The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 17 (18)

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, Bridget. How are you today? Are you feeling better? Oh, getting a little better every day. Thank you for asking. Good. How are you? I'm awesome. I'm awesome, awesome. We had a storm go through last night, and it's a little chillier than has been the last couple of days down here, but it's all good. It was six yesterday. It was six. Okay, well, it's not that.

0:31 much cooler oh no no but it was i know we had it 80 degrees just a few days before that so you know they're jacking with our weather yeah i always feel bad talking about the weather because bridget's weather is always so much worse hey we had tornadoes come through and not one of them touched us so i'm i'm great man part of it

0:56 Well, I see SR-71 over there on Rumble, but I don't see him on, oh, there he is. Just say it and he will come. All right. There you go. All right. So we're going to go ahead and start the lesson part of the show. And we're still finishing up the chapter, The World for the Roof of the World. The War, sorry, for the Roof of the World.

1:25 which should be finished today. Yeah, we'll get into the next chapter today. Okay, so what estimate that the CIA equipped 14,000 soldiers in Tibet, which was almost all of the active male population still fighting in the high Himalayas, supplying the NVDA,

1:55 without aircraft seemed impossible. But they were very efficient at setting up ways to do that. One of the new tactics was going to be using a ancient principality called Mustang. And that was located between Tibet and Nepal. And of course, we know that the CIA has been very active in Nepal for a very long time.

2:28 They were going to use it as a base from which the Tibetans could farm out into the countryside in small bands, not large units, you know, like stay behind units. Desmond Fitzgerald said that aircraft could still be useful if they did not enter China. At an Interpol conference, and I find that fascinating that they're using Interpol

3:00 meetings, because Interpol's like the international police kind of clearinghouse. So they go to an Interpol conference and are talking about this kind of nefarious stuff. Dick Bissell, who was at the time the chief of operations, along with Richard Helms, cleared the concept with Indian intelligence.

3:27 So they go to an Interpol meeting and they're basically discussing international criminality of destabilization of China. You got to love the irony of that. The liaison was required because some Tibetans were now to train inside of India. They're going to set up terrorist training camps in India.

3:56 Meanwhile, the International Jurist Commission, set up by the UN, released its conclusion that China had been committing genocide in Tibet. Does that sound familiar? Well, it should, because the same international body decided that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs, which, by the way, we have already talked about, was set up exactly like this.

4:28 in order to destabilize China. These things are all patterns. They have everything rigged. So you go and basically destabilize a country and we've got all of the apparatuses that are controlled outside of that country that are going to demonize the people being attacked, not the attackers.

4:59 Was China killing Tibetans? Yes, they were. Why is that? Because the Tibetans were being trained by the CIA to attack the Chinese. And you can say whatever you want about an internal civil war of Tibet and China and whoever was right or wrong. The CIA had no business in China arming and equipping the Tibetans to destabilize China, which they were doing.

5:31 On September 15th, 1960, the 5412 group convened just before the National Security Council meeting. According to the record, quote, as a result of the discussion, the DCI said he would reorient his thinking to some extent, unquote. The key would be to limit the visibility of Mustang, the location they're going to work out of.

6:02 Switching to caravans moving over land. This meant a loss of volume delivery. But the agency had little choice. At least the CIA could use the stockpiles that it had already accumulated in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Thailand. Desmond Fitzgerald and Roger McCarthy did the heavy lifting on the planning aspects.

6:30 The agency also began monthly subsidies to the Dalai Lama, totaling $1.7 million a year. That continued for many, many years. Just before the 1960 election, CIA General Cabell updated the special group on Tibet, adding comments about Cuba.

7:04 another CIA project by then that was in full swing. One veteran recalled that on election day, the Far East chief, Desmond Fitzgerald, learned of Eisenhower's vow that Richard Nixon, if elected, would continue the Tibetan operation. Instead, JFK won. Evidence suggests officials

7:29 handed the project over to the Kennedy transition team several weeks later. Though Ike himself did not sit down with the president-elect until December 6th, Eisenhower specifically recalls that Allen Dulles had already briefed Kennedy on a number of international matters, including Far East affairs, which means nothing because he briefed him on Africa affairs too and never told him that they had.

7:59 basically just killed Patrice Lumumba. There was also a discussion with Gordon Gray and Eisenhower on the morning of November 25th. Mr. Dulles reported to the president on certain consultations that he had had with respect to projected undertakings in Tibet. Eisenhower passed on the Tibetan secret war that was now going to be JFK's.

8:36 The New Delhi, Delhi, focus of the Tibet effort raised both diplomatic and intelligence problems. The director of operations near East Division was somewhat restive at the independence of the officers in India who worked with the Tibetans, and they were afraid of potential trouble.

9:04 That affected John Hoskins and Howard Bain, B-A-N-E, who were brought in to insulate Hoskins from the CIA station chief, who was Harry Ratisky. And again, he's another guy we come across all the time. He had taken a jaundiced look at Project Circus. Meanwhile, JFK's ambassador to India would...

9:33 would be Harvard economist John Galbraith. Before leaving for his post on March 27th, 1961, Galbraith discussed CIA operations in India with Richard Bissell. There was an element of irony in this meeting. They were both economists, one perhaps the foremost Keynesian, the other

10:01 a man who had long resisted Keynesian arguments, but ended up administering Keynesian-style foreign and military aid, first during the Marshall Plan, and now for the CIA, which is basically the same thing, because we know the Marshall Plan was used to covertly give money to the CIA to fund Operation Gladio. Bissell showed...

10:32 Galbraith. The list of projects, many of which bothered the ambassador. A couple of weeks earlier, President Kennedy had authorized CIA airdrops to the Mustang location. Galbraith determined to stop these spooky activities. Tibet among them. The ambassador thought the partisans deeply unhygienic tribesmen.

11:03 He also ordered his country team to make a full investigation of the CIA activities. He wanted to be number one on his agenda item. He recalls that the CIA station chief, Harry Ratinsky, made little effort to defend the program. As for himself, the ambassador wrote, quote, I was not troubled by an open mind.

11:31 I was convinced that most of the projects proposed would be useless for their own anti-communist purpose and were capable, when known, of doing us great damage as well, unquote. Which is true. That's called blowback. He had started from a handicapped position, as JFK had already approved the supply flights.

12:03 And a pair of them had already taken place, even as the new ambassador prepared to leave for his new post. One dropped equipment over Mustang. The other one moved CIA teams inside Tibet. The new ambassador persisted in his negative view. He also went back to Washington in May of 1961 to further discuss this.

12:35 He found Kennedy subdued and too busy with the CIA failure in Cuba. He argued with the president, Bobby Kennedy, and McGeorge Bundy and put his objections to Dulles and Bissell, telling them Kennedy had been sympathetic to ending the project. But Galbraith's efforts were not wholly successful. He did get circus canceled.

13:05 The partisans had achieved the status of an ally. Kennedy, the man who challenged Americans to do what they could for their country in the Cold War, could not abandon one of the few active resistant efforts against Mao. Ambassador Goldbraith would be permitted to shut down CIA activities aimed at the Italian Communist Party, but the Tibetan program

13:35 lasted somewhat longer. Kennedy did rule out further flights into Tibet. Everything happened at Mustang. The camp, a mountain stronghold in the northwest part of Kathmandu, inside of Nepal, began growing in the 1960s.

14:01 Under the new formula, the NVDA fighters were to be gathered in companies, more formal units, to escape the tribal and clan rivalries that were prevalent throughout this entire effort. Because they're basically tribal people that the CIA is trying to hobble together to do their bidding.

14:28 But when the Tibetans learned their forces were gathering at Mustang, a migration from all over India began towards that location. That meant publicly that people were going to realize something significant was going on there, and that caused a security issue. The CIA officers tried in vain to curtail the migration. That's probably the only migration that they've ever tried to curtail.

14:57 Though they had more success blocking access to the camp. In October of 61, the NVDA achieved a great success. A raiding party led by the Indian-trained partisan RAGRA sent to disrupt traffic along one of the major roads wiped out the Chinese entire.

15:28 contingent that they had there. Among the dead, they found a deputy regimental commander. A bag of documents was captured, over 1600 pages in all. It included reports on the 1959 Tibetan capital uprising. It had material in the Russian-China split. And it also had a file called

15:59 Bulletin of Activities of General Political Department of the PLA. It basically had covered a period of January to August 1961. The CIA officer personally retrieved the material and carried it to Washington, where Allen Dulles proudly exhibited the documents to the special group later that month. The typical journal.

