Smithsonian volunteers for being with us for this event. If you would be kind enough to turn off your cellphones and so forth. As a c. I. A. Officer who went through the church pike hearings, part of its will be by vince today houghton, attempted assassinations, none of which succeeded, which reflects incompetence or a lack of commitment. Looking back, the charges almost 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, vince houghton, who has a phd in diplomatic and military history. The area of his research with was scientific and technological issues or developments during the world 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. Interestingly enough, 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. [laughter] 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] 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 i had grown up to think about 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 the United States because he and the United States because he started nationalizing companies that we have economic ties to. Or that we owned outright. You might say, this sounds like a communist to me. He did not count couch this in 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 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 was the mesh with 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 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 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 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. But the fact that the harolderald 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 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 action 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. Harvey was also somebody brought 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. Who did fleming base james bond 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 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. Its not that odd to me that 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. 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 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. He was tasked to go negotiate 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 where castro 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 the panama plot is where he almost got captured. He wasma city, discovered before he had the opportunity to place 200 pounds of high explosives in the castro wast about to give a speech at. Right before. Imagine the destruction that would have done. He got close enough they had to arrest him on the premises as he plant these bombs. Hes trying to kill castro. The fact that somebody with this rap sheet was pardoned and is now living his retirement in miami a free man tells you about the american and our allies attitude towards people who try to take out the dell castro in our name. We look at the precautions that he took until the end of his life. It became more difficult after late 1960s to dis consider goig after fidel castro. He employed food tasters. Which is smart. This is what a lot of dictators do. Drink this water first. See if it tastes funny. A lot of people sent him gifts as he was getting sicker and sicker. Every one of his gifts was taken apart to make sure there were not exploding cigars or anything. He used to love to walk around havana. That made him a person of the people. And talktake strolls to the average citizen. He stopped doing that. He was holed up in several compounds inside cuba. I was there before he died. He would drive by these areas and there would be off the main street a big gate on it and military vehicles. No one ever actually knew where he was. I ask, where does he live . Nobody knows. Even the cuban people didnt know. They knew where his houses were but no one but his top people knew which one he was in at any time. He had body doubles. In case you wanted to shoot somebody maybe you hit the double instead. He was never in the same place at the same time. It is extraordinary. Not just the fact that he was known to be someone who like to eat rich food or that he was someone who had a healthy appetite for female companionship for somebody who had someone trying to kill them so many times. He was constantly on the move, constantly under stress he was going to be assassinated. ,m not saying i admire the man his longevity is extraordinary. Im going to in with my favorite story, which is apocryphal. It may be true, it may be not. The joke is that one time fidel castro was given a turtle as a gift. One of those big galapagos turtles. These turtles live up to 100 years. The story is he gave the turtle back saying that is the problem with pets. , you get attached to them and then they die on you. That sums everything up. No matter what you try to do he was going to keep kicking. It is old age that got him in the end. I ask this question, fidel has retired but has he really . In the end he had. Raoul was really running things. The final thing that got him was just he lived a long and exciting life. Im going to open up it to any questions. Have two microphones that are going to go around. An emphasis on how much high level emphasis there was, i remember being told when Robert Kennedy was the attorney general on his way home to hickory, he would stop at the headquarters and talk