plan and kennedy did not put a lot of thought into it. That is the nicest thing we can say about kennedy. The cubans in miami dont have nice things to say about kennedy when it comes to the bay of pigs. Many of them to this day refuse to vote for a democrat because of what kennedy did many years ago. 50 every one of their statements usually has four letter words that i wont say because cspan is covering this. They are not fans. The most charitable thing we can say is, kennedy did not know what he was getting himself into. The bay of pigs operation was a failure, as we know. It is not oust castro. Many of the members of the brigade were rounded up and captured. In many respects, according to che guevara, the bay of pigs helps castro to consolidate his power inside cuba. Prior to the bay of pigs, people could speak out against castro and there were in paris on it embryonic movements of opposition against castro. After the bay of pigs he was able to crack down violently against these opposition movements and lock in his power. When che guevara met with an american ambassador, who was the secretary of state under kennedy, he said, thank you for that ridiculous operation. It allowed us to lock down power inside of cuba. Lets look quickly at what went wrong. There was a lot of rushed planning when it came to the bay of pigs. We knew through intelligence that the soviets would ship advanced weapons to you that as to cuba as part of the deal that castro has made with khrushchev. We could not wait long to figure out how to get this done right. Eventually, the cuban exiles would be dumped on the beach and running up against technologically advanced cuban weapons. As it was, in 1961, in the early stages of the bay of pigs, they were not going up against state of the art soviet equipment. The idea was to get in quickly so we are not running up against top level equipment. The broader problem was the internal security of the bay of pigs invasion. There is a lot to this. One of them is how good cuban intelligence was. As an aside, cuban intelligence is one of the best in the world. Per capita, arguably the best. They have a huge advantage. Their huge advantage is, they only have one external enemy they are focused on, us. If the c. I. A. Only had one country they had to Pay Attention to, we would be good at what we are doing. We are good, but we have to look at everybody. The cubans only needed to focus on the United States and they were very good at doing it. As many of these refugees passed over into miami, estimates vary. There are numbers that say as high as one out of every 10 refugees was a member of cuban intelligence. When the cuban refugee of miami was planning this operation, there were cuban intelligence assets inside the planning and operation passing information back to cuba. To the point that a week before it actually, five days before the bay of pigs invasion, radio moscow broadcast a message saying, cuban exiles are about to invade cuba and get castro out. You would think that the United States government would say we cannot do this. They obviously know we are coming. This is a problem. What they dont. They just kind of ignore the warning signs. The miami herald was ready to publish a piece weeks before the invasion, detailing there was a group of Training Camps planning to take out castro. And they sat on it. Haroleraldthat the new about this meant that everybody knew. Even assuming they had internal security and the planning was done well, the plan counted on a popular uprising. The idea was the 1500 men would land on the beach and the cuban people would rise up against castro. This was Wishful Thinking. There was no popular uprising, there was no rallying in the streets against fidel. You and up with the 1500 men of of the brigade defending 40 miles of beach along this long coastline against the entire cuban army and militia. It did not go well. This is a picture of me standing on the bay of pigs, this is a big open beach. This is dday. This is not something where you want to drop men on the beach 1500 against the entire cuban army. It is not a great area of operations. It is not a way to effectively start a revolution. Because if you do not get through the beachhead, which they do not you are screwed. , there is not much you can do. The problem stems down to the concept of groupthink. The plan came up during the Eisenhower Administration and kennedy says it was a good idea. Because eisenhower was a fivestar general. No one would stand up and say, mr. President this is stupid. Everyone was convinced that the cuban people would rise up, that is a great idea. Yes, these 1500 guys can start a revolution to defeat castro. That is a great idea. No one had i dont want to put it on their soldiers and say no one had the courage to stand up. I think it is more that people were Wishful Thinking. Everyone began Wishful Thinking that this would be a successful operation. Lets take a look quickly. This is huge. Inspector general of the c. I. A. Did a postmortem after the bay of pigs. It is a massive document. I want to pull out big key issues they identified to show why this goes bad. The first one is interesting. The c. I. A. Exceeded its capabilities. This is the c. I. A. In 1961. During the 1950s, the c. I. A. , it was argued, got a little too big for its britches. They had successful operations around the world overthrowing governments in guatemala, iran, fixing operations in italy, but they are not yet the c. I. A. We know and love today. They are not capable of running a massive military operation in 1961. They get really good during vietnam and the secret war in laos. By they are not there yet. 1961, this is not the same thing as fixing an election in italy, this is a massive paramilitary operation. The idea that the c. I. A. Is going to run this operation to kick out a very popular president was laughable, at this point. Lets go to the next bullet point here. It is a problem the ci is not collecting and analyzing intelligence about cuban forces. Peter can tell you that is probably plan number one, you should be doing if you are thinking about invading cuba. They did not take the time to do that. It had a lot to do with the president ial transition and a lot to do with the fact that the c. I. A. Did not know anything about what was happening in cuba. Insufficient spanish speakers. Another one of those guerrilla operations, cuba 101 kind of things you should know. And lack of contingency plans. This