The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 10

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Transcript

0:00 All right, we've got the space open. Let me grab my book. And SR is here, bright and early. Okay, and there's Miss Bridget. All right, we're set. Oh my gosh. You think when you've been on X as long as we have that you would have seen it all? Nope, nope.

0:44 I'm going to make a comment right up front. The thought that anybody today in 2026 would think that John Rockefeller worked for the CIA and not the other way around is literally mind-blowing to me. I just, I'm sorry. What? What'd you say, SR? Oh, I thought he said something. That is hysterical, by the way.

1:22 So, and it's so, you guys have no idea. My immediate out loud response was, what the, what the app? So I try not to always, although sometimes I do on purpose, respond in that way. But it's just so, and by the way, you got the wrong Rockefeller too.

1:51 He was saying that John Rockefeller was the guy running the Rockefeller Commission, which was Nelson, not John. Not that it matters a lot, but facts matter. Details matter. If you're going to say something like that, at least get the details right. Holy crap. When you're propagandizing someone, it's pretty easy to just, you know, throw all caution to wind.

2:18 If you're going to lie about one thing, why not lie about the whole thing? Just totally go off the rails. See, I don't even think the guy was lying. I think he actually thought that. That could be. But again, it's just so ridiculous on the surface. But anyway, all right, let's get to the lesson and then we can bitch about the people on X. All right. So we are at.

2:49 We're on page 112 in Bitter Fruits. We were talking about PB's success when we left off on Monday. And the concert, by the way, was awesome. Okay, so PB's success moves forward, though not without developments portending an outcome different from its name. The CIA organization for the project, which Richard Helms confirmed in mid-November, still had not completely filled out. Some doubted.

3:25 that the Nicaraguan dictator, Somoza, was going to be able to uphold his end of the bargain. And J.C. King wanted to use the first arms delivery to Castillo Armez, based in Nicaragua, to deepen Somoza's commitment. Another part of the plan involved using U.S. military assistance officers, military...

3:54 assistant officers from several central american countries but the pentagon was not okay with that idea the assistant to the secretary of defense for special operations refused to permit the cia to bring military into the plan although there's military acts if i could a second sure is it just me or it has not rumble started yet uh i don't know

4:25 Let me check. Let me refresh my thing and see if it'll start. Okay, there you go. I refreshed my browser. Well, I'll get to that afterwards. Okay, so they're a little slim on manning the PB6S staff. They have a lot of doubts about how this is going to go off. The SECDEF's not all that hot on having military advisors in country, although...

5:02 Military attaches are in the embassy there, fully aware of what's going on. Hans Toft, T-O-F-T-E, took that frustration to Tracy Barnes. But the staff chief could do no better. We are still in the intro over on Rumble. What the heck? Sorry, just didn't mean to interrupt. I turned that off. It must be a delay because it's not even playing on my end.

5:38 That's weird. Normally it's only like a 15 second or 30 second delay. You're there now. That's the reason why I hopped back over. Okay. All right. There you are. All right. So one of the oil companies told the CIA it would be feasible secretly and gradually to reduce stocks of fuel in Guatemala. This is called economic warfare. To the point where the oil crisis would result.

6:05 but company executives refused to proceed without cooperation from competitors. Later, the State Department refused to intervene, fearing a multi-corporation move would be identified as U.S.-inspired because they want plausible deniability. That does not mean that the corporations didn't collude on their own. Just keep that in mind because the CIA works for those corporations, not the U.S. government. Just before Christmas,

6:42 The troops that were at Apalaca under Al Haney covered several walls of his operation center with a complex flow chart tracking the many distinct parts of PB's success, showing current status and what needed doing before other portions of the project could proceed. The charts impressed Richard Bissell.

7:12 when Dulles' man went to Florida on his ever more numerous visits to this command post. In Mounting Fury, King complained that Haney considered himself directly under Dulles and that psychological warfare had been critically slowed by obstructions, such as a two-month delay in moving mimeograph machines to Castillo Armas, as well as

7:43 intentions to craft its own psychological warfare plan regardless of how it fit into the overall operation. In late January 1954, there occurred an enormous security breach. Arbenz police recruited a pandemonium diplomat, Jorge Delgado, an associate of Castillo-Armez, who had functioned as a courier.

8:09 Delgado gave the government copies of correspondence between the rebel leader and others, including Somoza. And for several months, he acted as a double agent, furnishing the Arbenz people more data. Delgado was present, for example, on January 12, 1954, when the first CIA black aircraft landed in Nicaragua with weapons. Based on Delgado material,

8:38 The Guatemalans arrested an individual who was the principal link between Castillo Armas and the supposed internal opposition. This internal front happened to be notional, essentially non-existent, but the agent network was real. The Arbenz government presented the Delgado material to the Organization of American States.

9:06 to other Central American governments and turned it into a white paper released to condemn American intervention. The CIA went into high gear to neutralize this, attempting to paint Delgado as a liar. Meanwhile, Castillo Armas pulled in to meet with CIA officers at an Opelika safe house, responded indignantly.

9:36 to suggestions that his own organization was the source. He denied any need for a security review. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City kept up unremitting pressure on Arbenz throughout these events. Ambassador Parafoy set the tone in January 1954 when he told a reporter for Time magazine that quote-unquote public opinion in the U.S. might force actions.

10:04 to prevent Guatemala from falling into the lap, you guessed it, of communism. The CIA prepared the groundwork as quietly as possible. Henry Ketcher, a key operative from Berlin, posed as a European coffee buyer to move covertly inside the country. Later, his role expanded to inducing defections from local military.

10:33 Project PB Success became the first real CIA covert operation for David Atlee Phillips, brought in after a brush with Florida police who had arrested him for trying to spend an alleged bogus check that almost broke his CIA cover and ended his clandestine career. He came before Tracy Barnes and E. Howard Hunt for vetting. Phillips, an amateur actor,

11:02 as well as a quote-unquote journalist, originally recruited in Chile four years earlier, had a flair for colorful language, but was not dumb. He put the key question to Tracy Barnes at their first meeting. Quote, but Arbenz became president in a free election, unquote. Phillips pointed out, what right do we have to help someone topple his government? Barnes evaded the question. It's all about democracy.

11:35 PB6S political action kicked off after the Arbenz white paper. Chief political operator E. Howard Hunt masterminded this aspect. Dave Phillips was assigned to run the black radio station. Phillips began with a field trip where he contrived to meet Henry Heckscher. The coffee buyer's professionalism and skill was legendary at the CIA.

12:04 But when Phillips checked, not much of Heckscher's information proved useful. In April, Phillips and several Guatemalan acolytes prepared a dairy barn at Santa Fe in rural Honduras as a clandestine voice of liberation radio, CIA codename Sherwood. In Guatemala City, a...

12:33 Anti-communist student newspaper, basically El Rebel, began publishing weekly, supported, and partially controlled by the CIA, interior to Guatemala, basically being ran as a CIA proprietary. An agent network codenamed Essence waged a political handbill and poster war against the Arbenz government.

13:05 The most successful endeavor, the 32 campaign, involved planting stickers or painting walls with this number, a reference to an article of the Guatemalan constitution prohibiting foreign political parties, thus an attack on the supposed communist that didn't exist. The only foreign presence in Guatemala at this point is the CIA, not the communists.

13:37 Always project onto others what you're doing. In El Salvador, a Castillo Armas-directed immigrant publication also received CIA money. Agency press assets throughout Central America began planting stories designed for psychological programming. In Washington, Whiting Willauer received his CIA briefings on February 8th.

14:08 the bulk of the time devoted to the operational covert aspects. Soon, the newly minted ambassador, his appointment encouraged by Tommy Cochran, was in Honduras. Willauer is going to be the Honduran ambassador. Arranging for a rebel air force to be created. Well, Willauer, until then a senior manager with CIA's Civil Air Transport.