about this. I think that is something worth pointing out. The attorney general but also the white house extremely interested. It became an unnatural obsession. This Little Country that had no Real National security. They had already finished nationalizing everything. Screwed onees were way or the other. More of anits became National Security threat. We have been holding onto this as politicking. This idea that cuba is a National Security threat. They are not. They are an intelligence threat. That is a whole other ball game. The cuban five is a great story. They were arrested for spying. They did not 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. That is about as logical a response as you can get. Castro was worried about the Exile Community invading. After weertain point, pledged not to invade and we were going to do it, it was really, the Exile Community behind the cia that the worry was. How interesting to see obsessed the Kennedy Administration got. It goes back to the bay of pigs. It played to the psyche of kennedy. He got a little bit of faith back in the abilities of the intelligence agencies. It put a real big whack on his beliefs and competency coming from langley. Over here, shauna is coming up the microphone. I have a side question. I have worked on the internet for four years. Couldwondering, you explain what you meant by desperation to the internet. That is something i have never heard and i have worked on the internet since the beginning. When you are looking at arpanet, can we create a fast and efficient way to communicate securely. You had the very desperation at the highest levels. The idea that we need to create technologies that will give us a leg up on what the soviets are doing. You want to claim that as a civilian question mark internet and arpanet are two different things. They have to be disambiguated. The world wide web. Further, i will get off this and talk to you about it afterwards. I do believe that what you said is factually incorrect. Based on having interviewed people who were in leadership positions during the 70s. It is not like the Bowling Green massacre. But i think you are not right. All right. Thats fine. You shamedod to hear publicly. We love this. There were all these plans to kill castro. Was there any plan, what happens if they were worked . No. There were contingency plans. The idea of governments and exile. The problem is that by the time thereid60s comes around were a lot of claims to the throne. It would mean a power vacuum like no other. Weve seen some recently that were nasty. Killed, chase steps in. The idea was this colt of personality. There is no question his gravitas rallied the people behind him. People will rise up. At that point it is unlikely. What castro did is to consolidate and bring power not just under him but under the government. Counterfactual conversation. Say yes. Le theres a lot of strong evidence that says you are in a position where castro dies, it doesnt mean the government collapsed. Che was never a clinical leader. Beginning that made more sense. When castro was consolidating his power, it would have had a huge impact. He was the guy everyone rallied behind. As the government became more bureaucratic, as it became more like a government it wouldnt have been a game changer i dont think. There were contingency plans that i dont think they were realistic. It would have been chaos. Tens of thousands of cubans rushing back to take their property back, there was a hierarchy within the community. It was difficult. It would have been very interesting. I say that in a sardonic way. It would have been bonkers. I know you try to avoid the subject of kennedys assassination but im curious in your humble speculative opinion, do you think the cuban government or cuban exiles had anything to do with it . I dont the Exile Community had anything to do with the assassination. They were mad. Im a Firm Believer lee harvey trigger. Lled the there is he had ties to the cuban government. Leti think fidel would have us know. He is that kind of guy. I think as he got older he would have been like you know what i did . He has nothing to lose at that point. Conspiracies, unless they can be proven, this is trite, im a Firm Believer in the occams razor idea. The simplest solution is usually the right solution. What you are looking at is he could have taken that shot. The physics work. Theres no reason to bring a conspiracy into this. He was a deranged young man who thought killing kennedy was a good idea. Maybe it had something to do with that. But it is not in their best interest. We would turn cuba into a parking lot. Same with the soviets. Theres no reason. I look at the zimmerman telegram. It gets world war i started. They say mexico attacks United States, and we will give you back the states and mexico is like you are out of your mind. I can see the cubans doing something similar. Even if all is walled went to them and said i need your help assassinating kennedy. We are decent terms. We have agreed not to invade. Castro was annoyed the russians pulled the missiles out. His number one goal was to make sure the cuban people, the cuban government state under his power and he accomplished that. Killing kennedy opens that up for a possible reversal of that. You are not going to have palavi only invasion with 100 approval rating. If the cuban government was proved behind the assassination, everybody go. Be a doesnt seem to reason for either of those governments to be involved. But i could be wrong. Who knows . Im interested in the later started when or if we stop worrying about assassinating fidel and decided to wait him out. It was basically shutdown or dropped down to very few people in 1968. We were more focused on vietnam at that point. Vietnam became our number one priority. 