Course, part of which will be discussed today by vince. The attempted assassinations, none of which succeeded which reflects a lack of confidence, we will hear about today. Looking back at that time, the charges almost seemed quite quaint. There is very little success in knocking off these leaders right and left. As you know, at least on a couple of occasions, taking out an american citizen. Looking back at that time it almost seems quaint. It will be fun to revisit with my colleague who has a phd from the university of maryland and democrat diplomatic in American History. Areareas of Research Scientific and technological issues during world war ii and the early part of the cold war. He also got a masters in relations between the soviet union and the United States. You might get questions on the that. That is a lively topic. I should also say that he has taught extensively at the university level, high school level, and will School Middle school. I would think middle school would be the most challenging, the worst. Good for you for being a teacher. He is a u. S. Army veteran and serves served and worked in several capacities in military intelligence. Let me introduce dr. Vince houghton. [applause] vince this is interesting lien of, interestingly enough, we talked about doing these four great assassinations with one not so great thrown in. Things have changed a little bit. The basic idea behind this is killing fidel, or not killing fidel. For a lot of younger people in which i deal with here at the museum, castro, or the mystique of field fidel castro is not as wellknown as it was for other generations. He had not been in charge for a while. He was not a mean ogre of a person leading cuba. A lot of people who lived through this time, for the most castro was somewhat of a caricature of himself. I love this cartoon, to me it spells out the end of his career once he had retired. When he died it was a big deal in a lot of places. For a lot of college aged students or older, it was like, some old guy who used to be a bad person died. He didnt matter a whole lot when it came to the relationship between the u. S. And cuba. Here we will talk differently. We will look at the cia attempts on Fidel Castros life. According to castros retired they of intelligence said counted 638 attempts by the cia on his life. Next 14 hours and 638 slides we will systematically go through im kidding. I included this quote. It is from castro. Attempts assassination if it were an Olympic Event i would win the gold medal. 639 is a charm. This is a spy museum exclusive. You will hear this first before anyone. I have now acquired the name of a topsecret operation that finally, finally got fidel castro [laughter] vince the name is a little on the nose. We finally paid off. Mission accomplished. We finally got fidel. It is a funny story, for me. My mother will that never let me live it down. My fascination started early. Fascination is the right word. I grew up in miami. I am not cuban. The blonde hair, green eyes, transparent skin not give that away. Everyone i knew were. Many of their fathers, mothers, grand parents were refugees from cuba. One of my best friends grandfather was a kernel in the army. These are people that came over because they had to. The funny story behind this is my mom still lives in miami. My whole family was down there for many years. I have been here for 10 years. I have lived in washington for 10 years. Every thanksgiving i went home to miami. My wife is in miami as well. Every thanksgiving except this year. The one year i say, i have done a lot of traveling, we have been out of town, lets stay in washington. Of course, fidel castro dies two days after thanksgiving. Miami. Have been in my mother will never let me live it down. Its like, thats what happens when you do not come home for thanksgiving. A horrible dictator dies and you miss a party. It really was, from the very beginning, a question that i had to deal with. This idea of, who was this man. He was somebody who as a historian, was somebody that i could not reconcile the image of castro that i got for my friends families. The image of this monster with a lot of information that i had read from more objective sources. The real problem you run into is there are not a lot of objective sources when it comes to him. You have the people that knew him best, many are still procastro. You cannot get inside the mans head. The other people who knew him best were his arch enemies. You will not get a straight story from them either. You kind of look at things and say, this is a man. 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 of these stories about cuban education and medicine being the best in the world. About how everything is free. Later in life i would learn those stories were half true, half nonsense. 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 because the doctors are the best in the world, but they are somewhere else. You look at things like, these are the pictures of castro before he became the dictator. Playing basketball and baseball. He wanted to be a Major League Baseball picture. He sort of tried out. The story of the orioles, that was popular. His fastball was history and. Pedestrian. Was good at last couple basketball, an avid reader, he understood history. It was difficult to kind of reconcile this with the monster i had been taught to think about based on my friends. Lets tackle the broader question of who he is. This is going to be an incredibly controversial topic. There is no one who has a blank objective opinion. There are people who think he was the worlds worst dictator. There are people who think he was a great guy. Im going to be in the middle. Was he a communist . In the end, yes. Did he start out a communist . That is up for debate. I was even asked the question of cuban exiles, people who fought against castro, i said, did he start out a communist . Most of them hedge the question because they know it is difficult to say yes. He came to power was worried because he started nationalizing companies that we have economic ties to. You might say this sounds like a communist to me. He did not put this in marxist terms. He counts this is bringing it back to cuba. More of a nationalist, more of what happened in egypt. 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 straight to moscow. No, he came to the United States and tried to meet with president eisenhower and Vice President nixon. Neither of home was available. 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 in new york. 