The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 20 (21)

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Transcript

0:00 Let me get Bridget up here, and we'll get the show started. How are you today? Getting a little better every day. Yay! And it is, I am so excited to tell you, it is 88 degrees outside. Eighty frickin' eight degrees. It is blessings from heaven and sunshine. In Missouri. In Missouri. Never happens.

0:33 Bridget gets to brag about having warmer weather than I do in Florida. Oh, my God. Never happens. Mark it on the calendar, but hey. You'll take it. Yes, ma'am. How are you doing? Is this pace crashing or something? Because when I came in, it... When you came in, was it throwing you out or anything? No. Just out of curiosity? Oh, okay. So, I do want to say thank you.

1:03 to everybody that has joined our movement on X. There's lots of new people there. And I can't thank you enough. It's all of the relative old timers sharing the material that is doing this because I'm doing the same thing I did three years ago.

1:30 I'm just putting information out. And it is all of you guys that have joined this army of truth and information that has directly contributed to people getting this information. So whether you're on Rumble or on X, the sharing of this information,

2:00 has just exploded. And I can't thank you enough for doing that. You guys know that we've talked about, and I hate even bringing it up, but there has been both an overt and a unseen, I can't call it covert, attempt. There's things that you can run on X to see if you're...

2:25 reach is being suppressed. And every single time Bridget or I have done that, it has come back that it is. So this is all the manual labor that all of you guys have done. We are not getting any favors. I refuse to pay to have truth promoted. I will not pay money to have a post, which you can do. I was shown that. I didn't even know that existed. But if you're a premium

2:54 person on X, you can actually pay to have your post promoted. I'm not going to do that. That's all of you guys' job. I spend about eight hours a day doing this research and that's the role that you guys play. And I'm blown away by the amount of attention that you guys have provided and the fact that you do that every day. I'm eternally grateful because

3:23 To me, the only way we move forward is for people to realize the truth about our history. And because I think that's the only way that people will have the wherewithal to motor through what's coming down the pike, like at rapid lightning speed right now, to change, to actually

3:51 do things in your local community at the state level and at the federal level, the change that has to occur, we are not going to have the commitment to that change because it's not going to come easy if you don't understand what we're fighting against. And that's what I see our role here. So I just wanted to start that out on a Friday afternoon to tell you that Bridget and I are eternally grateful.

4:21 for all that you guys do. Okay, so for those of you who are new, we spend an hour going through our book, which happens to be Safe for Democracy, the one that we're going through now. And then we have a gab session at the end, starting off with the material that's being presented, followed by...

4:45 Anything that you guys want to talk about that's late breaking news or happening. Because so much of what's happening right now is directly tied to what we talk about in the material that we cover here. Hey, great set of Gladio glasses. That's all I got to say. And can you add SRS co-host as well? Sure. Thank you. All right. We're going to dig in. We are on page 225.

5:15 It starts off and we were in the middle of the preparation for the Bay of Pigs. So it's, and again, what's on the conversation table today, Cuba. So there's divine intervention here when we go through this material. It just seems that when we're covering a particular book, there's pieces of it that are applicable to.

5:42 what's going on. I had no idea the Venezuela operation was going to occur. And we had just covered the Venezuelan coup book. And we were all prepared for what was going on. We knew the players and everything. We knew the background because we had done the work to research what was going on there and had gone on there for decades.

6:13 So anyway, we start today where we left off with kind of the transition between Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency in JFK and the lead up to the Bay of Pigs. So the third force in the Cuban context meant moderate July 26th movement adherents who had rejected

6:44 Castro's move to the left. So you guys know that we have basically the Cuban exiles that are all here. We also have the pro Castro diehards in Cuba, but there was created a third movement that wanted revolution from the military dictator Batista, but didn't want to go full on socialism.

7:13 It so happened, however, that the CIA's WH-4 unit that was overseeing the preparation for the Bay of Pigs, political action chiefs, held opposing views. For Project AET and Pluto, both simultaneously going on, Howard Hunt wanted no M-26 people, no matter how moderate they were.

7:47 Because they had originally supported Castro. Okay. Gary Droller, D-R-O-L-L-E-R, on the other hand, did not much care what philosophical beliefs the people had. He wanted boots on the ground. There was a continued friction between the two on the subject of who to enlist and pay to.

8:17 be operators. They also didn't personally get along very well. You know, that's the best thing you want to do when you're putting a team together, have people that don't get along. Droehler held the title as the WH-4 political action chief, but Hunt had the forward assignment and a reputation honed not just from Guatemala, but

8:48 in Lansdale's Philippine project as well. In other words, E. Howard Hunt had been around for a long time. He had already established his bona fides. Droehler got a leg up when Hunt visited Mexico City to meet with the FRD there and lost a briefcase full of secret documents. Hunt would blame one of his agents, but

9:15 That didn't really matter because he was still responsible. On the other hand, Hunt actually visited Havana that summer where the headquarters-bound droller couldn't go. The search for a surrogate Cuban political movement centered in Miami. Robert Reynolds opened the CIA base there on May 25, 1960. Known as J.M. Ash, A-S-H.

9:47 The base masqueraded as a Coral Gables branch of a New York headhunter firm with a Pentagon contract. So we've got an HR company that's a proprietary of the CIA being funded by the Pentagon, not the CIA, that is being led by the CIA. Reynolds had to play the buffer.

10:19 between hunt and droller. An 11-year agency veteran, Reynolds had served in Mexico, Argentina, spoke fluent Spanish, and headed the Cuba branch of the D.O. Western Hemisphere when Castro had taken power. He knew Esterling from his OSS days. They both were in Burma together, hanging out with Chiang Kai-shek.

10:48 a nexus that united many people on this project. Among the first people selected for the WH4 task force, Reynolds had another headache besides the Hunt-Droller conflict, a second-in-command who outranked him. But Bob had been Esterling's original deputy and the acknowledged area expert. The arrangement seemed to work out well.

11:20 Hunt and Droehler were something else. Howard Hunt had entered on duty at CIA in 1949, just a month after Reynolds. The senior of the two political officers at the Miami base, Hunt held the reins. Jerry Doehler worked out of Washington. He liaisoned with the Committee of Interested Businessmen.

11:50 and posed as a steel tycoon when he visited Miami. Droehler's crude behavior in plantation master style, with his accent and specialty in European operations, gave Hunt excuses to put Droehler on a tight leash. That applied especially after Droehler as Frank Bender, that was his front name,

12:19 held a meeting in a hotel room and was so boisterous that the next door neighbor, a stenographer whose brother worked for the FBI, wrote notes down of every single thing he said. The FBI then asked the CIA about what they were plotting. Meanwhile, Hunt exercised his political activities.

12:55 many of the Cubans. Hunt cut off others' access to him. All this did not add up to a happy camping group. Esterling favored Droller, whom he considered much more reliable than Hunt, but Droller was his own worst enemy. Critics of the Cuban fiasco

13:19 point out that the selection of the FRD excluded more than 100 other factions. Even so, they were basically backbiting each other, the different factions of Cuba. So the leadership's fractioned, the people involved in it is fractioned. When the CIA helped Manuel Rey flee Cuba,

13:53 The group split fiercely over whether Ray should be included in the operation being ran out of Miami. The FRD leadership also wanted huge amounts of money. Their budget was demanding $740,000 a month. Political action people at the agency guided this effort. Control became a crucial issue over the Cuban exiles.