is an issue where when the plan went bad, which it did in the very beginning, the ship that was borrowed from the u. S. Navy was carrying all the extra ammunition and explosives. That got blown up before it got to the ground. As it was approaching the bay of pigs, it was hit and exploded. There went all of the ammo. There went all of the actual heavy weapons. What do you do now . There was no plan b. There was no, how do we fix this. Again not great planning. , bay of pigs is a failure. The u. S. Licks its wounds. Kennedy fires all of the top leadership of c. I. A. , including the director who had been the , man who built the ca into what it was at that point. He falls on his sword, it was not necessarily his fault, but kennedy felt like he needed to clean house and bring in his own team. And he does. His own team begins to take things in a different direction. Instead of looking at these big paramilitary actions, they start taking covert. How can we take out castro in a way that will not embarrass us if it goes bad and will not get us into a shooting war with the soviets . The answer was called operation mongoose. This became a catchall for anything that was focused on destabilizing the government and taking out fidel castro. There are programs of that 638 different operations. It is a nonsense number. It is not really that high. There are counting everything from when a random cuban tried to do something to castro, or when one of the groups blow things up. These are not operations that are c. I. A. Operations. But anytime the c. I. A. Or anybody else try to do anything to destabilize the castro regime, it came under the broader heading of operation mongoose. It was really a multiphase operation. It starts out relatively slow and builds up over time. As we continue to fail to kill castro, we begin to get more and more elaborate in our operations. Mongoose includes three pretty famous names in the history of c. I. A. Edward lansdale was the covert guru within c. I. A. He was the guy who was thinking of the more interesting ways to do a lot of these what we would consider now unethical operations. I am not going to say he was a bad guy. He was given the parameters he could work within, which was essentially do whatever you need to do, and he took that to the full extent. William harvey was another great c. I. A. Covert operator. More on the paramilitary side. Broughtas also somebody up as a potential model that ian fleming used to create james bond. That is like, where did washington sleep . There are about 100 different people. Bondid fleming base james on . Harvey as part of this group. Richard nixon said that when he and ian fleming sat down and chatted about james bond, fleming told nixon that bill harvey was an inspiration for the james bond character. If you cannot trust Richard Nixon, who can you trust . [laughter] dr. Houghton and of course ted shaklee. His name might ring a bell to a lot of people. He was the chief of station in saigon during a lot of the yet vietnam war. He will become a central figure in the operation mongoose plan. Before he went to vietnam he was , a chief of station in another place. Someplace that may surprise you. We will talk about that in a second. There are some very straightforward attempts at castros life. I want to get that out of the way before we get to the more elaborate ones. But there were some lets go and , just shoot the dude. The keep it simple stupid theory. One was a man named felix rodriguez. Anyone heard of him . Maybe some. The guy in the back is like yes. Talk about him all the time. He is still alive and lives in miami today. Hes to be president of the brigade 2506 foundation. He went in before the bay of pigs. He was a part of an infiltration team. After the bay of pigs fiasco, many of the men who were on that mission were invited to join, not only the u. S. Military, but also were recruited into c. I. A. Felix took the c. I. A. Route after a short stint with the u. S. Army, and was recruited by c. I. A. To infiltrate into cuba and shoot fidel castro with a highpowered rifle. As simple as it gets. It was ready to go, three times they tried to get him in to the island and three times they failed to infiltrate him into cuba. One time he was on a raft, he was supposed to meet a bigger boat and the boat never showed. Another time the boat showed up, but it was a cuban coast guard boat. That was a problem. The third time, they were unable to get him that close. Eventually they scrapped the plan. That shows at first, they were thinking lets just do it the , oldfashioned way. A highpowered rifle with a bullet will solve our problem. When this failed, they went to other things. There is an interesting coda to the story of felix rodriguez. He went on to do a lot of things at c. I. A. Along and distinct career. He never got fidel. But he got an amazing opportunity as a cuban refugee in to hunt somebody else down. 1967he was the leader of the c. I. A. Team that went to bolivia to get this guy. Anyone recognize the man on the right . That is che. The man on the left is felix rodriguez. This is the last known picture of che he did not get fidel but he got che. They start thinking and more elaborate ways. The elaborate planning is not done from langley here in the washington dc area. It is done from a different cia station. Where are the stations generally . Are they in idaho . They are overseas, in moscow, havana, beijing, except for the cia station in miami, florida. Known as jmwave or jm space wave. We will talk about it as a miami station. This was a cia station in a the mystic city, miami, florida. It is not supposed to be that way. During the majority of the 1960s, the largest cia station in the world, other than the one right here at headquarters was in miami. Not moscow, beijing, berlin, in miami florida. It existed under the cover name of Zenith Technical Enterprises incorporated. Does anybody know miami well . So now i can make stuff up. It was over by what is currently the miami zoo. It used to be an air station in world war ii. It is in the middle of nowhere. No one would ever drive by there. When it popped up, knowing give no one gave it a second thought. It used to be called several different things. These are some of the cover names. Vanguard services corporation. As benign and boring names as you can possibly come up with so no one would ask anything else. 300400 officers at its height. 