1975, a lot of these assassination plots were revealed to the public for the first time. Order oneet executive triple three. Ofse things seem to be kind commonplace today. We are not offering political leaders today because of what comes out of the mid1970s decisions. Its illegal for us to assassinate political leaders. We get around that with al qaeda. It became illegal in the United States for us to target castro. That does not mean he wasnt targeted. But it was not u. S. Policy. I hope none of them are watching cspan. Out the 66 is a group of now very old men who ran around the everglades shooting leaves and alligators getting ready for the time they can invade and take their country back. Trying to attempts plan some kind of real operation. None of them were backed by the u. S. Government. Theres no reason at that point. Most people realize cuba was not an issue anymore. This is straight was the soviet union begins to fall. The soviet union was the reason cuba was considered a National Security threat. Cuba is not something that you are paying a lot of attention to. Why do people keep paying attention . Florida needed to be one in national elections. Time of cuban voters in south florida who were going to vote for keeping the embargo, vote republican. If you wanted to win cuba as republican you needed to talk about how mad how bad castro was. About how bad castro is. To win florida. Until recently, the census data for this is from 10 years ago. Cuban americans make up 49 of hispanics in south florida. They are not the majority of hispanics in south florida anymore. Many younger cubans, sons and actually notey are still to stop at john kennedy. Off at john pissed kennedy. You see this shift in american it towards a lightning is safe to argue that it stay the way it did for so long because of political raises. Most of the community had realize cuba was not a threat. By the mid60s most people realize this. Does that answer the question. Any speculation on your part as to what happens in cuba when raoul dies question mark the have a designated successor. He has 40 years or so. There is a designated successor. The cubans i talked to say that doesnt necessarily mean anything. There will be a tassel to be in charge. There is a handpicked successor. He is a younger guy. Hes not going to be a big reformer. Keepikelihood is he will the policies the same they are. They were smart enough to realize they needed to name somebody. I cant remember off the top of my head. Ashas basically been named when i step down, that is probably not going to happen. When i step down, this the person who is going to take over. Theoretically they are supposed to have elections. They do technically have elections. It is a democracy, but they are basically saying this guy is in charge next. It should be a relatively peaceful transition. Theoretically. It never is perfect. You went from one brother to the other and that went pretty well. A lot of cuban people are worried about that because if he does die there is no one around to put the power behind this guy. There might be a power struggle. But it is unlikely. Most people have said this is the next person in line. You can google that. I will Pay Attention to him when it is time. I have a net other things to worry about. People at the cia are paying attention to him. Hes the designated guy. Raphael wasand associated as a cia operation. My question is, did any, was there any overlap with those who plotted the assassination with the ones trying to kill castro. When youre looking at plotting, at the highest levels of the cia you have the same couple of people making these decisions. The director of plans at the time. When did it shift . It was still planned at the time. Deputy director plans. At the actual people overlap on the ground, no. The plan for the castro was done with cuban exiles first and foremost. They only cared about cuba. They were great because a singular focus. They were dedicated. They still are very dedicated to this day. Castro dying, they had a celebration and said who is next . Cuba is not free until cuba is free. Fidel but time it was they realized it is now the government of fidel. Until the government of fidel is brought down there is no freedom. These guys for 60 years now have been the same thing. As passionate as they have ever been. That is pretty extraordinary. The longevity of their passion. I can understand. Ive never had my home when taken away from me. I would be pretty annoyed with it. That is the situation you are seeing here. Does that answer the question . From the highest levels, you are talking about the same people. They are farming it out to different groups. It is good to use internal people if you can. It theelihood, legitimacy of government. You want to use dominicans when you can use dominicans. Quite