14:25 leading to a very divisive situation. Howard Hunt despised Manolo Ray, that was his nickname, and tried to minimize CIA support for Ray's political group. Washington had to knock heads, both to bring the Cubans together and to get Hunt out of the way. With CIA pouring $130,000 a month,

14:56 into one segment of the movement, which was a lot less than they wanted, and a total action budget of perhaps half a million, there were plenty to fight over. Agency officers plugged potential leaks in Florida. Already, Manuel R. Times MRR efforts had threatened disclosure. In the summer of 1960, local residents near Homestead

15:25 saw Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a farm. As a joke, someone threw firecrackers into the compound. The exiles thought they were under attack and came out guns a-blazing, shooting everywhere. Yeah, nothing screams OPSEC like,

15:53 lighting firecrackers and have everybody out of a compound come out with their guns firing. The exiles thought that they were under attack and one of the pranksters that threw the firecrackers into the compound was wounded and several of the CIA paid Cuban exiles were arrested. Only federal intervention.

16:24 Convince local officials to drop the charges because of national security. But a Miami newspaper found out about it, including CIA's connections to the Cuban exiles. In Washington, Allen Dulles received reporter Stanley Carnow and his bureau chief and introduced them and, excuse me, induced them to kill the story.

16:50 Allen Dulles picks up the phone and says, don't print that story. Evidence of the existence of Mockingbird Media yet again. The press also learned of the CIA's communications complex. It had opened in June at a former Richmond Naval Air Station that was leased from the University of Miami. This became...

17:21 a hugely visible element. For instance, when Bob Reynolds, even by the fall, had only a couple of political action people and a couple of paramilitary experts, he had 44 communication specialists at Apalaca, more than the rest of the CIA base altogether. Gee, I wonder what you're doing with 44 comm officers.

17:50 sitting at Apalaca, which is an abandoned base. I'm sure that doesn't look strange. And by the way, this is, even back in this day, that area of Florida has lots of air traffic. So you know what it takes to run a comm center. And that crap is just thrown all over this supposedly abandoned base. Again, no regard to OPSEC at all.

18:21 Meanwhile, with growing numbers of, that's operational security, by the way, you're supposed to be masking the fact that you're doing this kind of stuff, especially if it's a covert operation. The growing number of exiles and trainers, the CIA cover story broke down elsewhere too. Early recruits dealt with Americans who insisted they were working privately. After August, the scale of TRAX, the operational name,

18:50 The activities there and the operational name of the compound in Guatemala, the increased activities at that plantation, and the close cooperation of U.S. officials in Guatemala and Panama made official connections impossible to deny. By late August, New York Times reporter Tad Scholesly

19:21 in Costa Rica, was covering an OAS conference. He learned of the CIA project from his Cuban friends. Dissuaded from writing a story, again, once he checked with the State Department, he stayed interested, started asking questions. On October 30th, the Guatemalan city daily, La Jara, published an article based on bragging Cuban exile.

19:51 political types that revealed Tract's existence up on the plantation where they're training future guerrillas. This was picked up by the Hispanic American Report, a regional studies newsletter that was written by Ronald Hilton of Stanford University. The report tipped off Havana. The Stanford piece, in turn, led to an editorial in The Nation.

20:22 Written on November 19, 1960. OPSEC blown. The Miami base had other problems too. Bob Reynolds received his basic instructions in early October. Supposed to personally supervise any project activity in the area and draw on any CIA facility personnel or resources there. Reynolds had responsibility, but basically no authority.

20:54 The droller hunt fight reflected the basic dynamic. Key activities were reversed, then put back on the front burner, then reversed. Miami repeatedly found itself in a support role. The boat operations ran out of Miami, but headquarters, not Reynolds, decided when and how they would be carried out. Not the person on the ground in Miami, the guy in Washington.

21:29 For air operations, Miami functioned only as a letterbox, recording resistance requests, passing them to Esterling, then informing the Cuban resistance of the response. In fact, staff sections in Miami had their own channels to headquarters, bypassing the station chief altogether. On agents, the standards were even more confusing. Since most Cubans belonged to one group or another,

22:00 Lines of communication ran to camp tracks, Miami and Cuba. Howard Hunt had a claim to use agents as political operatives rather than spies. Yeah, they're both the same thing. At the headquarters in D.C., they had its call as well. When the U.S. Embassy pulled out of Havana, Miami base got orders to take over its networks. But instead,

22:31 they were run directly out of Washington, D.C. No doubt this related to the fact that Jim Noel had gone to Washington. Once again, Miami became a letterbox. The morale suffered accordingly. Many felt Miami should be the true CIA station with support from D.C. rather than the other way around. Miami performing medial task

23:01 To backstop the Cuban task force was unacceptable to the people in Miami. Personnel at the Miami base were fewer than needed even to cope with the jobs that it had. Reynolds got his first paramilitary expert in June and a second one later the summer. Richard Bissell repeatedly questioned why Miami needed any at all. What?

23:30 Miami is supposed to be running the operation. Why would you not have a paramilitary person on your staff there? That's ludicrous. Suspicious that Reynolds merely was duplicating work done elsewhere, people gave him like the side eye. So if you guys don't realize, like when you do these kind of covert operations or even just a regular military operation, you have

23:59 repetitive staffs all the way down the line. So whatever you have up in Washington DC, like an ops staff, a comm staff, whatever, you're going to have that at the next echelon because they talk to those same people. And basically what they're getting at is that Washington DC has a covert ops guy.

24:28 Under him, they have a paramilitary, a political action, the propaganda, and they're basically doing skip echelon. So the Miami station, they were questioning whether they needed those same areas of expertise there because the forward deployed tracks location in Guatemala.

24:55 where the training and the ops is actually going to be launched at, are they all talking directly to Washington, D.C. when it comes to planning paramilitary operations instead of the Miami people that's supposedly running the operation? Well, yes, that's what they're inferring, that they don't have the people on station in Miami. And when they ask for them, everybody's like raising their eyebrows going.

25:22 Are you just trying to grow your staff? No, I'm trying to do the job. On top of that, none of them like each other. None of the Cuban exiles like each other. The people in charge of this operation doesn't like each other. You just get the impression that this entire thing was meant to fail. No one in a leadership position of a vital operation would ever put two people

25:54 that they know do not get along unless you want it to fail. You would never do that. If you have two squadrons, if you have three squadrons and you're a group commander and you know two of the people, while they're fine with their squadron, they do their job, blah, blah, blah, but you know they personally don't get to get along with each other and you need to deploy two squadrons worth of people, you're not sending the two people that don't get along.

26:23 You would never do that. That's just ludicrous. Okay, moving on. Personnel at the Miami base were fewer than needed. Let's see. Late in August, Bissell asked Barnes and Helms to look into whether Miami and the forward location of Panama were overstaffed. Not understaffed, overstaffed.