14:40 So they're bringing the guy that ran the proprietary CIA airline and posting him as an ambassador to Honduras. He had reported to Claire Chenault in a letter that he worked day and night to arrange training sites and instructors plus air crews for the rebel air force and to keep the Honduran government in line. So they allowed this,

15:13 activity to continue. Claire Chennault, the guy that set up Shanghai Shack and was trafficking all of the opium out of Southeast Asia. Willauer is his guy trying to keep all this straight. Later, participants acknowledge that if some of the Guatemalan rebel aircraft was shot down, surviving pilots would have to be found speaking Chinese. The lead pilot

15:44 A former Navy ace seconded by another Navy vet were backed by a variety of air crew. A total of about a dozen aircraft was assembled, including three bombers plus P-47s and P-51 fighter bombers. Willauer gave the CIA advice on airmen on the timing of increasing frequent.

16:12 the frequency of black flights best at night, and on which local officials were or needed to be apprised of the activity. Visiting home on two occasions, Willauer went to CIA headquarters to convey his views directly. The ambassador spoke of PB's success with Honduran officials ranging from the president to the Air Force Chief of Staff. So, we got a guy that is...

16:42 known to be in charge of opium weapons trafficking and all this stuff, posing as an ambassador in Honduras, running a covert air force while serving as an ambassador against a neighboring state. By mid-April, CIA officials were concerned, admitting that they had never thought Willauer would be projected into a firsthand discussion of the details of the operation. Sure.

17:12 That's why you hired the guy that runs your proprietary airline because you didn't think he was going to be involved operationally. The State Department publicly termed the charge that Americans had a role in the Castillo Armas plans ridiculous. That was their response when asked. We're not doing what we're doing. That's ridiculous. At that very moment, Guatemalan exiles.

17:43 Assorted Latin Americans and American soldiers of fortune were training in CIA camps in Nicaragua and the Panama Canal Zone. Arms and equipment now arrived in a steady stream aboard U.S. Air Force C-124 transports borrowed by the CIA, with their markings painted out.

18:11 himself lived in a house in Managua directly across the street from the first secretary of the U.S. embassy. On February 10th, al-Haini held a conference to check on all aspects while those things the CIA could control proceeded smoothly. They continued to denounce Arbenz and pose that he

18:45 posed a communist threat. Communication traffic brought another headache. PB6S had resulted in a five-fold increase in proprietary messaging from the U.S. to American missions in Central and South America. Anyone with a competent radio watch on the CIA could detect this increased activity.

19:15 Little could be done other than to try to send more messages by courier or pouch. Not possible when it was urgent. That eventuality arose almost immediately. Leaving his apartment one day, Castillo Armas, lieutenant, left behind a batch of secret messages. Compromised were all the basic encryptions and pseudonyms, not just for PB's success.

19:44 but the CIA at large. Two of the cables had been from CIA headquarters, the rest from Haney. Fortunately for the secret warriors, the leak did not reach the ears of the Guatemalan government. It was hushed up almost immediately. The big attraction in March of 1954 was diplomatic. The Conference of the Organization of American States, where the U.S. pushed for condemnation of communist penetration.

20:15 of the Guatemalans. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivered a speech prepared in consultation with Alec Dulles. Beneath the surface, the plot boiled. Agency's progress reports noted that the logistics arrangement were on track, far enough advanced that one of the two C-124s the CIA had borrowed from the Air Force could be returned. Eventually, 433 tons

20:45 of arms and equipment were delivered. Agency officers increasingly distrusted Castillo Armas, explored another structure that would exclude him. Cost estimates for the Sherwood Radio Project had firmed up to the degree that Al Haney decided to base the Guatemalan announcers and scriptwriters in Florida instead of Honduras.

21:15 sending pre-recorded tapes that could be broadcast. Sherwood's radio equipment arrived aboard a late black flight. Meanwhile, the State Department developed cold feet about the direction the U.S. was headed. Jack Esterline of the task force believed that diplomats had dug in to defend the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of states.

21:44 On March 16th, Frank Wisner met with Richard Helms, Tracy Barnes, and J.C. King and others for a high-level review. Haney warned that delaying D-Day would cause morale problems and weather difficulties. Wisner saw no need to change the ops tempo. What mattered most, according to Wisner, was not getting caught. One PB6S preparation was sinister.

22:16 connotations was the creation of a list of Guatemalans for disposal by the new regime, evidently requested by Al Haney. Now, why is that important? This is a list of people to assassinate. You know, like the list the Democrats are currently putting together in case they were ever put back in charge.

22:46 Making these blacklists of people became a necessity during Operation Condor. It was used in the Phoenix program. This is a critical part of CIA operations. It's a hit list. A similar list had been compiled for Project Fortune, and this renewed formed the basis.

23:16 for a list that they created in March of 1954. Rip Robertson took it to Alpilaka to be checked against CIA data. Decades later, agency researchers established that no one had actually been assassinated on the basis of these lists, but they would have echoes for the CIA in Indonesia and Vietnam.

23:46 because they do it every single time to include today. Director Dulles listed the station nicknamed Lincoln on March 31st. The spy chiefdom expressed himself as being impressed with the briefings that he was receiving on the operation. His reply

24:17 to the briefings was continue the good work and give them hell. Toward the end, Dulles turned to the chief of security and asked him to tell Haney, who was absent from the meeting, that Dulles meant exactly what he said when he referred to this project as the most vital one to the agency, overthrowing a democratically elected president for United Fruit.

24:48 Number one CIA project. In April, the public who paid attention to Central America were diverted by a plot to assassinate Nicaraguan leader Somoza. This would be attributed to the quote-unquote Caribbean League, a loosely organized entity. As a movement, the Legion had peaked in the late 1940s and had never enjoyed the structure implied by its name.

25:18 It had, however, received some support from the Arbenz predecessor as president of Guatemala. The CIA propagandists now made strenuous efforts to pin all of that on Arbenz, even though he had nothing to do with it. Behind the scenes, Rip Robinson's paramilitary boys began smuggling packets of CIA equipment across the Guatemalan border to four...

25:48 anti-Arbenz sabotage teams. Frank Wisner also approved the final timetable for the attack, plus a fresh psychological warfare plan to help justify the operation. The CIA would configure a phony Soviet bloc arms shipment to Guatemala and contrive to make the world believe that there were weapons arriving from the Soviet Union.

26:18 well, Guatemala is a Soviet satellite. Why do you have to fake this? Because it wasn't. And pay attention to this because this is exactly what's happening today. There's no one that knows any of the stuff that's happening in the Middle East as far as the origins. When you hear that somebody that's claiming to be an Iranian is doing something outside of Iran,

26:49 to further the Iranian mission, understand that that Iranian may in fact work for a foreign government and doing things on behalf of that foreign government as a quote unquote Iranian. People have to understand how these operations work. You cannot form instant judgments on who's behind anybody doing anything.

27:19 because of history illustrating how these operations work. We're reading it right now. Just like Operation Northwood, dress up Cubans that are under the control of the CIA in Cuban army military uniforms, claim their Cuban army military and kill Americans to justify an attack on...

27:48 the island of Cuba. This is done all the time by all of these countries. The tiff between the CIA and the State Department now endangered Project Success. The Deputy DCI, General Cabell, assured senior diplomats on April 10th that no black flights into Honduras would occur until State had studied the situation, despite the fact that they were already being...

28:21 done a lot. The agency, which had already scheduled 15 flights, made one the following night. Investigations showed that al-Haini had instructed his air officer to disregard any guidance coming from the headquarters. Secretary of State Dulles could not have protected his brother's agency from the fury of diplomat scorn. Within days of the CIA,

28:51 Within days, the CIA was told to report on the impact of the postponement or cancellation of PB's success. Wisner's defense combined elements that would be employed once again when the identical question arose during a CIA operation against Cuba. Cancellation entailed the danger of open recriminations from the CIA's Guatemalans, effectively exposing the CIA's hand.

29:20 It would worsen U.S. relationships with Nicaragua and Honduras and lend an effort or support Arbenz. It would leave Washington with a question, what to do about Guatemala and have adverse effects on the morale of the boots on the ground. So in other words, once they start recruiting these people, you just absolutely are forced into continuing it or...

29:51 everybody's going to get mad at you. That's basically what that boils down to. But they don't have any problem doing that. And the Kurds are the best example of that. The CIA made lots of promises to the Kurds over the decades, like literal decades, and never followed through on any of them. They used them, abused them, and abandoned them. They have no problem doing that. This statement is...

