Empire: World History - 175. The CIA vs Fidel Castro

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Following the fall of Batista, the Cuban revolution took a more radical turn. Castro was not a communist to begin with, but as those around him became increasingly Marxist, the CIA’s desire to regain control of the island grew. With the failure of JFK’s Bay of Pigs invasion, events escalated into the Cuban Missile Crisis as the USSR brought nuclear weapons to America’s doorstep. Listen as Anita and William are once again joined by Alex von Tunzelmann to talk about how the Caribbean almost became the centre of a nuclear armageddon. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producers: Anouska Lewis and Aaliyah Akude  Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Durimple. And this is part two of our rather enjoyable romp through Cuban history. I mean, we're having a nice time, aren't we? I mean, largely due to the fact of our very special guest who is just wonderful sublime writer,

but a hoot to boot. It is the fabulous historian, Alex von Tinselman, the author of Red Heat, which is a story, the inside story, of Cuba and America. Not only has she written a book called Red Heat, she has blue highlights to her hair, which can't show up in the podcast, sadly. But readers, you're listening. You're missing. I've been to Lahore, Pakistan.

with Alex, who it's impossible to walk anywhere with her through a bizarre because every three steps she was stopped for a photo opportunity. Completely fascinated by her hair, which is resplendant, of course. But, I mean, that was quite something in Lahore. Yes, it was a bit impossible to go. You forget. I was there too. We were there together doing Kerry door, yeah.

I got a bit fed up, really, Alex. I'm sorry. I'm very attention. And she's usually normally just to be getting all the attention to herself. Nobody gave me a second look. It was all about Alex. Anywho, it is all about Alex today because we're doing part two of our Cuban story and the reason why Cuba and America have such fraught relations even today, why you'll hear so many Cuban exiles in America speaking out politically and so strongly against Cuba. Where does this come from? How does this happen? And you sort of trace the roots right back in the last episode. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen. This is an old relationship and a dysfunctional relationship between America and Cuba. But now we get to the roots right back in the last episode. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen. This is an old relationship and a dysfunctional relationship between America and Cuba. But now we get to the crux of it, and that crux is Castro.

Exactly. And in the last episode, we had that slight feeling that this was sort of slightly keystone cops, coup after coup, intervention after international, and these revolutionaries sort of, you know, with fake armies that don't really exist. But actually, this now becomes really important because what has happened in Cuba becomes a model for a lot of the rest of Latin America. And it brings the whole of the early part of the Cold War to a very terrifying climax and one of the points that the human race has been nearest to nuclear Armageddon. So this is rather less of a jokey episode than the last one. And in fact, deals with really crucially important historical issues. But let's pick up where we left off,

which is the success of Fidel Castro and his mates in booting Batista out of Cuba. What is the immediate effect on Cuban-American relations when he comes to power? Well, it's quite, complicated. There's not a sort of immediate difficulty. I mean, really everyone's just sort of trying to figure out what's going on is fundamentally the situation, because the Americans were quite taken by surprise that Batista fled. They didn't know that was going to happen, nor did the Cubans. Hemingway, whose biography I've just been reading, welcomes it. He's thrilled by the whole thing. He thinks that Batista's a crook. He's associated with the mob. He's associated with vice on an epic scale. Not necessarily something that Hemingway was against, but nonetheless,

something that he thought sort of lowered the tone in Cuba, and he's very pleased when Cuba goes over to Castro. He welcomes this coup. Many people did. And I mean, you know, the first government that Fidel Castro installed was basically center-right. It wasn't any kind of revolutionary government. It was seen as a government of rather sensible people by the Americans and by everybody else. It was seen as a rather good sign, and he is not the leader of it. It's a nationalist coup. It's not a communist coup. It's very much a nationalist coup and very much installing a government that appeared to be moderate and if anything, as I say, on the right of politics. So definitely not a bunch of commies turning up. I mean, very, very far from that.

And actually, you can see this. If you look at the CIA records and the records of the State Department in Washington that, you know, they were aware that Che Guevara and Raul Castro were communists. They were aware of all of this, but they also were very aware that Fidel had positioned himself quite strongly against communism. And actually, again, if you look at the Soviet records, if you look at the other side, you can see that the Soviets also were very cautious about Fidel Castro. They had assessed him as not being one of theirs, as being quite anti-communist. One KGB report said that he was a CIA agent, which indeed he may have been unwittingly.

Furthermore, you know, they had this sense that actually everybody was watching and waiting. Nobody really knew what was going to be done. And it certainly appeared the first signal that Fidel was not going to install a kind of radical government at all. However, although there was this moderate government installed, there were also sort of summary trials and executions of various kind of villains. And quite a few. Five hundred of five or six hundred of Batista's former henchmen. Yeah, of Batista's henchmen. Which is quite a bloodbath.

It's quite a bloodbath. The trials were showed. trial and the executions then were, you know, spreading fear right at the, from the get-go to to anybody who's not going to be loyal to the new government, albeit not overtly Marxist, communist government, but can I just maybe just try and understand one thing, if he wasn't going to be identified as communist or Marxist, one of the first things the Cuban government does is that they nationalised US properties. And I love this fact that there's a mock funeral, complete with coffins bearing the names of ESO, United Fruit,

and all the American companies that sort of does this sort of parade through the street. That doesn't sound very centre-right. No. So how did you explain that? What you had going on was something quite complicated, where there were effectively three broadly, I mean actually about 100, but, you know, let's say broadly three political factions competing for control of this Cuban revolution. You have this centre-right government that Fidel Castro had installed, and of course they wanted kind of conservative policies and close relations with the US.