16:28 would be translated and opened to American scholars by the State Department in August of 1963. This windfall is the reason why Ray Klein records that Tibet resulted in a bonanza of valuable, substantive intelligence. That was basically the only thing that was of any value that happened out of the entire operation where, you know,

16:56 Tens of millions of dollars have already been expended. Meanwhile, the CIA sent political action specialist Howard Stone, last seen in Syria, to head up the beefed up station at Kathmandu. The agency also created a new proprietary airline, because of course they did. This one was called Air Nepal. Along the lines of Air America, it had flights from Bangkok,

17:31 to Mustang. Light planes did short-range work from Kathmandu. Of this, the Indian ambassador said, I was especially disturbed by this particularly insane enterprise, unquote. He believed that in conjunction with Bobby Kennedy, he had finally stopped this from happening.

18:02 He just found out nobody paid any attention to him. A December 1961 incident demonstrated beyond doubt that the Tibet program continued. Again, just demonstrates how they don't work for any of the government officials. On the morning of December 7th, deep snow and icy roads around Camp Hill delayed Don Cesar's bus of Tibetan bound for Peterson Field.

18:34 We're back in the United States. Rather than flying away at night, the Tibetans reached the field after dawn. Airfield employees saw the Globemaster sitting on the apron and strange men milling about. Foreigners. The local sheriff raced over with two deputies. To preserve secrecy, army soldiers held 47 Americans at gunpoint, including the sheriff.

19:04 told them that it would be a federal crime to talk about any of it, all in the name of a dubious national security. The story made the local radio the next morning, by afternoon in the Colorado Springs Gazette, and it stayed out of, of course, the New York Times, only due to personal appeals by Secretary of Defense McNamara.

19:34 Don't you dare print anything about this for the American people. They're not allowed to know what we're doing. Snafus like this one had terminated projects before, Indonesia being a case in point. The Peterson incident was even more serious in its way.

19:59 prohibited by law from operating inside the United States and has no authority to detain citizens or to protect secrecy. The major flap in Washington ended Roger McCarthy's tenure as chief of the task force. He was replaced by John Noss, a former Camp Hale trainer and a sophisticated, well-spoken secret warrior who would write a history.

20:29 of the resistance. I'm sure that was accurate. In that book, Noss fails to mention anything about the Peterson incident. Imagine that. With Mustang, the pattern of operations changed completely. The virtual end of airdrops and Chinese dominance of the trails above.

20:56 made it impossible to wage large-scale operations. Meanwhile, Mustang itself proved so remote that sustained forays were not possible. Yeshe replaced Tashi and things kind of went south from there. The resistance was reduced to less than 7,000, then to less than 2,000.

21:26 because of attrition and the fact that it's not nearly as well organized, nor funded, nor equipped. The CIA made several more air missions, but permissions became bureaucratic battles the secret warriors found as tough as fighting the PLA. The document scoop in 1961 won one of the battles, but the CIA

21:56 lost most of what it had gained after India's 1962 border war with China when W. Avril Harriman made a diplomatic tour of the region and sided with the ambassador. Not even Desmond Fitzgerald, Jim Critchfield, or John Noss, who were among his entourage, could turn Harriman aside. The diplomat finally backed,

22:27 Fitzgerald's fallback proposal, an alliance among CIA, Indian intelligence, and the Tibetans. As the Mustang forces diminished, most of the partisan enlisted in the Indian Border Commando Unit, which eventually far exceeded the resistance in size. Indian intelligence also set up a joint headquarters. A communication center was established at Orissa.

22:57 by 1963, and a combined headquarters in New Delhi by early 1964, all funded by the CIA. The Indian intelligence people met weekly with the CIA and the NVDA representatives. Indians were supposed to command, but they never were permitted the partisans to do anything big. The virtual revolt among the Tibetans,

23:28 eventually was the result of that. This is exactly the same setup, by the way, that they had with the ISI in Pakistan next door to India as it related to the Afghanistan people. Washington's secret warriors reoriented their program again. High-level talks with Yeshe

23:51 and senior leaders in the summer of 1963 found CIA managers insisting that the Tibetans return to their country as a condition of support. They didn't want them hanging out in India. They wanted them hanging out in Tibet and fighting the Chinese for them. Kennedy simply would not authorize deliveries inside Nepal because supposedly Nepal was neutral in all of this.

24:24 The Tibetans countered with a proposal to split their strength in both places. A couple of months later, William Colby, now the chief of the DO for Far East Division, carried a fresh proposal to the special group. Colby argued for a switch to targeted raids aimed at specific objectives, warning of significant losses. In 1964, the special group approved a scheme.

24:54 to continue giving the Tibet issue a high international profile, but with a reduced emphasis on military activity. Payments to the Dalai Lama continued. While for the most part, the resistance received CIA cash, a final weapons airdrop took place at Mustang in May of 1965.

25:26 This is crazy. Just year after year, just throwing weapons away. But the leading edge of the CIA effort now shifted to Ithaca, New York at Cornell University, where the agency sponsored Tibetans to learn English, writing, and international relations in hopes of creating yet another advocacy base here in the United States

25:56 further embroil us in propaganda and bullshit against China. Bring them here, educate them on our dime, and then turn them into advocates that advocate for expansion of foreign policy, expansion of military activity. They're creating monsters and we're paying for it. In the end, Washington,

26:28 would eventually get cold feet. By 1968, the CIA had told the special group that no current operations justified the Tibetan forces at Mustang. The few telephone taps the CIA wanted could easily be managed by a much smaller effort. The following year, the secret warriors told the Tibetans that the United States was cutting them off.

26:55 Another blow in 1969 was the retirement of Galio Thornthrop. With the U.S. rapprochement of 1972, Mao Zedong demanded an end to the charade. When the King of Nepal visited Beijing in November of 73, Mao's concerted action

27:24 John Koss is not convinced this was the case, but basically now laid the law down for Nepal. The next year, the Nepal government, with information from the disinfected Ayashi, had set up arrangements with the PLA to patrol their side of the border, put 10,000 royal troops in Mustang, including...

27:56 some of their most fierce fighters. The top commander escaped with the NVDA archives and had a small escort only to be killed in a later ambush. Seven other Tibetan leaders surrendered at Mustang and sat in a Kathmandu jail until pardoned by the king in 1981. So China made it very clear.

28:26 that Nepal needed to stop this bullshit. But you can bet it was the CIA that wanted those documents out of there. That brought an end to the quote unquote rebellion. From the beginning, Washington knew that Tibet would never be more than a large scale harassment of China. To achieve that, the CIA had promised the Tibetans liberation. They lied. Many, many people died.

29:03 As a result of that, they saw a darker side of the CIA's intelligence bonanza. John Noss concedes a certain operational hubris and acknowledges that for the secret warriors, preserving the project becomes almost an end to itself, endowing the covert action, momentum, and excitement, and they don't care who dies.

29:33 Once these things start, they take a life of their own on, and they don't want to quit, even when the casualties start increasing exponentially. Troubled by questions about the CIA's role, Noss sought out the Dalai Lama, and he talked to many others, along with key Tibetans, to ask whether the secret warriors had done the right thing. Noss's sense of relief

30:04 When most of the Tibetans accepted, the American action is almost palatable. But in truth, despite the CIA's intelligence successes, whatever they were, their cache of information, in Tibet, Americans' reputation as a guarantor of democracy was once again tarnished.

30:30 For Tibetans, more than 100,000 of whom became refugees from their own country, there would be one mitigating factor. Defeat took many years. They could adjust gradually to this trauma. In Cuba, the CIA's next paramilitary disaster, trauma was immediate. Chapter 11. This is another black hole of Calcutta. That's the name of the chapter.

31:02 At CIA headquarters in New York on 1959, there was a subdued atmosphere as members of key people sat around the table awaiting news from Havana. Fletcher Prouty represented the Pentagon at the seance, which took place the day and the hour that Richard Bissell officially assumed the office as deputy director of operations.

31:33 For months, the agency had followed events in Cuba in growing fear of the disintegration of Americans' cozy position with their military dictator, Batista. They had been unable to quell the rebellion that spread rapidly through the island, just 90 miles off the U.S. shore. Batista's main opponent, July 26th Movement,

32:02 ran by Fidel Castro, successful in every endeavor, appeared to be marching to Havana. Despite CIA analysts who argued Batista's solid hold on power, President Eisenhower approved measures to forestall a Castro government. So the CIA is on record as saying there's no way in hell Castro can overthrow Batista's government.

