The Rest Is Classified - 140. Trump’s Latin America Playbook: Before Venezuela, There Was Guatemala (Ep 1)

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Is Cuba next on Trump's hit list? Why are the US so concerned by what's happening in their "backyard"? And what can we learn from the history of regime change in Latin America to help us understand the "Donroe Doctrine"? Listen as David and Gordon delve inside the Guatemalan coup of 1954 and examine what Donald Trump has learnt from how the CIA plotted regime change in the agency's early years. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com. The U.S. wants hemispheric domination to make sure it has control over its backyard. And Washington is going to use the CIA to bring up out regime change. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera.

Gordon, we are now a few months out from the U.S. operation that ejected Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro from office slash kidnapped him. It is jammies. Yeah, ejected is one way of putting it, I think. And we are now heading back down old South America way. Isn't that right, Gordon, to understand, I think, a little bit more in this two-part series about the historical roots of America's desire. to control Central and South America, really the Western Hemisphere, I think you could say, and it's kind of framed, I think, under this concept of hemispheric domination. And so we're going to be looking closely at maybe a slightly less well-known effort promulgated by the Central Intelligence Agency during the very early days of the Cold War that I think sheds some light on what we might be seeing today. Regime change, David.

Let's not beat about the Bush. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the US imposing regime change on other countries. And I think that's why this is going to be, I think, a very interesting journey into a wild story, which is wild in its own right. But it's also interesting in the current context, I think. Because as you said, we've had Venezuela. We've got regime change in the news with the events in Iran. And I suppose the wider question about how it's possible to go about doing regime change if you're Washington, the ways in which you can use different types of omit.

of COVID action, military action, paramilitary action to do it. I mean, Venezuela was remarkable because it just deposed the leader. I mean, it was leader change rather than regime change, wasn't it? Because they just took Nicholas Medeiro out and put it a new leader who was more amenable to Washington. So I think that was fascinating, but it wasn't the first operation like that that's taken place in America's backyard. It certainly may not be the last because Cuba looks to be in Washington's sights at the moment, doesn't it? It does. And Cuba, of course, in a bit of, I guess you could say, dire straits right now, Gordon, having its, I mean, essentially fuel pipeline cut off after the Maduro raid, the cheap, plentiful oil that the Cubans got from the Venezuelans

has been cut off since January. And when you look at the reports coming out of Cuba right now, it's bad. It's reporting this episode. It is bad. And a quick glance at some of the press, rubbish piled up in the streets, there's obviously no tourist activity of any kind anymore really on the island, massive fuel crisis, electricity shortages. I read in one report, Gordon, that the stars are visible again in Havana because there is so little ambient light right now with the electricity shortages. And Trump has kind of, in his predatory way, started to put Cuba square in his sights. I mean, he's said recently, Cuba is going to fall pretty soon. It's kind of a weirdly menacing forecast. Because who might be doing the

felling in that example, Gordon? It's the quiet part out loud almost. And we've seen some other strange things, including paramilitary activity in late February of this year. The Cuban Coast Guard spotted this speedboat about a mile off the shore. And when they approached an arse for identification, the people on board opened fire leading to four of them being killed. And someone was arrested on the sure who's going to meet them. Then Cuban authorities said they had assault rifles, body armor, camouflage, and they were exiles who'd come from the US intending infiltration for terrorist purposes. Now, it's a bit vague as to what that was. But as we'll see in these episodes, you know, this infiltration, paramilitary operations, there is a history for this. I'm not saying

that that was a CIA operation. I don't know. But it's interesting, isn't it? There are things going on which could be paving the way for an attempt. to bring about some kind of regime change in Cuba. We like talking about Cuba and the rest is classified. Yeah, we do. We seem to come back to Cuba a decent amount, but we're not talking about Cuba, and that's two-parter, but we are going to make the case that this CIA covert action operation from the 1950s in Guatemala could be a template.

We're not recommending it, we should say clearly, but this regime change effort could be a template that we are seeing and might see the Trump administration use throughout Central and South America in the not so distant future. Yeah. And it is interesting because it's a model rooted actually in the early Cold War on how COVID action, diplomatic, economic pressure can bring about regime change. It's a crazy story where the CIA plans teeter on the edge of failure. I mean, it shows you how unpredictable these things are.