50 million budget in 1961. That is a massive amount of money. And not only do you have 300400 people working for the cia, but under the offices of the cia mining session station, you have 50,000 cubic exiles cuban exiles connected to them in one way or another. This could be people directly working with them or people working with splinter groups. This is a massive enterprise. It ends up being one of the biggest employers in south florida. Miami today, the glitz and glamour was not exist if it wasnt for fidel castro and the cia. Im not exaggerating. You have four people at the cia station just working on acquiring real estate and managing the properties that the cia owned down in miami. And i have a list here, marinas, hunting camps, publishing things to make paraphernalia, propaganda, statehouses, all these things were bought and sold by the cia station. They leased more than 100 cars. You bring 400 officers down there and you are relocating thousands of cuban exiles. The all needed homes, on who to buy food, shopping stores. The economy in miami went to being a sleepy town where snowbirds relocated to able filling to a metropolis it is now because of the cia station and fidel castro. Access to stateoftheart aircraft, but it was the worst kept secret in miami. I have a great story the reason i grew up in miami was my father grew up there and he was not cia. He was a p. E. Teacher. He started out as of the lease to topsecret thing in the possible universe. His College Roommate, they all stayed in miami after they had graduated, his College Roommate said my car broke down, and need a ride to work. Theyre driving down south and they turn on southwest 52nd street and stop at this building and dad said, i didnt know you were with the cia. It was the worst kept secret in miami. It was the point where everyone knew this is where the cia was operating out of contract to kill castro. They had to change their name again and they take someone something even more scary more of your sounding. It got to the point where it was a joke about how this secret operation working with castro was being held out of miami. This is a massive enterprise. Im going to walk over here for a second. These are big buildings. This is a massive amount of space in miami. This building was considered the miami south campus, they rented the space from the university of miami and um said just keep it. You transformed it into a government run facility, it is all yours. It is not something you can keep secret. It is one thing if you have a safe house or two out in the woods where you are running a couple of operatives out of. It is another thing if you have 400 cia officers. There are stories stories of them going out and training in the everglades and being pulled over by Florida State troopers and the trooper looking on the back of the car seeing 57 millimeter tank rifles in the back of their car and it was just a nudge, nudge, wink, wink thing, like go on your way, go on your business. Me that yout odd to have an antitank weapon in the back of your car because you are speaking in a very cuban accent and youre out by a cia station. Operation started from the cia station and the way that again, that you might be anticipating. The real phase one of operation mongoose used them all as their heavy hitters. This was an attempt by the cia to keep things simple. They wanted the mob to walk up behind castro and shoot him in the back of the head. The mob does not have suicide bombers so they said no, this is a way to get ourselves killed. They demanded a different way to take out fidel castro. The main people who were the points of contact between the mob and the cia were roselli, this middle management mob guy who knew everybody. He is the guy who went around and knew all the different model people mob people. He could be a good gobetween between all these mob bosses. The second man was the head of the mob in chicago. This is old school, this is out the poem al capones descendents. If you know the history of the Warren Commission and the jfk assassination, sam and jack kennedy shared a girlfriend. Im not going to get any near this conspiracy to tell you how made this guy was. Tropicante was the head of the mob in miami. He had been the one he was kicked out by castro along with all the casinos and all the mob people. These are the people who want to get rid of castro. The cia said we have 150 thousand dollars on the line, never kills castro, the money is there. Were talking about him for he gets fired by jfk. He would later say that he was in a meeting where they discussed at the mob and they never said anything about killing the guy, it was his way of saying plausible deniability. The cia preferred a oldschool gangland style but the monsters refused. The mobsters refused. They had this idea of using lethal cigars. Actually putting botulism toxin inside of a cigar. They were never able to get close enough to slip him on of these botulism cigars. And then the idea of having a pen with shellfish poison. The same thing the cia had created for pilots if they were shot down. Someone was supposed to run up to fidel and stick him with a shellfish pen. And the idea that was put into production was to take a liquid poison and drop it inside his coffee or tea. They felt that they could get to somebody who served castros drink and they could drop a till inside erie it the first pill they created did not dissolve so they dropped it in water and it floated around in the water. The cia tech people went back and created a second pill that did dissolve and they decided to check the lethality on a guinea pig. The problem was the specific type of poison they used, guinea pigs were inordinately amused to this type of poison immune to this poison and the guinea pigs are poisoned and they said they for the drink. Oh man, we have to figure out something else. Someone said, the poison doesnt work on any pig so it was finally monkeys. They give it to the monkey and the monkey dies. And finally have something that can kill castro. They had this elaborate operation to get somebody or castro on a daytoday basis. That person got cold feet. That person said im not going to do this. This is not going to make my life go on for very much longer if i get caught doing this. Castro like to go to different restaurants inside cuba. He would frequent a restaurant for a couple of days and the cia would say he is going there and castro knew what he was doing. He would not go there, he would not establish a pattern. As soon as they set up