Great assassinations with one not so great assassination. It wont matter that castro is still alive, because we plan these back in october. In cap changed a little bit 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, mystique of fidel castro is not as wellknown as it would be for other generations. He had not been in charge for a wild. 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. Castro was somewhat of a caricature of himself at the end. I love this cartoon. Out thet really spelled end of castros career when he had been retired. [laughter] mr. Houghton so when he died, it was a big deal a lot of places. Many college aged students were like, ok. A wholey did not matter lot when it came to the relationship between the united or the broader, world. We will talk differently here. Attemptsook at the cia on castros life. The number 638 is according to castros retired chief of counter intelligence. In interview he said, we have counted 638 different attempts by the sea at a cia on castros life. We will systematically go through each i am just getting. On hereed this quote that was great. This is from castro. Assassination attempts were an olympic event, i would win a gold medal. 600 39 is a charm. This is a spy museum exclusive. You are all hearing this first before anybody else. The name ofcquired the topsecret operation that finally, finally got fidel castro. [laughter] the name is a little on the nose, they are not as creative as they used to be. This is not in Operation Overlord kind of thing. We finally paid off. Mission accomplished. [laughter] mr. Houghton we finally got fidel. This is a really funny story for me, and my mom will never let me live this down. My fascination with fidel castro started early. I grew up in miami. Hair,ot cuban, the blonde green eyes, transparent skin did not give that away. Everyone i knew, all of my fathers, mothers, grandparents were refugees from cuba. Friends best 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 lives down there for many years. I have been up. For 10 years. I have lived in washington for the last 10 years. Every thanksgiving i went home to miami. My wifes family is in miami as well. Everything is giving, 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. Of course, fidel castro dies two days after thanksgiving. 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. That is what happens when you dont come home for thanksgiving. [laughter] mr. Houghton it horrible dictator dies and you miss a good party. It really was, from the very beginning, a question that i had to deal with. This idea of desk was this man 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. Not a lot of objective sources when it comes to him. You have people that knew him best, and many were procastro. You cannot get inside the mans head as they are skewed in certain ways. 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. You look at things and say, this is a man, a man with in incredible following. A man with incredible charisma who got a lot of people to follow him and do things they probably would not have otherwise. Stories about cuban education and cuban medicine being the best in the world. About how everything is free. Thosein life i learned stories were half true and half nonsense. Cuba has some of the greatest medical schools. The doctors have been shipped overseas. They were sent to venezuela and traded for oil. The medical care and cuba is not good. Doctors of the best in the world are not there, they are somewhere else. Theseok at things like are the pictures of castro before he became the dictator. He is playing basketball and baseball. He wanted to be a Major League Baseball picture and tried out. The story of the orioles. Fastball was pretty pedestrian. He was a great athlete, good at basketball. N aviddy who was a reader that understood history. It was difficult to reconcile this with the monster i grew up to think about based on my friends and friends family. Lets tackle the question of who was feeidel . This will be a controversial topic. There is no one that has a blink objective opinion about this. There are people who think he was the worlds worst dictator. I will come down in the middle. Was he a communist . In the end, yes. Did he start out a communist . That is up for historical debate. I have asked the question of cuban exiles. People will fight against castro for decades. Did castro start out a communist . Most of them hedge the question because they know it is difficult to say yes. And he worriedr, the United States not because he was a mark says, he worried the United States because he started nationalizing companies that we have economic ties to. You might say, the somebody communist to me. Marxistot put this in terms. He counts this is bringing it back to cuba. 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 a counterfactual. Anyone know what country castro visited first when he took power . Yes, he came here. A lot of people are surprised. To moscow. He went no, he came to the United States to try to meet with president eisenhower and Vice President nixon. Neither was available. Purposeful, they did not want to meet with him. It was so purposeful that when castro visited new york, he cannot 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 he we pushed him into the hands of the soviets, but there is that argument. The question is broader than that. The idea is, was he ready to embrace a soviet partnership from the 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. Of hisl this naive, many close advisers did call this naive. Simultaneously, as he was trying to meet with the americans here in the United States, his aul, and che guevara was in moscow. They knew that we would not nationalization of the Fruit Company and other organizations that were billions in dollars for american economics. They knew the writing on the el did. Fore fid 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 a directll it, confrontational situation with the United States. We were not any position where satelliteet a soviet 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 history of 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 turnip terminology. It worked. Had a strongchev relationship, 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 it all. We will focus more on our attempts to get rid of him. 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. Day,e 1960, new years 1959, if you have seen godfather part two, you know the story. Prior to the Eisenhower Administration, there were some basic schemes. Good word here for trying to take castro out. One of them involved a Radio Station. Broadcast once a week. He would give a stirring, patriotic, this is what we are doing in cuba to the people in cuba or it the early ideas was to spray this Radio Station was lsd. 