32:33 That's what you get for your investment in intelligence. Despite the fact that we already have documented evidence that the CIA was embedded in the mountains with the Castro and Che Guevara. Eisenhower's mind influenced by Florida businessman and dabbler in the secret world, William Polly, another one of our Forrest Gumps of Operation Gladio.

33:05 began focusing on anti-Castro schemes in late 1958. That November, William Polly, who owned the Havana Bus Company and many sugar plantations and a whole bunch of other shit down there, had founded the Cuban Airline in addition to owning the Havana Bus Company. He fancied himself, William Polly did,

33:35 As an activist, he hosted several persons, including CIA Western Hemisphere Division Chief J.C. King at his Miami home. And his Miami home was a mansion with a big-ass yacht on the dock behind his house. No stranger to the agency, Polly had helped in the Guatemala operation and participated in the Doolittle Report.

34:06 William Polly also was part and parcel of the Flying Tigers and installing Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, originally Formosa. He owned the Curtis Aircraft franchise over there, supplied him with all of the aircraft that he needed to create. He was also one of the financiers with Claire Chennault in creating the Flying Tigers civilian part.

34:35 which morphs into civil air transport, blah, blah, blah. William Polly's all over this story. He was now advocating Batista's resignation in favor of a Cuban leadership that was not as radical as Castro. So in other words, hey, Batista, really quick resign so we can install the next person that we control to avoid having a Castro. And Eisenhower let him try.

35:08 Polly traveled to Havana in early December to fill out the Cuban politicians. King and another CIA officer accompanied him. But the moment had already passed. They waited too long. In Cuba, the rebel drive was retaining its momentum. Quote, many high-ranking officers in the armed forces are said to be making preparation to leave, unquote.

35:41 And without them, there's no way they can hold off Castro. For its part, the CIA became involved in at least four different plots. Colonel Prouty's group at Quarters Eye on December 31st, 1958, sat there because a U.S. aircraft, a Hilo courier from Key West, flew a clandestine mission to Cuba.

36:10 Washington wished to find Cubans to whom they could deliver arms to create a third force that was not part of Castro's revolution. The mission required backstopping in case of a problem. A spare was waiting in Washington. A large C-54 had been summoned from Europe and its cargo of weapons would be packed by the day.

36:41 after New Year's. The flight went as planned, but no third force existed in Cuba. You were either fighting as part of Batista's band of criminals, or you had joined the revolution, and they couldn't find any middle ground.

37:03 The CIA officers who had succumbed to the fervor of the anti-Batista revolution, such as William Caldwell, station chief when Castro's movement first became entrenched, had given way to more hardened out attitudes. The current chief of station, James Noel, sided with Ambassador Earl Smith, who stood solidly against Castro.

37:31 All of the ambassadors are going to not want a Castro because the ambassadors actually represent the international syndicate, not us. The station warned of Batista's vulnerability, even as the CIA tried its 11th hour efforts. On December 23rd, Alan Dulles told the NSC that Batista's days were numbered and that the Cuban communists, he actually called them communists. They're not communists at this point.

38:01 They just want the corrupt CIA-backed mafia that was propping up Batista out. But Dulles has already started the narrative that they're communists because anybody that is against us is a communist. There's no middle ground. Dulles said they could be expected in any Castro government without any intelligence to back that up. Gordon Gray.

38:34 watched at the December 30th meeting and was looking for all possibilities of what to do. Senior diplomats more favorable towards Castro than Ambassador Smith, nonetheless, would not oppose the third force efforts. Of course, Batista knew his position had become untenable. Days earlier,

39:03 a general strike had given a frightening illustration of how unpopular a dictator he had become. The question preoccupying everyone was that Batista, what would he do now? Prouty's group on New Year's Eve understandably sat in an atmosphere of expectancy. In Havana that night, Batista

39:36 had his own New Year's Eve party, but it was very subdued. Guests ate chicken served by military aides in dress uniform. There was a little bit of champagne, more coffee than champagne. The atmosphere is captured well by a scene in the movie called The Godfather Part Two. Until that day, December 31st, 1958, Batista's last in power.

40:06 The guest had been the rich and powerful of Cuba. Some of the 60 visitors knew and suspected that Batista was going to run, flee the country. Castro's irresistible forces were descending from the Sierra Matres mountains where the struggle had begun two years earlier. At first, his guerrillas had been contained by the Cuban army.

40:35 But Batista's corruption and oppression increasingly lost their support. Cubans flocked to Castro's July 26th movement by the droves. It had taken this name from the date of an unsuccessful revolt that Castro had once led. The M26 guerrillas, we're going to call them guerrillas again. They're not resistance.

41:06 spread out from the Sierra, creating fronts in several parts of Cuba. Those who cared could see the handwriting on the wall. Batista was no fool of what would be his disposition. The dictator's brief appearance at his reception came around midnight. He handed power to his commanders, then he and his family and close associates headed for the airport.

41:35 Aboard three planes, the group took flight. Batista left Camp Columbia base at 2.40 in the morning on January 1st, 1959. David Attlee Phillips, now a part-time CIA undercover agent in Havana, sat in his backyard as the aircraft flew overhead. Phillips immediately informed superiors, some of who

42:04 At first, didn't believe him. At that moment, the M26 unit closest to Havana, a column of Santa Clara under Argentine Shea Cavera, was 150 miles away. They still had a lot of fighting to do, but Batista wasn't going to hang around. Shea was asleep on the top of his Jeep.

42:34 He got the news seven hours after Batista fled. Che Guevara immediately ordered a march forward. His force arrived in Havana the next morning. He drove directly to the La Cabana Fortress, whose garrison of 15,000 men dwarfed Che's small M26 column. The M26 Comandante walked up.

43:05 to the iron drawbridge. There he shouted, I am Che, Cavera. I want to talk to your chief. A few minutes later, a government jeep rolled out of the fortress. The occupant, an army major, unholstered his pistol and handed it to Che Cavera. That was the surrender. We are not interested in fighting. It is not necessary now. The Cuban Civil War ended.

43:34 A few days later, David Attlee Phillips stood in the crowd as Fidel Castro entered Havana in a motorcade. Washington's efforts to shore up the dictatorship and then to force Batista into reforms that might save off a Castro revolution left the Cubans in no doubt as to the U.S. policy. The changing government on January 2nd

44:03 1959, could have ushered in both a new beginning and an opportunity for U.S. relations with Havana. Come on. Castro was suspicious from the outset. It did little to make it happen. Eisenhower failed to grasp the opening, both because of the discomfort from the fake intelligence the CIA was handing him and

44:36 Fidel Castro's doubt of whether any of the people in the CIA could be trusted because he knew that they were behind Batista. Events led to a spectacular covert operation, an episode that would blacken America's reputation as a proponent for democracy. The origins of the hostility that persisted between the U.S. and Cuba had faded into a mist of time.

45:04 Note, therefore, that in 1959, notwithstanding Castro's pronouncement decades later, Fidel Castro had not become a communist, nor was his January 26th movement anything associated with the Communist Party. Nor did Castro bring communism into the government. According to a 1958 CIA report, the Cuban Communist Party

45:33 favored general strike tactics. They wanted nothing to do with the M26 movement. Even people in Cuba, they had a very small contingent. They actually called themselves communists. They wanted nothing to do with Castro. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico all had communist party elements that were much larger than Cuba's.

46:06 And most, unless they were getting ready to overthrow the government, no one in Washington talked about any of them. Castro's own movement also far outnumbered any that of the self-proclaimed communist in Cuba. Relating to the Castro government, Eisenhower began with a wait and see attitude. The CIA's initial assessment.

46:32 explained Batista's fall by citing corruption and his consequent lack of public support. Alan Dulles is said to have taken this report and personally rewritten it. A paper Dulles forwarded to State in February of 1959, not all complimentary to Castro, called the situation far from stable. The paper assorted...

47:02 asserted that M26 group lacked dynamic leadership. He categorized it as floundering. It said that it had difficulty relating to youth and that all of the top leaders were inexperienced. Well,

47:30 That doesn't say much about your CIA-supported dictator, Batista, because they kicked his ass. He also said the glamour of the Sierra Matre and the straggly beards is rapidly wearing off. That was the actual intelligence assessment regarding Castro. Fidel's visit to Washington in April for a speech.

