Blowback - S2 Episode 10 - "Infinite Crisis"

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

After the Kennedy assassination, US-Cuba diplomacy wanes and the embargo continues. To this day. Our story ends.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

My fellow Americans, I want to begin tonight by telling a story. Compared with the hellish years of the last decade, Guatemala today seems positively serene. But the gap between appearances and reality can be dangerously deceptive. In the 1990s, Guatemala, the site of America's original Latin American coup, the blueprint for the Bay of Pigs, Guatemala had been for decades a military dictatorship. Human rights abuses and murder on the scale. of the 1988 Aguacarte massacre, a common place in Guatemala. This is where death squads were invented 30 years ago, where terror in Central America began and where it continues. In its internal war

to stamp out communism, socialism, organized labor, and any kind of left-wing militants, the junta killed as many as 200,000 people, most of them indigenous peasants and workers. Students, trades unionists, Indian activists, and local peasants are being made to disappear at a frightening rate. And with presidential elections coming up in November, the pace of the violence has increased. Those that did not perish in these massacres were terrorized, tortured, or simply witnessed their family and neighbors mutilated by the regime. Now, this was done in the name of democracy. And it was done, it was said, to restore democracy because the Soviets had infiltrated the Guatemalan government.

The Guatemalan Army and its death squads received extensive training, hardware, and military cooperation from the United States, from the Pentagon to USAID. This was particularly true of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who viewed the regime in its paramilitary groups as a particularly effective tool of U.S. policy in the region. Nearly four years ago, I addressed you as I do tonight and asked for your help. in our efforts to support those brave people against a communist insurgency. That was one of the hardest fought political battles of this administration.

In the country where the Bay of Pig's style operation actually worked, Guatemala's military dictatorship was possibly the most brutal, but by no means the only example of the many U.S. client states in Latin America. The story of what has happened in that region is one of the most inspiring in the history of freedom. Today, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, as well as Costa Rica, choose their governments in free and open democratic elections and their people can hope for a better life for themselves and their children. It is a record of success that should make us proud.

Cuba, the site of this year's Pan American Games, and the bastion of one of communism's last hold. out's Fidel Castro. We'll have a documentary report and discuss Cuba's future with a State Department official and three Cuba experts. Then Charlene Hunter-Gault begins the first in a series of conversations to explain the financial schemes of the failed bank of credit and commerce international. Funding for the news hour has been provided by PepsiCo. In 1991, a Bush administration official appeared on the McNeil-Lehr News Hour to denounce a Latin American dictatorship, the, quote, last dictatorship in the hemisphere, Cuba.

How much life does the administration think is left in Castro's regime? Politically, this is the last dictatorship in Latin America. Every other country in the hemisphere, including now Haiti, has held free and fair elections. Do you see any signs that he is personally weakening? Well, I think that the government is certainly going through a major crisis. It's a crisis of readjustment. The allies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union no longer can provide what they were providing in the past.

There are cracks within the Communist Party. There's a growing dissident movement, and there's a lot of discontent among the young people in Cuba. But that does not mean that the government could fall tomorrow. There's strong nationalistic sentiments. A significant sector of the population still supports the government, and there's always the military that Castro has been able account on for many, many years. So even if we see a social collapse, a great crisis, even

mass hunger, we could be facing a scenario like Saddam Hussein's scenario, where the dictator stays in power because there is no one else to push him out of power. Welcome to Blowellon. Speak about this loss, son. Welcome to blowback. I'm Noah Colwyn. I'm Brendan James. And this is episode 10, Infinite Crisis.

In the last episode, we saw how, in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy took up a two-track policy, hedging on whether a lasting peace was possible with Cuba and the Soviet Union. In November 1963, Kennedy was killed. The U.S. government, in the form of the Warren Commission, would later conclude that he had been murdered by a disaffected loner, Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time of Kennedy's death, as we talked about, he had just started to explore the possibility of, as Cuban diplomat Carlos Lachuga put it, a rapprochement with the Castro government and the Cuban Revolution. This episode will pick up what became of that approach.

an important cause to ABC news reporter Lisa Howard, her friend in the State Department William Atwood, and of course Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership. Then we're going to do a bit of a time jump, a speed run of U.S.-Cuban relations in the decades since the main story of this season. We'll take you through the years until we start to see some familiar faces from season one. Now, this is the last episode of the main story of season two. But this is not the end of blowback season two. There are bonus episodes on the way.

All right. Once more into the breach. Let her rip. When John F. Kennedy died in November 1963, there were several burgeoning Cold War peace initiatives. JFK had negotiated a limited nuclear. test-band treaty with Nikita Khrushchev, and James Donovan had successfully brought home, in time for Christmas 1962, over a thousand Bay of Pigs prisoners, in addition to subsequent prisoner releases from Cuba. One of the initiatives up in the air at the time of JFK's murder

was the back-channel diplomacy to Cuba, involving Lisa Howard and William Atwood. As we left it last episode, after a particularly dramatic game of phone tag with the Cuban leadership, Howard and Atwood had wrangled a response out of JFK's National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. And Bundy told them this. JFK didn't think an official Atwood visit made sense at the time. But the president was open to Atwood visiting Cuba secretly to set the agenda for a more formal visit. Then November 22nd arrived and JFK was dead. Replacing him was his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson. On November 25, 1963, as we discussed last time, the Johnson administration produced the Katzenbach memo. This was the document stating that

the administration position was that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed JFK by himself. There was no conspiracy, either of the right-wing or left-wing variety. Johnson appeared not to want this to slide into a larger war that could get lots of Americans killed on his watch. Of course, he'll be fine with a smaller war that does that in Vietnam. The same day that Katzenbach memo was written, Mick George Bundy, still in the administration, received a Cuban diplomacy update from his deputy on Latin American affairs. Quote, while I think that President Kennedy could have accommodated with Castro and gotten away with it with a minimum of domestic heat, I'm not sure about President Johnson.

For one thing, a new president who has no background of being successfully nasty to Castro and the communists, e.g. President Kennedy in October 1962, would probably run a greater risk of being accused by the American people of going soft. In addition, the fact that Lee Oswald has been heralded as a pro-Castro type may make rapprochement with Cuba more difficult, although it is hard to say how much more difficult. After JFK's death, William Atwood left New York to take up his new station as ambassador to Kenya. Contact with Cuba became less frequent, and it became clear the U.S. was backsliding. As Cuban diplomat Carlos Lachuga notes in his memoir, in Christmas of 1963, LBJ persuaded the leader of West Germany to join the Cuban embargo.