Then you had a kind of moderate centre left. And at this point, Fidel Castro, you would have put him in this group. He put himself in this group, which wanted various types of reform, but not radical things. And third, you had the radical left wing. And that's Raul Castro and Che. Raul Castro, Che Guevara were in control of that, but they certainly, neither of them had any control of Fidel Castro. In fact, at this point, he was really quite antagonistic towards them.

He didn't appear in public with them. He used to appear instead with Camillo Sienfuegos, who was another moderate. Sienfuegos was actually really an incredibly important figure at this point. He was later killed in a plane crash, so you won't have heard of him. But also rather a good-looking young man. Immensely good-looking young man and then blames it on me. I don't know. I think Willie's quite into the good-looking men of Revolution.

But you say something. I mean, we've chatted about this before, Alex, and you've said before that you think that Shea Gavara was much more in the thrall of Fidel Castro than Fidel was with Shea. I mean, just can you unpack that a little bit? Absolutely. I mean, I think you can see it even from like the earliest meetings after they met, Fidel Castro was meeting a lot of people and there's not a lot that he wrote. I said about thought he was pretty good guy, but he didn't, you know, it didn't really pick him out from a crowd. Che went off and wrote all this lyrical poetry about how wonderful Fidel was. So, you know, you can see an imbalance right from the start. There's a sort of thing that you can really see that there's a slight hero worship thing. But Fidel always kept him at arm's length, and that was because he found Che at this stage just, you know, politically he wasn't in the same place as him. He wasn't into communism.

But even later, when Fidel did turn that way, he always found Che Fartu doctrinaire and, you know, Shea became very much. Stop spouting, stop quoting at me. Talk for yourself. Stop quoting I mean, right. Che really became very Maoist and he didn't like that at all. But Alex, there is some quite serious land reform that kicks off at this point. You have this process that we said before, where it's 75% of the land is owned by Americans, and this begins to be tackled by Fidel Castro. But again, this is something that kind of almost any moderate, centrist government in Latin America would do. Okay, but it's going to shake the Americans. I mean, how do the Americans respond to this?

They've seen trials. They've seen Batista loyalists who were presumably their loyalists as well executed. They've seen this triumvirate who have political beliefs that, you know, however moderate they may seem will seem extreme to an American agenda. What do they make of all of this? There's also a real problem with information. So the American ambassador in Cuba was a guy called Earl Smith, really hated Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro hated him back.

And it was a very difficult situation because Earl Smith was not provoked. providing accurate information back to the US. And actually, there's a lot of complaints about this. Again, if you go through records of the State Department of junior people in the US embassy, they were really quite worried about him. One said he created a poisonous atmosphere. He was an apologist and defender of Batista. So, you know, a lot of, there was a lot of resentment towards this ambassador, but he was kind of really driving a very negative image of this new regime. Eisenhower was quite reluctant to let him go. But yeah, I mean, you know, it was it was tricky because there was so much going on and so many different factions going on.

But actually, again, if you look in Washington, if you look at what the State Department were saying, they were watching and waiting. They did not immediately jump up and down. And even when they do make noises, I mean, they did American politicians, when they heard about the executions, do denounce them. But Castor has an answer for this. So he says, you know, don't interfere in our politics. And he says, based on his estimates, for every one person executed in Cuba, 1,000 men, women and children were killed by American bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki just 14 years earlier. So he's like, don't lecture us about how much life is valuable. So it is uneasy. It's not openly hostile, but it's pretty hostile. It's fairly hostile,

but not to the height of what it will become. No, exactly. I mean, certainly, I would say at this point, there was everything to play for, actually, in that relationship. But Alex, you also make a case that at this point, the CIA, as opposed to the State Department, is beginning to get paranoid and is over-egging the communist pudding, so to speak. They are seeing reds under the beds where they don't necessarily exist, or they're certainly not in complete power in Cuba. Yes, and one of the reasons the CIA station in Havana really turns against it is that one of the people Fidel and Che executed was a guy called Jose Castagnos, who was the second in command of the Bureau for Repression of Communist activities, which had been set up by Alan and

John Foster Dulles, the head of the CIA and Secretary of State in the US. And there was an American-trained colonel in charge of that agency. It was a torture agency and a repression agency. He fled, but the Castro did capture Castagnos, tried him, convicted him, and sentenced him to death by firing squad. And the CIA tried to intervene with Che Guevara to say, can you not kill this guy who's kind of one of ours, we're quite fond of him. And Che told them very short words that he would not do that. Right. Okay, so despite this sort of bog-offery that's going on, Castro does get invited to visit the United States by the American Society of Newspaper agents in April, 1959, so quite soon after assuming the mantle of power. And he is met by a hero's

welcome. I mean, he's a popular figure. There's an American toy manufacturer that's released I love this number, 100,000 Fidel Cap and Beard sets, which sell like hot cakes. And this also puts the American government on edge because you just don't want a man like this being popular among the young. He's very, very powerful. And I mean, he went to, yes, he went to New York, he went to the US. And actually the CIA requested, did not demand, requested an interview with him there. He didn't want to have it in Washington.

That was too conspicuous. But outside Washington, D.C., they did have an interview. the CIA man spent three hours alone with Fidel in the hotel suite talking through things. And the CIA guy came out of that interview, exhausted but in a very good, happy mood, and said, Fidel Castro is not only not a communist, he's a strong anti-communist fighter. So at that stage, the CIA, we're pretty convinced actually that despite all that was going on, these executions in this, which were making them uneasy, actually there was a pretty good possibility that Fidel Castro could be a bulwark against communism in Cuba.