It also links back to our first ever two episodes. which were about regime change in Iran in 1953, led by the famous Kermit Roosevelt, because this actually follows on very directly the following year from Iranian regime change, but again shows in a different context how a kind of mix of psychological warfare, paramilitary operations, COVID operations, can destabilize a regime. And it has consequences because it gives the US a kind of taste for covert action, which is going to lead on to things in Cuba. I also think, I mean, there are wonderful echoes here of anyone who's seen the Knight

Manager series two, the TV update of the La Caree novel, the second series, because that's about attempts to bring about regime change through covert backing of paramilitary force in Latin America. And that is really what this story is. So I think it's got lots of interesting resonances to today, but also is really deeply rooted in Latin America, Central America. this desire for hemispheric domination. I think the other interesting part of the story, Gordon, is that it really shows the emergence

of almost psychological or political warfare, right? The use of information as a weapon to undermine a society, which is something we talked about very recently in our series on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the 2016 case, we were talking about social media. obviously, you know, the 1950s will be talking about a very different medium, but still the same premise of how do you use information, misinformation, to destabilize a country or to shape its political environment. So it has some very kind of modern echoes, I think, as well, even though this is, of course, a story about covert action in the 1950s. And the target here, as we said, is Guatemala. This episode is sponsored by HP.

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Terms and conditions apply. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96.

Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. So let's do a very quick geography lesson. Guadamala sits on the connecting strip between North and South America. On the one side is the Caribbean, or the Caribbean, I should say,

for our American listeners. Thank you. But the other side is the Pacific. Mexico to the north, El Salvador and Honduras to the south. Guatemala cities, the capital in the early 50s, which is when we're really talking about the population, is only about 3 million. After the Spanish are kicked out in the 19th century, it is run, and this is important, by dictators and landowners who kind of laud it over the peasants in a pretty feudal, medieval way.

1944, there's a popular revolt against the latest dictator, and this repressive system of government is, overthrown with a move to more democracy, a new constitution, the promise of free speech, labour rights, equal pay. Jakobo Arbenz Guzman, known as Arbenz, comes to Barre in 1950. And the crucial thing is he's elected. 65% of the vote. First ever peaceful transfer of power through elections in the history of the country. Arbenz is 37. It's interesting. His mother is Guatemalan, and his father is Swiss. His father kills himself at one point. And the young Benz finds his way to a military academy where he excels. It looks, I think because of that

mixed heritage, blondeish hair, looks quite striking with a high forehead, not super ideological, quite moderate, Democrat reformer. Fundamentally, he's a nationalist moderniser. He wants to reform the economy to deliver to the people, but that requires dealing with this feudal element of land control and who owns the land. So he wants to confiscate him. redistribute the land. Of course, this is a challenge not just to the country's own elite, but also, and this is where the problem comes in, to the United States, because the country's largest single landowner is an American company. And that company is United Fruit. It's not an oil company. No, it's not an oil company. We're talking fruit. Big fruit.

The term banana republic, we hear it a lot these days, but it is coined at the start of the 20th century, to refer to Central American countries where the economies, but also the politics and the government are dominated by companies like United Fruit. And Honduras, I think was the original example, but by the 50s, Guatemala is the prime example of a banana republic. And United Fruit monopolizes export of bananas to the U.S. and it builds the infrastructure to do this. So it builds and owns the railways, the main port through which trade comes. The company has controlling shares of electricity, rail and telegraph companies. It employs about 40,000 people, and it's a state within a state. So in Guatemala, it was known as El Pulpo, the octopus,

because its tentacles extend everywhere. Normally you don't think about the fruit company owning the electricity rail and telegraph companies, do you? I mean, it kind of, normally you think about that go in the other direction. So it's a pretty remarkable, pretty remarkable kind of statement on how consolidated and integrated it was into the daily life of pretty much everybody in Guatemala. Yeah, it is a bit like the kind of East India Company or one of these semi-colonial business enterprises. And the company's view is that the job of Washington is to keep the region safe for U.S. business interests. They're obviously not very happy about this idea of land reform. They start a lobbying campaign against this plan.

They hire top PR companies to persuade Congress and newspaper that the reforms are dangerous. Spread of communism. They take the publisher of the New York Times down to visit. It just happens, just happens that whilst he's there, a communist riot the first ever takes place, which just seems incredibly convenient, doesn't it? Almost as if they'd organized it for him, the PR company. But the point being to warn that this huge dangerous. if there's land reform, if wages are going to have to increase.