48:07 To the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he did not meet Eisenhower, but spoke to State Department officials and with Vice President Richard Nixon, who thought Fidel sincere. But he reported, quote, he is either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline, unquote. He was not under communist. And.

48:51 He didn't give a crap about communism because he wasn't planning on being a communist dictator. He wanted to give the island back to the people. You can talk about corruption later on because dictators have a tendency to be very corrupt. Granted, that was not his intention. His intention was to get the corrupt people out of his country that were being controlled.

49:19 by the United States. He didn't want the drugs there anymore. He didn't want the prostitution and he didn't want the American government and all of the United Fruit and all of those other people owning all of the shit and making them slaves to these people because the labor was basically being extorted at that point. Again, not a Castro fan, just laying out the facts. The State Department analysis read this, quote,

49:51 With regard to his position on communism and the Cold War struggle, Castro cautiously indicated that Cuba would remain in the Western camp. However, his position here must still be regarded as uncertain. He did go sufficiently far in his declaration to be vulnerable to the criticism of radicals among his supporters, unquote. So Castro makes it very clear.

50:21 to Nixon and to the State Department. I'm in the Western camp. I'm not a communist. But everything during this time is seen through a black and white lens. You either allow us to extort your people or we're going to call you a communist. And then you can become whatever you want because we're going to try to kill you. On his own copy of the State Department analysis, Eisenhower wrote, we will check in a year.

50:59 So obviously, Castro was not an imminent threat. Castro did have a problem, but with Cuban conservatives, not the radicals. By and large, the landed, moneyed families had been tied to Batista. They enabled him. They wanted him and his army to put down any unions, anything that threatened their wealth. The same is true.

51:35 In every one of these countries, the CIA comes in and the William Pollies and the Sullivan and Cromwells and the United Fruit come in and there's this bourgeois class of people that are either recruited because they were already rich or they make them rich by corrupt land deals and financing and all this other stuff and then use them as their Praetorian guard over...

52:05 and with the government to squash the people and exploit them. So there's a real problem with those people. They're not going to like Castro at all. Fearful of the revolution, they left in droves, taking their money with them. Within two weeks of Castro's assumption of power in Havana, the CIA had set up an office in Miami. It was a field activity called Domestic Conduct Division.

52:39 It kept a watch on everyone arriving from Cuba. It was headed by Justin Glickhoff, G-L-E-I-C-H-A-U-F, the sole agency officer involved. Miami presently became the largest station in the CIA's global network, on a par with Bonn in Germany.

53:05 during the Soviet operation or Taiwan during the attacks on China. It was huge. The largest one at that current time was set up in Miami because the anticipation is everybody that worked with the CIA in Cuba need to be repatriated into the United States or patriated into the United States as refugees because the people are going to talk.

53:35 They're going to know who was Batista's inside people in bed with the CIA, who the corrupt elite are. They all have to get out of there. And the CIA is going to welcome them all in to live as our neighbors. By December 1959, there were 100,000 Cuban immigrants in the U.S. Without these skilled technicians, doctors, and lawyers and their money,

54:08 Cuba had little capital to diversify away from sugar, whose market centered in the United States and was regulated by a quota system. So basically, they had eliminated all of the production capability except for sugar. And why sugar? Well, a lot of reasons. They're trying to poison us with sugar, but they also use sugar to cut the cocaine with, not cocaine, heroin with.

54:38 to come into the United States, which is why Cuba was a staging point for Sicilian and Corsican mafia cocaine. We told the story of how they were shipping cocaine into Cuba, masked in plastic oranges by the crates. And that was one of the functions that Cuba served for the CIA.

55:09 Very interesting. So they have sugar and all of the rich people leave, the doctors, lawyers that were all in bed with the CIA and the corrupt government leave and you have immediate brain drain. And that's on purpose. Meanwhile, under Batista, the mafia had controlled all of the gambling houses in Havana, the hotels, the restaurants, everything. The Godfather Part Two illustrates this.

55:42 The mafia left when Castro prohibited gambling. Imagine that. Exappropriation as attempted by Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala became part of the solution. An element of irony existed here since Castro's father had once worked for United Fruit. In any case,

56:08 In the fall of 1959, which is probably why Fidel Castro knew all about what was going on, because he was a lawyer. He was not like this hobo guy that just got pissed off. And Che Guevara was a doctor. They were not uneducated people. They knew exactly what was going on. Fidel signed a decree for nationalization. That December, the first American concern was, quote unquote, intervened, as the Cubans called it.

56:40 In 1960, the sugar plantations and Havana hotels followed. Land reform accelerated with the nationalization of large holdings, beginning with the Castro family plantation. It is said that Fidel's mother never forgave him. So he even confiscated his own family's plantation. That's hilarious. I had not heard that story before. I have it highlighted.

57:12 Eisenhower feared what was going on in Cuba. There were reports of a legion created for this purpose. During 1959 and 60, small armed groups invaded Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. Much as Castro himself had sailed to Cuba,

57:42 to establish his base. The rebels were citizens of their own countries. So in other words, there were going to be some lookalike revolution attempts since Castro had successfully done his. Not from outside forces, from people from those countries. Let's see. It says, in fact, the invasion of the Dominican Republic had been carried out from Puerto Rico.

58:20 from expats from the DR that were living in Puerto Rico. The American government, even the CIA, recognized these factors to some degree. By November 5th, 1959, Director Cabell told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that either the Cuban communists, and again, we're calling communists already, nor the CIA considered Castro a communist.

58:49 Cabell also downplayed the participation in the revolutionary expeditions, pointing out that they were not organized or dominated by Cubans. He also conceded that anti-communists have an interest in rumors, which will increase our alarm over the communist influence in Cuba. So he's calling them out. Sure.

59:17 All of those people that live under the banner of anti-communists are going to call us communist because we don't agree with their economic model. And anything else that happens, whether it's the revolution that happened in Cuba starts a blaze of other people that have been under the thumb of United Fruit and U.S. oligarchs start trying to attempt. That's all going to be categorized as the spread of communism.

59:48 Even though they're officially recognizing Castro's not a communist. As Cabell spoke on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Christian Harder put finishing touches on a paper he sent to Eisenhower. The memo proposed four measures on Cuba. These included doing nothing to help Castro consolidate power, a propaganda campaign to promote

1:00:22 the American concept of democracy, encouraging opposition to Cuba, both inside Cuba and elsewhere, avoiding any impression that Washington was doing it, and preserving mutual interest for the U.S. in a Cuban government. Harder ended with a revealing note, quote, in view of the special sensitivities of Latin America to the U.S., intervention.

1:00:51 I would propose that the existence and substance of this current policy statement be held on a very strict need to know basis, unquote. So we're already talking intervention and he hasn't even really done anything. Eisenhower accepted the proposals and also the secrecy as

1:01:16 Good Pastor told Harder on November 9th at the White House, knowledge would be confined to Good Pastor himself, Eisenhower's son, John S.D. Eisenhower, Gordon Gray, and one confidential secretary. When Gray proposed that the Hall board be brought into the circle, Allen Dulles shot it down fast. In April of 59, the president was willing to wait a year.

1:01:45 Now, six months later, Eisenhower approved measures that began a secret war. So again, Castro hasn't even been there very long at all, six months, and they've already declared war on him. The CIA already had an answer. In August of 59, discussions had begun creating a paramilitary capability for Latin America. You know, overall, we're just going to have one we can deploy everywhere.

1:02:14 And now we have all these Cuban exiles dumped in our lap. Voila! Studies ensued with a recommendation by the Western Division staff to move to acquire an airline usable in the region. Meanwhile, the secret warriors also intervened to help put Castro in a penalty box.

1:02:47 On November 24th, Alan Dulles saw the British ambassador and asked Great Britain to resist Cuban attempts to buy weapons, in particular, Hawker Hunter jets, then that was already under negotiations from the previous administration in Cuba. So yeah, don't sell them any weapons because we're getting ready to attack them.

1:03:12 The ambassador's cable noted Dulles saying he hoped that any refusal by us to supply arms would directly lead to a Soviet bloc offer to supply. You see what's happening? Hey, NATO, don't sell him anything. Leave him out there as a sitting duck because we want him to call the Soviet Union so we can start building the case that he's a communist.