30:19 Them saying they don't want to do it because they don't want to stop PB's success. They're going to abandon the people eventually. They're key people. They relocate to the United States. We know that for further use. But they always abandon all of these people eventually. While the impasse continued, the CIA resumed black flights, even though they were told not to, at least to a day. Where Wisner, King, and Esterlin...

30:52 and others had been furious at the early violations of the flight ban, the absence of protests this time suggest that they were fine with it. If the CIA irrevocably committed, the State Department would have had much more problems shutting it down. For his part, on April 24th, Wisner mounted a full defense of the project.

31:21 in a paper refocusing the operation. In retrospect, his handiwork is notable for its utter misappreciation of Guatemalans' willingness to rise against Arbenz, while rightly rejecting Castillo Armas' estimates of 40,000 adherents. Wisner projected somewhere between 6,000 and 19,000 partisans. In reality, no Guatemalans.

31:51 would join the rebels. None. At this point, the State Department backed off. So if you want to get your operation approved, just lie at will. A few days later, a full headquarters delegation visited Opelika in triumph. Frank Wisner, Tracy Barnes, Richard Bissell all went on this trip to Opelika. They hastened to give the bottom line, quote, we have the full green light and the go ahead.

32:26 Unquote from Wisner. The operations cautioned that the approval relieved no one of the responsibility to conduct PB success so as to minimize any chance of any attribution to the U.S. It was 100% the U.S. False trails that had been sufficiently developed, for example, provision had been made for a minor arms purchase from

32:58 Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which could later be used as an answer to the questions of where all those guns came from, which is why it's so important that they control the countries around the target. So if we get caught, we're going to lie and say the guy that we actually own, Trujillo, he must have supplied some of his excess weapons.

33:30 to the rebels. Wisner wanted more of the same. He wanted to see Opelika's documentation on the strength of the anti-Arbenz opposition. Despite what he had written a few days earlier, headquarters had never received a clear, concise statement on what the plans are in respect to what takes place on D-Day. So in other words, Wisner pulled all of that out of his ass because there had never been an estimate.

34:01 on the amount of rebels that were supposedly going to take up arms against the government that they just voted for. Among themselves, Wisner talked with Barnes about a paper for Assistant Secretary of State Henry Holland at State Department to illustrate that PB's success had accomplished other than those aspects that concerned the diplomat. At a meeting,

34:31 Once they were back in Washington, Richard Bissell spoke of a different paper, one that might show how much time had been wasted as a result of the fight with State Department. Blame somebody else. The CIA's big psychological war victory came soon afterwards. Project Washtub, the attempt to plant a cache of weapons and make it seem like the work of the Russians, carefully surfaced in early May.

35:02 Reporting cables crowed that when Somoza called in the diplomats and reporters to look at the weapons conveniently marked with hammer and sickle, even the U.S. ambassador was taken in. The French ambassador, who had been in Greece during the civil war there, readily confirmed that the weapons were from the Soviet bloc. In early May, Tracy Barnes, who had begun spending most of his time at Opelika,

35:33 or making rounds at forward bases, returned to the headquarters for consultations. These meetings were in the deputy director's office. They included Richard Helms, Dick Bissell, Kim Roosevelt, J.C. King, and Jake Esserlin. Wisner hammered home that black flights into Honduras would go only with the okay of Allen Dulles or General.

36:03 Cabell. Barnes described the status of the various PB success elements. The CIA project seemed to be moving along smoothly. One action by the Arbenz government did play into the preparation for the success. The Guatemalans turned to Czechoslovakia to buy 2,000 tons of arms from the country.

36:30 Washington learned of this when an agent in Poland reported the loading of weapons aboard a freighter. The ship turned out to be a Swedish vessel, which eluded several attempts at interception and reached Guatemala on May 15th. The phony wash tub weapons and the real ones from that ship permitted the U.S. to argue.

36:58 that the Russians were indeed penetrating Latin America. President Eisenhower initiated Operation Hard Rock Baker, a naval blockade of Guatemala. The blockade was illegal under international law, but no one had standing to oppose it. This brought a windfall for E. Howard Hunt's propaganda experts. Radio Sherman went on the air May 1st.

37:28 and went to town on the arm caches and the freighter. Then in only real defection sparked by the CIA, former Guatemalan Air Force Chief Rodolfo Mendoza left the country with a former U.S. air attache who had been at CIA the day before departing for Central America. The supposed defection

37:59 was used by Dave Phillips' radio show. The Arbenz government made a significant error, taking the government radio station off the air for installation of a new antenna. For several weeks, the Voice of Liberation was the only game in town. Later, Guatemalan police made a series of arrests. Eisenhower refers to these as a reign of terror.

38:26 accused the government of killing opposition forces. At the time, the CIA reported that the wave of arrests resulted from Guatemalan search of a CIA agent's house who had been, he was a historian of Guatemalan politics.

38:55 They concluded that several hundred were arrested and at least 75 people killed, including persons who had nothing to do with the CIA conspiracy. That was what the CIA reported anyway. Eisenhower made out the Arbenz government as agents of international communism in Guatemala and that they were continuing their effort to penetrate and subvert all surrounding Central American states.

39:24 despite the fact that the CIA at that point had basically controlled them all and had forces inside of them training to take over Guatemala, knowing it's a lie. Eisenhower told the American people that. Aside from individual arrest of opposition figures, the role of Guatemala in the quote-unquote alleged assassination plot against Somoza had zero evidence. So it is more likely that the CIA did that.

39:57 In order to accuse Guatemala of doing it. And that they grossly inflated Guatemala arresting CIA assets in Guatemala as some kind of reign of terror. No, they are arresting treasonous assholes. The arms shipment on the Swedish vessel affair.

40:29 led to the first military action of the project. Headquarters ordered a sabotage. CIA paramilitary man Rip Robertson wanted to go into Puerto Barrios with frogmen to sink the Swedish ship with explosives. Washington said no. Instead, Robertson got orders to send saboteurs from the CIA-backed Liberation Army, in air quotes.

40:59 to blow up trains carrying the equipment. Robertson led the teams despite orders that no Americans were to be involved. The saboteurs laid explosives on railroad tracks, but the detonators, thanks to rain, didn't work. The CIA team then shot at one of the trains. They could not stop the 10-train convoy. One anti-Arbenz soldier died.

41:31 as did one of Robertson's strikers. Two later commando attacks also failed. With the gloves off, it became increasingly obvious what was going on. Opelika wanted to mix some bombing runs with leaflet drops. Barnes preferred to smuggle leaflets into the country and have them distributed by antiques.

42:03 anti-Arbenz activists, giving the impression of a widespread rebellion. After all this trouble, the Czech's weapons proved to be useless. They included large caliber cannons designed to be mounted on railway carriages, which were of limited use to Guatemala because United Fruit had never actually finished all of the railroads.

42:29 In Guatemala, that they promised the Guatemalan government for operating there, they just finished the railroads to the port like they always do. The ship had a small fraction of World War II vintage British and German small arms. No Russian. Eisenhower might think Arbenz was a communist, which he did not. But clearly the real...

43:01 communists were no friends to Guatemala. They basically were setting up Guatemala. They gave them nothing useful to them. They just took their money. In a supreme irony, the arms enabled Eisenhower to declare Guatemala an outpost of the communist dictatorship on the American continent, when in fact, the communists had set Guatemala up. But that news didn't get conveyed.

43:30 May 23rd, the Navy received orders to conduct surveillance of shipping near Guatemalan ports. The next day, Eisenhower told a party of congressional leaders he was ordering the Navy to stop suspicious foreign flag vessels on the high sea. Thus began Hard Rock Baker. The Swedish ship was intercepted on the return voyage and escorted to Key West for a search.

43:58 The Dutch government lodged an official protest after a Dutch ship was boarded in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Later, it was decided that no more ships would be boarded without specific State Department authorization. James Haggerty, Eisenhower's press secretary, wrote in his diary on June 19, I think the State Department made a bad mistake, particularly with the British in attempting to search ships going to Guatemala.

44:24 As a matter of fact, we were at war with the British in 1812 for the exact same reason. Project PB's success was already in its final stages. E. Howard Hunt's propaganda featured cartoons, posters, pamphlets, and more than 200 articles based on CIA material placed in the Latin press by the U.S. Information Agency, which is a CIA front.