an operation to poison his tea at a certain restaurant, he would go to a different restaurant. They are essentially chasing him around havana trying to find a place where they can set up an operation to put this stuff into his tea or coffee. In the end, it doesnt work, obviously. We waited for him to get really old. The first attempt at killing castro doesnt work out. I wasnt sure if i would include this or not. Operation northwoods, anyone heard of northwoods before . Northwoods is an operation that was proposed but never carried out. It went all the way up to john kennedy. Created by the joint chiefs of staff and when all the way to the president s desk and the president said that we are not doing this. The fact that it was proposed has been used by lots of conspiracy theorists to say if the government was willing to do this, theyre willing to do anything like fake a 9 11 or fake the moon landing. Northwoods is about as corrupt and shady plan as you can think of. This is something i cant believe our joint chiefs of staff gave up came up with. It is essentially a list of different ways we can justify an invasion of cuba to take out castro. The suggestions were at broad as staging the assassination of a leaving the date. Leaving the United States. Killing a cuban refugee and saying it was the cuban government. Faking a Terror Campaign in washington dc and blaming it on the cuban government. They literally were talking about blowing up buildings in miami and blaming it on the cuban. They were also thinking about creating a remember the maine incident. The maine explodes in havana harbor but we blamed it on spain and that started the spanish antiamerican war. Spanishamerican war. They said, we can blow up an American Ship and blame it on the cuban government. They also talked about seeking a boatload of cuban refugees and blaming it on the cuban navy, hijacking a civilian airliner and pretending it was the cuban government and even dressing up cuban refugees as cuban Army Soldiers and having them do an assault on guantanamo bay. All of these things are listed in this document that were approved by the joint chiefs of staff and handed to president kennedy. Kennedy, to give him credit, said are you guys out of your mind . We are not this country. We dont do stuff like this. But how did it get to that level . How did it not get stopped and before it got to the desk of the president . Operation northwoods is still used by the conspiracy nerds out there to say if we are willing to do this, what else are we willing to do . This plan was little over the top. But it doesnt mean we do not try other things to try to kill castro. One of my favorites is the story of james donovan. Have you seen bridge of spies . Time tom hanks plays him in the movie. He was a lawyer for the Organization Called the osrd which focused on High Tech Research and development during world war ii. He worked for the nuremberg trials and he negotiated the release of Francis Gary Powers in trade for rudolph powell. Negotiateked to go the release of the bay of pigs survivors that had been captured by the cubans. We sent him over to negotiate with castro to get these hundreds of cuban exiles released back to the United States. The cia said youre going to be in the same room with castro. Castro loves to go scuba diving. We want you to give him this wetsuit. And he said, why my giving him this wetsuit . They said it will have this massive fungus on it that will give him this skin rash. And inside the snorkel is tuberculosis. And donovan is like, im not doing this. I am a diplomat. Im not going to poison the man im trying to negotiate in good faith. Donovan went out and bought a brandnew wetsuit and gave that to castro. The cia was very annoyed with donovan at that time. The idea that castro loves to go skin diving and stupid diving so someone had the idea of creating a bobby trap sea shell. We have a plastic explosive that is shaped like a lump of coal. The idea was to create a fake seashell and put it in the area liked to be and he would pick it up and it would blow him up. This is very much james bond. They could not figure out a way to put it in a place that he would be guaranteed to pick it up. They cannot create an effective seashell that would be big enough to guarantee his death. And if they created one that was so beautiful it would look so fake that castro would not pick it up. There was also the issue of using a woman who had been Fidel Castros lover. She has been jilted by fidel so she was pissed off. She was mad enough that the cia reached out to her and said you want to get back at fidel . We want you to kill him for us. This shows how good cuban and counterintelligence was, and she walked in, he said you are here to kill me, or to arent you . She broke down crying, she said im sorry. He gave her a stern look and they jumped into bed and they were lovers again. It didnt work out that well. There was another program called am lash, this was the idea of using a poison pen. This looks like a regular ballpoint pen but you can fill it with a biotoxins and staff someone. This plan this plan was being hashed the same moment as john kennedy was being shot in dallas. As the president was being assassinated, there was a plan being hatched in paris for another assassination to take place. Then everyone heard the story of the exploding cigar. It is likely we created one that when you lit it it would explode in his face and blow him up. It is very difficult to do and just like the cigar with botulism, it would be difficult to plant on his person. I just want to point out that a creating an exploding cigar is an idea that has been thought of before. This is not a brandnew idea the cia concocted. This was thought up by a very important person who decided this was a great way to take care of his enemies. Bugs bunny, daffy duck has an exploding cigar and jerry and thom. This plan is out of you looney tunes. The cia is pulling stuff out of cartoons. I dont know if there is a chicken and to the cartoons, do they play on the actual mission . Exploding cigars i and i want to make a side note, theres something we have to understand. This is not think of the most ridiculous thing we can possibly do. This is we have to think of any way we can possibly take out fidel castro. Sometimes desperation leads to the internet. Other times desperation leads into exploding cigars. It just depends on what direction you take it in. That is really the end of the cia