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 and actually many of his close advisers did call this naive. Simultaneously, as he was trying to meet with the americans here in the United States, his brother raul, and che guevara , one of his top lieutenants, were in moscow meeting with nikita khrushchev. They knew that we would not allow for the nationalization of the United Fruit Company and other organizations that were billions of dollars for american 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. Direct, himself in lets call it a direct confrontational situation with the United States. We were not any 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 on break 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 this marxist and leninist terminology that he was not using before. And it worked. He and khrushchev had a strong alliance, as we know from things such as the cuban missile crisis and the amount of weapons and aid that went to cuba. There is a lot of history here, we will not cover it all. We will focus more on our attempts to get rid of him. We are going to 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 of them are worth noting. 1960, castro takes power essentially 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 gave 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 with ellis d. 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 fallout, and there is another thing here as well. Salt that makes your hair fallout. Was that Cuban Society is very macho. People thought that within the beard felles is his out he would lose his machismo, and his charisma. He was called the beard and if he had no more eyebrows or beard 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 peaks in april 1961. Gs in april 1961. This is when the invasion 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. 2506 was named that because each of the members of the brigade had a number. Not their name. It was their codename. 2506 was the number of the first man who died during training so they renamed the prograde after him brigade 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. Oh my gosh, there is 2600 of you. Up by theught Eisenhower Administration and it was essentially dumped on the Kennedy Administration because kennedy was a lieutenant during world war ii and eisenhower was fivestar general. Eisenhower said this was a good plan and kennedy did not put 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 refuse to vote for a democrat because of what jfk did 50 years ago. 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 does 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 actually helps castro to consolidate his power inside cuba. Prior to the bay of pigs, people could speak out against castro and there were embryonic movements of opposition against castro. After the bay of pigs, he was able to crack down violently against these Opposition Movement 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. Because 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 show that the soviets were going to ship advanced weapons 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 stateoftheart, 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 as we can 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 is how good cuban counterintelligence was. Sidesomewhat tangential cuban intelligence is one of the , best in the world. Per capita, arguably the best in the world. Their huge advantage is, they only have one external enemy they are focused on, us. If the cia only had one country they had to Pay Attention to, we would be good at what we are doing. We are good anyway, but we have to look at everybody. The cubans only have to focus on the United States and they are good at doing it. As many of these refugees passed through the florida straits and 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 operation,g this 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, kind of the equivalent of radio for europe or voices for america, broadcast a message saying, cuban exiles are out to invade cuba and get castro out. You would think that the United States government would be like, this is blown. We cannot do this. They obviously know we are coming. They just ignored the warning signs. The miami herald was ready to publish a piece weeks before the invasion, detailing there was a group of Training Camps in guatemala of troops planning to take out castro. They sat on it. The fact that the herald knew about this, they were not in any topsecret briefings. It meant that everybody knew about this. Even assuming they had been internal security, assuming the planning was done well, the plan counted on a Popular Uprising inside cuba. 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. So really what you end up with a brigade 2506 defending 1400 miles of beach along this long coastline against the entire cuban army plus the 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 just drop 1500 relatively well armed men on the beach 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 to the beachhead, which they dont, you are screwed. You will be pushed back into the sea and there is not much you can do. The problem stems down to the group effect. The plan came up during the Eisenhower Administration and kennedy says it was a good idea. No one would stand up and say, mr. President , this is really stupid. Everybody was convinced that the cuban people will 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 just Wishful Thinking and everyone began Wishful Thinking that this would be a successful operation. Lets look at this quickly. This is huge. The Inspector General of the cia the baystmortem after of pigs invasion. I want to pull out big key issues to show why this goes bad. The cia exceeded its capabilities. We have to remember this is the , cia in 1961. 1950s, the cia was argued 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 cia we know and love today. They are not capable of running a massive paramilitary operation in 1961. Theyve get really good of it during vietnam and the secret war in laos. By 1961 they are not quite there yet. This is not the same thing as fixing an election in italy, this is a massive paramilitary operation. The idea that the cia is going to run this operation and take out a very popular president was laughable, at this point. Lets go to the next bullet point here. Failure to confidently collect and analyze intelligence about cuban forces. That is a problem when they are not collecting and analyzing cuban forces. That is the basics. 