26:57 Only in September did Miami base get an intelligence specialist. So first they questioned whether or not you need a paramilitary guy there doing a paramilitary operation. They didn't even put an intelligence guy there with that as his specialty until September of 1960. There was a long lag time in him coming up to speed on what was going on, which is typical.

27:28 Reynolds got no photo intelligence because no one in JM Ash had the necessary clearances. Now, keep in mind, in our other project we're working on on the U2, they're flying the hell out of Cuba. They're flying there daily. They're doing zigzags. They got photo intelligence out the yin-yang during this time. We found that out in our other project.

27:56 CIA declassified document we're going through. And the guy that's running the operation isn't getting any of the photos. Again, that's crazy. How does someone working a covert operation to overthrow the government of Cuba not have the fucking clearance to look at a photo? I understand the U2's classified. It's a photo.

28:26 At the end of the day, it's a photo. Nope, you don't have to tell them where it came from. We have satellites up there too. Could have just been a satellite. Nope, no photos. Two of his maritime specialists were overwhelmed with the boats and the infiltrators. Bob Reynolds repeatedly pressed WM4, higher headquarters, for clarification of his mission or sufficient authority to execute it. By December, he was begging for...

28:58 operational action authority. Several months later, the base would welcome more precise requirements for its agents in the interest of making more efficient use of them. In his eventual end of mission report, the Miami chief observed that the future denied area operations should either be firmly vested in the forward base or ran out of headquarters. Don't try to do both.

29:29 The divided command during Operation ATE and Pluto resulted in competitive relationships that didn't enhance the mission. By then, Reynolds had 160 CIA officers on his roles. Almost half of them were communications people. Many of the rest were just sit spinning their wheels. The other key relationship that did exist remained that.

29:57 between the CIA political action officers and the Cuban exile leaders. While exile politicians argued the Cuban resistance struggled on, at least Ray and a real group in the MRR had forged a working relationship. Failure to work more closely and with Francisco or Heda,

30:26 and the MRR Underground proved one of the more crucial errors. Another guerrilla band in the Escambray Mountains was led by M26 veteran Captain Manuel Beaton. The M26 being the one that the one guy didn't want to talk to at all. But he's on the ground in Cuba, actually running a resistance. But one of the senior CIA guys doesn't even want to talk to him.

30:56 With several hundred men beaten, might have accomplished something. Though critics derided his band as little more than a collection of relatives, the exiles bragged of a thousand or more guerrillas in the mountains. The first CIA supply drop came from a C-54 in early October. This plane was hit, lost an engine, and then went off course while the crew slept and its automatic pilot drifted.

31:26 They barely made a crash landing in Mexico, where the CIA project came close to being blown once again. Yeah, show up at a Mexico airport with a bomb-damaged engine and not knowing where you're at, and you're the CIA. Airdrops into Cuba became the bread and butter of the Ratalajulu base.

31:57 During the first phase of the project, there were 30 supply missions, only four of them judged successful. 30, but only four was judged successful. There were also more emergency landings in Mexico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. In the Jamaican incident, the snafu went entirely unnoticed by the CIA.

32:26 The FDR radio monitors heard the emergency message and exiles warned the secret warriors of the disaster. Worse, when the pilot telephoned the agency's Guatemalan emergency number, officers said they had never heard of him. Only swift action by the FDR security chief saved the day. He spoke to the crew in Jamaica and convinced them to return.

32:54 The air system seemed sluggish and lacked responsiveness, the air operations, the aircraft. Request went through the Miami base, which had no role in the missions, but had to hold the bag when it came to smoothing the feathers of the enraged guerrilla leaders. Here, the WH-4 task force, too, functioned merely as a letterbox. Colonel Beerly's

33:24 Development Projects Division had the real action. A month into his assignment, Hawkins had seen enough to write a blistering memo detailing shortcomings and demanding change. Gotta love them blistering memos. Richard Bissell responded with a pair of directives that essentially confirmed the existing setup. Colonel Beerly continued in charge.

33:50 When Beerly's people acted on Cuban matters, they would be considered part of WH4, the headquarters. Then they gave them a new name because we needed another operational name. They became JM GLOW. This simply gave the air staffers extra hats to use rather than subordinating the Beerly unit to Esterling, which had been Hawkins' recommendation all along.

34:18 With its own communication, the air staff acted on its own authority and had access to Bissell independent of the headquarters staff already running the operation. So now we have a whole nother rogue organization. Bissell routinely dealt with Burley on the U-2 and the SR-71 program, had no qualms about the arrangement, and felt it preserved the division's ability to function outside of the Cuban context.

34:48 Not inside the operation, but outside of it and separately. So now we have another chain of command. In addition, every proposed flight had to be recommended by General Cabell, who had long worked this side of the street and was approved by the 512 group. In setting up this arrangement, there were inevitable...

35:18 lag times in the ability to act in a timely manner. If you have to go all the way up to the headquarters, basically deputy DCI to get approval to fly a mission, you're already doomed. Only around November did Esterling succeed in getting Beerly to designate a single staffer, George Haynes, Gaines, sorry, sorry, as a focal point for all air ops matters.

35:49 during this operation. So they don't even have a director of operations is what we call them in the Air Force. They didn't even have a DO until November. November. Again, crazy. And the DO is not in the field running an operation. He's on the staff. Success remained elusive and much of what passed for it really did not make the grade. Pilot Eddie Ferrer, F-E-R-R-E-R,

36:21 flew 11 times to Cuba before registering a good drop. The frustration was palatable. The resistance felt the same. One mission rated successful took place on December 30th. Four days earlier, Miami base learned that one of the CIA trained agents who had infiltrated back into Cuba wanted an equipment drop on his farm, the most convenient location.

36:49 He specified what he needed and how it needed to be packed, as well as the location and the layout of the drop zone. The request went to Esterling, who passed it to Beerly. Approval procedures naturally led to a meeting in General Cabell's office. This is ludicrous. Beerly explained the mission and had finished when the CIA deputy director asked how much the cargo space would consume.

37:18 Told the cargo represented a small proportion of the capacity, Cabell ordered the load topped off with rice and beans. Dick Drain, startled, warned Cabell that the plane's task was to deliver the specific items requested. Propaganda chief Dave Phillips interjected that Cuba had no shortage of rice and beans, but Cabell wanted to be forward-leaning. Drop the rice and beans, he ordered.

37:50 The next day, the headquarters sent word to tell the agent he would retrieve the shipment as he had requested. But the air staff, in cables not cleared through Esterling, added allotments of 80 pounds of rice and beans. 800 pounds, sorry. And 160 pounds of lard, in addition to 1,500 pounds of weapons that he actually requested.

38:17 They also threw in 200 pounds of leaflets for propaganda. That'll get you killed, but go ahead and put it in there. When the C-54 flew the mission, the plane lingered too long in the area, showed lights, dropped the leaflets onto the agent's farm, and dropped almost a ton of supplies the Cubans did not want and could not handle.