Lachuga last spoke with Atwood around that time on December 12, 1963. He says the two did not talk again until Atwood visited Cuba unofficially in the 1970s. On February 1st, 1964, Lisa Howard and her crew once again arrived in Havana. At this point, Peter Cornblur writes, Howard had become a quote-unquote self-appointed diplomat. Shortly after her arrival, Howard asked Renee Vallejo, Castro's advisor, about when she might see Fidel. He has been crazy to know when you're arriving, Vallejo replied. He's been asking about you all day. After spending two weeks together, Castro agreed to an interview with Howard that was taped on February 13, 1964. In his recorded comments, Fidel reiterated the same desire for peace that he had expressed in his interview with Lisa Howard the year before.

We demand peace, and peace can be established over the base of respect to the sovereignty of our country. Peace can be established over the base of absolute respect of the international principle, absolute respect of the sovereignty of all the nations. You understand, we can live in peace with all the nations in this hemisphere. About the late American president and the incipient peace process underway at the time of his assassination, Castro said this, quote, after three years as president of the United States, Kennedy had much more experience than he had at the beginning. And I think he had a better understanding of world problems and about Cuba. My opinion is that he was in the way of persuading himself of his mistakes about Cuba. We had some evidence that some change. was taking place in the mind of the government of the United States. A new situation, and we had evidence I don't want to speak about now. Howard and Castro further deliberated on an off-the-record message to the White House to try and restart U.S. Cuban diplomacy. In this message, which Cornblue

and Leogrand, say remained secret for 35 years, Castro asked if they could pick up things where they had left off with JFK. Castro said that he wanted LBD to get re-elected in 1964, and that, quote, I realized fully the need for absolute secrecy if Johnson should decide to continue the Kennedy approach. I revealed nothing at that time. I have revealed nothing since. I would reveal nothing now. In the early morning hours after she and Fidel had wrapped up their interview,

Howard asked Renee Vallejo to give her in Castro the room. In her diary, according to Cornblue, Lisa Howard wrote that she and Castro frankly discussed what was in the air between them. The two of them agreed that they had a complicated relationship, and in spite of the substantial language barrier, Howard and Castro were drawn to one another for reasons beyond just a desire to make peace between the U.S. and Cuba. They were clearly falling for each other. She wrote in her diary

He said he wanted me very much But the conditions had to be right And we had to be away somewhere Where we could forget everything Nevertheless We did get to bed And he made love to me quite expertly And it was of course thrilling and ecstatic

As much as anything I have ever experienced Lisa You are not so simple Gastro told Howard just before he left With you and me it is not simple, but that is more interesting. Though William Atwood was now out of the picture, McGeorge Bundy's deputy Gordon Chase

would maintain back-channel ties to Castro throughout 1964, initially using Lisa Howard after her return from Cuba. Here's Cornblum. The back channel does continue during Johnson with Lisa Howard. It does expand towards the end of the Johnson period. A different back channel is set up in Spain and in France. The U.S. and Cuba are exploring specific issues, but not the broader issue of normalizing relations.

But resolving these specific tensions always was hoped that would lead to a resolution of the broader problem. In 1964, while the diplomatic back channel to Cuba was activated, it was to ease those, quote, specific tensions that Peter Cornblue just mentioned. For example, an incident at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, where a U.S. Marine had shot a Cuban. Privately, the Americans reassured Castro that the incident was not a provocation or a pretext for anything like an invasion. But at the end of 1964, it was clear that whatever process had been initiated toward normalizing relations with Cuba the year before, those efforts were now stalling out. By the end of the year, Lisa Howard had been cut out of any U.S. communication with Cuba, despite the pivotal role she played in making it happen. Howard was given an especially cold shoulder after a meeting she set up with Che Guevara in New York City.

During Guevara's visit to New York to speak at the U.N. in December 1964, Howard introduced Guevara to Senator Eugene McCarthy at one of her infamous apartment suarez. According to what McCarthy told the Johnson administration afterward, Guevara seemed to, quote, express Cuban interest in trade with the U.S. and U.S. recognition of the Cuban regime. This meeting was consequential, but not in the way that how much. Howard might have hoped. McCarthy was told in no uncertain terms that he had screwed up. Under Secretary of State George Ball, quote, emphasized to Senator McCarthy the danger of

meetings such as that which the senator had had with Guevara. There was suspicion throughout Latin America that the U.S. might make a deal with Cuba behind the backs of the other American states. This could provide a propaganda line useful to the communists. In addition to being frozen out diplomatically, Lisa Howard was also paying a price professionally. Three months earlier, in September of 1964, Howard had been suspended from ABC News. Allegedly, because of her involvement in a group she had created with her friend, the writer, and one-time JFK confidant, Gore Vidal. Both Howard and Vidal hated Bobby Kennedy because of his hawkishness on Cuba,

his strident anti-communism, and his wishy-washiness on civil liberties. And so when RFK began running for Senate in New York in 1964, the two journalists started a Democrats for Keating group. Yes, you heard that right. Lisa Howard and Gore Vidal hated Bobby Kennedy so much that they were throwing their support behind Kenneth Keating, the first politician, a Republican, to claim that there were Soviet missiles in Cuba.

And Howard and Vidal, according to the Village Voice at the time, even got people like James Baldwin and Paul Newman to sign on to their effort. At one event, Howard reportedly said that, quote, brothers are not necessarily the same. There was Cain and Abel. Howard told the New York Times that her September suspension from the network, which became a firing after the November 1964 elections were over, was tantam out to a blacklist. As she had told the network, her activities were solely in her capacity

as a private citizen. But as Howard herself later claimed, an ABC News executive said to her, she had been marked as, quote, lousy. She's being canned. She doesn't fit. An anonymous ABC executive separately said to the New York Times. She's a mystery girl. We just don't want her on the staff. In the summer of 1965, the following year, Howard was reportedly found by friends walking in a daze in a parking lot while vacationing in the Hamptons. In addition to her professional troubles, Howard reportedly had suffered a miscarriage and a period of depression. Not long after the episode in the parking lot, she died in what the medical examiner called a suicide. He said that Howard had reportedly taken enough barbiturates to kill five men. Lisa Howard was obviously more than a mystery girl to Fidel Castro.