So what is it that changes that? Because quite soon the CIA is operating very energetically against him, dropping leaflets and stirring up anti-revolutionary activity in Cuba. So effectively at this point, the CIA are coming up with a plan and some links to invade Cuba, but that doesn't mean they're going to do it. They come up with these sorts of plans at all points. They have plans for all sorts of activities that they don't actually do. but they do start creating a bit of a network and setting up, you know, a plan for if we need to invade Cuba, how would we do it? Would it be this? Would it be this group of exiles and so on? But also, they've got their fingers in a lot of pots at this point

because also at this point, 1961, they have realised they pretty much need to dispose of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He is gunned down by some of his own men, but with rifles provided most probably by the CIA. So, you know, there's a lot going on. And this is, already there's been the CIA coup in Guatemala when at the best of United Fruit they've moved in.

And this is famously the occasion that the word banana republic is born, isn't it? Absolutely. Trying to stop the nationalisation of United Fruit's land operations. Okay, but as far as Cuba's concerned, this is on paper only. We're just making plans. We're not going to do anything. And then there's a change of man at the top. So you've got the inauguration of John F. Kennedy,

replaces Eisenhower in the seat of power, February 1961. We should talk about Kennedy. I mean, most people will know who he is, born to a political dynasty in 1917. He's kind of, you know, the Renaissance man who can do everything. He's a writer. He's international affairs. He's an expert. He's a sportsman. You know, he's a pin-up kind of guy. He beats Nixon taking part in the first ever televised election debate, which I thought was very interesting. I've never watched it. I should, though. And when he comes to power, he's known as a sort of a supporter of civil rights, too left for many Americans' palettes. But when it comes to Castro, he knows where he is, and it's not on the left, is it? What does he make of Castro? Well, it's less what he makes of him

and more that he comes into office. And I sort of think what's going on here is something a bit psychological, because as you say, Kennedy has seen as a bit of a kind of squidgy lefty by some of the kind people in Washington. I think particularly you've got sort of someone who's feeling that, but he's a little bit, you know, maybe he's not looking macho enough around all these military generals that come to meet him. And they present him with this plan for these Cuban exiles to invade Cuba with the CIA in support. We should say that this is a moment of great paranoia in the United States against communism. And that while we have this rather benign memory of JFK, we often forget that, In fact, he was actually very close to Senator McCarthy, the McCarthy, which trials are beginning.

Communists are the bogey men of the moment. And Castro, while he may not see himself as a communist and see himself instead as a Cuban nationalist, is being put further and further into that envelope by the CIA. And as a firm anti-communist, JFK is now ticking the box to try and remove him. So one of the first things Kennedy did when he came into office, So 28th of January, straight after, of course, came into office, he reviewed the CIA's plans for Cuba. And Alan Dulles, who's head of the CIA, said, you know, at this point Cuba's basically communist controlled. That wasn't true at all, by the way.

It simply wasn't the case. It was still a very complicated position there with different factions. And Kennedy authorized the continuation of the plan. The plans that he was shown included at least two separate plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara, in vague language. But, you know, there was a sort of problem here in that although John F. Kennedy and Alan Dulles were sort of old family friends in this, they didn't actually understand each other brilliantly. They were of quite different generations. Eisenhower and Alan Dulles really understood each other. Kennedy didn't. So, I mean, one example, for instance, is that Kennedy, like many men of his generation, had a habit of saying, yeah, while Dulles was speaking in response to points. And Dulles said, only very too late did I learn that Kennedy, when he said, yeah, didn't mean to express understanding or assent, but only, yes, I'm listening. You know, this, Dulles was taking all this as authorization, but actually Kennedy was just like, uh-huh, you know, it wasn't agreement. But a very serious misunderstanding came just at the beginning

of February when Kennedy had asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to assess the CIA's Cuban invasion plan. And the assessment put the chance of the operation succeeding at 30%, which was really not very good. and the Joint Chiefs thought this was terrible. So they did a summary in military language, which said the Joint Chiefs considered that timely execution of the plan has a fair chance of ultimate success. Now, fair in military language

is only one step up from poor. So actually, that's really quite bad. But apparently, John F. Kennedy read this and thought fair meant reasonable or decent. A pretty decent chance. Yeah, right. Yeah, so he said, go ahead. But actually, it had been assessed

as really being quite a bad plan. And he, you know, it was where you should just not just read the summary, you have to read the whole document. So this is the Bay of Pigs invasion plan. Is it the same way? That is what it will become. No, it's called the Bay of Pigs because it is a swampy area which had these creatures that were known as Koshinichon, which sort of means pigs, I think, and prehistoric sort of remnants and it's got coral reefs. It's not an easy place to land a landing, but that's where they choose anyway to make this invasion. How does it unfold? Well, poorly. There's a lot of faults in the planning of this.

So this operation is supposed to be covert. So it's supposed to be that you don't know that there's any American or CIA involvement, that it's just a group of Cuban exiles, who they call Brigade 2506, who are going to invade spontaneously and liberate Cuba from Castro. That's the idea.