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 cia did not know anything about what was happening inside 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 beginning the shipment was , desperate from the u. S. Navy was carrying the extra ammunition and explosives. That got blown up before it got to the ground. Basically in, as it was approaching the bay of pigs, it was hit by an all tillery round and exploded. There went all the ammo. There went all of the extra artillery. There was no plan b. There was no, how do we fix this. How do we get of this situation . There was not great planning. Bay of pigs is a failure. The u. S. Licks its wounds. Kennedy fires all of the top leadership of cia including the director, who had been the man who built the cia into what it was at that point. Dulles really 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 , huge, broad, paramilitary operations a start thinking about covert. How can we take out castro in a way that will not embarrass us and will not get us into a shooting war with the soviets . The answer was called operation mongoose. Many of you have heard of it perhaps. This was a catchall for anything that was focused on destabilizing the government and taking out fidel castro. There are programs other than 638 different operations. Which is a nonsense number. It is not really that high. There are counting everything from when a random cuban tried astro toething against one of these groups like out for 66, who run around blowing things up. These are not operations that are cia operations. Anytime the cia, or anybody else try to do anything to destabilize the castro regime, they came under the broader heading of operation mongoose. Mongoose was really a multiphase operation. It starts out relatively slow and builds up over time. As we continue to fail to kill castro, we will get more and more elaborate in our operations. Mongoose includes three pretty famous names in the history of cia. Edward lansdale was the covert action guru within cia. He was the guy who was thinking of all the more interesting ways to do a lot of these what we would consider common now, unethical operations. Although i am not going to say he was a bad guy. He was given the parameters to work within which is do whatever you need to do, and he took it to that extent. William harvey was another great cia covert operator. More on the paramilitary side. Harvey was one of the people who was brought up as a potential model that ian fleming used to create james bond. That is like, where did washington sleep . There is about 100 different people. Who did flemingbased james bond on . Harvey is somebody who is part of this group, and we havent from Richard Nixon himself. 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] mr. Houghton and of course ted shaklee. This name might ring a bell for a lot of people because he was the chief of station in saigon war. G a lot of the vietnam 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. There were some, lets go and just shoot the dude. The keep it simple, stupid, theory. One was a man named felix rodriguez. Rodriguezrd of felix before . Yes, i staff in the back is like yes. He is still alive and lives in miami today. He was part of the upper grade 25 brigade 2506. 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 in the cia. Felix took the cia route after a short stint with the u. S. Army, and was recruited by the cia 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 actually infiltrate him into cuba. One time he was on a raft, he was supposed to meet a bigger boat and the boat never showed up. Another time the boat showed up, but it was a cuban Coast Guard Boat so that is a problem. The third time, they were unable to get him back and 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 can solve our problem at any minute. 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 for the cia. He never got fidel. Obviously. He got an amazing opportunity as a cuban refugee to hunt somebody else down. He was the leader of the cia team that went to bolivia to get this guy. Anyone recognize the man on the right . E. The man on the left, felix rodriguez. This is the last known picture of che guevara lie. It was taken right before his execution. Felix led the team that captured him. He did not get fidel but he got che. Not bad. That is his background and that is his story. Once this does not work we start thinking in more elaborate ways. The elaborate planning is not done from langley here in the washington, d. C. Area. It is done from a different cia station. Where are cia stations generally . In idaho . They are overseas. Mr. Houghton they are overseas in moscow, havana, beijing, except for the cia station in miami, florida. Known as jmwave or jm space wave. We are going to talk about it as the miami station. This was a cia station in a domestic store 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 incorporated. Does anybody know miami well . Good so now i can make stuff up. , it was over by what is currently the miami zoo. Kind of in an area that 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 nobody gave it any second thoughts. It used to be called several Different Things. Corporation,ices as benign and boring names as you can possibly come up with so no one would ask anything else. The largest cia station in the world, 300 to 400 operatives at that point. Peter can tell you that is pretty big. In 1961. Ion budget in 1961 dollars. That is a massive amount of money. And not only do you have one without 100 to 400 people working for the cia, but under the offices of the cia mining station, you have 50,000 cuban nationals 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 and lebron and all that stuff would not exist if it wasnt for fidel castro and the cia. Im not exaggerating. They had 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, safehouses 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 , lets say, thousands of cuban exiles. They all needed homes, all needed to buy food, shop at stores. The economy in miami went to being a sleepy town where snowbirds to the bustling 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 i consider it a great story. Miami and my father grew up in miami as well. He was not cia. He was a p. E. Teacher. He started out as of the lease least 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 onto southwest 152nd street and stop at this building and dad said, i didnt know you worked for the cia. It was the worst kept secret in miami. The cover story did not mean anything. It was the point where everyone knew this is where the cia was operating out of to try to kill castro. They had to change their name again to something even more obscure sounding. It got to the point where it was a joke about how this secret castroon working against was being held out of miami. This was not a small building, it is kind of hard to see. This is a massive enterprise. Im going to walk over here for a second. These are big buildings. It took this massive amount of space in miami. This building was considered the campus, that is who 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. This 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 case officers and several thousand cubans going in south florida. 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 Station Wagon and seeing 57 millimeter tank rifles in the back of their car and it was just kind of a nudge, nudge, wink thing. Me thatt that odd to you 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. So operations started started from the cia station and the way that again if you have seen godfather part two you might have been anticipating. The real phase one of operation mongoose used the mob as their heavy hitters. This did not start out as an elaborate plan. 