While her outlook was ultimately that of an American liberal, squeamish at the tougher measures of the revolution, Howard was close to Fidel and loyal. According to Peter Cornblow, Castro told Howard on a 1964 phone call that, You know no one could come down here and do what you did, with your will and persuasiveness, no one. Nikita Khrushchev had spent years cultivating a close bond with the Cuban revolutionaries.

He met Fidel in Harlem, forged decades-long trade pacts, sent nuclear missiles to Cuba to ward off an American invasion, and, after the crisis, hosted Fidel in Moscow to personally assure him that the same. Soviet Union remained committed to socialist revolution in the third world. But by the end of 1964, Khrushchev had been weakened politically at home by the crisis, as he had by the widening Soviet split with China. And in October of that year, Khrushchev was pushed out of the leadership. Khrushchev became politically irrelevant immediately after his firing by the Presidium. He lived between his Moscow apartment and his dacha, and he died of a heart attack in 1971.

In his memoirs, written in the seven years between his exit as premier and his death, Krischoff directly addressed one of the events that led to his removal from power, the crisis in the Caribbean. Quote, The path I traveled was a good one. Not only am I not ashamed of it, I'm proud of it. The Caribbean crisis was a bright ornament that brilliantly set off our foreign policy. We achieved a brilliant success on behalf of Cuba without firing a single shot.

Although as ex-Premier Khrushchev was no longer privy to any more information than what he got in the papers, the veteran of the October crisis concluded in his memoirs that the greatest danger facing the world remained nuclear war. quote, the main issue now is for all the leaders of the world to recognize that war must be prevented, because if it breaks out in this day and age, it will bring disaster to the whole planet. Krischchev then reflected on the nature of the Cold War more broadly. We must keep in mind that military competition is profitable for the circles of monopolistic capital in the West, while it's economically damaging for the socialist world. If we try to compete with the West in any but the most crucial areas of military preparedness,

we will be further enriching wealthy circles in the United States, who use our military buildups as a pretext for overloading their own country's arms budget. He noted that it was, quote, that faithful dog of capitalism, John Foster Dulles, who had come up with the balance of fear formulation and had forced the rest of the world to abide. died by it. But then, Khrushchev struck an optimistic tone. The forces of peace are considerably more numerous than the forces of war. If we can encourage the peace movement by submitting

to mutual arms control, and even, should it be necessary, unilaterally reducing our own armed forces, we should do so. Khrushchev's fall from power in October 1964 was a sign of more to come. The Soviet Union and Cuba retained close military, political, social, and economic ties. As Albert Sismansky writes, in addition to all the economic and trade support through 1971, the Soviets gave the Cubans, quote, about 1.4. billion dollars to modernize and build up their armed forces. There has never been a more generous program of economic and military assistance to a third world country, with the possible

exception of U.S. aid to its puppet regimes in South Korea and South Vietnam. Still, the relationship at the highest levels was noticeably cooler. But as the Johnson administration continued to lobby Western European countries to cut ties with Cuba, Che Guevara had begun drifting toward Mao's thinking about actively initiating popular revolutions around the world. And at home, the most pro-Soviet members of the Cuban Communist Party were ousted. Castro made a point to criticize the Soviet Union directly in 1964 for not doing enough to come to the aid of an embattled third world ally in East Asia. We are in favor of giving Vietnam all the aid that may be necessary.

We are in favor of this aid being arms and men. We are in favor of the socialist camp running the risks that may be necessary for Vietnam. Even though the Cubans and Soviets would soon grow close again, as Sismansky put it, The Cubans' willingness to disagree and to stand by their convictions showed that they were, quote, nobody's pawns. 1965, newly elected Senator Bobby Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk both took trips to Latin America, where they got the Richard Nixon treatment. They were spat on, stones thrown at them, and so on. RFK in Chile, Rusk in Uruguay. According to what RFK reported back to the Senate afterwards,

quote, In the years following World War II, we were content to accept and even support whatever governments were in power, asking only that they not disturb the surface calm of the hemisphere. We gave medals to dictators, praised backward regimes, and became steadily identified with institutions and men

who held their lands in poverty and ferns, fear. What brought about Mr. Castro and communism in Cuba was our support of Batista. Certainly a change of tone from a man who, as part of XCOM, on multiple occasions, suggested staging another false flag USS Maine operation. But then, as the historian Lars Schultz puts it, Cuba then disappeared from Washington's consciousness, with the exception of a boatlift that began an emigration system that would last eight years, formerly bringing over 260,000 people from Cuba to the United States.

The Cuban Adjustment Act created a procedure specifically for Cubans that allowed them to become permanent residents of the U.S. after one year in the country. In Dallas, 1964, Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner connected to both the Cuban and American underworlds, was convicted for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Ruby was sentenced to death. On appeal, Ruby's new lawyer enlisted the help of Dr. Jolly West, a prominent and flamboyant psychiatrist who would later be revealed to be a part of the CIA's experiments in brainwashing, mind control, and drug manipulation, the program known as M.K. Ultra. Dr. West was called into the Dallas County Jee. to administer a mental examination of Jack Ruby. Journalist Tom O'Neill in his book, Chaos, reports what happened next.

The Dallas Papers reported it in their final editions that evening. West emerged from Ruby's cell to announce that the previously sane inmate had undergone, quote, an acute psychotic break, end quote, sometime during the preceding 48 hours. Whatever transpired between West and Ruby in that cell, only the two of them could say. There were no witnesses. West asserted that Ruby, quote, was now positively insane. The condition appeared to be unshakable and fixed.

Well, he's not faking. Not that one. I'll talk to the judge and see if I can get him moved to the secure wing at Arkham. I can't treat him here. In a sworn affidavit accompanying his diagnosis, West described a completely unhinged man who hallucinated, heard voices, and had suddenly acquired the unshakable belief that a new Holocaust was underway in America. The delusions were so real that Ruby had crawled under the table to hide from the killers. From that day forward, O'Neill writes, every doctor who examined Jack Ruby made similar diagnoses.