1:03:43 They say it out loud. This, of course, was in classified cables, but they're talking among themselves. This is the modus operandi. And then he goes on to say he's hoping that it leads to a Soviet bloc deal. Then he might be able to do something. Dulles said Castro had a quote unquote streak of lunacy.

1:04:18 He's only been there for a few months. They're building the rhetoric. He speculated that his leadership might last eight months or shorter. And they're going to be very intent on making sure that happens. This is just crazy. It said that if Castro endured this testing time, he might remain in power for a number of years. So Alan Dulles, using Eisenhower's one-year clock,

1:04:59 was going to try to pressure Castro into doing something stupid. And if we don't get him in the first year, he may be there for a long time. He was there for a shit ton of time. Several strange incidents occurred in Cuba around the same time. On February 19th, an American piloted plane blew up while flying over the sugar refinery in the Montanza province.

1:05:31 just weirdly blew up. A month later, near that same area, two Americans were captured in another plane crash. The captives, William, I'm going to spell his name. I don't know how to say it. S-C-H-E-R-G-A-L-E-S, Chagallus and Howard Runquist, injured were hospitalized.

1:06:03 One asserted that the Castro government had hired them. The story could have been true or not, but probably not, because it was later indicated that they had some fairly sketchy backgrounds, but that was going to be their cover story, that they're working for the bad guys, the Castro government. There was also an incident in Havana's harbor.

1:06:34 The Pan-American dock, already nationalized, was unloading a French motor vessel carrying general cargo plus ammunition purchased from Belgium. On March 4th, without a warning, a blast blew away the ship's bow and most of its structure. A secondary explosion ignited the ammunition.

1:07:06 Flames quickly spread. All of the firefighters in Havana barely contained the blaze before it reached the nearby electric plant. More than 100 people were killed or injured. Castro immediately blamed this on Americans. Of course, Washington denied it. The only sure fact remained that they had lost not only the ship,

1:07:37 but several people on board. That's crazy. So just within a few days of this wait and see and Alan Dulles saying, hey, let's see what we can do. You got a plane crash. You have a plane blow up. You have a ship blow up. I'm sure it's nothing to see here. Nothing at all to see here. Okay, so that's it for today.

1:08:17 And the Cubans resurface, right? Isn't it funny how all of these things all kind of contrive together as we go through the reading? And what's also very interesting for those of you, and I still haven't figured out how to download the premiere videos over on Rumble yet. Maybe Bridget can help me with that. But anyway.

1:08:46 We just finished the segment that I just did, I think yesterday, is talking about all the Cuban overflights of the U-2 program. So they're like going along simultaneously here. And I didn't even realize that because I didn't read the U-2 stuff ahead of time. But it is literally mirroring the material in this book. Again, one of those divine intervention things.

1:09:17 because we just covered the crazy, aggressive U-2 flights over Cuba. It's just a big woven tapestry. Yep. SR? Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for being here as well on Spaces and on Rumble. I'm sitting here listening to all of this, and all of a sudden Cornell University pops up. And I'm thinking about Cornell, and I'm saying, you know,

1:09:53 We've been doing this series about secret society for some time now. Yep. And there happens to be one at Cornell called Quill and Dagger. Yep. Although we haven't heard a lot about those characters being positioned in some of the levels of the government that we have seen. So to me, the question is, where did those go?

1:10:20 Then along with the fact that you pointed out and made it so very clear that during this whole Cuba deal, the people who wound up getting far back here were the wealthy. Not the small-time people who needed all this help. No. Correct. We brought back the wealthy. So thank you, Colonel. Yep. And the corrupt.

1:10:51 Military people that had worked with the CIA and the mafia down there, all of the casino owners. Yeah, that's kind of the way it works. Go ahead, Renee. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. You're going in and out now. I was going to.

1:11:30 okay let all along okay all right go ahead all along um yes colonel i think that um you're bringing these points about the youtube spy play is you know very important and we hello go ahead you can hear me yeah okay sorry yeah i think um the stuff about the multiple you know multiple

1:12:03 actions that the YouTube project entailed, you know, whether it be from Polaroid with the development of the camera going back in 1953, or whether it be, you know, the YouTube incident, whether it be the YouTube spy plane flying over both China and the Soviet Union, and the way it was used to, you know, sabotage the detente talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev in 1960.

1:12:33 Plus, not even to mention, as I've said a billion times, the absolutely critical statement of Gary Francis Powers about Lee Harvey Oswald being in the Soviet Union at the time he was shot down. And again, he said that on a big San Diego radio station. For me, that's what matters. Noticing the communications aspect of this. They could give a green crap if I said anything anywhere.

1:13:02 If a guy with really magnetic access, like a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, Derek Thomas, you know, who had the biggest, you know, the biggest following in Kansas City, he could have been several mayors, said something, you know, it really, really matters. And Gary Francis Power, who's already famous, and then he says that on a big San Diego radio station, and then he does. The communications aspect.

1:13:32 It's essential to understanding how, in my opinion, it seems essential to understanding how the CIA is going to respond to any different situation. You know what I mean? Yep. Because like some things that might be in their CIA's institutional interest, you know, which overlaps, you know, with international corporations interests to just ignore other things they might need to.

1:14:02 flagrantly combat in certain parts of the media you know that are potentially influential um i mean on that last note just the amazing book by deborah davis um on katherine graham of the washington post is just you know it's an amazing book but it doesn't get attacked you know why it's not because they can't they can't really attack it

1:14:32 So, you know, in that situation, it's better, as this is my understanding anyway, it might seem better to just flat out ignore, you know, you know what I mean? Maybe another option that might be better for CA to, in David Talbot's word, controversialize, controversialize the topic. And yeah, but also I just wanted to mention.

1:15:00 So it's important to look at, you know, all of these YouTube things and how they might interlap and over interconnect with each other. But also just in your mentioning of those different areas, one figure that has always interested me. And, you know, I could be making a mountain of a molehill or not is the CIA guy, Desmond Fitzgerald, because he goes he goes from Southeast Asia.

1:15:30 two cuba operations in the western hemisphere i think he may have i don't he wasn't head of western hemisphere but he was like very high up there with um whatchamacallit the head of western hemisphere and it's just in 1962 now kind of an interesting time to go from southeast asia to cuba i'm just saying and i'm like i just i you know it could be i could be way you know romanticizing this temporal

1:16:00 you know, change here or overemphasizing it, but it's all, it's also perhaps noteworthy that, you know, Desmond Fitzgerald's daughter is on the editorial board of the nation magazine. And it's, I mean, I'm not, it's not really fair to, to blame her or her dad, but in my understanding is there's vast differences between them. And, and, you know, I read her book, fire in the lake on Vietnam about a billion years ago.

1:16:31 But I remember being struck by it as, you know, at that time I had no contacts. You know, very good. But, again, there could have been all kinds of, you know, left gatekeeping mechanisms that I wouldn't have known about. You know what I mean? Yes, because now you have your Gladio glasses. Right, right. Exactly. And also, but, yeah, it's just, you know, The Nation is such an interesting magazine because, you know, they're.

1:17:00 Lead investigative reporter. I know I've said this a million times. I'm going to post it in the bubble again. Fred Cook was he wrote an amazing article or chapter from his book on how Kerry McWilliams, the famous left liberal, you know, editor of The Nation, just like smacked down his objective, you know, reporting about the Warren Commission in late 63 and throughout 60.

1:17:29 four, five, and six. And it's just like, the way he describes it, you can see the elitist kind of class nature of the left gatekeepers, who, in my opinion, are not in any way left. Just the opposite, because they help elitists manipulate the Gladio operations with false opposites, false binaries.

1:17:59 Yeah, and so, yeah, Desmond Fitzgerald, he's always struck me as interesting. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on him because he's often not widely mentioned. He died in 1967 in what I call the tennis court. He had a heart attack on a tennis court. And with that kind of a figure being where he was and when he was, you know, I can't remember the details of it as to whether it was suspicious or not.

1:18:29 He just seems an intriguing guy to me. But anyway. So let me just give you the highlights. I have an outline in my research where I come across him. He was educated at one of those elite boarding schools, St. Mark's, Harvard graduate. And he was in China with Paul Helliwell and those operations during World War II.