type operation. There are about 50 other groups of that fail to kill castro over time. One guy got very close several times. He was a member of 2506. He went to the u. S. Army afterwards. This was his picture when he was inducted into the u. S. Army. This is an original spook who had been working against castro since the very beginning. He was someone who was as hardcore, anticastro as he got and he was able to get very close to taking out fidel castro. He was known to work with another cuban exile and he and jorge thought of and they were together to disrupt the cuban economy to kill fidel. Theyre both wanted to this day although bosche is now dead. Theyre considered the ringleaders behind the bombing of Cuban Airlines flight 455. It was carrying a team that had just won the gold medal and their flying back to cuba and a plane exploded in the air killing everyone on board. They were considered the ones who got a bomb on a plane. On the plane. The idea was to kill cuban Government Officials. Many of them are completely unapologetic about their target. These are people who are considered terrorists by the u. S. Government today. But many think they are heroes in the cuban Exile Community. This is a time when felix was working as an independent contractor and el salvador trying to fund the anticommunist forces. The iran contra comes around, depending on who you ask, he kind of washes hands of iran contra. Later on there were tourist bombings in havana and other places in 1907 better place that are traced to him. Right after the 1997 tourist bombings, the fbi went into havana to help do the investigation of these tourist bombings. Instead of investigating them all that deeply, they were able to uncover the evidence of that led to the arrest of the cuban five here in the United States. Even those who designated him as a terrorist did not take it seriously to find out what he was doing wrong against the cuban people. The opposite, they used the opportunity to go inside havana to capture human spies that were spying on the United States. The panel plot is where they almost got castro. The panama plot is where they almost got castro. They planted explosives in the lectern where caster was supposed to give his speech. You can imagine the sort of destruction that would of done. He got close enough that they were able to arrest him on the premises. He got pretty close. He was captured after this. He was jailed by panel panama and later pardoned. Someone with that rap sheet is now living in miami as a free man, it tells us about our allies and our attitude towards people who try to take out fidel castro in our name. We will look at the precautions fidel took in his later life. It became very difficult after the late 19 to even consider going after fidel castro. After the late 1960s to even consider going after fidel castro. He employed food tasters. He had a gift screen. Every one of his gifts were taken apart to make sure there were no exploding cigars. He used to love to walk around havana. That is something that made him a person of the people where he would take strolls and talk to the average citizen. After the first couple of assassination attempt, he stopped doing that. He was holed up in several compounds outside of havana. I was there before he died. I was there in the springtime and she would drive i these areas and there were the a street that would have a big gate on it, or the military vehicles and that would be one of the dell fidels houses. I asked the question, where does fidel live, no one knew. No one but his top people knew where he was. He had a body doubles. People who looked a lot like cam so in case you wanted to shoot somebody you got a body double instead. He had multiple addresses. He was somebody who was never in the same place at the same time. It had to be exhausting. If you look at the longevity of this man, it is extraordinary. Not that he smoked cigars or that he had a healthy appetite for female companionship or someone who had so many people trying to kill him so many times, the fact that he was constantly on the move, constantly worried about his tiny country being invaded by the United States im not saying i admire the man. Im saying his longevity is extraordinary. The fact that he lived as long as he did. Im going to end with my isorite story which apocryphal. This comes from the telephone game of stories. The joke is that one time fidel castro was given a thought was galapagos turtle as a gift. They said fidel, these turtles live for almost 100 years. The story goes he gave it back and then said, pets you get attached to them and then they die on you. To me, that just sums everything up. This is a man who said it no matter what they try to do, he would keep on ticking. It is old age they got him in the end. I ask this question, fidel retired but did he really retire . He did. Raul was running things for the last couple of years. Something big came up, he said lets do this way, but the thing that got him was he lived a long and exciting life and the operation wait for him to get old and he will die came in and it finally got fidel for us. I am ready to answer questions. [applause] we have a few mics going around. The emphasis how much highlevel emphasis there was when Robert Kennedy was attorney general he stopped at the headquarters and talked about this. That is something that was worth pointing out. Obviously the attorney general but also the white house was interested. Is really became an unnatural of session. This country that has no National Security impact of the point. They had already finished nationalizing everything. Granted once the soviets were there as a military unit they became a little bit more of a National Security threat but until there were missiles there they were not at all. This is maybe politicking a little bit, we have been holding onto this idea that cuba is a National Security threat and they are not. They are an intelligence threat. Their intelligence operations are amazing but the cuban five is a great story. They were arrested for spying but they didnt get life in prison because they had an interesting defense. They said we were not spying on the United States, we were spying on the cuban exiles. And you know what, that is a logical response. Castro was worried about this Exile Community coming in and invading. He was worried about the United States military, but certainly as we pledged not to invade, it was really the Exile Community behind