Ruby would die in 1967 after a diagnosis of cancer in the liver, lungs, and brain. In 1965, Che resigned his posts in the government and left Cuba. He traveled to Africa, where he sought to help Congolese fighters and former followers of Patrice Lumumba against the Western-supported government and their mercenaries. After seeing Castro once more, secretly in 1966, Che traveled to Bolivia to create a new guerrilla force and defunement revolution. Once it was known that Guevara was in Bolivia, the hunt was on to capture him. Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile and CIA agent,

a man who had once eagerly requested to assassinate Castro, he oversaw the Bolivian troops that caught and executed Guevara in October, Rodriguez, for what it's worth, is still alive. In 2021, he can be found hanging out with right-wing pundits such as Ben Shapiro, showing off mementos of his long career in service of the American government. After the 1963 assassination, according to various accounts, the Kennedy family left the assassination alone, publicly, but privately, Bobby Kennedy stewed, reportedly telling confidants that should he get elected president,

he would revisit the tragedy. And both he and Jackie Kennedy privately communicated to Nikita Khrushchev that they didn't think the Soviet Union was complicit in the president's murder. Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible? Is that possible? On June 6, 1968, two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. I am right here. Raper Johnson has a hold of a man who apparently has fired the shot. That's it, Raper. Get it. Get the gun, Raper.

Okay, now hold on to the guy. Hold on to him. He had just won California in the Democratic presidential primary, riding a wave of discontent over the Vietnam War. Hold on to him, ladies and gentlemen. Hold him. Hold him. We don't want another Oswald. Hold him, rapper. We don't want another Oswald. In a sign of what was to come for many a left-wing organization in the United States, the fair play for Cuba Committee, once the leading voice in America for solidarity with Cuba,

eventually succumbed to infiltration by U.S. intelligence agencies. The public links identifying the group with JFK's assassin Lee Oswald, were the proverbial nail in the coffin. Robert Tabor, a founding member, one of the people who helped Fidel get to the Teresa Hotel in Harlem and whose journalism we've cited early on in this show, Tabor took to drinking heavily

and reportedly submitted himself to the CIA as a co-operator. Writer Bill Simpich reports, During 1965, Tabor released his classic work on guerrilla insurgency, The War of the Flea. ominously, this book was reprinted in 2002 by Potomac Press. The book is now a standard reference for the U.S. military on counterinsurgencies, end quote.

In other words, the work by a one-time supporter of the Cuban Revolution in America was, after 9-11, repurposed to aid the U.S. military against insurgencies in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 1970s, there was a series of congressional committees set up to investigate America's clandestine services. The Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church Committee, the House's Pike Committee, and finally, in the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And there was the sense that if Congress was serious here, it could mean the end for the CIA and other clandestine services, at least as we knew them. Richard Helms, who had since become CIA director, only to get fired by Richard Nixon,

was cut a plea deal and essentially admitted to lying to the Senate committee about the CIA's role in overthrowing Chilean President Salvador Allende. Helms received a $2,000 fine and a two-year suspended sentence. He reportedly wore the conviction like a badge of honor. Now, the House Select Committee investigation, we've mentioned a bit on the show before. Although that investigation was rushed and resource limited, its authors concluded that while Lee Harvey Oswald had killed President Kennedy, quote,

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence of, available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy. In 1976, as part of its investigation, the select committee formally called for Johnny Raselli, the key link between the CIA and the mafia on the Castro assassination plots to testify. That August, Raselli's bloated corpse was found stuffed inside of a steel fuel drum, floating in the water near Miami. A year earlier, not long after resurfacing from years of hiding in Mexico to dodge prison time, Sam Giancana, who had shared a girlfriend with and rigged votes for Jack Kennedy,

was shot seven times in a Chicago home. Another one of the mobsters caught up in CIA Cuba intrigue, Giancana had been days away from testifying before the church committee. Santo Traficante, the Tampa Kingpin, died after heart surgery in 1987. And shortly before dying, he reportedly told something to a mob lawyer named Frank Regano. On his deathbed, Traficante said that he had participated in the killing of John Kennedy, and that it had been a mistake. Quote, we should have killed Bobby, Traficonte.

Conte said. Regano, an underworld figure who had a latent life change of heart, had gotten his start with Traficante. But also, Regano served as a go-between, between Mob-Connected Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa and Dallas and New Orleans mobbed on Carlos Marcello. Marcello, the Sicilian mafia king of Dallas and New Orleans, meanwhile, lived a long life. In November 63, he had been in federal court, tangling once again. with Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department in the weeks before the assassination.

But he was mostly left alone by the law until the FBI put him away for bribery in 1981. His conviction was later overturned, and in 1993, Carlos Marcello died, a free man at the age of 83. The 1970s saw the first direct diplomatic engagement between Cuba and the U.S. since Eisenhower had officially broken ties back in January 1961. Under Gerald Ford, a deputy of Henry Kissinger met with two Cuban officials in the cafeteria at LaGuardia Airport, where they held exploratory talks about a new Cuban-US dialogue. Of course, old dogs, new tricks, et cetera. Here's Cornblue and Leo Grande.

At one point, an indigent blind man who is hawking ballpoint pens interrupted their conversation. Quote, he tossed a bunch of pens on the table, one of the Cubans wrote in a recollection. The only way we could get rid of him was to buy some, so we did. As he left, we were thinking that there were some microphones hidden in some or all, of the pens that could record our conversation. A possible sign of the presence of the CIA or FBI. Many countries are becoming very concerned that the non-aligned movement is being subverted by Cuba,

which is obviously closely aligned with the Soviet Union. Jimmy Carter, who had run as a reform candidate, came into office and took baby steps toward easing tensions with Cuba. At one point, Cuban diplomats went for a meeting at the residence of Andrew Young, the Martin Luther King confidant who had been appointed as Carter's ambassador to the UN. There, according to Raul Roakori, they were going to meet Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. I remember distinctly that we had first listened to and saw President Carter's speech at I think it was Annapolis, where he said that relations with Cuba were impossible. And of course, I remember our vice president said, well, I think there's nothing to talk about with Mr. Bans.