1:19:00 he worked at a Wall Street, hold on, he worked at a Wall Street law firm. So, you know, you can just see the profile building itself. And he was part, as we articulated here, of the Tibetan operation. And he was very, very close to

1:19:27 William Colby, very close. He conducted operations in the Philippines. He was also involved in the Korean operations. He was part of the approval process of the decision to arm the Hmong guerrillas in Laos.

1:19:54 You can just see how he is involved in many of these operations. I also found an excerpt that he was part of the, in the mid 60s, he was part of an effort because Rampart Magazine during that period of time was kind of the go-to revelations of.

1:20:19 what was going on in CIA operations. So he mounted an attack on them. And yeah, and we find them in the Cuba. He is also, like, this is one of the things that we do with War Hamster. You always look at who these people married. He married a Peabody.

1:20:50 So I made note of that in my notes. So supposedly, to your point about how he died, it says that, I just looked this part up on Wikipedia. In 1967, while playing tennis with his wife, the British ambassador to the United States, Patrick Dean, and the ambassador's wife, he suffered a heart attack.

1:21:20 I'm sorry. The U.S. ambassador or the British ambassador to the U.S.? Okay. Yeah. There's nothing. Yeah. So we'll just leave that there. Okay. Renee, go ahead. Okay. I think I'm in a better zone now. Yeah. Looking forward to.

1:21:45 What's going to happen with Cuba, because it's such a grand finale of everything we've learned in Operation Gladio, Condor, Latin America, United Fruit, you know, anti-communism, communism propaganda. It's such a big player for this hemisphere and what has gone on here, including all the old. Yeah, you cut out again.

1:22:19 Go ahead and try it again, Renee. I don't know. Maybe they're attacking her too. We'll come back to her. Why are you so mad? Go ahead. I just wanted to state that the timing couldn't be more perfect in what you're exposing. I can't praise you enough, Colonel. And you and Bridget and all that you're doing, letting everybody know what is really going on behind the scenes.

1:22:52 So that, you know, some people that don't really know will not panic. And I just, I can't praise you enough. I don't believe in coincidence. This is absolutely divine timing for you. And I really appreciate all that you're doing and all that Bridget and everybody else is doing to expose all this. This is your time. This is our time. And hopefully, you know, people are courageous like you.

1:23:20 You set an amazing example, and I really appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you. Renee, go ahead. All right. Let's try this one more time. Can you hear me? All right, great. Yeah, what I was saying is really looking forward to the unfolding of Cuba right now because it's so connected to Operation Condor, Operation Gladio, all the old dogs, E. Howard Hunt.

1:23:51 Paul Haleywell, et cetera, who were part of the OSS, you know, William Polly over in China. There's so many connections here. And then currently we have a lot of people in our government who are connected to Cuban exiles. So there's so much on deck right now. Wanted to share a little was looking into Batista.

1:24:19 on my own recently. And his father and himself actually worked, uh, are connected with United Fruit as well in Cuba. And he had an interesting life kind of bouncing back between the United States and Cuba. Um, and when he fled on, uh, that, what it was, um, New Year's Eve,

1:24:47 He took with him, of what majority I can find, almost $300 million when he fled. You're fading out again. Connections he had. And he had Swiss bank accounts. And naturally, he ended up in Florida and then later went to Madera.

1:25:19 Portugal and he was in Spain in the end of his life, both Portugal and Spain. So it all fits in full circle with Operation Gladio completely. So this is like, I'm very excited to see how this all comes together and how Trump plays this out because there's such an abundance of loud voices on X with

1:25:48 ill words and opinions of Cuba, but the propaganda is so great on it. So I'm biting my fingernails to see how this unfolds and how people will respond because a lot of information and opinions, I think, are going to collapse. Yeah. And that's so important.

1:26:17 to take these players and these strategy of tension focal points off the board. Because if you're taking apart this system, you have to address the nodes of strategy of tension. And Cuba has facilitated that for the entire...

1:26:40 western hemisphere it has been the one focal point so and that's why we have talked often about you know what part of the war against cuba was legitimate and what part of it was there to um

1:27:02 basically create a narrative that they're just constantly falling all over themselves, trying to take this poor guy out. And at the same time, oh my gosh, we failed again. Oh my gosh, we failed again. Because he immediately became very useful to the anti-communist narrative. And it is what facilitated Condor because it was used in every...

1:27:30 You know, absent the initial Guatemalan coup, it became the crutch that was used throughout all of the nefarious activities in the Western Hemisphere. So it has been hung out there. And of course, you see today.

1:27:45 that every narrative of every attack anywhere by the CIA and destabilization in the Western Hemisphere has used it. And it has to be taken off the board. It has to be resolved. If you're going to pull the rug out from this entire global enterprise, these strategy of tension nodes have to be neutralized.

1:28:11 And I don't mean that as in assassination. I mean, they have to be taken off this proverbial board. And so one way or the other, it has to be dismantled. It has to be neutralized from that perspective. So anyway, okay. Anybody else got anything? SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I did want to...

1:28:44 Say thank you, Renee, because you make a valid point here. For all of us that have been listening to the kernel for quite some time now, we are seeing it come full circle. We do have new folks that come and join us. And for those that don't, William Pauly was talked about today a little bit. I did put a link out there to your substack kernel, William Pauly.

1:29:10 And and a few of the other things to help people along to see that this is not something that just happened overnight. It has been playing out for a very long time. So thank you for that, Renee. I appreciate that. Yeah. And to Renee's point about the massive amounts of money in order to allow the.

1:29:39 basically overrunning of Cuba by these oligarchs and the setting up of these enterprises there's

1:29:48 money that is siphoned off through quid pro quo type of arrangements both with the mafia i mean he got in bed with the mafia big time batista did and so there's going to be a skimming off of that money in order to allow the because the muscle of the cuban army

1:30:09 was what allowed these nefarious activities to come about. And this is the same arrangements that we talked about totalitarianism in Italy under Mussolini. They use the government as the muscle in order to facilitate the repression of the people and the enrichment of the oligarchs. And that's the piece that most people miss in this.

1:30:37 arrangement of how these things work. They focus primarily on the dictator while ignoring the oligarchs that benefit so that these dictators facilitate basically the fleecing and repression of the people.

1:30:56 and the enrichment of the oligarchs, but they don't do that without exacting a percentage of the profits that are being generated that theft.

1:31:08 So there is a quote unquote tax put on that theft in which goes into their own personal bank accounts. And that's why all of these people, you find them with accounts at Castle Bank and BCCI and New Jahan and all of these various illicit banking activities in order to.

1:31:30 maintain this operation, you have to keep that dictator basically on your payroll. And just like we saw in Iran with all of the massive real estate that the Ayatollah has amassed over the period of time that he was quote unquote in charge of Iran, they enrich themselves by sacrificing their people.

1:31:57 You just have to understand how that whole cycle works. Anybody else? I'm going to jump off here real quick since I've got a six o'clock with Ash and Ken Con as we continue to go through this crazy book. So anyway.

1:32:23 Very interesting, all of this. So I do have a few other things I will probably put out later. A little bit of additional research I did when I was reviewing this part of the book, but we'll do that separately. Or I'll talk about it tomorrow as we start.

1:32:43 Because we're going to be talking about Cuba, obviously, for the next couple of days. So I might just wait till then to talk to you guys about some of the other pieces. But Renee is definitely on point with her comments. So you guys have a nice evening. Did you have something else you wanted to say, Renee? Yeah, I just wanted to say, well, thank you, SR. And thank you, Colonel and Bridget and everyone. Because I guess I wouldn't.

1:33:13 be here if it weren't for you, Colonel and Bridget, and, you know, coming upon everything. And I can't believe I'm here, but I'm just so very grateful. We have eyes so different now than the rest of the world, and it's all thanks to you. So thank you. Thank you. Well, it's obviously been a team effort. Colonel Carter.

1:33:41 Colonel started it. I did. I did. But I could not have done any of this without all of you. That is absolutely true. I am just constantly amazed at the amount of pockets of information that exist in this network that we've created. And I am, you know,

1:34:09 bombarded by DMs of people filling in pieces that I have not yet discovered that put into context. And I try to vet those things. Sometimes, obviously, they don't pan out and the sources are not what I would consider.

1:34:32 uh worthy of bringing to you guys but so many of them are and so many of them are from personal experience um so a lot of people along the way also i'll just say this and then um we need to close but there's been a lot of people that have had personal experience with some of this stuff that is outside the parameter of our specific focus on operation gladio and it has been

1:35:01 interesting when you tell people that while I understand you have personal experience with this or that or whatever it is, that doesn't fit within my wheelhouse and I don't feel comfortable.