And the sense is that they're trying to build the idea in Washington, in American public opinion, that the communists are growing in influence. The version of this, Gordon, that I got in, and it was like a two-line version in my U.S. history textbooks in high school, was that the regime change was driven by United Fruit. Now, obviously, the CIA was involved, but it is explained. as being sort of concocted and designed and manipulated by United Fruit. Is that true or is that just true-ish? That was also my understanding of it originally was that's the simplistic portrayal of it,

is that this is United Fruit, gets the US government, overthrow the regime, that's all it's about. Actually, when you dig into it, it is a bit more complicated than that. And the US government can see United Fruit is quite a flawed. ally and employer. You can see actually people in Washington not convinced it's even necessarily that good for US interests the way they act in Guatemala. And so I think the truth is that United Fruit is a big player in this, but it is not the only player. The reality, and this goes back to, you know, our Iran series of 53, everything at this time in the early 50s is being seen through the lens of the new Cold War, the battle against communism.

isn't it? Yeah, and even things that are very much not about that battle at all. But I see you've got, so you've gone soft on Big Fruit, I guess. You're kind of using kid gloves against the banana enclamarate. Well, I put it in this way, I'm not saying I'm a fan of United Fruit or their behavior, but I think actually, if I had to choose who's more to blame David, I think I'm going to blame the CIA and the US government as much as United Fruit. So you know this was coming. Choose your adversary in this case. And I think I'm, I've gone for the CIA as much as the fruit companies and the PR companies, I think, as well. Because it's definitely the case, I think, that in Washington, there are a lot of people who start seeing Guatemala as this language of being a beachhead for communism, a place in which the communists can get a foothold in America's own hemisphere, in its backyard.

That is quite an important factor, isn't it? This is where, you know, I think it does start to rhyme a bit with the U.S. rhetoric, frankly, today about Russian and Chinese influence in Central and South America, where you get this kind of swirl of there's maybe corporate interests, you know, in Venezuela, for example. It could be oil, right? Not fruit, but big oil. But the operation against Maduro, you know, in some quarters, this kind of spun as an answer to attempted Chinese influence in South America. It's probably not the driving

factor initially, but it becomes almost the justification for action. And I guess you see a similar dynamic in the 50s where the CIA starts to see Guatemala as this kind of, you know, Soviet beachhead in the Western hemisphere. And once you get to that analytical conclusion, regime change maybe starts to make some twisted sets. Yeah, it's this Cold War updating of the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine, we talked about this in our Venezuela episodes, was the 19th century idea that actually said to the Europeans, keep out of America's backyard.

But at this point, it's being updated in the 50s, I think, to say it's more than just Europeans keep out. It's make the hemisphere safe and secure for American interests, brackets, business. but also keeping the Soviets out and ensuring friendly governments. I mean, what's interesting is Avents is not a communist. He doesn't initially appoint any communists to his cabinet, but he is willing to work with them. And he's got some allies who are labor unions,

who are keen on land reform, who are of that persuasion. But Washington can't seem to grasp that the idea of land reform can be domestically popular and genuine and not just Moscow plotting. I think there are only 5,000 card-carrying communists in Guatemala. at the start of the 50s and a population of 3 million. And they don't really have links to Moscow.

One friend of President Eisenhower tells him, yes, Guatemala has a very small minority of communists, but not as many as San Francisco, which is a good way of putting it. So by 1952, you've got the US looking at supporting opposition elements. There is even talk about assassinating Arbintz, but they fear that that might turn him into a martyr. It's the conundrum about. that. But it is interesting because the core national security case of seeing this as a threat

to the United States was not very strong. I mean, there would talk that maybe this could be a bridgehead through Guatemala to helping the Soviets or someone take control of the Panama canal, which is obviously strategically vital. But not really much evidence for it, but it is just that desire to roll back communism and prevent it coming anywhere close. But this is where it, at least at this point, it does make more sense to lay the blame at the feet of United Fruit, right? Because you've just made a pretty compelling case that Arbenz is not a communist. The regime is not infiltrated with communists. What would possibly be the justification for meddling in Guatemalan politics, if not to back the agenda of Big Fruit.

It's true. And I think the ability of Big Fruit and its allies to persuade people in Washington and lobby, I think, that there is a communist threat, is part of the origins for this. And it's interesting, there is the politics of Washington, which I think is important, because you get to 52, and there's some talk in the CIA about supplying some weapons to, oh, opposition groups, but it's pretty small numbers, 250 rifles. The CI actually pulls the plug on a shipment because technically the Truman administration's pursuing what's called Good Neighbor Policy from Roosevelt in the 30s, which says we're not going to intervene. So they don't want to get too involved. And then Eisenhower comes into office in 53. And then you get the Dulles brothers.