But we still went to the meeting, and Mr. Vance was late. And when he came, he was aghast. Later on, I learned that Saras Vance knew of the speech beforehand, and there was no mention of Cuba. The mention of Cuba was introduced by Brazinski. Zbikno Brazinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor and Arch Cold Warrior, had intervened at the last minute, apparently believing that it was pointless to talk to Cuba, as it was and always had been just a Soviet satellite. The basis for Brzezinski and Carter's change of direction was the Cuban government's decision

to send tens of thousands of its soldiers to Angola, in 1975 at the request of the Angolan government, which was opposed by America and the apartheid regime of South Africa. We'll convince that the best way to work toward these objectives is through affirmative policy that recognize African realities and that recognize African aspirations. The persistent and increasing military involvement

of the Soviet Union and Cuba in Africa could deny this hopeful vision. We are deeply concerned about the threat to regional peace and to the autonomy of countries within which these foreign troops seem permanently to be stationed. Cuba had already been supporting African independence movements up until now, but this marked the beginning of a decades-long military commitment to support. these groups abroad. According to scholar Piero Glehesis, Fidel, who did not consult or even inform Soviet General Secretary Regenev, wanted to prevent apartheid South Africa from tightening its grip over the people of southern Africa. In a conversation with Cuban diplomat Oscar Arama Suliva,

Oscar described to us the nature of Cuba's aid to Angola against apartheid South Africa and its American allies. The people of Cuba know what solidarity means in very difficult moment of our life. The peoples of Africa have offered solidarity to the Cubans. The Cuban people consciously assume that homeland is humanity as our national hero, Jose M.R.T. set. Through all of this time and into the future, covert American sponsor terror campaigns were still waged against Cuba. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, with at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African

swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. In 1976, Kauru, a new terrorist group founded by veterans of Cuban, Dominican, and other Latin American counter-revolutionary causes, blew up a Cuban plane en route from Barbados to Jamaica, Cubana Aviation Flight 455. All 48 passengers were killed. This is a map of Central America. As I said, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Colorado. Costa Rica are all friendly and democratic. In their midst, however, lies a threat that could reverse the democratic tide and plunge the region into a cycle of chaos and subversion. That is the communist regime in Nicaragua called the Sandinistas, a regime whose allies range from communist dictator Fidel Castro of Cuba to terrorist supporter Gaddafi of Libya. But their most

important ally is the Soviet Union. With Cuban and Soviet block aid, Nicaragua is being transformed into a beachhead for aggression against the United States. Quote, you just give me the word and I'll turn that fucking island into a parking lot. Secretary of State, Alexander Hague, to President Ronald Reagan, March 1981. This was the guy who would manage the most significant official contact between the United States and Cuba since 1959. In November 1981, Hague met with Cuban Vice President Carlos Rodriguez. It didn't go anywhere. Quote, it was not a conversation intended to reach conclusions, Rodriguez would say.

Haig was thuggish, Rodriguez impassive. The American's official line would remain the same. No talks, no peace, no anything, until Cuba agrees to internal changes. The U.S. invasion of Granada in 1983 and the earlier Mariel Boatlift in 1980, which saw 125,000 Cubans go to the U.S. and which Reagan happily used as a rhetorical weapon against Cuba, these kept the pressure up on Castro and the Cuban government. In the following years, a Cuba lobby emerged in Miami and Washington, spanning influential, deep-pocketed, and hard line, anti-Castro organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation and government-funded propaganda

outfits like Radio Marti and TV Marti, which sought to broadcast their messages into Cuba, but have mostly served since as a multi-million dollar make-work program for right-wing Miami Cubans. Both of those taxpayers-supported entities are still around today for what it's worth. In 1989, the Los Angeles Times reported, President George H.W. Bush and congressional leaders agreed that the CIA would be able to take part in covert ops to assassinate foreign leaders. But over his term, Bush did not make moves toward invading Cuba, nor did he successfully eliminate Fidel Castro, despite his administration's apparent vigor. He did, of course, invade Iraq, and Cuba was one of the two votes against him. at the UN Security Council. As one reporter put it in December 1991, the prospects of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba were, quote, unlikely to change soon,

especially not before next November's presidential elections. The collapse of the Soviet Union that same year, however, was nothing short of a catastrophe for Cuba. Before the revolution, we remember Cuba's economy, and therefore its government, was the plaything of its neighbor to the north. And in the time between the 1960s and the Soviet collapse, Cuba had made enormous strides in health care, education,

social security, addressing poverty and hunger. And in the Zapata swamp, where the Americans had invaded in 1961, Cuba had developed the land into what the World Wildlife Fund now recognizes as an ecological rarity, quote, the best preserved swamp land in the Antilles. But Cuba was still a small, politically isolated country in the Caribbean. With the Soviets gone, Cuban exports and imports fell around 80%.

Oil and other essential raw materials for a modern society to function became scarce. The average Cuban's calorie intake plummeted. The country had entered what is now known as the special period. And it was in this period that socialist Cuba actually was forced to open up. up some of its economy to the private sector. Unfortunately, of course, it had the effect of reversing a lot of gains they had made over the several decades since the revolution, and resulted in increased social, racial, and economic inequality. During this period, the United States refused to change anything about its policy toward Cuba, the embargo, political isolation,

etc. The hope was that such hard times would inevitably bring the Castro government to its knees. Listeners of season one will notice more than a little similarity to American policy toward Iraq in the 1990s, where our sanctions brought that country to the brink of famine. Major American press outlets, such as the Washington Post and the Atlantic, would go on to cover the island's increased hunger and malnutrition in an interesting way. They approvingly commented on the decrease in obesity and diabetes. The sub-headline of a 2000 13 Atlantic Peace reads, quote,

sometimes financial crises can force lifestyle changes for the better. And it was at this time, during the most perilous and difficult circumstances for everyday Cubans since the 1960s,

that Cuban exiles in America began revving their engines. A group called Brothers to the Rescue, using planes donated by, among others, singer Gloria Estevan, began flights to identify Cubans who had

fled the scarcity-strickened island on the makeshift boats and raft that you've no doubt seen on cable news. The leader of Brothers to the Rescue was a DRE member, Brigade 2506 member, and commando on the Miramar raid whose name you may recall, Jose Basulto. Among other things, since the time of our season's story, Basulto had been flying supplies for the right-wing contra militants in Nicaragua in the 1980s. After repeated warnings that the brothers to the rescue flights dropping leaflets over Havana constituted violations of Cuban sovereignty, in 1996, Cuba shot down two of the planes, killing everyone on board. Hardliners in Congress, notably the infamous segregationist Jesse Helms,

quickly passed new legislation intensifying the economic sanctions on Cuba, signed into law by Bill Clinton. In 1997, a wave of bombings struck Havana hotels with the goal of weakening Cuba's tourism industry, which had increasingly taken the place of sugar as Cuba's economic lifeline. Many were injured and one man was killed. The following year, exile terrorist Luis Posada Corrillas admitted responsibility for the bombings in an on-the-record interview with the New York Times. Quote, with a ruleful chuckle, Mr. Posada described the Italian tourist's death

as a freak accident, but he declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, I sleep like a baby. Cuban spies, meanwhile, who had been sent into Florida to infiltrate the exile groups carrying out terrorism, were arrested in September 1998.