44:53 The military plan had to be changed at the last minute when Salvadorian officials refused to allow the invasion to be mounted from their country. At the beginning of June, Tracy Barnes argued that the paramilitary plan, as originally conceived, could no longer be carried out. As late as June 16th, a meeting at CIA headquarters considered canceling it or postponing it, with Wisner willing to entertain a delay.

45:23 The final plan based the rebels in Honduras, Castillo Armas, made his invasion two days later. Riding in an old station wagon accompanied by a few trucks, only about 140 soldiers were with him. Those several additional forces entered Guatemala from other points.

45:46 The same day, Arbenz held a mass rally at a stadium in Guatemala City, which CIA aircraft buzzed and dropped leaflets. One rebel patrol tried to hook through El Salvador, but the soldiers were arrested by Salvadoran border guards and freed only with difficulty after the CIA got involved. In all, there were perhaps 400.

46:18 rebel troops, most of them not from Guatemala. Castillo Armas advanced to a church six miles inside Guatemala and halted. He awaited a popular revolution that was supposed to support him. From there, the main force would march over land and capture the railroad station at Zacapa, a Guatemalan military garrison.

46:46 while several boatloads of men made for the Caribbean port of Porto Barrios. Both places, plus Guatemala City, would be bombed by the CIA. But no popular uprising appeared. Castillo Armas did not march even the few miles to Zacapa. Another of his units was defeated in a small skirmish, and the biggest action of the campaign

47:17 was also an insignificant battle, proved no better than a standoff. The seaborne force sent to capture Porto Barrios also failed. The CIA's optimistic approach didn't seem to be working out. It was reported to President Eisenhower on June 20th that Castillo Armas had taken in as many soldiers as had joined him for a total

47:48 of approximately 600 men. All now depended on Whiting Willauer's Rebel Air Force. It had run a number of bombing and leaflet missions since the first day of the invasion. A raid that caused some damage to Porto Barrios involved a hand grenade and a stick of dynamite. Another pilot missed his target and ran out of gas, crash landing across the Mexican border.

48:18 The CIA operation could have been exposed right there. As it was, an American national, William Bell, was taken into custody. You know, there was not supposed to be any Americans flying any of these airplanes. But the agency managed to get him released. PB-6S survived another flap. Two more planes were hit by small arms fire and could not be repaired.

48:47 The CIA Air Force seemed no more effective than their Liberation Army. Allen Dulles got the bad news on June 20th from Al Haney. The Rebel Air Force could not operate more than four planes at a time. Losses made the difficulty even greater. The supply of high explosive bombs was limited, so pilots resorted to dropping smoke bombs, leaflets, and empty Coca-Cola bottles, which were made to...

49:17 cause an explosive sound. Haney reported that Nicaragua's Somoza had offered two of his P-51 fighter bombers to make up for the rebel losses, but only if the U.S. would replace his aircraft. This sounded simple until State Department's Assistant Secretary for Latin America insisted on getting Eisenhower's approval.

49:45 On late afternoon of June 22nd, Eisenhower met Allen and Foster Dulles at the White House. Henry Holland entered the office carrying several legal papers, but legality had ceased to even be an issue. The president turned to Allen Dulles. What do you think Castillo's chances would be without the aircraft? Dulles' immediate response was zero. Suppose we supply the aircraft, Eisenhower said. What would be the chances then?

50:17 20%. Mainly because the important psychological impact of air support, Ike agreed anyway to do it. The Somoza Rebel planes were in action the next day and air attacks became the CIA's main activity. Mainly because of the important psychological impact of bombs being dropped. The Somoza Rebel planes gave them

50:48 that option. The bombing led to the worst scare of PB success. The British were angered over American boarding and searching ships at sea. Then the CIA bombed and sank a British merchant vessel. The ship was Springford, which had sailed from Nicaraguan's Pacific port of San Jose. Somoza feared

51:18 The vessel carried gasoline with which the Guatemalans would need for their trucks and airplanes. Somoza turned to Rip Robertson, top CIA officer at the airfield, and demanded the ship be stopped. Robertson asked Opelika for orders, but his cable arrived at two in the morning. Alhaney and Tracy Barnes refused.

51:48 They told Robinson to use another method, frogmen or a commando raid. That infuriated Somoza. If you use my airfield, you take my orders, he demanded. Somoza was afraid that if this fuel got to Nicaragua, that Nicaragua would find out that Somoza is supplying these aircraft and attack them. So he didn't want them to have the fuel to fly their own airplanes. Robinson also

52:16 disappointed by the orders to desist, ordered up one of the fighter bombers. 15 minutes out of base, the plane found the spring Freud and hit her with a 500-pound bomb. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the ship sank slowly enough for the crew to abandon it. It was later learned it had only carried coffee and cotton, no fuel.

52:46 When news of the sinking reached Washington, it destroyed the atmosphere Ike sought at a summit conference he was hosting with British leaders. Frank Wisner left immediately for the British embassy to offer apologies. The agency investigated circumstances of the incident in October 1954 and confirmed the ship had been sunk on Robinson's orders.

53:13 Robertson's orders without authorization from CIA headquarters by one of the Air Arms American pilots. The British allowed themselves to be mollified and the CIA later quietly reimbursed Lloyds of London who had insured it. The $1.5 million they'd paid out on the ship. Colonel King, the agency continued.

53:43 meeting Assistant Secretary Holland on this matter as late as spring of 1956. In the heat of the action, however, the ship's sinking had a significant psychological impact on the Guatemalans. The bombing broke the political situation wide open. Apparently, the Guatemalan military began thinking the CIA would stop at nothing to oust Arbenz. The army began to consider a coup.

54:10 Arbenz received an ultimatum and resigned before the day was out, taking refuge at the Mexican embassy and asking for political asylum. PB's success had achieved its goal. Despite the success of this unintended strike, that incident had a major effect on the CIA. It convinced Eisenhower of the need for more rigorous control.

54:39 of covert operations that basically never happened and led to a senior review group like Truman's 10-2 panel. The final price tag of Guatemala, though the CIA had only admitted to spending $3 million, came in considerably higher. The figure does not include the money paid out on the shipping incident, the cost of replacing Somoza's aircraft,

55:08 Hardware taken from CIA stockpiles or subsidies used in the coup d'etat. The actual number was at least double. Al Haney's air of covert operations came to an end. No further major assignments came his way. Rip Robertson branded a cowboy after sinking the ship, saw Alan Dulles, who supposedly fired him, and I'm going to use that in air quotes.

55:36 In a 1966 interview with New York Times reporter Richard Bissell conceded that the action went well beyond the established limits of policy. Frank Wisner and Tracy Barnes celebrated. Barnes would be rewarded with stewardship of the station in West Germany, you know, working with the Nazis. One of CIA's frontline jobs, E. Howard Hunt's services, were considered necessary for CIA's political action efforts.

56:04 And he went on to do duty in Japan as well as all over, as we have found out. Dave Phillips, who believed PB's success psychological war effort had been the engine of victory, went on to greater things as well. In retrospect, with more of the true record now open to view, it seems perplexing that the CIA and indeed secret warriors in many places for decades held out.

56:34 Iran and Guatemala as models of successful covert operations. The inner stories reveal that both Project Ajax and PB's success was filled with failures. At some point in each case, the CIA came close to canceling their operation. The projects may be said to be successful despite themselves and should not be marched forward as success.

57:05 overthrowing the governments. And that's all they care about. They don't care how sloppy it is. They don't care how many people get killed. They just, and they would have continued on just, and that's why Operation Gladio, when we looked at what they were doing with the stay behinds and inserting them into Albania and all those other places, Romania, they just kept going year after year after year, dead body after dead body.

57:30 They will just keep going because they don't care about humanity. They don't care about how many people die in these efforts. Their marching orders are from the oligarchs, overthrow that guy, and they will go to any extent to do it. And we end up paying for it. Okay, the CIA unleashed in the name of democracy, democracy as defined by American foreign policy, which came to mean governments that...