1:35:14 Because in many cases, it truly is personal and I can't validate any of it. I will not bring that information to you guys. And of course, that pisses a lot of people off and they say really nasty things in the DMs, but I don't care. If I can't vet the information, I'm not going to contaminate our group.

1:35:38 with, you know, what boils down to someone's comments, which I can't validate, and I realize that that ticks a lot of people off, and I'm not going to apologize for staying within my wheelhouse of the information that I can vet, and that is within the purview of the

1:36:05 kind of the fence, you know, cause this goes everywhere and I don't feel qualified to go all of the places this could go. And I won't go where I don't have in-depth knowledge of the material. So if that pisses you off, I don't care. Anyway, so we've lost a few people along the way because a lot of this information doesn't fit within their approved paradigms that they,

1:36:35 are comfortable with. And I completely understand that as well. The truth will not be for everybody. That's definitely just kind of my experience in the last three plus years. There are a lot of people that can't handle the truth. And we've experienced that, Bridget and I, along the way.

1:36:56 And there are other people that are very focused on shaping everything to their preconceived ideas. And that's fine. You can do that. I'm not going to do that. I want all of the information. I want to present the information and then you guys form your own opinions. But I'm not going to pre-shape the end destination for any of you. That was a core thing through this whole mission, I would say.

1:37:25 And like you said, a lot of people, you know, they got an ax to grind or they got an angle to work or they, you know, but it's the truth. The truth is not subjective. Yeah, Bridget can attest to the behind the scenes. It is not always, it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

1:37:48 If I took any of this personal, I'd have quit a long time ago. I don't. I'm just interested in the truth. I'm interested in presenting the truth. And that's the reason why we do books from both the proverbial right and left so that you guys can form your own opinion. Because I think that's critical in today's environment. There's too many people that jump on too many bandwagons and I'm not going to do that.

1:38:18 Anyway, that's it for today. You guys take care. I've got to go get me a drink and get prepared for the six o'clock show. So if you guys have the time, join us over on the book club on Badlands Media with CanCon and Ash. And we will continue to explore the election fraud that somehow is all in Venezuela and none of it's in Venezuela. But anyway, take care, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow.

Entities here

Cuba37 United States26 Fidel Castro25 Tibet25 CIA25 Fulgencio Batista24 China24 Dwight D. Eisenhower16 Mustang16 Nepal Volunteer Defense Army15 Havana14 Desmond Fitzgerald14 Allen Dulles12 Operation Gladio11 India11 Cuban Revolution9 John F. Kennedy9 Nepal7 26th of July Movement7 United Fruit Company6 Washington, D.C.6 5412 Group6 Mafia6 John Noss5 William Pawley5 John Kenneth Galbraith5 U.S. State Department5 Peterson Field Incident5 Belgian Communist Party4 Soviet Union4 Guatemala4 Che Guevara4 Richard M. Bissell Jr.4 Miami4 Kathmandu4 Gordon Gray4 Batista's Flight4 Christian Herter3 Paul Helliwell3 Dalai Lama3

Claims made here

CIA equipped Nepal Volunteer Defense Army documented ▶ 1:25

“which should be finished today. Yeah, we'll get into the next chapter today. Okay, so what estimate that the CIA equipped 14,000 soldiers in Tibet, which was almost all of the active male population s…”

CIA used Mustang documented ▶ 1:55

“without aircraft seemed impossible. But they were very efficient at setting up ways to do that. One of the new tactics was going to be using a ancient principality called Mustang. And that was located…”

CIA cleared_concept_with India documented ▶ 3:00

“meetings, because Interpol's like the international police kind of clearinghouse. So they go to an Interpol conference and are talking about this kind of nefarious stuff. Dick Bissell, who was at the …”

CIA trained Nepal Volunteer Defense Army documented ▶ 4:59

“Was China killing Tibetans? Yes, they were. Why is that? Because the Tibetans were being trained by the CIA to attack the Chinese. And you can say whatever you want about an internal civil war of Tibe…”

CIA funded Dalai Lama documented ▶ 6:30

“The agency also began monthly subsidies to the Dalai Lama, totaling $1.7 million a year. That continued for many, many years. Just before the 1960 election, CIA General Cabell updated the special grou…”

Allen Dulles briefed John F. Kennedy documented ▶ 7:29

“handed the project over to the Kennedy transition team several weeks later. Though Ike himself did not sit down with the president-elect until December 6th, Eisenhower specifically recalls that Allen …”

CIA killed Patrice Lumumba host_asserted ▶ 7:59

“basically just killed Patrice Lumumba. There was also a discussion with Gordon Gray and Eisenhower on the morning of November 25th. Mr. Dulles reported to the president on certain consultations that h…”

John Kenneth Galbraith discussed CIA documented ▶ 9:33

“would be Harvard economist John Galbraith. Before leaving for his post on March 27th, 1961, Galbraith discussed CIA operations in India with Richard Bissell. There was an element of irony in this meet…”

Marshall Plan funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 10:01

“a man who had long resisted Keynesian arguments, but ended up administering Keynesian-style foreign and military aid, first during the Marshall Plan, and now for the CIA, which is basically the same t…”

John F. Kennedy authorized CIA documented ▶ 10:32

“Galbraith. The list of projects, many of which bothered the ambassador. A couple of weeks earlier, President Kennedy had authorized CIA airdrops to the Mustang location. Galbraith determined to stop t…”

John Kenneth Galbraith canceled Project Cirrus documented ▶ 12:35

“He found Kennedy subdued and too busy with the CIA failure in Cuba. He argued with the president, Bobby Kennedy, and McGeorge Bundy and put his objections to Dulles and Bissell, telling them Kennedy h…”

Nepal Volunteer Defense Army carried_out_attack China documented ▶ 14:57

“Though they had more success blocking access to the camp. In October of 61, the NVDA achieved a great success. A raiding party led by the Indian-trained partisan RAGRA sent to disrupt traffic along on…”

CIA retrieved Nepal Volunteer Defense Army documented ▶ 15:59

“Bulletin of Activities of General Political Department of the PLA. It basically had covered a period of January to August 1961. The CIA officer personally retrieved the material and carried it to Wash…”

CIA created Air Nepal documented ▶ 16:56

“Tens of millions of dollars have already been expended. Meanwhile, the CIA sent political action specialist Howard Stone, last seen in Syria, to head up the beefed up station at Kathmandu. The agency …”

CIA detained John Hoskin documented ▶ 18:34

“We're back in the United States. Rather than flying away at night, the Tibetans reached the field after dawn. Airfield employees saw the Globemaster sitting on the apron and strange men milling about.…”

Robert F. Kennedy suppressed Peterson Field Incident documented ▶ 19:04

“told them that it would be a federal crime to talk about any of it, all in the name of a dubious national security. The story made the local radio the next morning, by afternoon in the Colorado Spring…”

John Noss replaced Roger McCarthy documented ▶ 19:59

“prohibited by law from operating inside the United States and has no authority to detain citizens or to protect secrecy. The major flap in Washington ended Roger McCarthy's tenure as chief of the task…”

Roger McCarthy removed_from_power CIA documented ▶ 19:59

Averell Harriman sided_with John Kenneth Galbraith documented ▶ 21:56

“lost most of what it had gained after India's 1962 border war with China when W. Avril Harriman made a diplomatic tour of the region and sided with the ambassador. Not even Desmond Fitzgerald, Jim Cri…”

CIA funded India documented ▶ 22:57

“by 1963, and a combined headquarters in New Delhi by early 1964, all funded by the CIA. The Indian intelligence people met weekly with the CIA and the NVDA representatives. Indians were supposed to co…”

William Colby proposed CIA documented ▶ 24:24

“The Tibetans countered with a proposal to split their strength in both places. A couple of months later, William Colby, now the chief of the DO for Far East Division, carried a fresh proposal to the s…”

CIA sponsored Nepal Volunteer Defense Army documented ▶ 25:26

“This is crazy. Just year after year, just throwing weapons away. But the leading edge of the CIA effort now shifted to Ithaca, New York at Cornell University, where the agency sponsored Tibetans to le…”