They became known as the Cuban Five, and were kept in federal prison on charges of espionists The last of the five was released in 2014. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Elion Gonzalez is found alive, in the ocean, clinging to an inner tube a few miles from Fort Lauderdale. Elion was one of the few survivors of a raft carrying a dozen others, including his

mother who died on the journey. The U.S. government, against procedure, the next day released Elion into the custody of Cuban American relatives in Miami, as the Cuban government sent a note requesting Elion's prompt return to the island. Elion's parents were divorced, and his mother had lied to his school about a doctor's appointment in order to take him on the doomed ocean trip. Elion's father naturally wanted him home. Though Elion's relatives would claim asylum on Elion's behalf,

U.S. courts did not recognize their legal standing, as Elian's father was perfectly fit and alive. He just happened to live in Cuba. It was not until April of the following year that Elion was reunited with his father in America, and only two months after that were they able to go home. This government will establish a commission for the assistance to a free Cuba, to plan for the happy day when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island.

The newly elected George W. Bush administration continued the tradition of a hawkish line on Cuba. The country was even folded into the administration's plans for a global war on terror. Headline, Washington Post, May 2002. Cuba seeks bioweapons, U.S. says. In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, State Department arms control chief, John Bolton, said that the Bush administration believed, quote, Cuba is developing biological weapons

and collaborating with pariah states that have their own germ warfare programs. Bolton, quote, offered no details when questioned. Though, wouldn't you know it, it was Judy Miller in the New York Times, listeners recall her from last season, who had the more restrained version of the Washington Post's headline. Washington accuses Cuba of germ warfare research.

When Senator Chris Dodd called for Bolton to testify about the claims before Congress, Colin Powell intervened, sending a lesser official, and saying that Bolton was not the appropriate expert to discuss the issue with the Senate. According to Senator Dodd's subcommittee, quote, U.S. government officials outside the intelligence community, while confirming that Cuba's highly advanced biotechnology industry is capable of producing biological warfare agents, have publicly discredited allegations that Cuba is manufacturing biological weapons. And of course, the Cuban government denied the allegations at the time, Fidel describing the idea as

suicidal. What about Bush's accusations of bioweapons in Cuba? It is something that cannot be taken seriously. They would only third us to commit suicide. The next year, George W. Bush announced the creation of a commission for assistance to a free Cuba, which would issue a couple of reports before the Bush administration's time ran out, pledging American assistance in creating a new regime in Cuba, once Fidel Castro's had fallen. This commission will be co-chaired by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martinez. They will draw upon experts within our government

to plan for Cuba's transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society. Meanwhile, Luis Pasada Corriles, co-founder of the right-wing terrorist expendables group, Kauru, an organizer of bombings and terror against Cuba in the 90s, He had been convicted in Panama in 2001, along with other terrorists. But shortly before Panama's president left office in 2004, she issued pardons to Correlez and the others. Here's what ex-diplomat Wayne Smith wrote at the time about how the pardons happened. The Panamanian president called former U.S. ambassador to Panama Simon Ferro to advise him that the deed was done, and the planes that brought the men back to Miami and Pasada Correlez to Honduras

were chartered by a wealthy Cuban-American. Many observers suspect there was pressure also from the U.S. government. The State Department insists there was not that it played no role in bringing about the pardons. Corriles went to the United States, where he successfully withstood further deportation attempts. So today we are confident, no matter what the dictator in terms, tens or plans, Cuba will be Pronte Libre.

And we know it's understandable that George W. Bush didn't get to spend that much time or political capital on Cuba. He had other things going on. But Cuba, for what it's worth, had meant a great deal to the Bush family.

The White House has also been receptive to the message of the Cuban American National Foundation. At a In the 1991 meeting of the Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Bernard Aronson, played a taped message from George Bush to Fidel Castro, which was being broadcast over Radio Marti, the U.S. radio service to Cuba. Jeb Bush, the president's son, lives in Miami. He's known as one line of communication to the White House. Let's start with Jeb Bush. George's younger brother, by seven years, Jeb's political career after college, began in the 19th. 1980s in Florida, where he moved in 1980 to begin a career in real estate with a Cuban-American colleague.

As a March 1980 headline in the Miami Herald put it, quote, business and love bind Jeb Bush to Latins. Here's how the story about the rising political star begins. It is such a blessing. George Bush's kid does speak nice Spanish. And so special arrangements were made for this young campaigner. WQBA, the Spanish language radio station, extended its studio one talk show an extra half-hour Monday night, just for 27-year-old Jeb Bush.

The right strings had been pulled within Miami's Republican Cuban community. This is the most important interview you will do, Armando Codina, the 32-year-old Cuban millionaire businessman, and co-chairman of the local Bush presidential campaign, warned the young campaigner. On an Anglo station, you may get six, eight, ten Republican ears, but all the Latin Republican ears are listening to you tonight. Later, Jeb became the Republican Party chair in Dade County. In 1989, he managed the campaign of Ileana Ross Lettinen, a competitive special election in the Miami area to fill the seat of a Democrat who had recently died. During Bush's 1989 stint as campaign manager.