Worth saying that they are important to this story, aren't they? Our favorite plotters, we've talked about Alan Dullers quite a lot, haven't we, in the past? Friend of the show, I would argue. Friend of the show. Yeah. Friend of the show, Alan Dulles. Well, and it is true because it is the same sort of wave affects the Iran operation against Mossadegh, which we talked about in our first two episodes ever, of the rest is classified

because under Truman, you didn't have the political kind of momentum for these kind of, I guess, really muscular, cold warrior efforts. And once Truman is gone and Eisenhower's in, and in particular once you have Alan Dulles at CIA and his brother John Foster Dulles at State, who have a very similar mindset, you now all of a sudden by the time you get to 1953, you've got political momentum behind these kind of, it's the way I'd put in Gordon is exploring our sort of near abroad with an eye toward, you know, changing regimes to be friendly ones. Yeah. It's one way of putting it, right? Yeah. But their first priority, of course, is Iran, and we talked about that before. You have this big operation in 1953, which succeeds.

And that is important, isn't it? The fact that they succeed in regime change in 53, to some extent, surprisingly, perhaps, given how crazy that operation was, gives this momentum, the idea you can do it. And I always think that operation was led by the wonderfully named Kermit Roosevelt. And when he goes to brief the White House on the success of Iran, he notices that John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State is there. And Kermit Roosevelt says, Dulles' eyes were gleaming. He seemed to be purring like a giant cat. My instincts told me that he was planning something else as well.

And it's Guatemala. I mean, that's what's being planned, isn't it? Because they're immediately off the back of Iran going to go, well, we've done regime change in the Middle East. Let's now do it in our backyard. There's a momentum to it. And I believe you could do it, which again, maybe is redolent recently this year of, you know, first Venezuela and then Iran. Administrations get confident. Absolutely. And, you know, interestingly, Kermit is asked to do it again. He says no. He actually seems to have taken a look at the plans and says, you know, you don't have the intelligence on the ground. You don't have the kind of knowledge. To do it, remember in the Mossadegh operation in Iran, much as it pains me to say, the reason it succeeded was that the CIA essentially came in and took over networks that MI6 had put together on the ground networks of support assets that were critical in driving the street action that would eventually kind of force the showdown with Mossadegh and eventually depose him, right? But there were deep networks that the Brits had cultivated for years that Kermit Roosevelt used. It doesn't seem that the agency had similar networks in Guatemala. So Roosevelt's reacting to that. You know, he says you don't have really good sources to know either kind of critical elements of the populace think or really importantly, where's the military in all this, right? Because that was a big piece of the story in Iran as well.

And if you don't know who's who in the military and who's loyal and who's not, it's really hard to pull off these kind of operations. Yeah. So in Kermit Roosevelt, won't do it. They turned to a guy called Colonel Al Haney, had some six-footer who's described as preferring spying to his old business career. He loves being on the road and in the mix so much that his wife divorces him. He didn't know much about Central America. This is telling, as he'd just been in Korea. But the view is he's got some experience of guerrilla warfare from Korea.

he's told that previous attempts had been bungled by United Fruit and he needed to come up with a new plan. But he's told to go see the United Fruit fixer in Washington. And he's told, if you think you can run this operation without United Fruit, you're crazy. So it is an example there where Big Fruit is the ally, I think, of the US, if not the entire driver of it. And then you have Frank Wisner, this fascinated character. I think we should do some more on in the future,

maybe some really interesting person who's an overall challenge. charge in Washington. Al Haney is the field commander on the ground. There's a guy called Tracy Barnes, who's head of the political warfare bit of it. Barnes is a classic Office of Strategic Services guys, isn't he, from World War II? And they are going to be the leadership team around it with Dulles at the top. So by December the 9th, 1953, Dulles approves it with a $3 million dollar budget. And it's got a great name, hasn't it? It does. They give it for the operation. PB as the digraph success. So, you know, I mean, you're sort of, you're baking the victory already into the

code name. I love it. What a thing to do to call your operation when you commission it, success. I mean, imagine if it failed, which, as we'll see, it comes pretty close to do it. Comes close. And we should say that the $3 million budget is worth somewhere between maybe $35 and $40 million. today, which, you know, is not a particularly large covert action budget. So they thought they could do this one kind of on the cheap.