Mao Zedong demanded Nepal documented ▶ 26:55

“Another blow in 1969 was the retirement of Galio Thornthrop. With the U.S. rapprochement of 1972, Mao Zedong demanded an end to the charade. When the King of Nepal visited Beijing in November of 73, M…”

Nepal pardoned Nepal Volunteer Defense Army documented ▶ 27:56

“some of their most fierce fighters. The top commander escaped with the NVDA archives and had a small escort only to be killed in a later ambush. Seven other Tibetan leaders surrendered at Mustang and …”

CIA followed Cuba documented ▶ 31:33

“For months, the agency had followed events in Cuba in growing fear of the disintegration of Americans' cozy position with their military dictator, Batista. They had been unable to quell the rebellion …”

Dwight D. Eisenhower approved CIA documented ▶ 32:02

“ran by Fidel Castro, successful in every endeavor, appeared to be marching to Havana. Despite CIA analysts who argued Batista's solid hold on power, President Eisenhower approved measures to forestall…”

CIA embedded_with Fidel Castro host_asserted ▶ 32:33

“That's what you get for your investment in intelligence. Despite the fact that we already have documented evidence that the CIA was embedded in the mountains with the Castro and Che Guevara. Eisenhowe…”

William Pawley founded Cuban Airline documented ▶ 33:05

“began focusing on anti-Castro schemes in late 1958. That November, William Polly, who owned the Havana Bus Company and many sugar plantations and a whole bunch of other shit down there, had founded th…”

William Pawley financed Flying Tigers documented ▶ 34:06

“William Polly also was part and parcel of the Flying Tigers and installing Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, originally Formosa. He owned the Curtis Aircraft franchise over there, supplied him with all of th…”

William Pawley supplied_arms_to Chiang Kai-shek documented ▶ 34:06

CIA involved_in Cuba documented ▶ 35:41

“And without them, there's no way they can hold off Castro. For its part, the CIA became involved in at least four different plots. Colonel Prouty's group at Quarters Eye on December 31st, 1958, sat th…”

Allen Dulles ordered_assassination_of Fidel Castro host_asserted ▶ 37:31

“All of the ambassadors are going to not want a Castro because the ambassadors actually represent the international syndicate, not us. The station warned of Batista's vulnerability, even as the CIA tri…”

Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista documented ▶ 40:35

“But Batista's corruption and oppression increasingly lost their support. Cubans flocked to Castro's July 26th movement by the droves. It had taken this name from the date of an unsuccessful revolt tha…”

Fidel Castro founded 26th of July Movement documented ▶ 40:35

David Atlee Phillips spied_on Fulgencio Batista documented ▶ 41:35

“Aboard three planes, the group took flight. Batista left Camp Columbia base at 2.40 in the morning on January 1st, 1959. David Attlee Phillips, now a part-time CIA undercover agent in Havana, sat in h…”

Che Guevara carried_out_attack La Cabaña Fortress documented ▶ 42:34

“He got the news seven hours after Batista fled. Che Guevara immediately ordered a march forward. His force arrived in Havana the next morning. He drove directly to the La Cabana Fortress, whose garris…”

Richard Nixon spied_on Fidel Castro documented ▶ 48:07

“To the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he did not meet Eisenhower, but spoke to State Department officials and with Vice President Richard Nixon, who thought Fidel sincere. But he reported, quo…”

Justin Glickauf headed Domestic Conduct Division documented ▶ 52:39

“It kept a watch on everyone arriving from Cuba. It was headed by Justin Glickhoff, G-L-E-I-C-H-A-U-F, the sole agency officer involved. Miami presently became the largest station in the CIA's global n…”

Christian Herter proposed Fidel Castro documented ▶ 59:48

“Even though they're officially recognizing Castro's not a communist. As Cabell spoke on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Christian Harder put finishing touches on a paper he sent to Eisenhower. The me…”

Dwight D. Eisenhower approved Christian Herter documented ▶ 1:00:51

“I would propose that the existence and substance of this current policy statement be held on a very strict need to know basis, unquote. So we're already talking intervention and he hasn't even really …”

Allen Dulles targeted_for_regime_change Fidel Castro documented ▶ 1:01:45

“Now, six months later, Eisenhower approved measures that began a secret war. So again, Castro hasn't even been there very long at all, six months, and they've already declared war on him. The CIA alre…”

Allen Dulles supplied_arms_to Fidel Castro documented ▶ 1:02:47

“On November 24th, Alan Dulles saw the British ambassador and asked Great Britain to resist Cuban attempts to buy weapons, in particular, Hawker Hunter jets, then that was already under negotiations fr…”

Fidel Castro funded William Schergales speculative ▶ 1:06:03

“One asserted that the Castro government had hired them. The story could have been true or not, but probably not, because it was later indicated that they had some fairly sketchy backgrounds, but that …”

Fidel Castro exposed United States documented ▶ 1:07:06

“Flames quickly spread. All of the firefighters in Havana barely contained the blaze before it reached the nearby electric plant. More than 100 people were killed or injured. Castro immediately blamed …”

Gary Powers spied_on Lee Harvey Oswald caller_asserted ▶ 1:12:33

“Plus, not even to mention, as I've said a billion times, the absolutely critical statement of Gary Francis Powers about Lee Harvey Oswald being in the Soviet Union at the time he was shot down. And ag…”

Desmond Fitzgerald carried_out_attack Cuba host_asserted ▶ 1:15:30

“two cuba operations in the western hemisphere i think he may have i don't he wasn't head of western hemisphere but he was like very high up there with um whatchamacallit the head of western hemisphere…”

Frances FitzGerald member_of The Nation host_asserted ▶ 1:16:00

“you know, change here or overemphasizing it, but it's all, it's also perhaps noteworthy that, you know, Desmond Fitzgerald's daughter is on the editorial board of the nation magazine. And it's, I mean…”

Frances FitzGerald founded Fire in the Lake host_asserted ▶ 1:16:00

Fred Cook exposed Kerry McWilliams host_asserted ▶ 1:17:00

“Lead investigative reporter. I know I've said this a million times. I'm going to post it in the bubble again. Fred Cook was he wrote an amazing article or chapter from his book on how Kerry McWilliams…”

Desmond Fitzgerald member_of Paul Helliwell host_asserted ▶ 1:18:29

“He just seems an intriguing guy to me. But anyway. So let me just give you the highlights. I have an outline in my research where I come across him. He was educated at one of those elite boarding scho…”

Desmond Fitzgerald carried_out_attack Tibetan operation host_asserted ▶ 1:19:00

“he worked at a Wall Street, hold on, he worked at a Wall Street law firm. So, you know, you can just see the profile building itself. And he was part, as we articulated here, of the Tibetan operation.…”

Desmond Fitzgerald carried_out_attack Korea host_asserted ▶ 1:19:27

“William Colby, very close. He conducted operations in the Philippines. He was also involved in the Korean operations. He was part of the approval process of the decision to arm the Hmong guerrillas in…”

Desmond Fitzgerald supplied_arms_to Hmong guerrillas host_asserted ▶ 1:19:27

Desmond Fitzgerald carried_out_attack Philippines host_asserted ▶ 1:19:27

Desmond Fitzgerald member_of William Colby host_asserted ▶ 1:19:27

Desmond Fitzgerald carried_out_attack Rampart Magazine host_asserted ▶ 1:20:19

“what was going on in CIA operations. So he mounted an attack on them. And yeah, and we find them in the Cuba. He is also, like, this is one of the things that we do with War Hamster. You always look a…”

Desmond Fitzgerald member_of Patrick Dean host_asserted ▶ 1:20:50

“So I made note of that in my notes. So supposedly, to your point about how he died, it says that, I just looked this part up on Wikipedia. In 1967, while playing tennis with his wife, the British amba…”

Fulgencio Batista member_of United Fruit Company caller_asserted ▶ 1:24:19

“on my own recently. And his father and himself actually worked, uh, are connected with United Fruit as well in Cuba. And he had an interesting life kind of bouncing back between the United States and …”

Fulgencio Batista member_of Mafia host_asserted ▶ 1:29:48

“money that is siphoned off through quid pro quo type of arrangements both with the mafia i mean he got in bed with the mafia big time batista did and so there's going to be a skimming off of that mone…”

Benito Mussolini member_of Italy host_asserted ▶ 1:30:09

“was what allowed these nefarious activities to come about. And this is the same arrangements that we talked about totalitarianism in Italy under Mussolini. They use the government as the muscle in ord…”