38:49 The agent actually left Cuba in February and went to Miami to denounce the air operation, canceled a follow-up drop, and said that he would not accept any more airdrops no matter what they were sending. So let's unpack that. He's accusing the CIA of basically setting him up. So you want a couple of crates of covert weapons.

39:19 Dropped on your farm. You are already in a very precarious situation. And they bring an entire fucking airplane full of shit and drop it all over your farm. Where are you going to hide that crap? It obviously didn't come from Cuba. What are they doing? That's one of the most ludicrous things I have ever heard of. And it's coming from a military general who is the deputy CIA director.

39:51 Like he's a pea brain. The guy's a covert person in a foreign country. And you're dropping shit all over with an airplane overhead that's going to draw attention because it's not Cuban. Okay, moving on. For some time after, at the CIA, General Cabell would be known as the old rice and beans man.

40:23 While many agency folks picked up the quote-unquote forward leaning for their lexicon, General Cabell leaves this episode completely out of his memoirs because it makes you look like a freaking idiot. Seaborne supplies had its own difficulties. The CIA did not even have a maritime unit. The agency had always borrowed U.S. Navy.

40:50 Since the project began, boat operations were all improvised. Cubans themselves were quicker off the mark. With Cuban-owned boats, such as the Reefer and Wasp, beginning supply deliveries in September of 1960. Typically, CIA case officers like Rudy Enders arranged supplies to haul or coordinate the Miami end of the operation to exfiltrate anti-Cuban.

41:20 or anti-Castro people, or insert agents. They basically contracted out everything. Around November, the agency actually acquired, they bought the WASP from the Cuban owners. In 1960, a dozen Cuban or CIA boat missions took place off of Cuba. Throughout that period before the invasion, boats carried 51 agents, radio operators, and rebel leaders.

41:50 and extracted 79 people. Early in 1961, Castro imported fast patrol boats and radars from Russia to stop those activities. Around December of 1960, Castro's FAR became actively involved in major counterinsurgency campaigns against the Escambray guerrillas. They began to blockade.

42:21 the food going to the guerrillas. They were also capturing and killing some of them. By the spring of 1961, the FAR blockade had the guerrillas starving. In all, aircraft dropped almost 14 tons of materials. Perhaps a third actually reached the rebels, while boats landed almost four times as much, and again with some seized by Castro.

42:55 So Castro knows what's going on. This amounted to very thin supplies. And it was at some point, there was probably rebels wishing the CIA had in fact dropped them the rice and beans, not the CIA agent. Meanwhile, the analytical component of CIA, the Directorate of Intelligence, had been cut completely out of all of this.

43:27 I'm sorry, I just have to laugh. We don't actually want anybody getting intelligence because we're just creating it. We're making it up to justify what we're doing. We don't need the Directorate of Intelligence involved in an intelligence operation. They might get in the way and write something down that's not true or that is true that's inconvenient. From Esterling on down, no one in the DO was allowed to request any intelligence analyst analysis.

43:56 that might even suggest what was impending for Cuba. So again, they may know over here in this office that Castro's on to all of them, but they're insulated by the covert action people because they don't want to hear that because then they have to brief the president and the shit might hit the fan. So best just to wall those people off.

44:25 We don't want to hear it. It's like the deaf, dumb, and blind monkeys. The analysts were deemed not to have a need to know about what they were doing. The chief analyst, Deputy Director Robert Amore Jr., went to many of the same Georgetown parties that the covert operators did. Even privately heard nothing about the operation. Washington gossip.

44:59 Amori undoubtedly found out. They all got through a capital briefing on January 6, 1961, where Alan Dulles presented the Senate CIA subcommittee some details of the Cuban project. But Amori had no standing to supply reports that might call the project into question. The U.S. Intelligence Board analyzed Soviet aid to Cuba in November of 1960.

45:29 And again in February 1961. But without deeper knowledge of the CIA plans, their reporting failed to tell the headquarters element of this operation much of what it needed to know about Castro's capability both against the resistance and the pending invasion. Again, picture the three monkeys. I don't want to hear. I don't want to see. I don't want anybody speaking to me shit that I don't want to hear.

46:00 To cap it all off, the CIA from TRAX, which is in Guatemala, intervened in Guatemalan politics. On November 14th, a number of army officers revolted against Fuentes, who had allowed the CIA into his country. Richard Bissell awoke at 3.30 a.m. to a call from the duty officer at headquarters.

46:27 A dispatch had just came in from Lieutenant Colonel Frank Egan, E-G-A-N, at tracks, conveying Fuentes' demand for the CIA Cubans to help him. Bissell spoke to State Department only to learn that the diplomats would not decide until later that day. Egan needed an answer in an hour.

46:55 Bissell cabled Egan on his own authority, permitting the use of CIA pilots, but not any of the Cuban exiles, supposedly, and recalls no evidence the troops were ever used. But President Eisenhower was later briefed that the Cubans deployed to Guatemala City and the Puerto Barrios, disarming the rebels.

47:24 It seems that two plane loads flew to the affected places, but never got off the aircraft. So we're told. Cuban veterans like Felix Rodriguez, another force gump of Operation Gladio, have spoken and written about the intervention. The U.S. Navy also responded, dispatching Amphibia Squadron 10 to the Caribbean with the helicopter carrier Boxer, five destroyers.

47:54 and a contingent of 2,000 Marines. No one is going to screw up us using Guatemala as a terrorist training camp. President, I don't, he goes by his, like the Hispanic name thing goes, by the middle part of his name. I don't know how to say it. It's Y-D-I-G-O-R-A-S. Idigoras, I'm just going to call him Fuentes. It's the same guy. It's the Guatemalan president.

48:28 His name they don't use, which is his last name, Fuentes, is easier for me to pronounce, just so that you guys can keep up. All right, President Fuentes survived, and with him, the CIA's privileges in Guatemala. But he became very restive as the CIA Cubans overstayed their allotted two months. The agency asked for two more months, and after that,

48:57 Esterling used his frequent trips to keep the Guatemalan leader humored. CIA contributed to rupturing secrecy. In his effort to recruit Cubans in Miami, Howard Hunt took photos of the forward operating base in Guatemala. Again, OPSEC. The pictures got wide dissemination and found their way to the Miami Herald.

49:27 Publication outraged Esserling. Hunt's efforts to sanitize the photos did little to disguise their true meaning. Sets of the pictures even reached the Cuban government. The Ministry of Information gave them wide publication. Oh, the CIA is down in Guatemala setting up a terrorist training camp. We've got shit coming ashore.

49:56 that we've already been intercepting. We've got airdrops into the mountains to feed rebels. Gosh, I wonder if he was able to figure out they're about to get invaded. In Eisenhower's counsel, after November 1960, it would have been implausible to argue that Project ATE and Pluto remained secret, only to the American people. The most that could be claimed was that the details

50:28 Not the operation. The details were hidden. Total surprise was impossible as early as November of 1960. I see that they kicked Bridget out. The next section is a little lengthy, but it basically concludes this.

51:04 So we'll start with that on Monday and then move on to the actual Bay of Pigs. Sorry about that. I got thrown out at the very beginning. I see War Hamster in the audience. Yep. All right. Any comment, SR or Bridget? More nefarious since Stellar's not up here.