And I think I remember Gordon from our Mosedek series that Kermit Roosevelt had claimed that he could do a Ron for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Price is going up. The price has gone way up in just a few months. Inflation. But it does speak to, I guess, the, the extreme optimism that was just filling the hallways of the Central Intelligence Agency at this point because you thought, well, we did Iran, we did it pretty easily, we got the shot

out of that, that's going well, and now we'll do Guatemala. What could go wrong? Yeah. And those corridors, I mean, the CIA at this time isn't yet in Langley, is it? It's in the center of Washington. But they're going to base this operation out of Miami, out of Opa Loka Air Base, just outside of Miami, to try and keep it away from Washington and a bit closer to the action. New locks put on doors, two-way mirrors and reception. That base is code named Lincoln. There'll be about 100 CIA officers there. They've also got a station in the embassy in Guatemala, which is important. They put in a new ambassador to help, a guy called Puerrefoie, who's a hardcore anti-communist from. South Carolina. So he's sent to be the theatre commander for the coup because he's, the current ambassador has actually moved out specifically to make way for him with the idea

is that he's going to do the political end of this on the ground of bringing in a new regime. He's a kind of tough guy like carrying a gun. I don't think he was a deep thinker. It's fair to say. But there's also going to be a station in the embassy, which is going to grow fast next to the ambassador suite in Guatemala, the city, part of the walled compound. Where there's they're going to execute this plan and we're going to look in detail at this plan. But overall, I guess it's got a few different elements, hasn't it? It's got psychological, economic, diplomatic, and paramilitary operations. Gordon, I know it just blows your British mind, but I do think that you can carry a gun and also be a deep thinker. You put those two things right next to each other

in the notes, as if somehow they, you know, if A, then B. But come on. No, I, look, you're exposing your continentalist sort of, yeah, your transatlantic. There was not necessarily. Prejudice is here. There was not a direct connection with those two things. He carried a gun. He was not a deep thinker.

Okay. Let me, let me just leave it at that. Yeah, just two statements that are just disconnected from each other. Totally connected. You wouldn't need to say the two. You'd just say he carried a gun, therefore he couldn't be a deep. So I'm going to defend myself there. But back to the plan, which is going to be.

economic pressure. So that's going to be using U.S. businesses to create import shortages, limit export earnings, put pressure on the country. That's interesting, isn't it? Because it's what we talked about at the start is happening with Cuba, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. I mean, essentially, I guess a mirror to the oil blockade that we're conducting today. That is strangling Cuba's economy.

And then there's going to be diplomatic pressure, isolate the country, put pressure on the regime, that's going to be led by John Foster Dulles and the State Department lobby against them. And then when you put enough pressure is the idea, you grow that pressure economically and diplomatically. Then you shift to paramilitary action, political agitation, sabotage, and propaganda to topple the regime and bring in their own man. But who is their man going to be? Who is their man? I think maybe there, Gordon, let's take. a break and we come back, we will see who the CIA and Big Fruit elect as their successor. So David, our live show, our first live show at the South Bank went so well in January.

They've allowed us to come back for more. That's right. We are coming back for our second live show. This time as part of Goalhangers, The Rest is Fest, which is a whole weekend of incredible podcast live shows. As part of that, you're going to be able to catch up both on Friday night where we'll be chatting about all things spies, tradecraft, and international intrigue. Last time we talked about spy fact and fiction, looking at some of your favorite spy films and talking about what they get right, what they get wrong about the secret world. We also did a debate about the biggest intelligence failure in history, in which I was roundly defeated by a, I would say, a hostile crowd, a hostile British crowd, Gordon, who was

very favorable to you and the argument you presented. And then we launched some squirrels into the crowd, which is another story. But if that's not enough, there's going to be even more of us at that weekend because we're doing a little crossover event with Anthony Scaramucci, no less, the mooch from the rest is politics, US. And it's called Team America World Police. Question mark at the end, exactly. Yeah. We will be talking about America's internationalist agenda, looking at Venezuela, Iran, Greenland. It should be an absolutely fascinating debate and one that Gordon is moderating, which sounds like it will be an amazing struggle for you to keep us contained. So best of luck. Looking forward to that one. So the Restis Fest is running from the 4th to the 6th of September at London's South Bank Center. The rest is classified members. Can get tickets now and you will have received a link.

in your inbox to buy tickets. General sale, though, goes live this Thursday, the 26th of March at 10 a.m. GMT, and you can find out more at southbankcenter.co.uk. Well, welcome back. The CIA and Big Fruit are squeezing the Guatemalans economically, isolating them diplomatically, Gordon, but they need a replacement for our business. as the leader of Guatemala and who do they find?

