The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 35 ｜ Félix Rodríguez ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 It is a strange irony of history that the person you're about to be introduced to

00:00:06.080 will be forever linked with Che Guevara, because the two men could not be more different.

00:00:12.000 Che devoted his life to tyranny and death, and this man has devoted his entire life to freedom and life.

00:00:18.320 He played an important role in stopping Che's murderous quest for communist revolution all around the world.

00:00:24.460 Alongside Castro, Che terrorized Cuba, the nation where my next guest was born. 0.78

00:00:31.020 So it was fitting, I guess, strangely, as you hear him tell the story,

00:00:36.000 that he was there in the mountains of Bolivia in 1967 to be the man who heard Che's final words.

00:00:43.120 He was in the CIA. He was part of the Bay of Pigs disaster. 0.72

00:00:47.200 He was in Vietnam, played a huge role there.

00:00:50.020 He put a price on Che's head, and because of that, had a price put on his head.

00:00:56.040 He also fought communism in El Salvador in the 1980s.

00:00:59.640 He was a victim of a witch hunt by a U.S. senator.

00:01:02.760 He participated in some of the most pivotal events in the last 50 years of U.S. history,

00:01:08.040 and has a different look at even the JFK assassination.

00:01:12.560 But in the end, as he's written in his memoir,

00:01:14.620 he is just a man from an island nation of Cuba who's just having a really hard time getting home.

00:01:20.020 Today, the man who helped capture Che Guevara.

00:01:36.760 I've interviewed celebrities.

00:01:39.920 I've interviewed presidents.

00:01:42.440 And my staff doesn't usually get excited.

00:01:45.320 You, on the other hand, everybody is very excited to hear what you have to say,

00:01:51.980 because you have been not just a witness.

00:01:54.680 You've been right there and a catalyst in many cases of some of the biggest stories since Kennedy,

00:02:05.600 since Castro went into Cuba.

00:02:08.740 And I can't wait to get to the part about Che and to hear what he was really like

00:02:18.000 from somebody who met him, talked to him.

00:02:21.460 And I gather in some way kind of liked him,

00:02:29.620 appreciated him at the end as a human being when you were talking to him,

00:02:33.900 because you were extremely kind to him.

00:02:37.440 Yes, it was very hard.

00:02:38.820 You know, I had in my mind what he had done,

00:02:41.720 the people who had assassinated.

00:02:43.520 But then when I first saw him,

00:02:45.580 the image that I had from him was completely different.

00:02:48.560 Here's a man that was completely in rack.

00:02:50.860 He looked like a beggar. 0.99

00:02:53.120 I remember his picture when he went to see Mao and the people of the Soviet Union

00:02:58.080 and then see the way he was.

00:02:59.420 But, you know, like a human being, you feel sorry for him.

00:03:02.960 That's what happened to me.

00:03:04.240 But you can get past all the feeling sorry for him

00:03:07.120 when you actually know what he did.

00:03:09.160 And I want to get into that.

00:03:10.280 But you were born in 1941 in Cuba.

00:03:15.240 And your parents did what in Cuba?

00:03:20.520 My father had a store in my hometown,

00:03:22.680 Santi Espiritus, that he ran there.

00:03:25.060 Okay.

00:03:25.160 Then actually in 1952, when Batista took over,

00:03:29.220 my uncle was made secretary of public work.

00:03:32.000 My mother went to Havana, and that's when I moved with her.

00:03:35.160 Okay.

00:03:35.620 We spent a couple of years there.

00:03:37.220 Then my uncle offered me to go to school in the estate.

00:03:40.360 So actually in 1954, I came to Pennsylvania.

00:03:43.080 I went to Perky Home and Preparatory School for high school.

00:03:45.960 And I spent there until 1960 when I graduated.

00:03:48.340 Okay.

00:03:48.760 So before we get to that part, moving to the United States

00:03:51.960 and where your parents ended up, tell me about Batista.

00:03:56.500 Because people don't really know about Batista

00:03:59.080 and what the revolution was all about in Cuba.

00:04:03.240 Batista comes from very, very poor ancestors.

00:04:08.100 He was working railroad before.

00:04:10.780 He saw his brother, for example, die from pneumonia,

00:04:14.720 and he didn't have any hospital to treat him.

00:04:16.740 And that's why he built Topaz de Coyante.

00:04:18.820 So when he first took over in 1933,

00:04:21.660 and he became president legally, you know, by vote,

00:04:25.000 he was a very good president.

00:04:26.980 And then when he went wrong for the election,

00:04:28.920 he lost, he turned over the presidency

00:04:30.440 to whoever had won the elections then.