the cia where the worry was. It was interesting to see how assessed at the Kennedy Administration got. I think he goes back to the bay of pigs. That embarrassment plays into the psyche of kennedy. It made him distrust the cia. Even the cuban missile crisis, where he got a little bit of feedback, it put a real big black on his beliefs and competency coming from langley. Over here, shauna, shes coming to the microphone. I have a bit of a side question, could you explain what you mean when you say desperation led to the internet. That is something i have never heard and i have worked on the internet since the very beginning. When youre looking at arfanet, the idea was kami craig can we create a fast and efficient way to communicate and communicate securely. That is what darpa is trying to create. Talking about desperation as the highest level were talking about cold war, broader desperation. The idea we need to create technology that will give us a leg up. Internet and arfanet are different things. The World Wide Web and the internet are different things. On get off this and talk to afterwards but i do believe that what you said is actually incorrect based on having interviewed people who were in leadership positions in darpa during the 1970s. It is not like the Bowling Green massacre but i think you are not right. All right, i am, but thats fine. Its always good to hear vance shamed publicly. We love this. There were all these plans to kill castro, was there any plan about what happened if they work . No. I mean, there were contingency plan, the idea of government in exile. The problem you run into is that by the time the 1960s come around, there were a lot of claims from the Exile Community, it would be a power vacuum like no other. There would be a pretty significant power vacuum. Even if castro gets killed, raul since then, steps in, che steps in. Theres no question that his charisma was what rally people behind him. If you cut off the head, that was the theory. At that point it was unlikely. Especially after bay of pigs. Webcaster did was to consolidate power not only under him but under the government. It is a counterfactual conversation that is castor has been killed in 1965 it would have made a difference but there are people who say you are in a position that castor dive, it doesnt mean the government would collapse. Especially decades with raul in charge or che. Raul could have stepped in or somebody else. At the very beginning, that made a lot more sense. When castro was still consolidating his power, taking out fidel would have a huge impact. He was the guy everyone rallied behind. At the government became more bureaucratic, it would not have necessarily been that much of a game changer. There were contingency plans but they were not realistic. It would have been chaos. Basically tens of thousands of miami cuban rushing back to take their property back, there was a hierarchy within the Miami Community but there were splinter groups that had broken off and did not agree with that hierarchy. It would have been very interesting and i say that in a sardonic way. I know you tried to avoid the subject of kennedy assassination but i was curious in your humble opinion, do you think either the cuban government or cuban exile had anything to do with the assassination. I dont think the Exile Community had anything to do with the assassination. They were mad, but im a Firm Believer that Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger three times. There is evidence that he had ties with the cuban government. I think fidel would have let us know. Hes that kind of guy. As he got older, he wouldve been like, you know what i did. He had nothing to lose at that point. I think conspiracies, i know this is a trite comment. Im a Firm Believer in the occams razor idea. He couldve taken a shot, taking all three of those shots, the physics work. Oswald was a deranged young man who thought killing kennedy was a good idea to help the soviets and the cuban. It is not in their best interest. If we find out it was the cuban government, we return cuba into a parking lot. The same with the soviets. I look back at the zimmerman telegram, what really gets world war i started. The government says the government in germany says if mexico joins world war i they will give you back the states. I can see the cubans doing something very similar even if oswald went to them and said i want your help in assassinating kennedy. They would say, no, we are on decent terms right now. He disagreed and not to invade. Castro was annoyed they pulled the missiles out but his number one goal was to keep the cuban government and the cuban people under his power. Killing kennedy would be a reversal of that. It would be the only invasion in American History with a 100 approval rating. There doesnt seem to be a reason for either of those governments to be involved but i could be wrong, right . Who knows . Amanda is in charge. Im interested in the later history when or if we stopped worrying about assassinating of fidel and decided to wait him out. The miami station was basically shut down by about 1968. We are a little more focused on that point. Vietnam became our number one priority. We are not offering political leaders today. That comes out of the 1970s position where it is now illegal to assassinate political leaders. Now we get around that because of al qaeda. But it became illegal in the United States for us to target castro. That doesnt mean he was not targeted, but it wasnt the u. S. Government policy. You have groups like alpha 66. Olds a group of now very men running around the everglades getting ready for the time they can go in and invade and take their country back. There were attempts like what reas did tryingor to plan some real operation but none of them were backed by the u. S. Government. Think people in the high levels of intelligence and defense world realized cuba was not an issue anymore. This is especially true after the soviet union began to fall. The soviet union was the reason cuba was considered a National Security threat. By the 1980s, cuba is not something youre paying a lot of attention to. Why are people paying attention to it . Florida news to be one in National Elections won in National Elections. You have a time of voters in florida who are going to vote for the embargo, vote republican. If youre going to win in florida, you need to talk about how that castro was. You solve these administrations talking