Colonel Armass. Again, my pronunciation may be wrong. Apologies. There was a lot of build-up for what I'm sure was an absolute flub of the pronunciation. But he is, Armas is a great character. I think to me, he's like something from a Graham Green novel. He is described by some CIA people as bold but incompetent, which I just think is a great. Great description.

And he also looks at, I mean, the pictures of him, it's worth looking at pictures of him because he's got a kind of Hitlerian mustache, you know, which you think this is the 50s, it's not the 30s. You just think that would be discredited having one of those little things. But he's physically unimposing, about 40 years old. Someone said, he always looked immaculate, though, like he'd been packaged at Bloomingdale's the department store. No real politics, always useful.

when you're trying to install someone, isn't it? Blank slate. Blank slate. Better than some of the alternatives who have a reputation for rape and imprisoning children. So that's the kind of the exile community they're picking from.

But I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because the CIA essentially pick him because he's malleable. Because they think he's going to do what we want. He's got a bit of a military background. He attacked a military base in 1950. He'd been imprisoned, but he tunnels himself out and flees abroad.

What do you mean he attacked a military based in 1950. Like, we're skipping over that part of the biography. I think when there was the election around then, there was some, you're constantly getting these minor revolts, I think, from military people. So he is a military man, but then he gets captured. He goes to live after fleeing capture in Honduras during various jobs, including I discovered as a furniture salesman, which is a classic figure who is then planning to

be the next leader of his country and lead a rebellion. You know, you're selling furniture in Honduras. But he's the one they pick. So he's a Hitler mustachioed, former military man who had recently been selling furniture in Honduras. This is the, this is who the CIA picks. Yeah. And he will now be known as the Liberator when they fly him to Miami. It is also, I think, a lesson here for, or just maybe some, some echoes with just when you when you were looking to do regime change and then and you look at the exile population and you think who will lead these people once we have deposed the the sort of you know hideous regime in name your country when you're looking at the exiles

it can be tough you're usually not dealing with the great and the good here and this seems Because they've, I mean, he's a furniture salesman. I guess he does have military experience, though. So that's something. So they picked him by the end of 53. The CIA are going to establish camps in Honduras and Nicaragua neighboring Guatemala where they can train the rebels. One of the facts I like is that the plan is not that secret, what they're hoping to do.

Because on January 30th, 1954, so just about a month or two after it had been formulated, events reveals there's a plot and a secret rebel training camp in Nicaragua, and it's picked up by newspapers around the world. And it came due to, and there are a lot of comic elements in this slightly, occasionally dark elements as well to this story. But this was a security breach because a CIA officer had left documents about the plot in his Guatemalan hotel room. And he gets hospitalized for a stomach ulcer,

so leaves his hotel room with the documents about the plot in his hotel room, which is then inevitably searched by the local police and authorities. And they find out about it and publicize it. I like this detail. Susie could walk after the operation for his ulcer. He's pulled back to Washington for three days of polygraphing and sent a long way away. Never happened to you, though, David, did it? Your time in CIA.

No, I always made sure that if I had to be hospitalized. in some foreign country, and I just happened to have, you know, a bunch of covert action documents in my briefcase that I would eat the documents before I would leave them in the hotel room. So the Guatemalan government essentially had the plans, or some, not like the master plan, but they knew that there was a plot. It's unbelievable. It's not that covert. And then Al Haney, the commander of the plot, who does come across as a bit of a loose canon,

he starts asking Washington desperately for ways to. distract the revelations about the plot. And he cables headquartered, he says, if possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying sources, birth of sextuplets in remote area, or come up with headlines that Arbenz is forcing Catholics to join a church that worships Stalin. I mean, it's like all that a Soviet sub was heading to cry.