In a deniable way. In a deniable way, exactly. So you don't know that the Americans are involved. And there's an awful lot, And almost everybody who looks at this plan in the US, spots that there are problems with it. So, I mean, one question, when they look at it as, you know, they see that there's a plan to invade at the Bay of Pigs,

which, indeed, as he says, a very swampy area full of, like, alligators, snakes, you know, very sort of swampy, very, very difficult terrain. And, you know, there it is. And the CIA guy said, I thought I was a victim of an April fall trick of the meanest kind with this location. And he said, how are they going to land on that beach and hold it? and the Colonel in charge said, well, we're going to take tanks. And he said, you're going to mount a secret operation in the Caribbean with tanks.

I mean, that's just crackers. Can I also do a correction? My pronunciation was so heinous. I know people are going to write in. These little creatures that the Bay is named after, they're the Queen Triggerfish, known in Cuba as Koshy knows. Whatever the hell I said before was not that, because she knows, which means pigs, which is why it's Bay of Pigs. Happy to make that correction before you all write in.

So, okay, so there's a silly plan. It looks bad on paper. And in practice, it starts going wrong within the first few hours. In practice, it's a complete disaster, especially because operational security has been absolutely dire. It's really important to say. So, I mean, everybody knows this is going on. Fidel Castro knows all about it. And he knows the CIA are involved. So Havana's May Day celebrations, which are actually the 8th of April, so somewhat before this all kicks off. He gave this really quite amusing speech in Havana, where he said, we believe that the central intelligence agency has no intelligence at all. They should be called the central agency of Yankee Cretins. So he already knows it's happening.

He knows it's coming. So the CIA's plan to kill him was to sneak a bazook into a group with Cuban exiles. He were going to sneak in during a boxing match that Fidel was attending at Havana's Sports Palace. But actually, the Cubans in Miami were then fighting so badly with each other, that the CIA couldn't work out who they should give the bazooka to, and nobody took the bazooka to have. Alex, there's also a failed attempt to wipe out the Air Force. The CIA repaints a whole load of their B-26 bombers. That's right. In Cuban colors, and the idea is to try and, in a deniable way, bomb the Air Force so they can't attack the invaders, but it fails. The Air Force

completely survives. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, Philo Castro knows he's coming, so it just moves the Air Force. I mean, really, it's very easy to. to do. And nobody is remotely fooled by a paint job. I mean, these people aren't completely stupid. You know, they know exactly what's going on. And it's very, very obvious. But they did form this force, this brigade of 1,400 counter-revolution. So it's quite a substantial invasion. It's a pretty substantial force. Yeah. So do they land at the Bay of Pages? Are they sort of dropped off by boat? What happens? I mean, they're immediately met by a coral reef and some really swampy land. But how do they land? So because Fidel Castro knew this was coming, just before it was going to happen, Fidel gave this

speech and he said, you know, the Americans have fabricated a complete story with details and names, scheming up everything. Hollywood would never have come up with something like this, ladies and gentlemen. He said the US have organized the attack, planned the attack, trained the mercenaries, supplied the planes, supplied the bombs, prepared the airport, everyone knows it. And then he said something incredibly crucial, which he said, what they cannot forgive is that we have made a socialist revolution right under the nose of the United States. That's the first time he had ever said Cuba was socialist. And the importance of doing it then, of course, is what was happening behind the scenes is that Fidel Castro had realized that all his attempts

to talk to the CIA to create these links with America had fallen aside. Nixon's faction had effectively won. Kennedy was going to go that way and invade. And at that point, he had to declare himself, he felt a socialist, didn't say communist, just socialist, because he was going to need to put an arm's from somewhere else. And the only, other game in town was the USSR. So this was a completely deliberate attempt to make hay with the Soviets who he had not previously been friends with. So your argument is that he's not a communist, it is the Americans who throw him into the arms of the USSR. I think there's absolutely an arguable path that had, and in fact many in the CIA wanted to do it, many in the state

Department wanted to do it. Had they actually been able to form a closer relationship with him, had they not sent the Bay of Pigs invasion, had they not done this, that Fidel Castro could pretty easily have been brought into a much more comfortable position with the United States. And the whole range of different potential futures for Latin America and the whole continent could have unfolded. It could have been a very, very different history. You know, massively different history was possible. You wouldn't really have heard of people like Chigavara, this would not have, he would be a completely obscure Latin American Marxist, you know, who you would just never have heard of.

Look, I just, I've left that question of what happens in the Bay of Pickers invasion, and we're going to take a break, but when we come back, Alex Fonton, someone, I want to know what happens and how it fails, because it fails so spectacularly, but we need to know why. So join us after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, there are 1,400, was it 1,400 or even more than that, Cuban exiles who are about to land in Cuba with the CIA's blessing and training to take back Cuba. They are going to land in this area called the Bay of Pigs. And just tell me who lands them and how does it go?

1,400 men of the brigade landing to supposedly liberate Cuba are approaching Cuba on boats. It's going to be an amphibious landing, which is an incredibly dangerous military maneuver anyway. First problem happens immediately, which is that the most problem happens immediately, which is that the maps that the US has used to plan this invasion on did not indicate coral reefs. Analysts looked at them and thought they were clouds or seaweed. They are coral reefs. The boats immediately run aground 80 yards offshore. And of course, their big red hazard lights start flashing.

They're immediately spotted by Cuban militia groups. It's not covert at all. They're spotted just straight away. And there's a school of frogmen approaching the boats. And the first man ashore is the CIA agent, David Gray. He opens fire. So for all this idea about plausible deniability, the first man to engage Castro's troops at the Bay of Pigs was an American CIA agent. And Castro sent quite a few men to welcome this invasion, as you say. This is pretty well flagged. That's right. He completely knows it's coming. So there's literally there's army brigades just over the, over the sand dunes, so to speak.