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. A gangland style mob killing. Qaeda, doesike al not have suicide bombers so they said no, this is a way to get ourselves killed. They demanded a more cia whizbang 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 kind of the joe pesci in goodfellas. The guy who went around and knew all the mob people. He could be a good gobetween between all these mob bosses. He was appointed contact for cia to reach out to the second man, who was the head of the mob in chicago. Is als old school, he being indescendent charge in chicago. If you know the history of the Warren Commission and the jfk assassination, sam and jack kennedy shared a girlfriend. That is where the whole, the mob kill kennedy thing got going. 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. During the 1950s. He certainly had a dog in the fight. 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 basically said we have 150,000 on the line. Whoever kills castro, the money is there. This was ordered from the very top. We are talking about allen dulles before 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 dulles way of saying plausible deniability. He blessed off on the use of the mob. The cia preferred a oldschool gangland style but the monsters mobsters refused. They had this idea of using lethal cigars. Actually putting botulism toxin inside a cigar and slipping it in. They were never able to get close enough to slip him one of these botulism cigars. And then the idea of having a pen with shellfish poison. The same thing the cia had created for its youtube pilots for 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. In the version of a small pill. They felt that they could get to somebody who served castros drinks and they could drop eight hell inside. This was a decent idea. The first pill they created did not dissolve. So they dropped it in water and it floated around in the water. They said, this is not going to work well. 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 immune to this poison and the guinea pigs poisoned and they said, thanks for the drink. Oh man, we have to figure out something else. Someone said, the poison doesnt work on guinea pigs so we need to try it on something else. Lets give it to 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 actually do this. This is not going to make my life go on for very much longer if i get caught doing this. The idea was, castro liked to go to different restaurants inside cuba. He would frequent a restaurant for a couple of days and the cia would be like, we have got a good pattern, he is going there for lunch for a couple days in a row, but 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 does not work, obviously, since we killed him with 639 in operation and waited for him to get really, really old. The first attempt at killing castro doesnt work out. The next slide im going to bring up, i was not necessarily sure if i would include this or not because operation northwoods, anyone heard of northwoods before . It is new to you, that is good and bad at the same time. 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 went all the way to the president s desk and the president that we are not doing this. The fact that it was proposed has been used by lots of conspiracy theorists, tinfoil hat types, 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 came up with. Just to give an idea of what it is it is essentially a list of , different ways we can justify an invasion of cuba to take out castro with the military. The suggestions were at broad as staging the assassination of a cuban exile in the United States, killing a cuban refugee and saying it was the cuban government. Developing a fake Terror Campaign in washington, d. C. And , blaming it on the cuban government. I am glad they did not put this plan in action. 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, to blow up the maine explodes in havana harbor and it was probably an accident, but we blamed it on spain and started these antiamerican war. They said, we can blow up an American Ship and blame it on the cuban government. They also talked about syncing nking 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 do not do stuff like this. But how did it get to that level . How did it not get stopped 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 was a plan that was a little overthetop. It doesnt mean we do not try other ridiculous things to try to kill castro. One of my favorites is the story of James Donovan. Anyone know the name James Donovan . If you have seen bridge of tom hanks plays him. 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 then of course he was the guy who negotiated the release of Francis Gary Powers in trade for rudolph abdul. You negotiate the release of a bay of pigs survivors that have 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 donovan was like, why am i giving him this wetsuit . They said it will have this massive fungus on it that will give him this massive skin rash. And inside the snorkel is tuberculosis. And donovan is like, im not doing this. Number one, i am a diplomat. I am not working in your spy world. 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. That was the first attempt. Another one was similar to this, the idea that castro loves to go skin diving and scuba diving so someone had the idea of creating a boobytrapped ski seashell. We have a plastic explosive that is shaped like a lump of coal. The idea was to create a fake seashell made out of an explosive and put it in the area , and castro liked to be make it a really amazing colored seashell so he would have to pick it up and it would blow him up. This is very much james bond. This is nonsense. They could not figure out a way to put it in a place that he would be guaranteed to pick it up. They also could not 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 ridiculously fake that there is no way castro would go and pick it up, so that plan was scrapped as well. There was also the issue of using a woman who had been Fidel Castros lover. She has been jilted by fidel so she was really pissed off. I am not going to get into sexist amount sexist accounts of how mad she was. 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 count arent you . May,he knew it was coming, and she broke down, broke down crying and said i am sorry, com andante. He gave her a stern look and they jumped into bed and they were lovers again. It didnt work out that well. [laughter] mr. Houghton 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 the reservoir was some kind of disease or some kind of iron tocsin and stab the person. The interesting part is this plan was being hashed the same moment as john kennedy was being shot in dallas. As one 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. The reason i had this last is it is somewhat apocryphal. It is likely we tried to do this and it is likely we created one it, litou make 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 that 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. Of course that is bugs bunny. Daffy duck has an exploding and tom. D jerry this plan is out of you looney tunes. The cia is pulling stuff out of cartoons and trying it. I do not know if this is a chickennd issue egg issue. 