51:43 More nefarious fuckery going on everywhere. So what I found most interesting about this part of the book, I had learned most of all of this in tidbits. Not any one of them, like the fact that Howard Hunt had lost his notebook or his briefcase or whatever. And that I had read in another book about the...

52:10 screw up on the airdrop onto that farm. This is the first book that took all of the preparation screw ups and wrap them in a bow. So again, when you're in the military and you do an operation that ends in total, to use Bridget word, fuckery, you do an after actions report.

52:40 And everything that's gone wrong. What I find most interesting is most historians will take one piece of the fuckery and concentrate on that saying that it was indicative of all of it. This is the first author that I have seen that took all of them, wrapped them together so that you can understand by November of 1960.

53:07 All of this had taken place. Dulles knows unequivocally the entire operation is compromised. And again, the place where the intelligence analyst and the intelligence operators, the covert side, meet is at the Cabell and Dulles level. So it is completely possible that the intelligence on the,

53:37 analyst side of this is picking up all of this information, but the separation, they insisted, and that's not even normal on covert operations. Normally, you will open the door to the analyst so that you can keep your covert operators apprised of the intelligence on the ground during an operation, except in the situations

54:07 where you have made the decision, you're doing it regardless, you're not interested in any of the on, especially if you're planning for something to fail, or you don't give a crap if it succeeds because you got a backup plan using the US military to overthrow the country. Those are the situations where you would opt to not have the intelligence because you've already accumulated.

54:36 the entire operation's compromised. OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, the entire operation is compromised. So if in addition to all of those compromised operational components, you were to be told that Castro has intercepted 10 boats from various, because the ones that the CIA was controlling, the Cuban exiles, that's not all of them.

55:05 They were doing shit on their own. And the analysts using the U-2 overhead satellite capability would have had intelligence that indicated that. So they would have had intelligence where they were massing their forces. Because again, using the other declassified CIA document, they're mapping the hell out of Cuba at this point.

55:34 And so it was very important for the covert operators to keep their project insulated because they had already decided it was happening no matter what. I'm going to, you may want to drop down SR and bring him back up. I can't because he's listed as co-host, but it looks like he's requesting a mic. Okay. Yeah.

56:09 Some more fuckery going on with the space. We're just full of it. Full of fuckery today, just saying. Yeah. All right. I threw him the co-host again. Well, I'll jump in while we wait for SR to figure out stuff. Howdy, Colonel. My apologies to everybody for having to postpone our show today. I had thought I'd have more control of my schedule during retirement, but apparently that's not the way it works. That never works. That's not the way it's working at all.

56:43 I do apologize. We'll try to get that done over the weekend. I caught part of the chapter you just read, and one of my favorite expressions has always been, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence, which you just described as a combination of the two. And most certainly, I think you've made the case that that's pretty darn intentional. Right.

57:11 Yeah, there's all kinds of little sayings like that about, you know, government incompetence, but a ton of them apply. Yes. And it's both malice and incompetence combined. And it's almost comical if it wasn't, you know, so freaking serious. Right. And when you have planned incompetence, it's still nefarious, right? Good choice of words. Yeah. And never did I ever.

57:42 that I would be talking about planned incompetence when it comes not only to the CIA, but our government at large. But you do clearly see that this was not only planned incompetence, but you have to convince me because when you read

58:12 the facts, the logical conclusion is that the Bay of Pigs was meant to fail. And you're going to have to create a very strong argument that that's not true because the facts lead you in that direction. And the aftermath of that, when we've heard in the devil's chessboard, the insistence of the

58:41 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Curtis LeMay, in charge of the Air Force, Dulles, all in JFK's office screaming at him that he has to use the military. You know, it's interesting. We're going back 60 years or more, and it makes it so easy to believe some of the news bits that are coming out about.

59:08 Oh, I don't know, hiding the intelligence about China interfering in our elections and a dozen more. So it's so easy to understand how they're, they care more about the little fiefdoms than they do about the country. That's so true. And that's why I, so thank you for saying that Warhamster. That's why understanding history is so important because those of us who.

59:32 years ago were naive and thought everybody had the best intentions towards our country at the center of everything they do. No, these people are nefarious bastards. And if you find it hard to believe that the CIA would intentionally hide intelligence from the president, you have not read enough books. You've not read enough history.

1:00:01 They kill presidents. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for being here on Spaces in a Rumble. What I'm looking at here is, yes, this is a failure to begin with, and all things are sort of like keystone cops going on here. But we come to this whole deal where...

1:00:32 you have issues with the plan that's supposed to fail being almost sabotaged from the very beginning, which you really didn't want. I mean, with the planes being shot at, with them landing in specific areas they're not supposed to show up at, and they cover up for those planes and everything else that went on.

1:01:02 I can't help but believe there's more than just a planned failure going on here among, as Warhamster stated, thiefdoms. Yeah. And what's really happening here? Well, and just so that you guys, I know most of you have probably read the post that I made. I do know there's some people over on Rumble and YouTube that are not on X.

1:01:30 The fiefdoms in government is huge and cannot be understated. You see all over X today, the introduction of the use of the A-10s in the Iranian theater operation. And the Air Force is in the operational community, have their own silos.

1:01:56 they have based on weapon systems. So you have what's called the heavies, which are the cargo. Lumped in there are the refuelers. And you have the tactical heavies, the C-130s. They're their own community because each of them have very separate missions. Yeah, they all, like the fighter guys say, they all haul trash, but they haul selectively different trash.

1:02:25 Of course, the refuelers have their own trash hauling capability as well as fuel refueling. So that is completely separate. And those are considered second class pilots, not to themselves, but to the Air Force overall. Because generally, the Air Force is led by fighter pilots. Have we had a few heavy guys? Yeah. Generally speaking, it is led by fighter pilots. That changed after...

1:02:53 the strategic air commands um once they figured out we weren't just going to tactically nuke everybody um they kind of faded out of um favor for the fighter guys and i have a book that was written just about the psychological difference of pilots they had done a huge study of what was the psychological makeup of bomber pilots versus

1:03:20 fighter pilots versus because they were trying to figure out recruiting. How do you go and recruit what you hope to be a future competitive fighter pilot? It's a very interesting book, but that was a long time ago, like 20 years ago. It was fascinating because it talks about the attributes of all of these different pockets of pilots.

1:03:46 And so the fighter mafia in the Air Force that basically runs the Air Force for all intents and purposes consists of all combat Air Force. Okay, so that's what Air Combat Command, ACC, is all of the combat aircraft. You have Mobility Air Command, which is all the trash haulers.

1:04:10 In that huge community of all of these sleek, fast jets, you've got the F-16 community, you have the F-15 community, and they all have their little rivalries, we'll just say. And if one of them in their community does something really stupid, like a guy did in Korea in the F-15 community, the entire community gets smeared with that. So there's a lot of don't fuck up.