a mall ands when you can use guatemalans. Cubans when you can use cubans. Really destroys the legitimacy if you bring in people from the outside. Especially in latin american communities. They are some of the most prideful in their own background. You would be surprised, maybe not, to hear and see how derogatory they can be towards other communities. Idaho, andfrom hispanic is and hispanic. Central americans have different ideas from south americans. Caribbeans think they are better or worse than others. They think they are european. There is this hierarchy that every country has that is different. That is why it is dangerous to do a cross pollination. This is a long way to answer but hopefully what youre looking for. Any other questions . Thank you. We were down there last year. We went snorkeling in the bay of pigs. Its actually beautiful. A Nature Preserve now. What they told us when we were down there is not only has he named a successor but in february 2018, he is resigning. We will see. Is, towards the end when obama and others had after that,chement, what do you think three percussions of the new administration are going to be with regard to cuba . There wasnt a big split. Fidel was the purpose the perfect mouthpiece at that point. He ripped the United States. He said i like that this is happening. The basic same idea, they are the bane of our existence. Why when castro was in power he did not have this. You didnt have this handshake was to the easiest thing blame the night at states for all the problems of cuba. The one thing i always argued was you are feeding into his hands. The cuban people dont have the food they need because the. Mericans are embargoing the cuban people dont have whatever they need because of the americans. That castrobogeyman could always point to and say your problems are because of them. Raul can tweak that. The obama rapprochement did that, you cannot use us as a ok man anymore. The physical embargo is still there. It has been lightened a little bit. Wet foot drive foot was ended. It is an interesting policy for immigration. For only cubans, if you are caught crossing from cuba to the United States and you are in a water, we willhe pick you up and send you back to water. The moment you step on dry land you can stay. And is is the water line am on miami beach, the waves are coming in, if the coast guard catches me three feet in the water they will send me back to cuba. If im running and i died onto the beach i have asylum. That was wet foot drive foot. It was done specifically for cuba. One of the last things obama did was and wet foot drive foot. Comeputs cuban exiles anyone trying to travel to the United States from cuba on the same footing as anybody else trying to get political asylum. What the Obama Administration , studying cuban policy for decades, is take away that target. Take away that excuse for the cuban government by saying your problems are because of the United States. Theres a lot of problems in cuba. They have some issues. I dont know where you stayed when you were there. There is a one square mile area in havana that is gorgeous. It is like you are in venice. Cobblestone streets. Gorgeous buildings. No trash anywhere. It is beautiful. You go outside of that and you are back in the 1950s. There is nothing done about anything. People living in poverty. The craziest thing, everyone walks down the middle of the street. They are afraid to walk on the sidewalks because balconies fall on people. Its easier to play frog or through traffic than to dodge falling balconies. People inayed with the not so nice area very down the street neighbors, the house collapsed while they were in it. They dont fix it. They pulled the bodies out and they dont fix it. Theres no money to fix it. Their doctors are amazing but they are all in venezuela. Itself is collapsing. When russia basically pulled out they needed oil. They basically traded doctors for oil. You hear about their great medical schools. They didnt have any doctors there. Their doctors make less money per month than i do in a day. Will comeimes they back from the hospital and have houses. That is cuba now. The dell was able to say it is their fault. Because of the embargo, because of policies of the United States. By getting rid of that, there is no one to blame but themselves. If you asked me can i get inside Donald Trumps head, i dont want to get inside. It would be nightmarish for weeks. I have no idea what he is going to say or do next. With the Obama Administration did was made it difficult to roll this stuff back. Sum withiny when the the community Cuba Committee were not happy with this. You have people visiting and sending money. Seeing family they were not able to see before. Point, this back at this the world did not end. We opened cuba a little bit and the world did not end. There goes that bogeyman. I cant imagine that is high on the priority list. Youre asking me to predict what the Trump Administration does. I dont have a crystal ball. I cant do that. I hope they continue. It sounds like from those i know at state, rex tillerson, despite that he was a next on ceo, he knows what he is doing. Or is willing to learn. The state department is key to all of this. If state goes to the president , just need tonk, we keep doing what were