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 out of pure desperation. 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 amazing innovations. Sometimes desperation leads to the sr 71 or 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 that try to kill castro over time and fail in special ways but i want to point out one guy because one guy got very close several times. He was a member of 2506. He went to the u. S. Army afterwards. It is hard to read this. This was his picture when he was inducted into the u. S. Army. It does say he is part of brigade 2506 and he is actually the intelligence officer. 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 as it got. And he was able to get very close to taking out fidel castro. Let me give you a little bit of background before we talk about panama city. He was known to work with another cuban exile and he and jorge worked closely together to disrupt the cuban economy to kill fidel. They are both wanted still to this day, although bosche is now dead. They are still both considered the ringleaders behind the bombing of Cuban Airlines flight 455. This was a commercial aircraft that was actually carrying a big chunk of the Cuban Fencing Team from the panamerican games. They had just won the gold medal and they are 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. The idea was to kill cuban Government Officials. Many of them are completely unapologetic about their target. These are people who are considered terrorists, even by the u. S. Government today. But many think they are heroes in the cuban Exile Community. An interesting crossover, he was the deputy to felix rodriguez. Time when felix was no longer working with cia and was an independent contractor in 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. There were also later on tourist bombings in havana and other in 1997 that are traced to him. The interesting thing from the spy museum is right after the 1997 tourist bombing 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 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 to go aheadiously and find out when he was doing wrong against the cuban people. Opportunity to go in trying to capture these cuban spies that were spying on the United States. The panama plot is where he almost got castro. In cap in panama city, he was discovered moments before he had the chance to place 200 pound high explosives in the lectern where castro was about to give a speech. And right before you can imagine the sort of destruction that would of done. He got close enough that they essentially had to arrest him on the premises as he was about to plant the bomb. He got pretty close. He was captured after this. He was jailed by panama and later pardoned. That is not all that against the law, trying to kill castro. Someone with that rap sheet is now living in miami as a free man, tells us a little about the american and our allies attitude towards people who try to take out fidel castro in our name. We look at some of the later inns fidel took his life. It became very difficult after the late 1960s to even consider going after fidel castro. He employed food tasters. You want someone to your food first so you do not drop dead. This is what a lot of dictators do. Drink this water, see if it tastes funny. He had a gift stream. Every one of his gifts were taken apart to make sure there were no exploding cigars or anything up inside the gift. 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 really hold up inside inside several compounds outside of havana. I was there before he died. I was there in the springtime areaswould drive in these and there were the a street that would have a big gate on it, or the military vehicles and that would be one of fidels houses. I asked the question, where does fidel live . Nobody knows. Were,new where his houses they were easily identifiable. But no one but his top people knew where he was. He had a body doubles. If you wanted to shoot someone maybe you got the body double instead. 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 just the fact that he chain smoked cigars or is known to be someone who liked to eat a lot of really rich food, that he had a healthy appetite for female somebody who, or had so many people trying to kill him so many times, the fact that he was constantly on the move, constantly under stress of being assassinated 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 dead. As long as he did. Im going to end with my favorite story. This comes from the telephone game of stories. One time fidel castro was given a galapagos turtle as a gift. They said fidel, these turtles live up to 100 years. The story is that fidel gave it said, pets you get , attached to them and then they die on you. 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. A lot of people look at i ask this question, fidel retired but has he really retired . He had. He was really out of touch with what was going on in the daytoday operations. Raul was running things for the last couple of years. Something big came up, he said lets do it this way, but the final 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. So i am going to open up to any questions. I will be happy to answer anything. Thank you. [applause] mr. Houghton we have two microphones that will go around. On how muchsis , highlevel emphasis there was , i seem to remember being told when Robert Kennedy was attorney general he stopped at the headquarters and talked about this. That is something that was worth pointing out. This is obviously the attorney general but also the white house was interested. Really becameit an unnatural obsession. This country that has no National Security impact of the point. They had already finished nationalizing everything. The businesses were screwed one way or another. 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. We have been holding on 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. That is a whole other ball game. 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 Exile Community. And you know what, that is about as logical a response as you could get. Castro was worried about this country coming in and invading. Sure, he was worried about the United States military, but certainly as we pledged not to it looked like we were not going to do it for a while it was really the Exile Community behind the cia where the worry was. It was interesting to see how obsessed 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 when he got a little bit of faith back from the intelligence communities, and put a little bit of a whack on his beliefs and competency coming from langley. Over here, shauna, shes coming to the microphone. I have a bit of a side question. By way of background, i have worked on the internet for 40 years and i am doing research on a book on the internet so i was wondering, 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. What is your source . Mr. Houghton when youre looking at arfanet, the idea was 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 on what the soviets are doing. You want to try to claim the internet as a civilian . Internet and arfanet are two very Different Things and they need to be disambiguated. Mr. Houghton the World Wide Web and the internet are Different Things. Net and the internet are Different Things. 