Absolutely. There's loads of them. They're absolutely everywhere. And effectively, even though there is a little bit of back and forth and not all of the Cuban response goes as brilliantly as Fidelitope, it's hope. it's pretty quick and pretty easy. It does not take very long for the Cubans to capture all of these men of this militia of Brigade 2506 to round them up and of course immediately to begin to parade them on TV and harangue the Americans for this. The figures I've got here, 100 are killed on the landing and 1,200 of the 1,400 surrender. So it's a catastrophe. It's a complete catastrophe. It's a straightforward catastrophe.

And I mean, you can hear this if you kind of go back into Washington at this point and look at the record. So Richard Nixon saw Alan Dulles, the head of CIA, who'd just come back from Puerto Rico where he was staging this. And Alan Dulles looked so terrible that Nixon said, would you like a drink? Alan Dulles said, I certainly would. I really need one. This is the worst day of my life. Everything is lost. The Cuban invasion is a total failure.

This causes a very strong anti-American reaction in Cuba, doesn't it? One man who suffers directly is Hemingway. Hemingway is still very pro-Fidel. He's totally open to all this, but instantly, among the many Americans who suffer from the punitive measures announced after the Bay of Pigs, Hemingway's house is seized and all-American property becomes forfeit. Yes, I mean, at this point, Fidel Castro has declared the Revolution Socialists, and of course that means he's going to go a lot harder in all of these terms. And so, you know, that licenses a lot of crackdown. And there's a huge amount of support for that, most probably in Cuba at that time, because people are absolutely furious about this very obviously

CIA-backed American invasion that has happened. And it's also embarrassing. I mean, so embarrassing for Kennedy, because they've got 1,200 men who've surrendered. You know, they've got these people. So to negotiate their freedom, it is Kennedy's brother, Bobby Kennedy, who has to make a deal with Castro to get these men back. It has to come and negotiate. And that's going to cost. I know what the cost. The cost is kind of crackers. It is $53 million worth of baby food and medicine in exchange for the prisoners. That's the only way they'll get the prisoners back. So, you know, even the stuff that Castro is getting makes him a hero in the eyes of his people because he's bringing medicine and baby food over from the very people who are trying

to overturn his government. Exactly. I mean, effectively what has happened is the US has handed a huge propaganda coup to Fidel Castro, massively shored up his regime, made him embrace communism, or at least socialism at this point, and yeah, changed the course of Caribbean history. Not in a way they would have wished to. Now, Alex, there's a lovely part in your book that follows, because the CIA doesn't give up at this point, as if they haven't made enough of food themselves, they come up with some sort of very wacky Austin Powers' ways of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro at this point, don't they? Yes, at this point they set up Operation Mungoos, which is a kind of supposedly coerced plan to assassinate Fidel Castro to overthrow

the regime in Cuba. And, you know, a lot of the records of this Cuba project were deliberately destroyed in 1967, so we don't have them all, but we do know a few of them. Some of them did remain. So some that we do have records of. Operation True Blue, which was set up transmitters in Florida to denounce Fidel's regime with slogans like Rise Up Against the Pig Castro. There was Operation Full Up in which a biological contaminant would be squirted into Soviet jet fuel supply to Cuba. Operation Good Times was called for a photograph of an obese Fidel Castro to be faked, complete with two beauties and a table heaped with fine food. The Department of Defense said, this should put even a commie dictator in the proper perspective with the underprivileged masses.

They were going to drop this leaflet. Bobby Kennedy wanted to stage a fake attack on Guantanamo Bay to give an excuse to launch a full invasion of Cuba. There was an airdrop all across Cuba, a planned of lavatory paper printed with the faces of Fidel Castro and Nikita Christov. And another plan, this didn't happen, for a full-scale fake second coming during which the Messiah would publicly declare that Fidel was the Antichrist. You've got me, this is just all berserk. A couple of others, tell me if they're true or not. These are things that I've heard, that there was going to be some kind of LSD-laced perfume aftershave that would be given to him, somehow snuck into his collection so that he'd get very, very

confused. And the other one, which was really, I mean, fairly recent was that they would put some kind of powder in his shoes, so his beard would fall out. That's right. So without his beard, he would not be so effective. I mean, these are that shit things, but it's like a frat party. It's planning some kind of, you know, hazing thing. Are they just getting all the kind of wacky ideas in the CIA files and just shabbing everything at Castro? Absolutely. They tried to make a poison diving suit because Fidel's love diving. They were going to impregnate that with fungus spores that were going to cause a skin disorder. And tuberculosis, you know, and tuberculosis. And tuberculosis, That's right. They were going to inject tuberculosis into his mouth through the aquilung. And there was one

extraordinary point where the head of the CIA's Cuban Task Force, a guy called Desmond Fitzgerald, planned for Fidel's diving to make an exploding seashell for Fidel to pick up when he was diving. And at this point, one CIA agent did sort of sense a bit of reality and say, how are we going to make Fidel choose the right shell? Are you going to put him flashing neon sign of it and have it played Bateshoven's fit? Which I think is about the level. This seems like sort of brain fartage going on in a panic. And what's going on in Cuba at the same time? As, you know, the CIA desperately scrambling for a way to get rid of this now self-identifying socialist. Well, we should also say that, you know, while this is going on, the people of Cuba realize that America has got Cuba in its sights once