00:04:32.740 Then later on, he moved to the United States in Florida.

00:04:37.680 And actually, he didn't plan the military coup

00:04:40.760 that took place in 1952.

00:04:42.440 People went to him from the military

00:04:44.860 who were very, very in disagreement with President Prio,

00:04:48.600 who was treated there very well.

00:04:49.920 They had very low salaries,

00:04:51.540 and the army was going to make a military coup no matter what.

00:04:55.040 And he was the only leader that everybody would go through around him.

00:04:58.940 Otherwise, there was going to be probably some bloodshed.

00:05:01.700 So he agreed to go ahead and head the military coup

00:05:04.180 that took place in 1952.

00:05:06.440 Now, he interrupted the democratic process in Cuba,

00:05:10.980 but at the time, there were a lot of problems in Havana.

00:05:13.820 For example, a lot of these gangsters were,

00:05:16.380 like in the time here when Al Capone,

00:05:18.940 they were taking banks.

00:05:21.080 There was, the army was in very poor shape.

00:05:23.800 And he restored a lot of that.

00:05:26.260 And it was the area where Cuba really progressed a lot of.

00:05:29.500 He did a lot of buildings, construction, highway, hospital, school.

00:05:33.900 But, of course, then, you know, power becomes a problem.

00:05:39.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:42.000 Now, the Castros.

00:05:44.580 Who were the Castros before they became Castros?

00:05:48.860 Well, Castro was always a kind of a revolutionary.

00:05:53.800 He was not in agreement with the local situation at all.

00:05:57.320 He participated in the Bogotazo in Colombia.

00:05:59.660 And he was revoltoso, we called him there.

00:06:05.040 Which meant?

00:06:06.020 A guy who is not in tune with the society.

00:06:10.260 Okay, all right.

00:06:11.000 He wanted to do something extraordinary.

00:06:14.360 I recall people told me one time he went to visit the president of Cuba.

00:06:17.360 He wanted to throw him down from the balcony to become prominent.

00:06:22.340 He wants to be recognized.

00:06:24.340 Right.

00:06:24.620 He run for congressman.

00:06:26.060 He didn't make it.

00:06:27.420 So, he did the Moncada attack where he became notorious because of that.

00:06:31.160 And now he became then public to the Cuban people.

00:06:33.560 Which was, what attack was that?

00:06:35.960 In 1956, 67, he attacked the Moncada barracks in Oriente province.

00:06:43.700 And they killed a lot of soldiers.

00:06:45.740 It was actually part, they have a hospital in there.

00:06:48.180 They killed a lot of people in there.

00:06:49.800 Then he run into the mountain.

00:06:50.960 That's when he became knowing.

00:06:52.100 And that took place on the 26th of July.

00:06:54.380 So, he used that momentum of that operation to call his movement 26th of July.

00:06:59.560 Okay.

00:07:00.500 Now, you're not there at the time.

00:07:02.440 No.

00:07:02.520 Your parents, they're there.

00:07:05.460 But you're living in Pennsylvania.

00:07:08.160 You get an offer to live there and be educated in the United States.

00:07:11.440 And your parents say, you've got to take this opportunity.

00:07:14.460 Yeah, but I went back to Cuba in every single time that I had an opportunity to.

00:07:18.240 So, I went back to Cuba five times a year for Christmas vacation, summer vacation, spring vacation, everywhere.

00:07:24.100 Yeah, I was home.

00:07:25.160 And then your folks, during the Cuban Revolution, your parents happened to be vacationing in Mexico.

00:07:31.660 Right.

00:07:31.940 And so, you're in Pennsylvania.

00:07:35.100 They're in Mexico.

00:07:36.600 The revolution happens.

00:07:38.700 If they would have been there, what do you suppose would have happened?

00:07:42.280 Well, they took my uncles home in Havana.

00:07:45.100 They ransacked and everything.

00:07:46.400 But my parents were already in Mexico for Christmas during that time.

00:07:50.940 So, I went from Pennsylvania to meet them in 1958, December of 1958.

00:07:55.480 We spent New Year's together.

00:07:57.200 That's when Castro took over, when Batista left.

00:07:59.980 And I actually had a ticket to go from there to Cuba, which I never used because of the revolution itself.

00:08:06.200 Then the scene that really impacted me, that made the difference, was when I saw those massive executions that took place.

00:08:13.060 Cuba never had a death penalty before.

00:08:15.400 And this guy was executing people right and left.

00:08:17.660 And the process was so unbelievable, unreal.