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. [laughter] good to hearys vince shamed publicly. Mr. Houghton assuming i still have the ability to feel shame. We love vince. There were all these plans to kill castro, was there any plan about what happened if they work . Mr. Houghton no. I mean, there were contingency plan, the idea of government in exile, who would be in charge. The problem you run into is that mid60s the mid1960s comes around, there were a lot of claims from the Exile Community, it would be a power vacuum like no other. We have seen some recently that have been pretty nasty but there would be a pretty significant power vacuum. Even if castro gets killed, raul steps in che steps in. , if you cut off the head, that was the theory. Gravitas is and what rallied people behind him. At that point it was unlikely. Especially after bay of pigs. Was to what castro did consolidate and bring power not just under him but under the government, under the system that had been created. It is a counterfactual conversation that if castro has been killed in 1965 it would have made a difference but there are people who say you are in a position that castro dies, it doesnt mean the government would collapse. Especially in that case 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. But as the government became , it becamecratic more like a government, it would not have necessarily been that much of a game changer, i do not think. There were contingency plans but they were not realistic. It would have been chaos. Basically tens of thousands of miami cubans 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. So it was difficult. It would have been very interesting and i say that in a sardonic way. It would have been complete bonkers if it had happened. Amanda has got somebody there. I know you tried to avoid the subject of kennedys assassination but i was curious , in your humble speculative opinion do you think either the cuban government or cuban exile had anything to do with the assassination. Mr. Houghton i dont think the Exile Community had anything to do with the assassination. They were mad that im a Firm Believer that Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger three times. There is no evidence he had ties with the cuban Exile Community. There is evidence that he had ties with the cuban government. I think fidel would have let us know. He is that kind of guy. I think as he gold got older he would have been like, you know what i did . Conspiracies unless they can be proven i know this is a trite comment. Im a Firm Believer in the occams razor idea. The simplest solution is usually the right solution. Shot,ld have taken that taken all three of those shots, the physics work. No need to bring any kind of Conspiracy Theory into this. Oswald was a deranged young man who thought killing kennedy was a good idea to help the soviets and the cubans. Maybe they had something to do with this but 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. There is no reason. I look back at the zimmerman telegram, if you know that story, what really gets world war i started. The government in germany says if mexico joins world war i they will give you back the states. Mexico was like, you are out of your minds. 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. They just agreed not to invade. Castro was annoyed they pulled the missiles out but his number one goal was to make sure the cuban people and the cuban government stayed under his power, and he accomplished that. Thatng kennedy just opens up for a possible reversal of that. It would be the only invasion in American History with a 100 approval rating. If the cuban government was proven to be behind the kennedy assassination it would be like, everybody go. 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. I am kind of interested in the later history, when or if we stopped worrying about assassinating fidel and decided to wait him out. Mr. Houghton the miami station was basically shut down by about 1968. We are a little more focused on vietnam at that point. Shaklee had moved to the saigon station. Vietnam became our number one priority. Where a lot of75 these assassination plots were revealed to the public for the first time, and we get something 12333. Ecutive order peter alluded to this and sent these things seem to be kind of commonplace today, but we are not offing 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 castor. You have these groups like out of 66 alpha 66 it is a group of very old man men running around the everglades and alligators and stuff, getting ready for the time they can go in and invade and take their country back. There were attempts like what carrias did trying to plan some real operation but none of them were backed by the u. S. Government. Because theres no reason at that point. I 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. Certainly by the mid1980s, cuba is not something youre paying a lot of attention to. Eople why do people keep paying attention to it . Because florida needed to win 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 bad castro was. See the bush and Reagan Administrations, even clinton administration, talking about how bad 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 ago. Cubanamericans only make up hispanics in south florida now, so they are not the majority of hispanics in south for the anymore. Many of the younger cubans, sons and grandsons and daughters and granddaughters of the exiles are actually not still pissed off at john kennedy and are willing to vote more like young people. A lot more democratic, and that is why you see the shift in american policy towards a lightning of cuban sanctions and even 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 was not a threat. Mid1960s people realize this. Does that answer the question . Yes. We will go to decide and come back over here. Any speculation on your part as to what happens in cuba when raul eventually dies . They have a designated successor. They have a guy lined up. He is in his 50s. With the trend going on he has 40 years he can be in charge. [laughter] there is a designated successor. The cubans i talked to said that that does not necessarily mean when raul dies, there will be a couple who will 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 name somebody. He is like the attorney general. He is a Government Official who as, whennamed by raul i step down raul is not dying anytime soon. He is pretty help you. When i step down, this is the person is going to take over. Theoretically, they are supposed to have elections for this stuff. They have elections and fidel winds 19. 