He's like just throwing, I mean, this is pretty wild stuff. please can you come up with something that will make the news to stop people talking about our plot. I mean, the idea of fabricating a story about the birth of sex tuplets in a remote area to distract from your coup plotting is pretty wild. But this does speak to the fact that I think in these kinds of operations, everyone is just more or less winging it. And you're hoping that it works. And you're improvising and seeing what happens. Throw stuff against a wall and see what sticks. What does that sound like, Gordon? Does that sound like what's going on right now geopolitically? Actually, I did see that there's plans to release some more UFO flying saucer files soon.

So if we suddenly get a load of flying saucer files out, we'll know that it's a distraction from some revelation. But actually, it kind of half works because a lot of people are thinking, well, maybe it's the Arbenz government making up the idea of a plot to distract from what's going on at home. So there's a bit of confusion. And the CIA go, well, it's kind of been blown, but not enough to stop us doing it. So they're going to go for it. They still double down on this idea of regime change. And importantly, the idea is that this is not going to be a full-scale invasion, right? So the aim is to topple Arbens with as a little fighting, as little bloodshed as possible.

Again, interesting parallel to Venezuela, where the idea was, let's just remove Maduro, very kind of, I think, similar dynamic here in Guatemala. I mean, Arbin's even offered, he's even offered a Swiss bank account if he just, if he just leaves. Of course, he refuses, which again, echoes the Maduro case. And so if the goal is just to get rid of him and he won't leave, obviously, you now have to turn the system against him, which involves turning elements of the population and I think really critically the army, the military against Arbins. Yes, that's right. It's this idea we've heard about recently as well is cracks in a regime. You want to find fissures or cracks and then prize them further apart. And the key target here is the army. And there are some signs that Arbenz was nervous about loyalty of the army and he'd had some officers moved out to the capital. And the US is clearly hoping to exploit that, although, as we said earlier, part of the problem is they don't really know that much about it. They don't have great networks and sources. In early 54, they actually send an officer under non-official cover. So he's posing as a, I think, a European coffee merchant into the country to try and talk to military officers and try and recruit some who will join the US side when the right moment comes.

I mean, this officer, though, speaks no Spanish, which I guess if he's a European coffee merchant and being posed as such, it may be plausible. It still might have been useful. It might have been useful. He's got a German accent, I think. And he's authorized to offer $10,000 a month bribes to any officers who are willing to turn eventually. But he doesn't seem to have much success. And he actually gets, I think, rumbled and so has to leave the country before he's arrested. And so they've still got this question here, which is how do you build enough pressure?

How do you pressure a system, a regime enough that you can. get the military to act and to turn against its current leader. That's the issue. And that's where we get to this really interesting question of psychological warfare, I think. Which seems to be a method that a lot of CIA officials at the time are pretty excited about, doesn't it? Because it's building off of a lot of the, I guess, kind of the science and the research that's being done in this era on advertising.

and psychology and sort of how do you convince someone to go out and buy something? You could sort of walk some of the the learnings from that into how do you convince a population or segments of a population or segments of a military to sit on the sidelines or that Arbens himself maybe is already weakened and on his way out. You can imagine all these different kind of parallels, I guess, between marketing and psychology and then how the CIA deploys. information in the context of attempting a coup. Yeah, I found this aspect of it really interesting. And the official CIA historian of it, Nick Collather, talks about this a bit,

how people at that time really were obsessed with this idea that you could persuade people through marketing and advertising. And it could work. I guess we've seen it recently with social media influence campaigns and things like that. But at that point, I think in the 50s, which was the new era of television, wasn't it, in marketing and the ability to sell ads to people. This was something which people really thought could make the difference. Although here it's not going to be TV, it's going to be radio.

We do love a bit of audio. No podcasting yet. And what's good is there's a memoir actually of the CIA agent who is in charge of this, guy called David Phillips, which is called The Night Watch, which talks about this use of radio to persuade. He's an interesting chap. He's born 1922 in Fort Worth, Texas. He gets recruited actually as an agent of the CIA rather than as an officer in Chile.

where he was running a newspaper for exiles and particularly for expats. Although I noticed that the British expats don't like his newspaper because he keeps writing about softball and they don't know what softball is and various American games and they're really annoyed because there's a lot of British expats in Chile where he's writing his newspaper. But he's recruited by the CIA while he's there, I guess because they can see his value. And then in 1954 asked to run the Guatemalan propaganda operation, It's interesting because he's told the Arbenz government has been getting close to Moscow.

He says, well, is it right to top an elected government? And he's told, well, the Soviets are coming. And, you know, it's unacceptable to have a commie running Guatemala. And he's told the order comes directly from Eisenhower. But he's convinced that this is something worth doing. What question I have is we're talking about this is, did this idea to change the regime in Guadavala, did it originate in the White House or did it originate at CIA? Or Big Fruit?