00:08:23.140 The one that really impacted me when they did a trial for Sosa Blanco.

00:08:27.960 He was a major in the Cuban army.

00:08:29.960 And they brought a witness who claimed that Sosa Blanco had assassinated his brother.

00:08:35.080 And when the guy got into the room, he started pointing at the prosecutor and telling the prosecutor, you killed my brother.

00:08:41.240 He had to be told, no, no, it's the guy next to him.

00:08:44.320 So, I mean, it was ridiculous.

00:08:45.160 And then later on, we found out, and Sosa Blanco was executed, that his brother was in Miami, and he never told his family.

00:08:52.240 So, he was never killed by anybody.

00:08:53.720 He went back to Cuba after that.

00:08:55.220 So, that impacted me to the point that I decided I had to do something.

00:08:58.500 So, people, strangely, here in the United States, either know who these people are and know that they were monsters,

00:09:08.220 or they look at them like, I don't know, Swedish socialists.

00:09:12.840 Well, the thing is, remember, when Castro was visited by Herbert Matthews, the newspaper guy, in the Sierra Maestra, he made him like a hero.

00:09:21.140 He made him like a Robin Hood to the American public.

00:09:23.900 And portrayed him like this guy who's going to save Cuba, who was a bunch of few people who were fighting this bigger army and all of that thing.

00:09:31.320 And that was one of the things that really impacted a lot of the American population.

00:09:35.700 So, it's very similar to what the American press did with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

00:09:40.220 Absolutely.

00:09:41.200 Okay.

00:09:42.540 Now, you graduate from school.

00:09:47.400 This is your home.

00:09:49.060 You want to free your home and claim your home.

00:09:55.980 And where do you go and see this big anti-communist movement?

00:10:00.280 Well, Glenn, before I graduated, in 1959, I went to visit my parents.

00:10:06.080 And the member from the Cuban Constitutional Army was recruiting people for the first operation against Castro that took place in the Dominican Republic,

00:10:13.740 what was called the Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean.

00:10:15.820 I was 17 years old at the time.

00:10:18.380 So, I joined that.

00:10:19.500 I actually had to forfeit my father's signature to be able to get a visa because I was a minor at the Dominican Embassy in Mexico.

00:10:26.560 So, actually, on the 4th of July, I arrived in the Dominican Republic.

00:10:30.580 That was a fiasco.

00:10:31.920 I came back.

00:10:32.660 I graduated.

00:10:33.780 And then I applied to the University of Miami for engineering.

00:10:36.800 And I was accepted.

00:10:37.720 I got my letter of acceptance.

00:10:39.400 Then when I got to Miami, I found out there was somewhere in Latin America, a place that they were training to fight against Castro.

00:10:45.600 I decided that was more important than going to school and go to the university here.

00:10:49.940 That's when I joined what later was called the Bay of Pig.

00:10:56.560 I can't believe I'm talking to somebody who was there at the Bay of Pigs.

00:11:12.860 Explain for anybody who doesn't know what that is, what that was.

00:11:15.900 In the early 1960s, President Eisenhower received information from the intelligence services that the Soviets were planning to bring offensive mission to Cuba.

00:11:24.460 So, that's why Eisenhower ordered the CIA to destabilize the Castro regime.

00:11:29.120 That's what a lot of people believe.

00:11:30.300 You know, why do they give an invasion to the CIA and not the Pentagon?

00:11:34.560 It wasn't supposed to be an invasion.

00:11:36.300 It was supposed to be a guerrilla warfare in the Escambride.

00:11:38.660 They brought a Filipino colonel by the name of Vallejo, whose real name was Napoleon Valeriano, who was very successful in the war against the Hawk in the Philippines.

00:11:47.380 And the training that he started in Guatemala was three different groups, what they called the great teams, the black teams, and the occupational force.

00:11:54.400 It was supposed to be an operation to increment the guerrillas in the Escambride Mountain in the middle of the island, who was already taking place.

00:12:01.880 And once we were able to have a stronghold in there, declare a provisional government in arms.

00:12:07.060 And what happened?

00:12:08.000 Well, elections took place in this country.

00:12:11.640 And then President Kennedy was elected president.

00:12:14.040 When he was briefed on the operation, he decided to continue, but change the concept altogether.

00:12:18.900 So, they took this Colonel Vallejo Valeriano out of the picture.

00:12:23.660 They brought a guy from the Pentagon.

00:12:24.880 They disbanded the black teams, because the idea was that the great team were going to Cuba before.

00:12:29.860 That was part of it, infiltration team.