7 of the time. Raul was probably the only guy who voted against him. [laughter] theres not a whole lot of democracy involved there. 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 one to put the power behind this guy. There may be a struggle. I will Pay Attention to him when it is time. The people at the cia are paying attention to him right now. It is because he is the designated next guy. I understand that rafael tru by anwas assassinated operation in 1991. Was there any overlap for those plotting his assassination and those plotting to kill castro . When you are looking at plotting, at the highest level of the cia, you have people making these decisions. The director of the time. When did that shift . It was still planned at the harvey,p, people like lansdale and others making these operations. People overlap on the ground . No. The plan to kill castro was cuban exiles. They only cared about cuba. They are great because they have a singular focus. They are great because they are really, really dedicated. They still are to this day. Castro dying, they had a celebration, they said, who is next . It is raul. Cuba is not free until cuba is free. For a long time, it was to fidel , but now ive run knows it becomes the government of fidel and until the government of fidel is brought down, there is no freedom. You have to think, these guys for 60 years have been feeling the same thing. They are as passionate as they have ever been and that is pretty extraordinary. Just as extraordinary as the and theirof fidel passion. I cant understand because it never had my homeland taken night for me, but i can imagine that i would be annoyed by it and do something about it. 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 , you are talking about the same people. E. On did that, they are farming it out to different groups. It is always good to use the internal people when you can. For a lot of reasons. Basically, the legitimacy of government gets dinged up when people come in from the outside. You want to use dominicans when you can use dominicans, guatemalans when you can use guatemalans and cubans when you can use cubans, so it is not always to cross pollinate because that destroys legitimacy if youre bringing in people from the outside. 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 see and hear how derogatory they can be towards other communities. R 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. [laughter] 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. I think it does hopefully what youre looking for. Any other questions . Right here. We were actually down there last year and we actually went snorkeling in the bay of pigs and it is beautiful, a nature reserve now and everything. It is gorgeous. What they told us when we were down there is not only did they name a successor after raul , but february 2018 is designated the day he is resigning. We will see. My question is, towards the end when obama and others had that, was there a split between raul and fidel and after that, what do you think the repercussions of the new administration are going to be in regard to cuba . There wasnt a big split. Basically fidel was the perfect mouthpiece. When you remember when that took place, p dell came out and came oute its fidel and ripped the United States. He came out and said they are are the idea, that they bane of our existence. When fidel was in power, you did not have this handshake. The easiest thing for fidel to do was to blame 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. The cuban people that have the freedom they need, it is because we have protect against the americans. It is the americans fault. We were the bogeyman castro could always point to and say, your problems are because of them. 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. That was one of the things the obama did, was to make it to where they cannot use us as a bogeyman anymore. Now, they still can because the embargo is still there. You can travel down there, wet footdry foot was ended. If you dont know if that is, it was an interesting policy of immigration that for only cubans that if youre caught crossing from cuba to the United States and if you are in a boat or water still, we will pick you up and send you back to cuba, but the minute you are in dryland, you can stay. Miserably, this is the water line. Im standing on miami beach. The waves are coming in. If the u. S. Coast guard catches me three feet into the water, they should be back to cuba. Running, i dive and make it onto the beach, i have asylum. That was whatfoot, dryfoot. 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 puts cuban exiles or anyone trying to travel from the united cuba on the same foot as anyone else trying to get political asylum. What the Obama Administration was trying to do, and i agree with this, not because im a democrat, but because i studied cuban policy for decades, was to try to take away that target, to take away that excuse for the cuban government by saying your problems are because of the United States, and there are a lot of problems in cuba. They have some issues. I dont know where you stayed when you were 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. Art sculptures. It is beautiful. You go outside of that area you are back in the 1950s and there is nothing done about anything. People living in poverty. The down the middle of the craziest thing, everyone walks street. Why are you walking in the middle of the street . Because they are afraid to walk down the sidewalk because balconies fall on people and kill them. It is easier to run through traffic and it is to dodge falling balconies on people. We did not stay in the nice area. We stayed with people in the not so nice area and down the street, neighbors, the entire house collapsed while they were in it. They do not fix it. They pulled bodies out and they leave it. There was no money to fix anything. Their doctors are amazing venezuelare all in because they were sent there for oil. They will get their doctors d. Ck when venezuela collapse but they needed oil because they dont have natural resources, so they basically traded doctors for oil. You hear about their greater medical school they dont have any doctors there. Their doctors make less money per month than i do in a day. A lot of times, doctors will come back from the hospital and have to clean somebodys 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. By getting rid of that stuff, there is no one to blame but themselves, and i think that is one of the great things of trying to change these cuban policies. [indiscernible] if you ask me, can i get inside Donald Trumps head . Number one, i dont want to get inside. I would have nightmares for weeks. I dont want to get inside and know what he is going to do next. With the Obama Administration did was make it difficult to roll some of this stuff back, particularly when 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 not able to see before. We opened up cuba a little bit and the world did not end, so people goes, there goes that bogeyman. 