58:05 assumed pro-American stances, actually encouraged the opposite. No elections occurred in Iran between 1953 ever. Thereafter, the parliament existed at the pleasure of the Shah. In Guatemala, after 54, the republic was abolished. The new constitution was adopted in 1965, but that was soon suspended by military rulers again. In effect,

58:36 The excesses of the ruling oligarch became such that the U.S. itself, under the Carter administration, finally halted virtually all foreign aid to the country. Over the long haul, the covert actions did not produce democracies. Imagine that. When you destroy a democracy, you don't restore a democracy. I'm literally shocked. In both Iran and Guatemala, the U.S. received credit from the world public opinion.

59:06 for creating dictatorships, not democracies. In the short term, though, the covert operations seemed to be a shining success. So while the fruit might prove bitter in the long run, Eisenhower became more encouraged to use them. The end for today. Ooh, look at that, right at five o'clock. Almost like that was the plan. Okay, what say you, Bridget and SR?

59:44 Well, what I'm seeing here is a whole ton of follow-ups to start with in what you just discussed. I'm also seeing Sweden involved in practically every operation. If it's not through communications, it's through something else. And I'm looking at the fact Lloyd's of London was probably pissed they had to pay that one out.

1:00:13 Why Alan Dulles never got fired for this fiasco, I'll never know. Yeah, Lloyds of London didn't care. They got their money. They paid them back. And, of course, our Swedish audience always tells us things always go back to Sweden somehow. In this case, other than them actually owning the ship,

1:00:43 I'm not sure we can say too much about that, but it is interesting how there's a Swedish angle to all of this stuff. I agree with that. Bridget, did you have anything? Sorry, I got pulled away during half of it. No, it's just patterns, you know, patterns.

1:01:16 Constantly noticing the patterns. Yep. Yep. I agree. All along, did you want to say something? Yeah, Colonel. Yeah. Okay, good. You know, again, once again, good friends of the United Fruit Party come up here. And it just, it kind of is a good point to remember that there's a lot of overlap between, you know, the Guatemala actions in 1954 and the Bay of Pigs shooting it against in 61.

1:01:55 There's really all, it's not surprising it's St. Richard, blah, blah, blah. We know that, you know, the Bay of Pays, some of them left from Guatemala, so duh. And you mentioned this a zillion times before, but I just think it's kind of important to look, you know, and remind ourselves about the New Orleans importance of the United Fruit Company and how that kind of overlapped with what we know about.

1:02:26 You know, the whole Reinhard Galen network out of Franco Spain, you know, with Skorzeny and the framing of Lee Harvey Oswald. And as you know, most of the framing was done in New Orleans. Right. And yes, there's a kind of intense overlap of a lot of different international aspects of the international court cartel.

1:02:57 linkages of intelligence and economics, you know, just like businesses, that happen in New Orleans because, you know, it is where a river hits an ocean, right? It is where the nexus of, like, trade between the U.S. and South America and the banana republics, quite literally, and we know how Sullivan and Cromwell kind of grew from those literal fruit and coffee trading networks up through New Orleans that kind of...

1:03:25 Join up at the Boston Club at a certain level, you know, at first Boston Bank. Right. And we know that key aspects of the intelligence operation. I mean, you could overstate it, but I mean, there is literally the Boston Club in New Orleans where, you know, key players in the assassination. And which key linkages between, you know, East Coast Rockefeller or Nelson Rockefeller ties.

1:03:54 to Nelson Rockefeller ties south of the border. And so but also, you know, it's just recently I was listening to these other to these broadcasts on the Dave Emery show from back. But, you know, the aspect of New Orleans where also we remember that the Information Council on the Americas is a you know, it's like an industrial espionage.

1:04:26 that is already there on the part of the shipping industry, which is, of course, very tied into media interests like WDSU, which is, of course, very tied into WDSU. It's tied into the thing that we're coming out of, you know, that's based in Italy, and it's tied to both the Vatican and the Nassau. You know, the name is, you know.

1:04:55 I forget the name of the organization. You know what I'm talking about. Permadex? Permadex, yes, ma'am. You know, with the Tides to Montreal also there that are very interesting later in terms of, you know, the Raoul sightings and the set up of the occasional raid later. But sticking to New Orleans, though, it's like, you know, the blood bank in Switzerland, as I think I mentioned.

1:05:24 The International Red Cross is really tied into the Oxnard Clinic, which is also based in New Orleans, is that really the Oxnard Intelligence Connection seems to be the real anchor of the Inca, the Information Council of the Americas that set up Oswald on August of 63, where they actually played the references with the pro-Cuban guy and Jack used him. But all, you know, it's a setup, obviously.

1:05:55 But they all did most of this in New Orleans. And it's interesting that the Ochsner Clinic, I mean, it was Ochsner who took the technology of blood typing to Switzerland to create the International Red Cross in Switzerland. And we know how important that is in terms of the syndicate, right? So it's just so, you could...

1:06:23 We could spend days and days talking about, you know, the significance of New Orleans and the overlapping. It is by no means creaky-dinky that Lee Harvey was framed in, you know, that sacred, that blessed city where they poured me the alcohol. And they listen because God knows everyone loves to hear me talk. No, just kidding. New Orleans is just a fascinating city. And the United Fruit Company is just known, except it just emphasizes it. There's so much there.

1:06:53 So let me flesh a little bit of that out. For those of you who don't know, after this coup, Guatemala became, because it's under now the control of the CIA, it becomes the launching point for the Bay of Pigs.

1:07:13 That's where they were training ground troops. That's where they were training pilots. It becomes a critical node, which is why the CIA does this. They want to control governments, not just for the oligarchs, but also for their operational plans for the oligarchs.

1:07:36 So when they decide that they're going to launch the Bay of Pigs, Guatemala becomes, because the government now is beholden to the CIA. They were put in place by the CIA. So you can ask them for anything or you can just tell them to do it or you'll cue them too. And they know you will do that because that's the only way they're there.

1:08:04 Guatemala becomes a key in CIA operations moving forward after this particular coup. To your point about New Orleans, so not just leading into the 1960s, but forevermore. We found out about in the 1980s that New Orleans and the mafia there

1:08:34 was a huge part of the savings and loan debacle when we did Pete Bruton's book. The trademark there where they were landing all of the quote unquote shrimp boats into New Orleans with actual drugs on them. New Orleans is, as you say, one of those

1:08:59 cities that was under the control of the mafia and the internal use of the CIA for a very, very long time, if not still today. And the whole aspect of this is early in the 1950s where these paramilitary forces are being trained in Spain.

1:09:28 by Otto Skorzeny, which all along brought up. And they are being farmed out all over the world to do operations like this. So they become kind of like the feeder, the springboard, spring training for all of these operations. And they are all related. So anyway.

1:10:04 But, you know, Ochsner is such a key guy. I had not realized that he was called up literally in 1944 or 5 by the secretary of state to go down to Panama and help the dictator who was feeling not well because he was pivotal in maintaining control of the Panama Canal. So the Germans did not get it. He was like he was on a very short.

1:10:33 You know, he was a direct MF, as it were, from the White House as early as, you know, what knows. He was on the American Cancer Board right out of Washington University Medical School in 1934, which is very, very, very young to be on that. And then he's just like his ties to the cancer researcher, Mary Sherman, because I know there is a book that is kind of it's called Dr. Mary's Monkey and a lot of it.

1:11:01 Some of it is controversialized debatably because of its ties to this one witness, very controversial witness that I am very skeptical of named Judy Berry Baker. However, the medical history foundation that the author goes through, the author is no idiot. I'll put it like that. He has done research and he has done his research in, you know.

1:11:30 The vaccines that come out of this intelligence pharmaceutical industry network going way, way earlier than we are normally used to thinking of. And that's Dr. Mary Sherman was University of Chicago, a woman scientist of that of the very highest stature in the 1930s. That is very noteworthy. And it is utterly connected to this international network that early.

1:12:01 Right. Yeah. Sean, did you want to say something? Yeah, thanks, Colonel. I've been listening to your spaces for quite a while now, and they're all very interesting. And I wrote a blog post, and it was before I ever started listening to your spaces, and it's called The Gang Culture of American Cartel Capitalism.