Or Big Fruit. Yeah. I think it was in the system and swirling around thanks to CIA and Big Fruit. And then I think once you get to Eisenhower, Dulles and the two Dollars brothers can push it. So I think it's a kind of Washington-led decision. But it's pretty clear it's got presidential approval. And David Phillips, the propaganda guy, has told that pretty clearly when he's briefed. I think he's originally briefed by Tracy Barnes, who briefs him first.

But then hands over the running to another person in political warfare, Howard Hunt, who we should say is a figure of CIA legend, isn't he, David? Yes, that's right. Future Watergate burglar. Yeah. I mean, he'll be involved in Bay of Pigs as well. I mean, he's one of these guys who's going to be involved in a number of these covert action plots from the 1950s and 1960s. Also, a sometime novelist. He'd been with the OSS

in China. So he's a colorful guy, kind of conservative, very devious. I'd say big party animal, likes to party in Miami with the Guatemalans. Apparently at one point, Howard Hunt had gotten into a car crash. He'd been driving a bunch of Guatemalans, and they'd all had too much to drink, crashed his car in Miami when it was full of Guatemalans. And then he wrote here, Gordon, tells them to Scarper. What does that mean? Do a runner. Do a runner.

Run. Because they're supposed to be Guatemalan exiles plotting a coup, and they're all in a car crash with Phillips and Hunter these guys. I mean, it's not, which is not good, because you've got to explain, who are these Guatemalans in the car? I'm sure the Miami Police Department would let them off with just a slap on the wrist. Yeah, maybe in those days. So Phillips and Hunt are there doing the political warfare bit of it.

It's interesting because the plan is they're going to set up a radio station in a cow barn in a neighboring country, but pretend, and this is a crucial bit, pretend that the radio station is in Guatemala. And it's going to be called the Voice of Liberation, codenamed Sherwood. and the aim is to basically spread, I mean, spread alarm amongst the people and undermine support, particularly within the army. And it's part of a bigger campaign because the US media is also being brought into this. There's a documentary on NBC, the TV station in the US called Red Rule in Guatemala, which is broadcast in the spring of 54. It's interesting, they work on the US press quite hard because Alan Dulles goes to see the public. of the New York Times and actually gets him to pull the correspondent who normally covers Guatemala, who's based in Mexico, but that's part of his patch, because he's seen as too

sympathetic to the left. And Dulles actually basically smears this guy and says that the correspondent travels on British passports, which I love the idea. That might be making some kind of lefty, and that he and his wife have liberal leanings. You know, the implication is clearly the New York Times correspondent is of maybe. a Soviet agent or some kind of commie. And as a result, the New York Times actually tell him stay in Mexico, don't go to Guatemala. So they're managing the media environment around it. But this radio station, I think, is going to be the key to the actual plot for regime change. Because I guess the reality, if we kind of tick through the levers that the CIA is attempting to

pull in the spring of 1954, you've got the economic. pressure, but so far that has not brought Arbenz down or forced him to capitulate. The CIA is training a small group of rebels who will presumably be able to do some fighting, but that's a pretty small force, and they're not particularly well trained. And certainly they don't have the same manpower or capacity as the Guatemalan military under Arbenz. And yeah, Arbenz might be sort of diplomatically pressured or isolated, but he controls the military. And unlike the Mossadec operation in 1953, there's no Shah here. There's no sort of pliable senior leader inside the regime that the agency is using.

So they really are reliant on that kind of information warfare, on that psychological component because they actually don't have, they don't have anything. They don't have much else. No, they've got Armass with his mustache and a few rebels, and that's it. So it's so interesting. I agree that they think they can do this. But by the start of May, 1954, 1st of May, the pieces are in place, and the radio station is ready to broadcast.

And it is so interesting because the aim is to have ACU within six weeks of the start of a radio station broadcasting. It's incredibly ambitious, and as we'll see, the whole thing will be almost comic and nearly collapsing chaos. Well, Gorda, maybe there with the coup scheduled for six weeks out at the radio station starting to pump out that disinformation. Let's end this first episode when we come back next time for our exciting conclusion. We will see if the CIA can pull off Operation PB success. But of course, you don't have to wait because you can get access to that. Episode right now, if you're a member of the Declassified Club.

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