1:04:40 pressure in those communities. I won't go into detail about that. But anyway, the one guy that's hanging, and so all of the C-130s that belong to ABSOC, that are combat, you know, special ops, they're not even in this pie at all. So the one stray dog in all of those fast, mock,

1:05:09 one aircraft is the A-10. It sits over here by, and the bombers, you know, you got this, all of these other communities, but the A-10 in ACC sits over and it's literally like a stray dog because its primary mission is not dropping bombs and air to air combat, which is what they all love. It's helping the army, close air support. It flies slow.

1:05:39 And it's lethal. That's not anything that interests these jocks that have really fast aircraft and air-to-air combat and all that other shit. That's not an A-10. So the Air Force tried repeatedly to get rid of the A-10. They didn't care if it went to the Army or the Marines or whatever. They didn't want it because it wasn't fast and it wasn't sexy. And so those internal rivalries.

1:06:07 in bureaucracies are always going to exist. The problem when you take that whole mentality and you set it on top of covert operations, because covert operations has like a mini military in it. It has ground operations. It has political warfare operations. It has air operations. Those same little

1:06:36 prejudices come into the CIA because a lot of the CIA agents have come out of these other communities, especially in the air thing. But a lot of the guys that do the paramilitary and the ground, they're former special forces guys. So you are already inheriting this innate, you know, ground turf war that if you're not a good leader,

1:07:05 It is going to sabotage something, especially as sensitive as a covert operation. It's just so important that the, I know we all like to idolize the military, but people have to be cognizant. There is significant limiting factors when you're dealing with the United States military. It is not a perfect machine. There's lots of inherent risk.

1:07:34 Talking about that. Yeah, it's funny you say that, Colonel. I've told you a little bit about my father's Air Force career. Yeah. He was a, for those who don't know, my father flew in Vietnam for the Air Force. And he started out as a fighter pilot. And apparently, when my mom got pregnant with my older sister, they switched him to flying these fat pigs across the Pacific transport plane. And so I guess he was part of more than one community.

1:08:03 And he didn't really talk too much about his Vietnam days. He just didn't like talking about it. But I've got all his war medal plaques and awards and stuff like that. And he's got them on two different walls from the two different stages of his flying career. Yeah, they're not allowed to touch each other. Yeah, they weren't really even allowed to look at each other, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, it is a very big deal.

1:08:30 And generally, you don't find too many people that go from fighters to heavies. You find people in the heavies that change aircraft, just like all the F-4 guys ended up as 16s or 15 guys when they phased out the F-4s. So it's not all that unusual to be assigned to a different aircraft when they're phasing out the one you're flying. But you rarely, rarely ever,

1:09:00 have a cross-pollinization. Now, obviously, by the time you get to be a general officer and you're commanding a numbered Air Force or a MAGCOM, you're in charge of all of them. But you generally are only in your flying community up to the point where you're a current...

1:09:21 And then as a one star, you could be on a staff or whatever. And then a two star, you're normally a numbered Air Force commander or something like that. So it is only once you get significantly high in rank that you're even in on a tactical level, a multi-aircraft kind of.

1:09:45 command structure that doesn't mean you're not going to come in contact you still know what all of the missions are and all that other crap because you're on planning staffs the whole way up but just they they stay very much in their communities um that's not as true on the um the airlift side um i've known lots of people that's flown both um the 130s the 141s and the c17s that it

1:10:13 It is more common, still not common, but it is more common to have that happen on the heavy side of the community. But I will tell you personality wise, the A10 community is, it would be, and I know this is probably an insult to most of them, but it's the difference between, I would put the A10 community as like a Southern gentleman community.

1:10:43 and the fighter community as the Northeast Snops. And again, that comes from someone completely outside. I had to work with all of them, but you'd be hard pressed to find somebody in an A-10 that was an egotistical asshole. That's not hard to find at all in the fighter community. As a matter of fact, that's pretty normal.

1:11:09 And it's just an interesting dynamic from a support person's perspective who dealt with them on the flight line as well as when I was enlisted, as well as as an officer trying to help them. So just a very interesting dynamic in that community. It's not too dissimilar from what I experienced on Wall Street. You know, I was the client facing guy and I'd have the bond desk and the stock desk and the derivative desk.

1:11:39 All those people, they had completely isolated communities and they did not talk to each other in any way, shape or form or share research. And that's with a couple of the big Wall Street banks. So I think the trend is pretty common with any big institution. I think you see that. Yeah, that's crazy. SR, go ahead. I just want to add a little bit to this as well. I can tell you that's among the junior ranks as well. You have.

1:12:12 Specific medals, you have specific badges, you belong to specific units. That carries some pride and prestige in what you do and rivalries that go on. But along with that, I recall when the Army decided to put berets on every soldier. And when they did that, I never heard such a ruckus like anything else between those that wore a beret, specifically the green one.

1:12:43 And now everybody's wearing a beret? Oh man, they were pissed. But thank you anyway. Sure. And you know, that came out around the same time where there was a big push in the military to designate people that did special operation missions. So obviously you have the SF guys, you have the Green Berets.

1:13:12 Again, the Marines, like they always do, God bless them, in a good way, they refused to participate. They told the Special Operations Four Star Commander that every Marine is trained to the same standard. They don't have special Marines. They have Marines. And every Marine is capable of being an SF support element or forward echelon equally.

1:13:41 And the reason why that was so important is because SOCOM has money to train anybody designated as a special operator to a higher standard than their normal service. So for us, all special forces capability is in AFSOC, Air Force Special Operations Command. And so they take a blank C-130 and SOCOM.

1:14:10 So the Air Force buys the 130, the Air Force trains the NCO, the Air Force trains the officer, they assign them to Special Operations Command and SOCOM then trains all those same people and modifies the Air Force bought equipment to a higher standard compatible with Special Operations integration. So if I take a blank C-130 and I put all these guns on it and all this other bells and whistles, it is now...

1:14:38 a special operations entity. So the Air Force is still responsible for the basic airframe, supplying mechanics, blah, blah, blah. But any special operations command entity that's put on there, they pay the bill to have it operate at that higher standard than all of the rest of the fleet of 130s. And that's true with the officers too.

1:15:02 The Air Force does all of the basic trainings, the senior service school, all that other stuff. But SOCOM is the one that would then spend, if you want them to speak a specific language or integrate into an air package that's going to do some covert operation, they train you to a much higher standard. And so that's kind of how that whole thing works.

1:15:31 you're not going to stay in AFSOC your whole career as an Air Force person, but it's going to look a lot like that. You're going to spend a lot of time there because they put a huge investment into those resources. Thank you, Colonel. Thank you for singling out the Marines, because I'll tell you, as a unit, Marines, if you tell one to drop.

1:15:58 all of them drop well and that's you don't want 20 push-ups you drop give me 20 all of them drop it give you 20 it's not just one yeah they didn't want to play in the whole you know we're going to um integrate um basic training all of that shit the marines are as far as i'm concerned the one entity in the military and that's not to say they're all like this but they're the one that

1:16:28 produces primarily the best senior leadership that doesn't buy into the bullshit. They definitely bring them up much differently where taking chances is not career ending. And that's not to say they don't scapegoat people because they have, I've seen it firsthand. But overall, they have a different environment that they operate in.