about how that castro was because if you need to win the United States presidency you need to win florida. The census data from this is about 10 years old, cubanamericans only make up about 49 of his bandits in south florida. Hispanics in south florida. The younger cubans, sons and grandsons and daughters and granddaughters of the exiles are not still pissed off at john kennedy and are willing to vote more like young people. That is why you see the shift in american policy towards a lightning of cuban sections, before the Obama Administration, it was the clinton administration. Politics in south florida have a dramatically changed. It is safe to argue that it stayed away did for so long because of political reasons. Not because of any National Security reasons. Most of the community realized cuba is not a threat. Any speculation on your part as to what happens in cuba when raul eventually dies . They have a designated successor. They have a guideline of who is in his 50s. With the trend going on he has 40 years he can be in charge. There is a designated successor. The cubans i talked to said that is not necessarily meaning anything. When raul dies of there may be a couple for who is in charge a tussel for who is in charge. He will likely keep the policies the same way they are today. They were smart enough to realize they should appoint someone. He is a Government Official who has been named by raul he is not dying anytime soon. When i step down, this is the person who is owing to take over. Theoretically they are supposed to have elections for this stuff. They have elections and fidel wins 98. 7 percent of the vote. Raul was probably the only guy who voted against him. It should be a relatively will transition. Theoretically. It never is perfect. You went from one brother to the other and that went pretty well. A lot of the cuban people are worried about that because they said that if raul does die there is no one to put the power behind this guy area there may be a bit of a power behind this guy. I will Pay Attention to him when it is time. The people at the cia are paying attention to him right now because he is the designated next guy. I understand that raffaella critique of that tortego was assassinated by a a operation in 19 to the one. Was there any overlap for those plotting his assassination and those plotting to kill Castor Castro . At the highest level of the cia, you have these decision. When did that shift . It was still plan at the time ddp you have people who are making these operations the people overlap on the ground, no. The plan to kill castro was cuban exiles. They only care about you. They are great because they have a singular focus. They are great because they are really, really dedicated. Castro dying, they had a celebration, they said, who is next . It is raul. Cuba is not free until cuba is free. It now becomes the government of fidel and until the government of fidel is brought down, there is no freedom. These guys are as passionate as they have ever been and that is extraordinary. Just as extraordinary as the longevity of fidel castro, is of their longevity. That is the situation you are seeing here with these exiled community down in florida. Does that answer the question to a degree. From the highest levels of cia youre talking about the same people. After that they are farming it out to different groups. It is always good to use the smaller people when you cant. When you can. The legitimacy of government gets dinged up when people come in from the outside. It is not always to cross pollinate because that destroys legitimacy if youre bringing in people from the outside area especially in latin American Communities. Latin American Communities are some of the most prideful in their own backgrounds and you would be surprised i was surprised to hear how derogatory they can be towards other communities. People from idaho a hispanic is a hispanic that is certainly not the case. South americans have a different idea about Central Americans and argentinians think they are better than everybody. They think they are european. There is of this hierarchy that every country has that is different so that is why it is dangerous to do a cross pollination. This is a longwinded answer. Any other questions . We were actually down there last year and we actually went snorkeling in the bay of pigs and it is gorgeous. What they told us when we were down there is not only did they designate a successor but february 2018 is designated the day he is resigning. My question is, towards the end when obama and the was there a split between raul and fidel and after that, what are the repercussions of the new administration are going to be in regard to cuba . It wasnt a big let. Basically fidel was the perfect mouthpiece. When it took place, fidel came out and ripped the u. S. He came out and said they are the bane of our existence. When fidel was in power, you did not have this handshake. The easiest thing for fidel to do was blamed the United States for all the problems in cuba. One of the things i argued against with the embargo is you are feeding right into his hands. The cuban people dont have the food they need, it is because of the americans are embargoing you. We dont have the freedom because we have to protect against the United States. We were the bogeyman castro could always point to. Raul is in a position where he can tweak that but it is much more difficult for him to say it is because of the americans. One of the things the obama move did was make it so they cannot use of the bogeyman anymore. The embargo is still there, but you can travel down there, wet footdry foot was ended. It was an interesting policy of immigration where only cubans if youre caught crossing from cuba to the date and you are in a boat cuba to the u. S. , if you are in a boat still, well send you back to cuba but the minute you are in dryland, you can stay. This is at the waterline. Im standing on miami beach. If the u. S. Coast guard catches me three feet into the water, they shipped me back to cuba. But if i make it onto the beach, i have asylum. It was the most ridiculous policy but it was done specifically for cuba. One of the last things the Obama Administration did was in wet footdry foot. It allows anyone trying to travel from the United States from cuba to the United States from cuba, it puts them on the same footing as other people seeking political asylum. Take away that excuse for the cuban government