1:12:27 And it basically lays out everything you've been talking about, right? The link is on my profile page on X if you want to read it. It's the second one down. Okay. It goes through the whole thing about the CIA and the gang culture of the CIA, how they've become more like the gangs than the gangs themselves. And maybe this is an inevitable thing. I don't know. But, you know, when you're fighting evil, you're supposed to be fighting evil and you become evil. Well, that's not good, right?

1:12:56 So that's the situation we find ourselves in. And there's a lot more to it than that. But yeah, I just wrote this post and I just wanted to, if you could read it maybe and tell me, am I being correct in what I say about everything? Because it coincides with what you're saying. And especially with regard to the concept of a global party, that these guys basically are just criminals. And the thing that criminals most want to do, right, is to party.

1:13:26 They have it in South America. They have these grand parties and they're all organized and orchestrated and everything. It's the same thing with those in the West, the elite in the West. It's the same thing, really, isn't it? So I don't know how long you've been here, but I would argue that, and I know we use imprecise language.

1:13:56 And, you know, obviously people use different terms in different countries, but I labeled this overarching umbrella of oligarchs as an international syndicate for a reason. And I believe.

1:14:18 with every fiber of my being, that post-World War II, all of the intelligence agencies were set up as a Praetorian guard for those oligarchs. Everything downstream, what we call gangs over here, or the networks, all of that, harnessed the mafia, the gangs.

1:14:47 and all of those to operate at the behest of the Praetorian Guard intelligence agencies on behalf of the oligarchs. So if you look at the stay-behind networks and Operation Gladio in Europe, which also transitioned to the United States, and it's in just about every country, what you find out is that

1:15:15 These sleeper cells of terrorists trained to assassinate people, to cause chaos, launch bombing campaigns, are projected domestically to control the populations as well as internationally to...

1:15:38 do covert operations under plausible deniability. So when the CIA wants to overthrow a government, like in the case of Guatemala that we were just talking about, they don't usually use too many Americans. What they do is they recruit from this sleeper cell network of like...

1:16:03 heritage. So if we want to pretend that all of these guys are Latin Americans, then I use the sleeper cells that are in Latin America. And then it looks more indigenous, like you could pass for, if you're a Nicaraguan, you can pass for a Guatemalan. I'm not saying they are, and I'm not saying they're the same, but I'm saying that if a picture was snapped and somebody happened to be killed and got a picture of it, then

1:16:33 there would be less uproar because the CIA would be able to lie their ass right out of it. And so I don't think, I 100% agree with your premise. I think the hierarchy, from my respect, isn't that the CIA was hanging out with gangs and started operating like them.

1:16:57 They actually, in most cases, create the gangs to act as the sleeper cells and to distribute their illicit narcotics and weapons and everything else on the move because they're expendable. So my research has basically revealed there's very few organic.

1:17:21 quote unquote gangs that are not part of this network. Because what the CIA does, both domestically and internationally, is if any of these, and there has been some, either through starting off under the tutelage of the CIA and gone rogue, or...

1:17:39 try to mimic something not realizing the international control. So for example, if I'm living in Columbia and I get up one day and decide that I wanna start looking around for my own supply of cocaine, that's not going to turn out well for me because you're not allowed to compete with them and they'll just take you out. And so I think understanding kind of the pecking order there is very, very important. And if you're...

1:18:07 Like Pablo Escobar. If you think that you're not going to use the distribution network you're told to use inside the United States, and he did not.

1:18:16 He did originally, he was using the Cuban exile network that the CIA had dictated, but he decided that he wanted to create his own and get a bigger share of the pie. And so he started importing Colombians and they had a mass gang war down in South Florida, killing each other, like every day, dead bodies showing up in alleyways. And Pablo Escobar was taken out because you're not allowed to compete with them. Does that make sense?

1:18:49 That makes absolute sense. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And unfortunately, because the governments in our countries have been complicit in so complicit in setting up this network that it's, you know, becomes almost impossible to get rid of it.

1:19:11 Because just in the case of this, the State Department's complicit in it. The Department of Justice is complicit in it. The FBI's complicit in it. The DEA's complicit in it. And if they don't get enough support, the CIA just infiltrates those organizations and put their own assets there. They get them hired. They'll have somebody in the DEA that'll hire 10 of their...

1:19:40 assets or agents, they will wear a DEA uniform when 100% they're working for the CIA. That's true in all of Europe as well. You don't have the flooding of these radical Islamic terrorists, both into the United States and into Europe, without the complicity of the government.

1:20:03 and they use them against the indigenous people of these countries so that they live in terror and don't rebel against the government. Colonel, just to back you up here, there's obviously a level above the CIA, though, that they sort of report to. One of the instances I always like to cite was, this is on the Nixon Library's website, if you look up the Kissinger telecons,

1:20:34 you actually find the story of what happened. When Kissinger leaves the State Department in 1977, his highly classified memos don't go to the National Archives, they don't go to the CIA, they don't stay at the State Department. They go to David Rockefeller's vault in his personal home in upstate New York. And that's the level above the CIA. That's the level above the CIA.

1:21:00 Later, Kissinger has to fight with the CIA 25 years later to try and get these things declassified. Nelson Rockefeller got Kissinger his job. David Rockefeller puts Epstein on the Council on Foreign Relations. There appears to be this group that exists.

1:21:28 Above the CIA. Yes. And yeah, the question always is, is whether the CIA is in charge of the gangs or whether the gangs are adjacent to them. The CIA clearly controls them on some level. Certainly they're geopolitical. Certainly the gangs, you know, geopolitics. And we know all of this, you know, from the relationship between.

1:21:54 That developed, you know, between the OSS, later the CIA, and Lucky Luciano and the Sicilian Moscow. Yes. Yes. We also saw it with the gangs that arose out of the illicit drug trafficking in the United States. They're not going to have any drugs to traffic if the CIA is not protecting the drug trafficking network.

1:22:25 Again, whether they're receiving a paycheck from them or not, there's a complicity there that has to be addressed. And it kind of loosely gives you the diagram and the pecking order of how all of this operates. So anyway. Colonel, you can, and Sean can run this one in the ground if he wants to take a look.

1:22:55 at the Department of Justice's case against Gary, Terry Reed and Barry Seale, right? In both instances, you had a Department of Justice going into court and stating under oath, an affidavit, that number one, these guys, yes, they were CIA contractors. Yes, they were using CIA planes. And yes, they were trafficking drugs. Yes. The only question,

1:23:25 is whether it was authorized or not. And Terry Reid made a pretty good case that it was authorized, and there were a lot of other witnesses to back him up on that. So, I mean, this is one of those sort of esoteric and controversial things that isn't necessarily something that you can't go into a debate with Malcolm Nance and pin him in an arm wrestling match.

1:23:55 But you can score a lot of back points with him and basically say that there's a difference between what you can totally conclusively prove and what you can basically know. And if you're willing to accept that, there's certain things that you can know about what CIA was doing in the 80s. And you can't establish this from the Golden Triangle to the Golden Crescent to the Crystal Triangle.

1:24:23 and not see the pattern. Regardless of how scientifically you can present a case in court, the circumstantial evidence is crystal clear. There is a pattern of how these things unfold. And if we're spending billions of dollars on intelligence and these operations run as smoothly as they do,

1:24:52 You can't tell me that we're getting our money's worth. You just can't. All of this stuff happened for 75 years and supposedly the CIA knew nothing about it. No, no, that's not how any of it works. And you can't find the same CIA station chief in country after country, sometimes not even on the same continent, overthrowing governments, installing dictators.

1:25:22 being paired with the same ambassadors over and over again, and there not be a pattern. We're going off of patterns, not what I can prove in court. We're a hamster. Howdy. Hi. Oh, lots of good, fun stuff to talk about today. Really, when you talk about the International Syndicate, we've used a bunch of different names for it, but it's this global Game of Thrones. I quote the book often, Superclass, where you have 5,000 or 6,000.

1:26:03 Families that play on a level above everyone else. We can trace it back to the Council of Foreign Relations in America, the British predecessors of that, what you call the roundtable, etc. But it goes back centuries of how the merchant class rose up and basically started manipulating world events and, most importantly, global resources for their own benefit. Originally, it was private intelligence agencies. Eventually, they figured out a way to make the taxpayer.