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 high on the priority list and that doesnt seem to become a suit you are asking me to predict with the Term Administration does. I dont have my crystal ball here. I cant do that. I hope they continue. It sounds like from those in state, tillerson, despite the fact that he was the x seat rex tillerson, despite the fact that he was the x ceo of accent, 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 benefiting us. American businesses may be will to move in there sooner rather than later. Will get you a nice car, i dont know, whatever you need to do, then i think we are in good shape. 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. The mob was there, that was that, right . [laughter] batista was there, he was a tyrant. For the most part, it is 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. I cannot be that person. Time for one more question. I want to cut to the chase on we were desperate to do so. To what extent do historians believe that jack kennedy directly ordered the assassination . Apologists do not want to acknowledge it and they have not, and in the biography about Robert Kennedy he said theres no evidence. What is the current state of evidence whether john kennedy passively, expressive the, or directly said to go get him . Right, the cia is not going to make those decisions on their own. Nowadays, any kind of covert action need to be blessed by the president. There was not the case going back to the 1950s in the Kennedy Administration. Under dollars, they are not going to make these kinds of decisions. Certainly under mcconnell. Kennedy makes a specific point of firing dolace at the beginning of his president. Of his presidency. He becomes president in january bay of pigs is a couple of months later. There is no evidence of that he did not talk about everything together. He will not do anything without the blessing of at least body. There may be times when it gets to the attorney general or bobby, but theres no evidence that they talked about anything together. I would say that we are guaranteed there was almost implicit blessing and i would say it is even more explicit. Kennedy may not have said lets put a bullet in his head but we thelisten to a lot of communications from the cuban missile crisis where they talk about we try to get rid of that guy. Yes, 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 get that. I dont think it makes can be kennedy any worse. I think people are trying to rehabilitate camelot. Seymour hers took that down a notch or two if you read quest for camelot, but this is what we did. If it wasnt kennedy, it would have been nixon. It was eisenhower after that. This was at the american way of doing war without doing war. Not the made that explicitly illegal. We are using hindsight to say that was a bad thing. Something we did successfully. Iran was still going well in the 1960s. Guatemala was doing all right. Of lessd like we kind stuff on blessed off on that in be anon, so that moved stuff. 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 i said from the very beginning, it could have ended things before they started. By 1963, 1964, not so much or after that, but if you had taken castro before he killed his government, it couldve fallen. It is counterfactual history and who the hell knows . There is an argument to be made that the culprit was his 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. [applause] thank you very much. Terrific presentation. [applause] thank you all for coming, have a great rest of your day. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, this evening at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, Abraham Lincoln authorities speculate on what might have been had he not been assassinated. We would have to assume he would have followed the cautious plan, so he must not have been willing to have black codes implemented, for instance, but he certainly would have been much more conciliatory to the south. America, the film on u. S. Trade. 10 million tons from this yard alone, everything from there to tractors going to different countries. On american artifacts, we tour philadelphia carpenters hall, at the Meeting Place of the First Continental Congress in 1774. We remember Patrick Henry ford give me liberty or give me death, but even more significant was his remark made here in the early days when he looked around the room and he said, gentlemen, we are no longer from massachusetts. We are no longer from pennsylvania, we no longer are from virginia. We are all americans. On the presidency, Ronald Reagan and the transformation of global politics. The Reagan Administration was attentive to Human Rights Violations elsewhere, focusing attentions on the 1981 polish invasion to impose martial law in response to the growing influence of solidarity and the trade union met there. For the complete schedule, go to www. Cspan. Org. Yes, they have very nice lifestyles, tons of money, but i do think the ones that make it to the top and stay there are not primarily motivated by money. They want to have standing, status, and be respected, and went to have power. Tonight on q a, beyond Global Founder and ceo discusses her book on how the financial elite and their networks wrote our world. I think many see perhaps it is following the system, but the key questions i ask in the book presenters orp are they presenters of the system . As if their fault or the systems fault . It comes to the conclusion that it is the interaction of both. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. Q a. Sunday night on afterwards, examining the changes the Foreign Policy in the book the survey. The the author is interviewed by the former secretary of state clinton Global Affairs in the Bush Administration and senior fellow at Harvard Universitys future diplomacy project. Isthe pieces you put forward you say there was considerable continuity in how the world work during this. Describe that. A lot of the structures of the world as it was had the idea sovereignty, the idea of borders that theyficant, defined nation states, countries, and there was a deal out there that we want try to change yours by force if you dont try to change ours. Sunday night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on afterwards. Tv,ext on American History ben stein, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and gerald ford, or flexon extends time in the white reflects on nixons time on the white house. He talks about his initiative it israel in Southeast Asia and speculates about what next in my think of our current clinical landscape. The Richard Nixon president ial library and museum hosted the event. It is about 50 minutes. Afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am william baribault