by saying your problems are because of the United States as there are a lot of problems in cuba. They have some issues. I dont know where you stayed when you are there. Theres about a one square mile area in havana that is gorgeous. It is like you are in venice. Cobblestone streets and outdoor cafes and gorgeous buildings. No trash anywhere. It is beautiful. You go outside of that area you are back in the 1950s and there is nothing done about anything people People Living in poverty. Everyone walked down the middle of the street because they are afraid to walk down the sidewalk because balconies follow people and kill them. It is easier to run through traffic then dodge balconies falling on people. We did not stay in the nice area. We stayed with people in the not so nice area and down the street, the neighbors entire house collapsed while they were in it. They do not fix it. They pulled bodies out and they leave it. Their doctors are amazing theyre all from venezuela because they were sent to their sent there. When the soviet union collapsed and russia pulled out, they needed oil. They basically traded doctors for oil. You hear about their greater medical school they dont have any doctors there. That know what they are doing. Their doctors make less money per month than i do in a day. Doctors will come back from the hospital and have to clean somebodies house to make extra money so they can feed their families. That is cuba today. For decades fidel was able to say it is their fault, because of the embargo and policies of the United States. Getting rid of that stuff, there is no one to blame but themselves and that is change these cuban policies. If you ask me can i get inside Donald Trumps head, i would say i dont want to get inside. I dont know what he is going to do next. But the Obama Administration did was make it difficult to roll some of this stuff back, particularly when the some within the south Florida Cuban community were very happy about this and you have people visiting, people spending money, seeing families they were able to see before were not able to see before. We opened up to that little bit and the world did not end. I cant imagine that is high on his priorities list but none of this stuff i thought was high on the priorities list. I thought russian hacking was highly priorities list and it doesnt seem to be. I dont have my crystal ball here. I hope they continue. It sounds like from those i know at jake, it sounds like rex tillerson, despite the fact that he was the exxon cio ceo he knows what he is doing. He is willing to learn. At this point it is not military intelligence, it is state department. It goes to the president and says it is in a fitting us. It is benefiting us. American businesses may be will to move in there sooner rather than later. It is not just want to go down there on vacation. It is the idea that this is an island with amazing culture, great baseball players, there is a lot there. It is not just music, culture, they are 90 miles away. It is a wonderful place. Before castro took power it was fantastic. Batista was there, he was a tyrant. The most part it was a caribbean paradise. It is something i am hoping will continue in this direction. But i cant predict that stuff. If anyone can, god bless you. Youre going to make a lot of money. Time for one more question. I want to cut to the chase to what extent do historians believe that jack kennedy directly ordered the assassination . Apologists dont to knowledge it in a garvey about Robert Kennedy he said theres no evidence. What is the current state of evidence whether john kennedy passively or directly said to go get him . Directly. The cia is not going to make those decisions on their own. Any kind of covert action need to be blessed by the president. That was not the case. Without some case going back to the 1950s. Under dolace theyre not going to make these kinds of decisions. Kennedy makes a specific point of firing dolace at the beginning of his president. He becomes president in january of 1961, bay of pigs happen later three months later. There is no evidence of that he did not talk about everything together. I would say we are almost your explicitteed there was blessing and i would think it is even more explicit. Kennedy may not have said lets put a bullet in his head but we can listen to a lot of the two communications from the cuban missile crisis where they talk about we try to get rid of that guy. They are not saying what caliber rifle to use, but theyre basically saying we need to kill the dude. That is pretty explicit in my book. Apologists are revisionist historians. I dont think it makes can be any worse. People are kind to trying to rehabilitate camelot. This was what we did. It wasnt kennedy, it would have and they. It was not eisenhower before that. This was at the american way of doing more with an out doing war without doing war. We are using hindsight to say that was a bad thing. Iran was still going well in the 1960s. Guatemala was doing all right. Knocking off leaders was a legitimate Foreign Policy decision and it was a choice we can make at the time that made some sense at times. Like you said from the very beginning, if we had killed castro in the beginning it could have ended things before it even started. My 1963, 1964, not so much. But if you taking castor out or he was able to consolidate his power, it could have fallen. There is an argument to be made that the culprit personality was so strong that it was so based on charisma and his ability to lead that chopping off the head at an early stage would if a huge difference. That is all the time i got. Thank you all. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you all for coming, have a great rest of your day. Announcer interest in American History tv, visit our website cspan. Org history. You can view our tv schedule, preview upcoming programs and watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. Stein, a former speechwriter for president Richard Nixon and gerald ford, reflects on nixons time in the white house. He discusses the service 37 president s Energy Policies as well as his initiatives and israel and southeast asia. He speculates on what nixon might think of our current political landscape. The Richard Nixon president ial library and museum posted this event. It is about 50 minutes. William baribault good afternoon. Im the president of the Richard Foundation to Richard Nixon foundation and i welcome you to