1:26:33 fund the whole damn thing, which is a pretty smart move by them beginning of the 20th century. But it just ties back to the same people over and over and over again. The University of Chicago was brought up, I think, by all along earlier. And I thought I'd throw out the friendly reminder that the University of Chicago was founded by none other than Rockefeller, the original Rockefeller himself, with the whole idea of, it was a Baptist base, but he really wanted to implement the Prussian education system.

1:27:02 And that's basically the German education system brought over in 1854 that taught loyalty to the state and never to question authority. You wonder why one of the kingpins, one of the biggest moves in the world, would want people to stop questioning authority. Do the math on that one. It all ties together. There's a reason the intelligence agencies drew from academia first. There's a reason who controls what academia teaches, who controls who's in academia, all of that stuff. And it's a donor class.

1:27:32 It's the same wealthy families. Some of them, we know the names of the others. We don't. But like I always say, all roads lead back to the Rockefellers. It's not unrelated. Now, let's talk about patterns. I mean, you know, we don't have a it's always about following the money. And we can do that to some degree. We're going back a century with some of these endowments, charities and the foundations, which we're going to get into soon. But we don't have the you know, we don't have forensic accounting.

1:28:00 As precisely as we'd like to, but we most certainly can see the patterns. And it's the same thing happens over and over again. Absolutely. All right. So we're at 530. It's Wednesday night. I need to get out of here. I appreciate everybody tuning in.

Entities here

CIA50 Guatemala27 Jacobo Árbenz20 Operation PBSUCCESS19 Carlos Castillo Armas16 Allen Dulles14 Frank Wisner14 Tracy Barnes13 U.S. State Department11 New Orleans11 Dwight D. Eisenhower11 Albert Haney10 Pat Robertson10 Anastasio Somoza10 Nicaragua8 Honduras8 Whiting Willauer8 Sweden7 David Atlee Phillips6 United Kingdom5 Richard M. Bissell Jr.5 J.C. King5 E. Howard Hunt5 United Fruit Company4 Jorge Delgado4 Puerto Barrios4 Iran4 Lee Harvey Oswald4 Ochsner Clinic4 Alexander Haig4 Sherwood Radio Project3 Henry Holland3 Jacob Esterlin3 Radio Swan3 Operation Gladio3 El Salvador3 Operation Pluto3 Lloyd's of London3 Richard Helms3 Henry Kissinger3

Claims made here

CIA funded Operation PBSUCCESS book_quoted ▶ 2:49

“We're on page 112 in Bitter Fruits. We were talking about PB's success when we left off on Monday. And the concert, by the way, was awesome. Okay, so PB's success moves forward, though not without dev…”

J.C. King ordered_assassination_of Anastasio Somoza book_quoted ▶ 3:25

“that the Nicaraguan dictator, Somoza, was going to be able to uphold his end of the bargain. And J.C. King wanted to use the first arms delivery to Castillo Armez, based in Nicaragua, to deepen Somoza…”

U.S. State Department removed_from_power CIA book_quoted ▶ 3:54

“assistant officers from several central american countries but the pentagon was not okay with that idea the assistant to the secretary of defense for special operations refused to permit the cia to br…”

Hans Tofte member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 5:02

“Military attaches are in the embassy there, fully aware of what's going on. Hans Toft, T-O-F-T-E, took that frustration to Tracy Barnes. But the staff chief could do no better. We are still in the int…”

CIA funded Sherwood Radio Project book_quoted ▶ 12:04

“But when Phillips checked, not much of Heckscher's information proved useful. In April, Phillips and several Guatemalan acolytes prepared a dairy barn at Santa Fe in rural Honduras as a clandestine vo…”

CIA funded El Rebel book_quoted ▶ 12:33

“Anti-communist student newspaper, basically El Rebel, began publishing weekly, supported, and partially controlled by the CIA, interior to Guatemala, basically being ran as a CIA proprietary. An agent…”

CIA funded Essence book_quoted ▶ 12:33

CIA funded Carlos Castillo Armas book_quoted ▶ 13:37

“Always project onto others what you're doing. In El Salvador, a Castillo Armas-directed immigrant publication also received CIA money. Agency press assets throughout Central America began planting sto…”

Whiting Willauer member_of Air America book_quoted ▶ 14:08

“the bulk of the time devoted to the operational covert aspects. Soon, the newly minted ambassador, his appointment encouraged by Tommy Cochran, was in Honduras. Willauer is going to be the Honduran am…”

Whiting Willauer member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 15:44

“A former Navy ace seconded by another Navy vet were backed by a variety of air crew. A total of about a dozen aircraft was assembled, including three bombers plus P-47s and P-51 fighter bombers. Willa…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Carlos Castillo Armas book_quoted ▶ 17:43

“Assorted Latin Americans and American soldiers of fortune were training in CIA camps in Nicaragua and the Panama Canal Zone. Arms and equipment now arrived in a steady stream aboard U.S. Air Force C-1…”

Albert Haney member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 20:45

“of arms and equipment were delivered. Agency officers increasingly distrusted Castillo Armas, explored another structure that would exclude him. Cost estimates for the Sherwood Radio Project had firme…”

Frank Wisner member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 21:44

“On March 16th, Frank Wisner met with Richard Helms, Tracy Barnes, and J.C. King and others for a high-level review. Haney warned that delaying D-Day would cause morale problems and weather difficultie…”

Albert Haney ordered_assassination_of Jacobo Árbenz book_quoted ▶ 22:16

“connotations was the creation of a list of Guatemalans for disposal by the new regime, evidently requested by Al Haney. Now, why is that important? This is a list of people to assassinate. You know, l…”

Pat Robertson member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 23:16

“for a list that they created in March of 1954. Rip Robertson took it to Alpilaka to be checked against CIA data. Decades later, agency researchers established that no one had actually been assassinate…”

CIA funded Caribbean Legion book_quoted ▶ 25:18

“It had, however, received some support from the Arbenz predecessor as president of Guatemala. The CIA propagandists now made strenuous efforts to pin all of that on Arbenz, even though he had nothing …”

Pat Robertson supplied_arms_to Carlos Castillo Armas book_quoted ▶ 25:18

CIA carried_out_attack Operation PBSUCCESS book_quoted ▶ 25:48

“anti-Arbenz sabotage teams. Frank Wisner also approved the final timetable for the attack, plus a fresh psychological warfare plan to help justify the operation. The CIA would configure a phony Soviet…”

Charles Cabell member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 27:48

“the island of Cuba. This is done all the time by all of these countries. The tiff between the CIA and the State Department now endangered Project Success. The Deputy DCI, General Cabell, assured senio…”

Rafael Trujillo supplied_arms_to Carlos Castillo Armas book_quoted ▶ 32:58

“Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which could later be used as an answer to the questions of where all those guns came from, which is why it's so important that they control the countries aro…”

CIA carried_out_attack Project Washtub book_quoted ▶ 34:31

“Once they were back in Washington, Richard Bissell spoke of a different paper, one that might show how much time had been wasted as a result of the fight with State Department. Blame somebody else. Th…”

Guatemala supplied_arms_to Czechoslovakia documented ▶ 36:03

“Cabell. Barnes described the status of the various PB success elements. The CIA project seemed to be moving along smoothly. One action by the Arbenz government did play into the preparation for the su…”

CIA funded Radio Swan documented ▶ 36:58

“that the Russians were indeed penetrating Latin America. President Eisenhower initiated Operation Hard Rock Baker, a naval blockade of Guatemala. The blockade was illegal under international law, but …”

Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered_assassination_of Operation PBSUCCESS documented ▶ 36:58

Rodolfo Mendoza member_of Guatemala documented ▶ 37:28

“and went to town on the arm caches and the freighter. Then in only real defection sparked by the CIA, former Guatemalan Air Force Chief Rodolfo Mendoza left the country with a former U.S. air attache …”

CIA recruited Rodolfo Mendoza host_asserted ▶ 37:28

David Atlee Phillips headed Radio Swan documented ▶ 37:59

“was used by Dave Phillips' radio show. The Arbenz government made a significant error, taking the government radio station off the air for installation of a new antenna. For several weeks, the Voice o…”