1:16:56 And it does bode well for the Marines when you have a four-star general standing up there going, no, that's dumb. We're not going to do it. So anyway, now that we've trashed on all of the different services and the CIA, we could probably call it a day. But anyway, let me just see over here on Rumble. I noticed...

1:17:25 Now there's MARSOC. Yes, I dealt actually with MARSOC. The CENTCOM had its own subordinate Marine element. And there were lots of Marines at CENTSOC as well. But again, let's see, what else?

1:17:53 There was about when the, oh, they were talking about over here on Rumble about the counterinsurgency training didn't become doctrine until JFK and the counterinsurgency push. Yeah, it didn't become doctrine until then, but they sure as hell did a hell of a lot of it without the doctrine.

1:18:20 But again, most of the counterinsurgency operations we do, and we've covered this in past programs, are actually insurgent operations. They're not counterinsurgents because they're actually going after, based on corrupted CIA intelligence, they're going after people in the country that are

1:18:43 basically trying to get the CIA controlled military dictator, like in the case of Latin America, out of their country. So they label the people, they go in and install a military dictator, and then they call all of the people that are rebelling against the fake president, like we were Biden, they call them insurgents. The indigenous people, they're insurgents. No, no, they just want their democracy.

1:19:11 democracy back they want the person in their government that they actually elected not the one that was selected by this oligarch and installed by the CIA so by it's very important labeling that we found out in this research so if you label those people that just want their democracy back and not to be ruled by a military dictator

1:19:36 By labeling them, the indigenous people, insurgents, they're not insurgents, they're citizens in that country and they want their democracy back. But you label them an insurgent and that allows the military and the CIA to conduct counter insurgency operations.

1:19:56 And by inserting these Gladio cells and special forces and CIA contract operatives, they're actually the insurgents. They're the ones that are introducing a foreign body into that country to quell a rebellion against a government that the actual...

1:20:22 CIA insurgents installed in their country. And it's so important to understand how they twist names and labels around, just like they were calling us terrorists. And the people that went to January 6th, they were insurrectionists. You are living through these things. And the problem that we have, because we don't understand how nefarious these people are, we never go back and question

1:20:51 These labels that have been assigned to people throughout history, just like we found that all of these people that were labeled communist in order to justify the overthrow of the government, the majority of them were not communist. They weren't even socialist. They just didn't want to be put in a box and said, you have to be aligned with the West. Well, but what if I don't want to be aligned with anybody? That's not allowed.

1:21:17 You're with us or you're against us. And so we have to be very careful now that we know what we know about labels that they want to assign people because it's generally indicative of follow on action. You don't spend time labeling just like with January 6th. The labeling those people as insurrectionist was step number one.

1:21:45 Step number two was going to round them up. Step number three was throwing them in prison. Labeling is very, very important with these operations as we have learned. Okay, all right, that's it. So we're gonna sign off. We will be back on Monday at four o'clock. I have two shows with Tommy tomorrow and hopefully...

1:22:15 Either tomorrow or Sunday, Warhamster and I will be able to arrange our schedule so that we can do our next segment. And we'll move on from there. So thanks, everyone, for joining me. I'm going to get up here and call my daughter because I haven't seen my grandson in like six days. So I'm going to spend the evening with them loving on him. All right. So everybody take care.

1:22:43 We will be back on Monday at four o'clock.

Entities here

CIA45 Operation Mongoose26 Cuba25 Miami25 E. Howard Hunt13 Richard M. Bissell Jr.12 U.S. Air Force12 Guatemala12 United States10 Gary Droller9 Robert Reynolds9 Joint Special Operations Command8 Fidel Castro7 Operation Pluto7 United States Marine Corps7 Fulgencio Batista5 Esterling5 Colonel Stanley Beerly5 Mexico5 Manuel Ray4 Directorate of Intelligence4 Allen Dulles4 John F. Kennedy3 Escambray Mountains3 M-26-7 Movement3 Bay of Pigs3 Operation Tropic3 Unknown Book on Wilson/CIA3 Havana3 1960 Guatemalan Coup Attempt3 JMASH2 Cuban Revolution2 Paula Hawkins2 Panama2 U.S. Army2 Jamaica2 U.S. Navy2 Dwight D. Eisenhower2 January 6 Capitol attack2 Apalachee, Florida2

Claims made here

Robert Reynolds headed JMASH documented ▶ 9:15

“That didn't really matter because he was still responsible. On the other hand, Hunt actually visited Havana that summer where the headquarters-bound droller couldn't go. The search for a surrogate Cub…”

JMASH front_for CIA documented ▶ 9:47

“The base masqueraded as a Coral Gables branch of a New York headhunter firm with a Pentagon contract. So we've got an HR company that's a proprietary of the CIA being funded by the Pentagon, not the C…”

E. Howard Hunt member_of CIA documented ▶ 11:20

“Hunt and Droehler were something else. Howard Hunt had entered on duty at CIA in 1949, just a month after Reynolds. The senior of the two political officers at the Miami base, Hunt held the reins. Jer…”

Allen Dulles covered_up CIA documented ▶ 16:24

“Convince local officials to drop the charges because of national security. But a Miami newspaper found out about it, including CIA's connections to the Cuban exiles. In Washington, Allen Dulles receiv…”

CIA operated_from Richmond Naval Air Station documented ▶ 16:50

“Allen Dulles picks up the phone and says, don't print that story. Evidence of the existence of Mockingbird Media yet again. The press also learned of the CIA's communications complex. It had opened in…”

Robert Reynolds operated_from Apalachee, Florida documented ▶ 17:21

“a hugely visible element. For instance, when Bob Reynolds, even by the fall, had only a couple of political action people and a couple of paramilitary experts, he had 44 communication specialists at A…”

Operation Tropic operated_from Guatemala documented ▶ 18:50

“The activities there and the operational name of the compound in Guatemala, the increased activities at that plantation, and the close cooperation of U.S. officials in Guatemala and Panama made offici…”

Tad Szulc exposed Operation Tropic documented ▶ 19:21

“in Costa Rica, was covering an OAS conference. He learned of the CIA project from his Cuban friends. Dissuaded from writing a story, again, once he checked with the State Department, he stayed interes…”

Ronald Hilton exposed Operation Tropic documented ▶ 19:51

“political types that revealed Tract's existence up on the plantation where they're training future guerrillas. This was picked up by the Hispanic American Report, a regional studies newsletter that wa…”

Robert Reynolds member_of JMASH documented ▶ 27:28

“Reynolds got no photo intelligence because no one in JM Ash had the necessary clearances. Now, keep in mind, in our other project we're working on on the U2, they're flying the hell out of Cuba. They'…”

Manuel Barreto member_of M-26-7 Movement documented ▶ 30:26

“and the MRR Underground proved one of the more crucial errors. Another guerrilla band in the Escambray Mountains was led by M26 veteran Captain Manuel Beaton. The M26 being the one that the one guy di…”

CIA supplied_arms_to M-26-7 Movement documented ▶ 30:56

“With several hundred men beaten, might have accomplished something. Though critics derided his band as little more than a collection of relatives, the exiles bragged of a thousand or more guerrillas i…”