again. And there is a long history of America having its sights on Cuba. So there must be a great deal of unease among the people of Cuba. Like, what the hell next? You know, we've been out from under this for such a long time. We've got out from the Spanish. We got out from these guys. is it going to happen again? And this is the prelude to what will become known as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. So let's take us into that, which is an ultimate expression of that kind of fear on the Cuban side and the kind of quite justifiable terror that comes from the American side as a result of it. At this point, obviously Fidel has declared himself a socialist. On the 1st of December 1961, he went to a party at the Soviet embassy in Havana. Afterwards, went to the

communist newspaper and declared himself to be a Marxist Leninist. And he said, you know, oh, I always have been, actually. Now, this wasn't true. We know it wasn't true. But of course, as it suited... He needs Soviet support at this point. Exactly. So he needed to pretend that he'd been a secret communist all along. And it turns out an awful lot of people have believed him, even though we have plenty of evidence that he, in fact, was not. And of course, we now know that Castro lives a long life and that none of this happens. But presumably he was worried now that the Americans having tried once are going to keep trying that he's in their sights. And this is not one failed attempt, but this is a long succession.

No, and he's not wrong. I mean, between this time and 1999, there were 637 failed assassination attempts according to the Cuban government to kill Fidel from the US. Now, the US would claim fewer, but there were certainly a lot. I mean, there's absolutely no question. It was severely dangerous. So he has to go to the Soviet Union. They're the only people he thinks that can protect them. Yes. I mean, he still really didn't get on with the actual communist. leadership in Cuba. They absolutely loathed each other. It really didn't work terribly well. But Nikita Khrushchev, who was the head of the Soviet Union at this point, was incredibly excited about having these young revolutionaries in Cuba come on board. I mean, you know, actually

really, since Comintern had been disbanded by Stalin, the Soviet Union hadn't really been looking abroad very much for any kind of recruitment. But the idea of these like, you know, handsome, romantic, young bearded men, as opposed to the sort of gray old men of the Presidium in the Soviet Union was really. really exciting and invigorating. You took them all back to the 1920s and Lenin and all of this stuff. No one puts a picture of Khrushchev up on their bed sit, but everyone puts J. No, exactly. And they knew that. And I think Khrushchev at this point, you know, you also have going on this huge geopolitical issue. You know, you've got the Sino-Soviet split happening.

So, you know, previously there's been an attempt between the Soviet Union and China to be kind of commie buddies. That's fallen apart. So that's very destabilizing, first of all. And there's another issue, which is, you know, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles. And one issue is that the US has stationed some nuclear missiles in Turkey very, very close to the border with the Soviet Union. And there's a great deal of upset about this in the Soviet Union. And Nikita Khrushchev, you know, starts to think that maybe he should do something with these Cubans. And this extraordinary quote from that time, you know, when this was happening, he needed to do something to sort of assert Soviet power against Mao Zedom.

in China and also against John of Kennedy in the US. And he said, what if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam's pants? And the hedgehog he had in mind was nuclear missiles and he thought, let's station some of those in Cuba. Just to flush that out a little bit. I mean, the reason that's significant that there are missiles in Turkey and there are also nuclear missiles in Italy that the United States has put there is because they are within striking distance of the Soviet Union. They could reach them in 10 minutes. And as we've said before, in the last podcast, Cuba is so very close to America. So, you know, you can't get much closer without being on the American mainland. If you put missiles in Cuba, you're sending a very clear message. If you can

get us in 10 minutes, we can get you in 5. And actually, I think Fidel and Raoul Castro really understood the significance of what was happening there, because initially they were really rather reluctant to accept those missiles. First of all, they were very concerned about it. But they decided they were going to go ahead and do so. And once they did accept it, the Cubans kept saying can we make this public? Rather than doing this behind the back of the Americans, if we're going to do it, we should make it public because the US has agreements with Turkey, Italy and Britain, of course. Let's not forget to stage nuclear missiles in those places. You could say you're putting them in Cuba. You could make an equivalence. This could be done.

But Krushchev decided it had to be secret. He wanted it done behind the back of the US. And again, that was against the Cuban's wishes. So the first sign of all this is the arrival of some Soviet troops, isn't it? Ahead of the missiles, you begin to get Soviet personnel turning up in large numbers in the autumn of 1962. And what they start seeing is U2 spy planes that fly over Cuba take photographs of what appear to be surface-to-air missile sites, all this. And what they saw initially was basically the equipment for missiles. So not warheads, crucially. What they saw is kind of launch pads of preparations for what could be nuclear missile sites.

but they did not believe at this stage that the warheads themselves were there. And these young Soviet troops don't quite know where they've arrived. They love the Cuban girls. They love the Cuban food. They're into rum. They're having a high old time. They think this is wonderful. Yeah, the Cubans get on incredibly well with the Soviet troops. And I think particularly, perhaps even more importantly, the commanders get on very, very well with Fidel and Raul Castro. There are some missiles that, in fact, the Cubans can fire without authorization from Moscow.

So that's very frightening. The other thing the Americans don't know that only got revealed later was that, in fact, nuclear missile warheads were already in Cuba at this point. So, I mean, this is as tense as it can be, although the Americans don't know yet, and when do the Americans come to know that there are nuclear missiles very, very close to their borders? Well, what they know is that there's nuclear infrastructure. So they know that with these U-2 overflights, and that's what they spot is these ships

coming from the Soviet Union to Cuba and they assume that the warheads are on those ships. How do they get onto the ships? What are the processes by which they... I mean, because obviously ships are sailing around the ocean, presumably there are ships going from Russia across the oceans in all directions at all times. Why and how do they know that these ships

specifically are carrying? They don't. This is a military fleet, but this is the estimation that they have is that the military fleet are carrying the warheads that are going to be installed in Cuba at these missile sites. That's the understanding.