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 that hef his cigars so would also trip whenever he smoked his cigars. Aere was an idea to put substance inside a cigar that would make his hair fall out to there is another thing here, sally m saltz inside issues. Was that, Stephen Society was very macho. People thought that within the United States, if his weird fell ,ut he would lose his machismo and his charisma. He was called the beer to if he had no pure den eyebrows people would refuse to follow him. These were ideas that were the bigup prior to idea. The big idea was the fullfledged invasion, the bay of pigs 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. Named that because each of the members of the brigade had a number. It was their codename. 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. Was, to start the Number System higher so that if someone was captured, you say my number is 2605 comment they would say oh in oh my gosh, there are 20 600s of you 2600 of you. It was dumped on the kennedy kennedyration because was a lieutenant during world war ii and eisenhower was a 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 kennedy did many 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 terrible 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. Many of the members of the brigade were rounded up and captured. In many respects, according to 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 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. 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 shift advanced weapons to you that 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. 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 takes invasion. There is a bay of pigs invasion. There is a lot to this. Cuban intelligence is one of the best in the world. Per capita, arguably the best. 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, but we have to look at everybody. The cubans only have to focus on the United States and they are good at 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. Refugee human cuban of miami was planning this, there were assassins 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 messageroadcast a saying, cuban exiles are out 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. They just ignored the warning signs. The miami hurled was ready to publish a piece weeks before the invasion, detailing there was a group of Training Camps planning to take out castro. They sat on it. Knewact that the herald about it, it meant that everybody knew. Even assuming they had been internal security, assuming the planning was done well, the plan counted on a popular uprising. Men wouldas, the 1500 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 end up with a 1500 men of milesigade defending 1400 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 a the bay of pigs, this is big open beach. This is dday. This is not somewhere where you want to drop 1500 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. To thedo not get beachhead, which they dont, you are screwed. There is not much you can do. To them stems down 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 stupid. Theybody was convinced that cuban people would rise up, that is a great idea. Yes, these 1500 guys can start a revolution to defeat castro. That is a great idea. No one had i dont want to put it on their soldiers and say no one had the courage to stand up, advocate is more that people were Wishful Thinking. Everyone began Wishful Thinking that this would begin to be a successful operation. Ugly. Take a look this is huge. The Inspector General of the cia i want to pull out big key issues to show why this goes bad. The cia exceeded its capabilities. In 1961. He cia during the 1950s, the cia was argued a little too big for its britches. They had successful operations around the world overthrowing iran,ments in guatemala, fixing operations in italy, but they are not who we know today. Iny are not capable of it 1961. Theyve get really good of it during vietnam and the secret war in laos. By 1961 they are not 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 will run this operation and take out a very popular president was laughable, at this point. Lets go to the next bullet point here. They collected and analyzed intelligence about cuban forces. That is a problem when they are not collecting and analyzing 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 cia did not know anything about what was happening in cuba. Insufficient spanish speakers. Another one of those guerrilla operations, cuba 101 you should know. Lack of contingency plans. This is an issue where when the plan went bad, which it did in the beginning. Was desperate from the u. S. Navy was carrying the extra ammunition. That got blown up before it got to the ground. A print approaching the bay of pigs, it was hit and exploded. There went all of the animal. There went all ammo. Extrawent all of the artillery. There was no, how do we fix this. There was not great planning. Bay of pigs is a failure. U. S. Licks its root wounds. Kennedy fires all of the top including thecia director, who had been the man who built the cia into what it was. , it was on his sword not necessarily his fault, but kennedy felt like he needed to clean house and bring in his own team. E does his own team begins to take things in a different direction. Bigead of looking at these paramilitary operations, they think over it. 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. Anythinga catchall for that was focused on destabilizing the government and taking out fidel castro. There are programs other than 638 different operations. It is not 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 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. 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 will get more and more elaborate in our operations. Three prettyudes famous names in the history of cia. The covertdale was action guru within cia. He was the guy who was thinking of the more interesting ways to do a lot of these what we ,ould consider common now unethical operations. He was not a bad guy, he was given the priam at her to work which do whatever you need to do. William harvey was another great cia covert operator. More on the pillow paramilitary side. 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 . Who did flemingbased james von brunn . James bond on . Hehard nixon said that when and ian fleming sat down and chatted ab