Colonel Stanley Beerly headed Development Projects Division documented ▶ 33:24

“Development Projects Division had the real action. A month into his assignment, Hawkins had seen enough to write a blistering memo detailing shortcomings and demanding change. Gotta love them blisteri…”

Development Projects Division renamed_to JM GLOW documented ▶ 33:50

“When Beerly's people acted on Cuban matters, they would be considered part of WH4, the headquarters. Then they gave them a new name because we needed another operational name. They became JM GLOW. Thi…”

George Haynes appointed CIA documented ▶ 35:18

“lag times in the ability to act in a timely manner. If you have to go all the way up to the headquarters, basically deputy DCI to get approval to fly a mission, you're already doomed. Only around Nove…”

CIA trained Cuba book_quoted ▶ 36:21

“flew 11 times to Cuba before registering a good drop. The frustration was palatable. The resistance felt the same. One mission rated successful took place on December 30th. Four days earlier, Miami ba…”

Richard M. Bissell Jr. ordered_assassination_of Cuba book_quoted ▶ 37:18

“Told the cargo represented a small proportion of the capacity, Cabell ordered the load topped off with rice and beans. Dick Drain, startled, warned Cabell that the plane's task was to deliver the spec…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 37:50

“The next day, the headquarters sent word to tell the agent he would retrieve the shipment as he had requested. But the air staff, in cables not cleared through Esterling, added allotments of 80 pounds…”

CIA carried_out_attack Cuba book_quoted ▶ 38:17

“They also threw in 200 pounds of leaflets for propaganda. That'll get you killed, but go ahead and put it in there. When the C-54 flew the mission, the plane lingered too long in the area, showed ligh…”

CIA funded Operation Mongoose book_quoted ▶ 40:23

“While many agency folks picked up the quote-unquote forward leaning for their lexicon, General Cabell leaves this episode completely out of his memoirs because it makes you look like a freaking idiot.…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 40:50

“Since the project began, boat operations were all improvised. Cubans themselves were quicker off the mark. With Cuban-owned boats, such as the Reefer and Wasp, beginning supply deliveries in September…”

CIA recruited Cuba book_quoted ▶ 40:50

CIA supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:20

“or anti-Castro people, or insert agents. They basically contracted out everything. Around November, the agency actually acquired, they bought the WASP from the Cuban owners. In 1960, a dozen Cuban or …”

CIA recruited Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:20

CIA funded Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:20

FAR (Cuba) carried_out_attack Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:50

“and extracted 79 people. Early in 1961, Castro imported fast patrol boats and radars from Russia to stop those activities. Around December of 1960, Castro's FAR became actively involved in major count…”

Fidel Castro targeted_for_regime_change Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:50

CIA recruited Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:50

Fidel Castro supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 41:50

FAR (Cuba) carried_out_attack Cuba book_quoted ▶ 42:21

“the food going to the guerrillas. They were also capturing and killing some of them. By the spring of 1961, the FAR blockade had the guerrillas starving. In all, aircraft dropped almost 14 tons of mat…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 42:21

CIA covered_up Directorate of Intelligence book_quoted ▶ 43:27

“I'm sorry, I just have to laugh. We don't actually want anybody getting intelligence because we're just creating it. We're making it up to justify what we're doing. We don't need the Directorate of In…”

Allen Dulles exposed Operation Mongoose book_quoted ▶ 44:59

“Amori undoubtedly found out. They all got through a capital briefing on January 6, 1961, where Alan Dulles presented the Senate CIA subcommittee some details of the Cuban project. But Amori had no sta…”

U.S. Intelligence Board spied_on Cuba book_quoted ▶ 44:59

U.S. Intelligence Board covered_up Operation Mongoose book_quoted ▶ 45:29

“And again in February 1961. But without deeper knowledge of the CIA plans, their reporting failed to tell the headquarters element of this operation much of what it needed to know about Castro's capab…”

U.S. Intelligence Board spied_on Cuba book_quoted ▶ 45:29

Richard M. Bissell Jr. supplied_arms_to Fulgencio Batista book_quoted ▶ 46:55

“Bissell cabled Egan on his own authority, permitting the use of CIA pilots, but not any of the Cuban exiles, supposedly, and recalls no evidence the troops were ever used. But President Eisenhower was…”

U.S. Navy supplied_arms_to Fulgencio Batista book_quoted ▶ 47:24

“It seems that two plane loads flew to the affected places, but never got off the aircraft. So we're told. Cuban veterans like Felix Rodriguez, another force gump of Operation Gladio, have spoken and w…”

CIA recruited Felix Rodriguez book_quoted ▶ 47:24

CIA recruited Cuba book_quoted ▶ 48:57

“Esterling used his frequent trips to keep the Guatemalan leader humored. CIA contributed to rupturing secrecy. In his effort to recruit Cubans in Miami, Howard Hunt took photos of the forward operatin…”

E. Howard Hunt exposed Operation Mongoose book_quoted ▶ 48:57

Ministry of Information (Cuba) exposed Operation Mongoose book_quoted ▶ 49:27

“Publication outraged Esserling. Hunt's efforts to sanitize the photos did little to disguise their true meaning. Sets of the pictures even reached the Cuban government. The Ministry of Information gav…”

CIA covered_up John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 53:37

“analyst side of this is picking up all of this information, but the separation, they insisted, and that's not even normal on covert operations. Normally, you will open the door to the analyst so that …”

CIA covered_up John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 54:36

“the entire operation's compromised. OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, OPSEC violation, the entire operation is compromised. So if in addition to all of those compromised operational c…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Cuba book_quoted ▶ 55:05

“They were doing shit on their own. And the analysts using the U-2 overhead satellite capability would have had intelligence that indicated that. So they would have had intelligence where they were mas…”

CIA covered_up John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 55:05

CIA covered_up John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 55:34

“And so it was very important for the covert operators to keep their project insulated because they had already decided it was happening no matter what. I'm going to, you may want to drop down SR and b…”

Curtis LeMay ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy book_quoted ▶ 58:41

“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Curtis LeMay, in charge of the Air Force, Dulles, all in JFK's office screaming at him that he has to use the military. You know, it's interesting. We're going b…”

CIA covered_up John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 59:32

“years ago were naive and thought everybody had the best intentions towards our country at the center of everything they do. No, these people are nefarious bastards. And if you find it hard to believe …”

United States Marine Corps refused_to_participate_in Joint Special Operations Command guest_asserted ▶ 1:13:12

“Again, the Marines, like they always do, God bless them, in a good way, they refused to participate. They told the Special Operations Four Star Commander that every Marine is trained to the same stand…”

Joint Special Operations Command funded U.S. Air Force guest_asserted ▶ 1:13:41

“And the reason why that was so important is because SOCOM has money to train anybody designated as a special operator to a higher standard than their normal service. So for us, all special forces capa…”

Joint Special Operations Command trained U.S. Air Force guest_asserted ▶ 1:14:10

“So the Air Force buys the 130, the Air Force trains the NCO, the Air Force trains the officer, they assign them to Special Operations Command and SOCOM then trains all those same people and modifies t…”