According to reporter Michael Isikoff, Bush used his clout to intervene with the Justice Department and halt the then imminent deportation of the terrorist Orlando Bosch. One of the men believed to be responsible for the Cubana plane bombing in 1976 that we mentioned earlier. Well, I'm not the liaison. I may be one of many people that from time to time pass on. messages, try to express concerns that might be down here, that might be unique to the Cuban-American community. My relationship is really not a political one with Cubans in Miami. I live here. Bush, then a Miami businessman who had served as chairman of the Dade County Republican Party,

was among a number of local figures who rushed to Bosch's defense, Isikov writes, even making a highly publicized visit to meet with Bosch's diabetic brother, who was then on a hunger strike protesting the decision. After losing a bid for Governor of Florida in 1994, Jeb successfully won the job in 1998 and held on to it for two terms. Governor Jeb Bush would later appoint one of Orlando Bosch's lawyers to the Florida Supreme Court. Well, in 1985, I was writing a biography of Frank Capra, the movie director. I was at the San Bernardino University Library,

and I was going through the microfilm of the 1977-78 FBI document releases on the assassination of Kennedy, and they had released about 98,000 pages of material, and the press, as usually happens, when documents are released, They write a story the same day and say there's nothing important in them, you know. They may look at a couple documents and say, oh, this is one that says blah, blah, blah. I mean, nobody can read 98,000 pages of material at one day, but they always seem to do that. This is Joseph McBride, historian and professor of cinema studies at San Francisco State,

talking with us about a discovery he made in the archives in the 1980s. Going through the records, McBride found a strange document dated November 29th, 1963, exactly a week after the Kennedy assassination. There was a memo from J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department, and he said he had briefed Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and a couple of other people on the reaction of the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida to the assassination, and he was concerned about whether they would try some kind of activity as a result of the assassination. This does not square with the official's story.

At the time of McBride's discovery, 1985, George H.W. Bush was vice president, and while he had previously served as CIA director, he was supposedly an outsider to the agency, someone who could come in after Watergate amid the church committee and the forthcoming select committee, Bush was supposed to be a new guy to the agency who had not worked there before he became director. So why did Joe McBride find a cable from J. Edgar Hoover, dated a week after the Kennedy assassination, saying that he had briefed, quote,

CIA senior director George Bush? And why was Hoover, according to the memo, briefing Bush specifically on the reactions to the assassination of Cuban exiles in Miami. In the summer of 1988, McBride published his findings in the nation, as the Bush-Ducas presidential race was heating up. Here's what happened when he called Bush for comment. Yeah, I called them, as you would, you know, before you run the article, and I said, I'm going to print, I found this document and other information that showed that he

was involved in the CIA before he was the director. What do you say? And I talked to his spokesman, Stephen Hart, who seemed baffled by this, you know, like he hadn't heard about this before. And he said it wasn't true. And he said, is this another George Bush? He said, I'll check with the vice president. He checked back.

And Bush said, well, I don't know anything about this. I never heard anything about this, you know. So I printed that denial. And I called the CIA, too. And their policy has always been, we don't confirm or deny that somebody works for us. That's a strict policy, you know. They protect their agents. So for about 10 days, that was the story.

But after 10 days, the CIA unexpectedly changed its tune. The agency then said that the George Bush in the memo found by McBride was not George H.W. Bush. The CIA said that it was another employee of the agency who was there in November 1963, a man named George William Bush. About 10 days after my story was published, they put out a story that the guy mentioned in the memo

was not the man running for president. It was another employee of the agency in 63 named George William Bush. They said he was the one who got the briefing from Hoover. And they said, we can't find this man, which is kind of extraordinary. The CIA claims they can't find some American guy. And so I found him right away. Actually, the Defense Intelligence Agency tipped off the nation. I don't know why they did that.

They must have had it in for Bush or something. But they told us how to find this guy. He was living in Virginia, and he was working for the Social Security Administration, and I got his phone number and called him. He said I was just a lowly map analyst. I was just studying maps, and I was on the night shift. And I didn't get any briefings, any high-level briefings in my job at all. I certainly didn't get this briefing, so he said, it must be the other George Bush, right?

So they were tapping a different guy, and it was suggested to me by somebody that this is, part of SpyCraft is to have somebody in the agency with a similar name, so you can say, well, it wasn't George H.W. Bush was this other guy, you know. It's kind of like Oswald. So today, we again reiterate on wavering commitment for a free, and democratic Cuba. Nothing shall turn us away from this objective. Thank you very much. To President Castro, the people of Cuba, thank you so much for the warm welcome that I have received,

that my family have received, and that our delegation is received. Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year the entire world held its breath, watching our two countries as humanity, came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war in a world that remade itself time and again one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas

Bush left office. The Obama administration did not change much at first. In 1994, according to Cornblue and Leogrand, Fidel Castro told a group of ex-U.S. ambassadors that he needed a two-term U.S. president to normalize relations with Cuba, because no first-term president of the United States would have the political courage to do it. In July 2015, about a year and a half before he would leave office, Obama re-react, opened the U.S. Embassy in Havana and resumed consular services. The embargo remained in place, then as now, but travel restrictions were significantly eased. In 2016, Obama traveled to Cuba, where he delivered this speech you heard just now. It is time for us to look forward to the future

together. Un Futuro de Esperanza. And it won't be easy and there will be setbacks. It will take time. But my time here in Cuba renews my hope and my confidence in what the Cuban people will do. We can make this journey as friends and as neighbors and as family together.

If you can't. Much of gracias. Thank you. Thank you. I had the opportunity to visit Cuba in January 1999, in a delegation that Trans-Africa Forum put together. So we had an opportunity to meet with Fidel Castro.

He said to us, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States predicted that Cuba would be finished within 90 days. And then he looked at us in the eyes and then said, it's been nine years. In 2008, Fidel Castro officially retired from power, having led the Cuban Revolution from its beginnings at the Moncada Barracks to one of the few surviving communist states in a post-Soviet world. Compromises had been made, some brutal measures taken. But as even one of Fidel's harsher critics Samuel Farber once observed, Castro and the revolutionary leadership seized Cuba's sovereignty back from the Americans. You think politically that an American president

can lift the embargo and resume relations with Cuba as long as Fidel Castro is in power. If I were the obstacle, I would be willing to give up not only my positions and my responsibilities, but even my life. What I would never do is to negotiate the revolution, The revolution is not negotiable.

Socialism is not negotiable. Sovereignty and the independence of our country are not negotiable. That I would never negotiate. Those more sympathetic observe that Fidel succeeded in building a more equitable country than the one he grew up in. And that the revolution he led, under great strain, not only improved social welfare, but transformed Cuba into a model for the world in areas such as health and education. and made it a leader in struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and apartheid.