doing. American businesses may be able to move in sooner rather than later. We will get you a nice car. Whatever you need to do. Then i think we are in good shape. Its not just about wanting to go there on vacation. This is an island with great culture. It is not just music. They are 90 miles away. Ts a wonderful place before castro took power it was fantastic. The mob was there. That was bad. For the most part it is a paradise. It is something im hoping will continue in this direction but i cant predict that. If anybody can, god bless you. Youre going to make a lot of money. I cant be that person. Time for one more question. I want to cut to the chase. To what extent do historians believe kennedy directly ordered the assassinations . Apologist to want to acknowledge it. Biology said his theres no evidence. What is the current state of evidence whether john kennedy directly said go get them . Directly. The cia is not going to make those decisions on their own. Even before church and hike. Case going back to the early 1960s. , they are not going to make these decisions. Dallas does have free run under eisenhower but not under kennedy. Kennedy makes a specific point of firing him at the beginning of his presidency. Bay of pigs, a couple months later, dulles gets fired. Mcculloch is not going to do anything without the blessing of at least a bobby. Is no evidence anywhere they didnt talk about everything. There is almost complicit blessing. Kennedy may have not say lets put a bullet in his head but we can listen to the x, communications where they talk about stuff like we tried to get rid of that guy, they are not saying what caliber rifle they used but they are basically saying we need to kill the dude. Revisionists. I get that. I dont think it makes kennedy any worse. I think people are trying to camelot. O rehabilitate i think that you dont have to. This is what we did. If it wasnt kennedy it would have been next in. It was eisenhower before that. This was the american way of doing war. There was nothing we are using hindsight to say that is a bad thing. It was the way we did things. And we did them successfully. Thatsnt until 79 hindsight said we shouldnt have gone out there. Wedidnt kill him but bluffed of on that. That was a smart move. Knocking off leaders was a legitimate foreignpolicy decision. It was a choice we could make at the time that made some sense. Like i said at the beginning, if we kill castro at the beginning it could have ended things before it started. By 63, 64, not so much. Castor outking before he was able to build his government it could have fallen. Counterfactual history. Who knows . It was all based on his ability to lead. Chopping off the head in the early stage would have made a huge difference. That is all the time ive got. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Terrific presentation. Good job. Thank you for coming. Have a great rest of your day. Weekend on cspan3, today at 7 00 eastern, gregory nobles on the history of 19th audubon and james how he pioneered citizen science. Course,rtistic work of also his fieldwork. He was very good at what he did. He did it with no binoculars, no iphone apps. And the proof here is in the painting. Gettysburg College Professor alan gills on abraham lincoln, and the dred scott u. S. Supreme court decision. No restraint. W not even the restraint of popular sovereignty. On taking slaves into the territory. Opening ceremony of the american revolution. Biden, the museums president and ceo, and cokie roberts. It is my hope this museum helps inspire you to become those active involved citizens in this great country. History has its eyes on you. Catherine talks about Florence Harding and the precedent she created. Quite she had been in hospitals. She had been in dire straits medically. Relate tolly a the things they were going through. Out of this cause came the veterans bureau. This is the first time the United States had a euro. Our fullcspan. Org for lineup. Sunday night, ken buck of colorado discusses his book drain the swamp. How washington corruption is worse than you think. When you arrive in d. C. And you have the surroundings ive described earlier, you get very comfortable in that situation and you dont want to give up those comforts. The way to continue is to spend more money, to grow government, to not solve problems but to create programs and take credit for those programs whether they are efficient or effective. Congress areers of here. It is the best job they have ever had. It is a job they dont want to give up. Their reelection is more important than the actual problem solving then that needs to go on in d. C. Next, and interview with elaine jones who served as the president of the naacp Legal Defense fund. This is from the explorations in black history oral history collection. We are currently airing six of the interviews with prominent africanamerican women. , sheaughter of a teacher discussed her early interest in the law and her experience as the first africanamerican woman to graduate from the university of virginia law school. This interview is 80 minutes and was conducted by julian bond. Julian bond welcome back to the university of virginia. Thank you. It is good to be back. Julian an exploration in leadership and i like to start with your earliest years