Pat Robertson carried_out_attack Puerto Barrios documented ▶ 40:59

“to blow up trains carrying the equipment. Robertson led the teams despite orders that no Americans were to be involved. The saboteurs laid explosives on railroad tracks, but the detonators, thanks to …”

CIA recruited Carlos Castillo Armas documented ▶ 45:23

“The final plan based the rebels in Honduras, Castillo Armas, made his invasion two days later. Riding in an old station wagon accompanied by a few trucks, only about 140 soldiers were with him. Those …”

Carlos Castillo Armas carried_out_attack Guatemala documented ▶ 46:18

“rebel troops, most of them not from Guatemala. Castillo Armas advanced to a church six miles inside Guatemala and halted. He awaited a popular revolution that was supposed to support him. From there, …”

Whiting Willauer headed CIA documented ▶ 47:48

“of approximately 600 men. All now depended on Whiting Willauer's Rebel Air Force. It had run a number of bombing and leaflet missions since the first day of the invasion. A raid that caused some damag…”

William Bell member_of CIA documented ▶ 48:18

“The CIA operation could have been exposed right there. As it was, an American national, William Bell, was taken into custody. You know, there was not supposed to be any Americans flying any of these a…”

Allen Dulles headed CIA documented ▶ 48:47

“The CIA Air Force seemed no more effective than their Liberation Army. Allen Dulles got the bad news on June 20th from Al Haney. The Rebel Air Force could not operate more than four planes at a time. …”

Anastasio Somoza supplied_arms_to CIA documented ▶ 49:17

“cause an explosive sound. Haney reported that Nicaragua's Somoza had offered two of his P-51 fighter bombers to make up for the rebel losses, but only if the U.S. would replace his aircraft. This soun…”

Dwight D. Eisenhower approved Anastasio Somoza documented ▶ 50:17

“20%. Mainly because the important psychological impact of air support, Ike agreed anyway to do it. The Somoza Rebel planes were in action the next day and air attacks became the CIA's main activity. M…”

Pat Robertson carried_out_attack United Kingdom documented ▶ 50:48

“that option. The bombing led to the worst scare of PB success. The British were angered over American boarding and searching ships at sea. Then the CIA bombed and sank a British merchant vessel. The s…”

CIA paid Lloyd's of London documented ▶ 53:13

“Robertson's orders without authorization from CIA headquarters by one of the Air Arms American pilots. The British allowed themselves to be mollified and the CIA later quietly reimbursed Lloyds of Lon…”

CIA overthrew Jacobo Árbenz documented ▶ 54:10

“Arbenz received an ultimatum and resigned before the day was out, taking refuge at the Mexican embassy and asking for political asylum. PB's success had achieved its goal. Despite the success of this …”

Jacobo Árbenz removed_from_power Guatemala documented ▶ 54:10

Tracy Barnes reassigned West Germany documented ▶ 55:36

“In a 1966 interview with New York Times reporter Richard Bissell conceded that the action went well beyond the established limits of policy. Frank Wisner and Tracy Barnes celebrated. Barnes would be r…”

E. Howard Hunt reassigned Japan documented ▶ 56:04

“And he went on to do duty in Japan as well as all over, as we have found out. Dave Phillips, who believed PB's success psychological war effort had been the engine of victory, went on to greater thing…”

CIA carried_out_attack Iran documented ▶ 56:34

“Iran and Guatemala as models of successful covert operations. The inner stories reveal that both Project Ajax and PB's success was filled with failures. At some point in each case, the CIA came close …”

CIA carried_out_attack Guatemala documented ▶ 56:34

CIA carried_out_attack Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 57:05

“overthrowing the governments. And that's all they care about. They don't care how sloppy it is. They don't care how many people get killed. They just, and they would have continued on just, and that's…”

Jimmy Carter removed_from_power Guatemala documented ▶ 58:36

“The excesses of the ruling oligarch became such that the U.S. itself, under the Carter administration, finally halted virtually all foreign aid to the country. Over the long haul, the covert actions d…”

CIA framed Lee Harvey Oswald host_asserted ▶ 1:02:26

“You know, the whole Reinhard Galen network out of Franco Spain, you know, with Skorzeny and the framing of Lee Harvey Oswald. And as you know, most of the framing was done in New Orleans. Right. And y…”

Reinhard Gehlen member_of Spain host_asserted ▶ 1:02:26

Information Council of the Americas framed Lee Harvey Oswald host_asserted ▶ 1:05:24

“The International Red Cross is really tied into the Oxnard Clinic, which is also based in New Orleans, is that really the Oxnard Intelligence Connection seems to be the real anchor of the Inca, the In…”

Alton Ochsner member_of International Committee of the Red Cross host_asserted ▶ 1:05:55

“But they all did most of this in New Orleans. And it's interesting that the Ochsner Clinic, I mean, it was Ochsner who took the technology of blood typing to Switzerland to create the International Re…”

Alton Ochsner member_of Ochsner Clinic host_asserted ▶ 1:05:55

CIA trained Operation Pluto documented ▶ 1:06:53

“So let me flesh a little bit of that out. For those of you who don't know, after this coup, Guatemala became, because it's under now the control of the CIA, it becomes the launching point for the Bay …”

Otto Skorzeny trained CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:08:59

“cities that was under the control of the mafia and the internal use of the CIA for a very, very long time, if not still today. And the whole aspect of this is early in the 1950s where these paramilita…”

Alton Ochsner member_of Panama host_asserted ▶ 1:10:04

“But, you know, Ochsner is such a key guy. I had not realized that he was called up literally in 1944 or 5 by the secretary of state to go down to Panama and help the dictator who was feeling not well …”

Dr. Mary's Monkey cited_as_source Mary Sherman host_asserted ▶ 1:10:33

“You know, he was a direct MF, as it were, from the White House as early as, you know, what knows. He was on the American Cancer Board right out of Washington University Medical School in 1934, which i…”

Judy Berry Baker witness_for Dr. Mary's Monkey host_asserted ▶ 1:11:01

“Some of it is controversialized debatably because of its ties to this one witness, very controversial witness that I am very skeptical of named Judy Berry Baker. However, the medical history foundatio…”

Mary Sherman member_of University of Chicago host_asserted ▶ 1:11:30

“The vaccines that come out of this intelligence pharmaceutical industry network going way, way earlier than we are normally used to thinking of. And that's Dr. Mary Sherman was University of Chicago, …”

CIA funded Operation Gladio guest_asserted ▶ 1:14:47

“and all of those to operate at the behest of the Praetorian Guard intelligence agencies on behalf of the oligarchs. So if you look at the stay-behind networks and Operation Gladio in Europe, which als…”

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Guatemala guest_asserted ▶ 1:15:38

“do covert operations under plausible deniability. So when the CIA wants to overthrow a government, like in the case of Guatemala that we were just talking about, they don't usually use too many Americ…”

CIA recruited Pablo Escobar guest_asserted ▶ 1:18:16

“He did originally, he was using the Cuban exile network that the CIA had dictated, but he decided that he wanted to create his own and get a bigger share of the pie. And so he started importing Colomb…”

Henry Kissinger stored_documents_with David Rockefeller host_asserted ▶ 1:20:34

“you actually find the story of what happened. When Kissinger leaves the State Department in 1977, his highly classified memos don't go to the National Archives, they don't go to the CIA, they don't st…”

David Rockefeller appointed Jeffrey Epstein host_asserted ▶ 1:21:00

“Later, Kissinger has to fight with the CIA 25 years later to try and get these things declassified. Nelson Rockefeller got Kissinger his job. David Rockefeller puts Epstein on the Council on Foreign R…”

Nelson Rockefeller appointed Henry Kissinger host_asserted ▶ 1:21:00

Barry Seal member_of CIA documented ▶ 1:22:55

“at the Department of Justice's case against Gary, Terry Reed and Barry Seale, right? In both instances, you had a Department of Justice going into court and stating under oath, an affidavit, that numb…”

Gary Reed member_of CIA documented ▶ 1:22:55

Terry Reed member_of CIA documented ▶ 1:22:55

John D. Rockefeller founded University of Chicago host_asserted ▶ 1:26:33

“fund the whole damn thing, which is a pretty smart move by them beginning of the 20th century. But it just ties back to the same people over and over and over again. The University of Chicago was brou…”