All of this during 60 years of uninterrupted American aggression. During the Obama administration's thaw with Cuba, Fidel wrote the American president with a, quote, modest suggestion. Don't try to develop theories about Cuban politics. Good evening on this Sunday night, and we come to you from Havana, Cuba this evening. we are here to witness the end of an era after the death of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. He ruled this island nation for a half century

and nursed his resistance to the United States right until the very end. Here in Havana, a somber mood tonight, this usually lively city, eerily quiet, in mourning. But in Miami this evening, a much different picture, celebrations in the streets. On November 25, 2016, Fidel Castro died, having outlasted nine American presidents

and as many as 638 attempts on his life. I think it's good for both nations to live in peace, really. That is what I think. But they didn't want to live in peace for many years. We are patients. We can wait five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, we are patient, sincerely. You said I was really,

realistic and I am realistic but they are unrealistic I think that we can live in peace and peace is inters for them and for us and for everybody that is our our position part of our continuing fight against communist oppression, I am announcing that the Treasury Department will prohibit U.S. travelers from staying at properties owned by the Cuban government. From 2019 to 2021, the Trump administration passed new, even harsher economic sanctions on Cuba. We're also further restricting the importation of Cuban alcohol and Cuban tobacco. Trump also. re-added Cuba to the state sponsors of Terror List.

As scholar of present-day Cuba, Helen Yaffe, told us, You would think that a blockade a set of sanctions and embargo that has been in place for 60 years couldn't be significantly strengthened. And yet the Trump administration found ways and methods to make it excruciatingly more stringent. These supercharged sanctions combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed down Cuba's tourism industry and forced Cuba to make its own vaccines to treat its population, all of this succeeded in once again deteriorating Cuba's economy. And when the Democratic administration

of Joe Biden took power in 2021, the Trump sanctions and the embargo in general were left in place. This dual pressure from both the United States and the pandemic led to a brief outbreak of protests in Cuba in the summer of 2021. They were real things. happening in Cuba still are, like, we are exhausted after 60 months suffering from all kinds of shortages, lack of food, of medicine, of toiletries. We have to stand in line three or four times a week. COVID infections and death soared since June due to the more aggressive virus strains immediately before July 11, in several cities where this happened, there were three to six hours of blackouts. The protests were widely covered by the Western and American press,

characterizing them as a movement to overturn the government for freedom and liberty. What did not get covered were the immense counter-protests by those Cubans supporting the government or conspicuous evidence that the social media campaigns surrounding the protests were driven by something other than organic human beings. There are things, Brendan, that happened, that really happened, in fact happened, but they were manipulated to show Cuba as a failed state. That's the main, for me, that's the main question. The root of everything is showing Cuba as a failed state. When it comes to Cuba, what is your current thinking on American sanctions toward Cuba and the embargo? And today your press secretary

said that communism is a failed ideology. I assume that's your view. I was wondering if you could also give us your view on socialism. In a press conference, Biden made with Angela Merkel. He was asked about this, and he said, no, this is because it is a failed state. It is a failed. He started to say, failed communism. Communism is a fail system, universally failed system. And I don't see socialism as a very useful substitute, but that's another story. Long after things had calmed down in Cuba, coverage in the media hit a fever pitch.

What should be being contemplated right now is a coalition, a potential military allies. in Cuba, similar to what has happened in both administrations, in both Republican and Democrat administrations, opportunities in the history of... Are you suggesting air strikes in Cuba? What I'm suggesting is that that option is one that has to be explored and cannot be just simply discarded as an option that is not on the table. So this was a perfect moment to show that this was a failed state, but it didn't work out. Because it's not.

While American policy stays exactly the same, there is something changing in Cuba. Shortly before that outbreak of protests, another shift had occurred, a shift whose implications were largely ignored not only by journalists but by the Biden administration itself. Raoul Castro, who had served as president after his brother died, stepped down. For the first time, there is a generation of leaders in Cuba who did not participate in the early days of the revolution, foremost being the new Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel. This government's mandate, overwhelmingly supported by the Cuban people in a 2019 referendum, is to preserve the core of Cuban socialism while also pursuing social and economic reforms.

So we will leave our story here with one more word from our friend, Marta. It's difficult for us here in Cuba in the midst of the pandemic, in the midst of the worst moment of the embargo, to continue being able to survive and to develop things, it's very, very difficult. And Americans don't know about that. Americans don't know about that. Americans listen. I don't think they even listen to Biden's or Jen Saki's, I mean. interviews. And maybe that's why all of them came like flooded Cuba since the Obama lifted some sorts of the things that blocked them to visit Cuba. They simply flooded us. And if people

could be convinced, normal people, I'm talking about normal people, people with money, that was the one that came, they could be convinced that Cuba was not. The failure was not the communist thing that they had been learning about or knowing about through the media, they were convinced in one week or less than one week, just coming, watching, not word of mouth, the seeing is believing, and we talked to them, and that was all. They went away, but then afterwards they forgot, and afterwards they forgot. All right, now for the thank yous. First of all, thank you to everyone who listened to this season and the first one as well. This season would not have happened without your support. Next, we have

to thank Matthew Giles, our fact checker for this season, Davidson Barski, who returned as our researcher and archivist, and Joshua Lynch, who once again delivered some incredible artwork for the show. One of the things we are most proud of in this season is that we were able to bring you the perspectives of our Cuban guests. So we'd like to thank Martin Nunez Sarmiento, Raul Roa Cori, Rafael Hernandez, and Oscar Aramos Oliva. We'd also like to thank our other guests, Jefferson Morley, Peter Cornblue, Rosemary, Joe Kaye, Martin Sherwin, Joe McBride, Jose Pertierra, Bill Fletcher Jr., Nelson Valdez, Jim Hirshberg, Michelle Chase, Simon Hall, and Helen Yaffee. An additional thanks

to David Kaiser and G. Robert Blakey for giving us their time. You'll hear more from many of these folks and others in future bonus episodes. The soundtrack to blowback, the music from season two, is now streaming on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your music. Thanks again to Robin Hatch, who co-wrote and performed on one of the tracks, and Marty Sulkow and Joe Valley, who helped me produce it. Once again, thanks for listening, and see you later. Adios. This loss sign

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