And that is why when Kennedy sees all this information, you know, there seem to be courses of actions seem to be one, go in, start a war, blow up all these missile sites in Cuba. That's an option. Two, do nothing. That's an option, but obviously also a very high-risk option. three, and this is what he does, is to set up a naval blockade, to stop those ships reaching Cuba.

Now, that's also an act of war, but it's obviously less provocative than bombing Cuba. And he does this, having discovered incontrovertible solid evidence, that there are conventional Soviet weapons now arriving in Cuba. Yes, there are certainly those. torpedo boats, ship missiles, extensive radar and other equipment, as well as anti-aircraft missiles. Those have arrived and the U2 spy planes or at least the CIA intelligence network picks up these for short, don't they? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, they know it's a very serious situation. And what they want, what they believe to be the case is to stop the actual warheads getting there so that this doesn't kick off into a situation capacity.

Of course, what we only found out much, much later, I think it was in the 1990s, was, that in fact Cuba already had, 36, 1 megaton warheads for the medium-range ballistic missiles, 24, 1-matton warheads for the intermediate range ones, which would hit Washington, D.C., Panama, maybe New York City, and, of course, many smaller warheads for rockets, illusion bombers and so on. And each of those were the same size as the little boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Bloody hell! So it was more serious than people realized at the time? Even knowing what he did know, even though it wasn't the full story,

On October the 22nd, Kennedy orders a naval quarantine of Cuba. He sends a letter to Christchief saying, get your damn missiles out of Cuba. And this starts at least an exchange of correspondence between the two leaders, that a line of communication, a bit more honest communication, is opened up between the two.

How does that go? And how close to the brink do we get? If you read all the memoirs and so on that were written at the time, which they were by a lot of Americans who were involved in this, You see this kind of very sophisticated negotiation between Kennedy and Hussaud, very difficult to do because they didn't speak by phones. This is all being done by letters through embassies and all of this. There wasn't a phone line.

So, you know, very difficult communication, incredibly delicate balance, carefully managed diplomacy. But of course, what they didn't have at that time was any access to the Soviet story or the Cuban story. So actually that story is very incomplete from those books. What we know now is that actually a great deal more was going on than this careful diplomacy. and not to discredit, you know, what Kennedy did,

because actually, I think in contrast to the absolute disaster of the Bay of Pigs, he handled this really rather intelligently and sensibly. But what happened is that on the 26th of October, Fidel Castro went to speak to General Issapliev, who is the Soviet commander in Cuba, and they sat there and wrote a letter if Fidel wanted to write a letter to Khrushchev saying what he was going to do in it. You know, this is quite a shocking letter,

and it was very, very delicate, and basically he said, If the imperialists invade Cuba with the goal of occupying it, the danger that aggressive policy poses for humanity is so great that following that event, the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it. So he's telling them to fire first? Yes, he's telling them to fire first.

And he's telling them that they've got to wipe out the US and this is what they've got to do. He sent that to Khrushchev. Khrushchev freaked out. So he suddenly thought, I've put all these missiles on this island with this crazy guy who thinks we should wipe out the US. This was not the intention. And Khrushchev definitely completely freaked out at that point and decided that they had to bring the missiles out. So this is very public at this point.

The newspapers are on to this, every news broadcast. Nobody knows this. They're just talking about Kennedy and this negotiation that's going on that you can read about in any other account. In the news broadcast that we've all seen, the ships heading towards Cuba are being tracked. The daily updates are on the BBC, the New York Times. Everyone is glued to their television news. I mean, it is, you know, everyone's sort of anxiously waiting around their TV sets. Is this it?

Everybody's terrified and it's really much worse than they think, because the warheads are definitely already there and it really could go very, very badly wrong. But, you know, the Americans are doing this very careful negotiating. But actually, I think also the fact that Fidel Ruffield is, wrote this completely deranged letter, basically saying you can just sacrifice Cuba, blow us up, no problem, but you have to eradicate the US, is what makes Christchov think that's a complete disaster. And in his memoir, Christchov says, when this message was read aloud to us, we sat there in silence looking at one another for a long time. It became clear

at that point that Fidel absolutely did not understand our intentions. So you can see that that was a really important point for him, and he basically then decided, let's back down. So the grown-ups in the room are the Soviets at this point? Basically, yes. Well, having done something unbelievably stupid, I mean, because, you know, I actually think it's true that if they put the missiles and given them public about it, that would have been quite different. But doing it behind the Americans back was an incredibly provocative thing to do. But Khrushchev basically soberes up, shall we say, and decides at this point to behave like an adult. Thank goodness for that. So on the 28th of October, Khrushchev publicly de-escalates and agrees to remove. the Soviet missiles from Cuba to turn the ships back. And the American part in this deal is that they have to remove their missiles from Turkey. Yes. And the person who's absolutely furious about this

because he's not even told is Fidel Castro. So what happened is a journalist telephone Fidel saying, is this happening, have the Russians stepped down? Fidel was then in a meeting with Che Guevara. The call was put through in the journal and Fidel said to the journalist, no, of course not. Christchov would never back down. This would never happen. So the journalists read out Christchov's statement. And Fidel swore turned around, kicked a wall, broke a huge mirror that was there. He was shouting, son of a bitch, bastard, asshole, and all this. And Che Guevara records this, so we have a real record of this meeting. What did Chee think? He was pretty furious as well. You know, the thing is, I think what had happened here is that Fidel Castro had got this idea in his head. And here's where you see that, like, this big personality, this extraordinary commitment and dedication, which in some ways can be very admirable.

became in this situation incredibly dangerous. What he had basically decided was that the Cuban nation should be martyred for this cause and that, you know, he was going to be there and be blown up and have this kind of glorious moment. It's horrifying. I mean, if you love the people in your country, how dare you decide that for all of your people? Well, indeed. But he had just been put very firmly back in his place, let's say, by this happening and shown that he wasn't in charge of this destiny.

He was absolutely furious about it. So across Cuba, after this Soviet-Supon, he was absolutely furious about it. symbols were ripped down and trampled on, and a little song was created by schoolchildren. Nikita, Maraquita, no Kesaida, no seita, which means Nikita, you little fairy, what you give, you can't take that. So as so often on this podcast, two difficult things can be true at the same time. We have these very romantic young revolutionaries with pictures of them that Anita has been downloading into her phone.

Do you know what? This is so unfair. He keeps sending me these pictures. It is so much protecting. He doth protest too much, Darrynpool. Yes, carry on, but what? These young men are effectively way out of their depth. It just seems insane.

It is insane. This is a completely almost religious fervour, as if they've got some calling and they're able to martyr an entire people. It's disgusting. So look, after Russia pulls the rug out from under them, thank God, and the rude poems are written, where does that leave international relations

after this nuclear missile crisis? I mean, do the Americans also have to undertake withdrawing their missiles from Turkey and Italy? Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a lot of fallout, I guess, despite the fact there wasn't actually a nuclear incident. There are, of course, other forms of fallout. And one thing that happens that's fascinating is a lot of these people have a rethink. Now, for a long time, Fidel Castro-Solks,

but he does eventually, because he doesn't really have a lot of choice, re-establish relations with Moscow and, you know, re-establish that link. And that's really because, again, there's just not another game in town. He kind of has to. He has to get over it. Che goes off meanwhile to ferment revolution in other Latin American countries and eventually he's hunted down and shot. Yes, I think that's quite a large element to which Fidel really

just wanted Chee out of the picture and kept sending him off to different countries until he got shot quite possibly. Why was that? Because he just two big personalities in one room. I think he thought he was too doctrinaire and not very trustworthy and he just didn't get on with him terribly well by this point. Well, he just, you know, Sounds out from what you're saying, Shea got on his nerves. And Shay was in love with Fidel, and Fidel didn't, you know, care or realize. She was far more into the Chinese communism. He was very Maoist. And by this point, really, the Cubans had decided they were going the Soviet way. So again, that was really unhelpful. There were lots of factors in this. And it's a really interesting, complicated relationship between the two of them. But the relationship between America and Cuba after this is bad to the point, well, it's cold. It sort of freezes over. So nobody from America is allowed to go to Cuba. And if they do go to Cuba, their passports are kind of compromised and they will have all sorts of questions to us.

And that's quite a fairly recent phenomenon. It's only Obama who sort of normalized relations between the two countries. It was bad before that. Even possessing Cuban cigars was a thing you could be in big trouble. Well, but even under Obama, you couldn't just travel there. You know, there was still El Blochero, which is called in Cuba the embargo, which, you know, meant that you still can't buy Cuban goods in the U.S. or anything like this. And as a result of which, Cuba went from being one of the richest countries in the Caribbean to one of the, of the very poorest. Well, yes, although also one of the countries with, you know, does have quite

decent health care and everybody's got a house. And literacy, I think it's got one of the highest literacy rates in the world. But also, remember, they've liberalised an awful lot since, you know, the dark days of the 1970s. But I'd like to leave you with a bit of a poignant moment, because this all didn't have to happen in many ways. And one thing that I think is quite extraordinary is actually that the Kennedy brothers really did have a bit of a rethink after this as well. And it was possible that things could have gone in a very different direction. For instance, we know that Kennedy in September 1963 had allowed secret preliminary talks between Carlos Sartuga, who was the Cuban ambassador to the UN, and Bill Atwood, who was an American diplomat. That was going very well. Jean-Dagnel,

who was a French journalist writing for Lex Pless, met Kennedy in Washington at the end of October 1963. He was going to go to Cuba, and Kennedy asked him to take a message to Fidel Castro. And what Kennedy said, quote, I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I've understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra. To some extent, it's as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. So he wanted to make peace with the Cubans. But of course, after that, Jean-Dagnale left for Havana with this message. JFK left for Dallas. And unfortunately, we know what happened then.

What I find extraordinary is towards the end of their lives, you have Raoul who is a communist who softens and becomes more liberal, you know, so the politics can shift. But Castro doesn't. And I wonder what you think about this, but it's that Jesuit upbringing that you told me about. It's just Jesuit think of martyrdom a lot. And the fact that you can martyr a country, they just can't get that out of their heads. Not just mastering yourself in this case. But mastering everybody else. Yeah. Like I say, I think the Jesuitical upbringing is so key. to understanding Fidel's entire personality.

I don't think you can really get there without it. As someone who went through a Benedictine Catholic education for 10 years, I can tell you you never get over it. Listen, it's been an absolute pleasure. Can I just commend to all of you, Red Heat by Alex von Tonson. It's not just about Cuba. It's about Haiti.

It's about the Dominican Republic. It's about US. The wielding of power in the Caribbean in all of these countries. It's an excellent read because you really humanised the story. Oh, thank you. So we are absolutely delighted you could join us on the podcast. That's all we've got time for. So until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnann.

And goodbye from me, William Deripal.