00:12:32.560 We started working the resistance.

00:12:33.940 Once the people started going to the Manta, they bring the black teams. 1.00

00:12:36.640 There were 25 men each, highly trained, explosive, demolition, air reception, maritime reception to receive weapons.

00:12:42.520 And once there was a guerrilla strong enough to secure a small area, they would bring the rest of the brigade with a provisional civilian government, a powerful radio station.

00:12:50.280 We declared to the world there was a government in arms promoting and guaranteeing a free election within a year.

00:12:55.660 And that's what was going to be recognized by the OAS and by the United States.

00:12:59.240 Of course, we all know, 99% American troops, 1% Latin American troops, and that was the end of Castro.

00:13:04.240 Now, before the Bay of Pigs, though, you were part of a three-man team that, is that right?

00:13:15.100 Three-man team that went in, or you were off the coast of Cuba with Soviet weapons, and you were going to go in and assassinate Fidel.

00:13:26.260 Yes, well, we were in Panama on training after they took the infiltration team, a great team.

00:13:31.940 Now, this was not, was this an American mission?

00:13:34.380 No, no, let me explain.

00:13:35.320 Okay.

00:13:35.800 We went from, you know, the great teams, we went from Guatemala into Panama for additional training, with Soviet equipment and everything.

00:13:43.600 While we were there, a friend of mine, Beneno Segundo Borja, and myself, went to talk to the CIA guy responsible for it.

00:13:48.920 And we volunteered to kill Castro, because we felt that we could eliminate him, it would shorten the war and save a lot of life.

00:13:54.840 Sure, sure.

00:13:55.360 So, when we went, in January, we came to Miami, and we went to a place in Homestead area.

00:14:01.820 They told me the operation was approved.

00:14:04.040 So, they gave me a rifle, it was a telescopic sight, a very powerful rifle, 20 rounds of ammunition.

00:14:09.080 They told me I only needed a few, and he said not to touch the sight.

00:14:13.080 I was already presided with this, and I was going to kill Castro.

00:14:15.680 So, they added one more man to my team, who was the radio operator, Javier Soto, who is now a present commissioner in Dade County, Florida.

00:14:22.920 They gave us a luxurious jet to infiltrate Cuba, a white boat.

00:14:26.460 Later on, we learned it did belong to Sergeant Shriver, relative of President Kennedy.

00:14:30.480 Wait a minute, that's Maria Shriver's father, right?

00:14:34.800 His father had a boat, apparently.

00:14:36.760 Yeah.

00:14:37.240 A very luxurious one, and they used that boat for that operation.

00:14:39.940 It was an American captain, and then a Ukrainian and Romanian crew, all with Soviet equipment.

00:14:45.680 And they were supposed to infiltrate us into Cuba, and then they would tell us where to go to a place to assassinate Castro.

00:14:51.300 So, here's a Kennedy using the boat, and you wouldn't think that a Kennedy or someone in the Kennedy family would be a part of that.

00:15:03.100 At least history would tell us that different.

00:15:05.520 Am I wrong on that?

00:15:06.900 Well, let me tell you.

00:15:07.720 Later on, after the Bay of Peaks, they were very much committed to eliminate Castro.

00:15:11.640 When we had an operation after the Bay of Peaks, we said our team in Central America.

00:15:17.640 So, that didn't happen.

00:15:20.320 No.

00:15:20.620 Twice, we got into the Cuban coastline.

00:15:22.980 The boat who was supposed to be meeting us, we were supposed to go into that boat, never arrived.

00:15:27.960 So, the third time, we came back, and then they threw the rifle away.

00:15:30.900 They told me it was terminated, that operation.

00:15:34.400 Somehow, they canceled, and I went in like a member of the infiltration team for Las Villas.

00:15:38.280 There were five of us, including Edgar Sopo.

00:15:41.020 We all infiltrated Cuba on the last part of February of 1961.

00:15:45.340 And how did you avoid the trouble of the Bay of Pigs?

00:15:54.280 How did you?

00:15:56.040 Well, we were part of the Bay of Pigs.

00:15:57.620 So, we were like, we call it the Special Forces of the Brigade.

00:16:00.280 Right.

00:16:00.820 So, our group that was about, altogether, we entered less than 40, 30-some people inside Cuba.

00:16:06.320 There was very few of them who entered through the airport.

00:16:09.160 We saw legal documentation claiming they were coming back from American University.

00:16:12.680 One team parachuted over in Kamauai Bronx, and the rest of us entered clandestinely by boat to the Cuban line.

00:16:19.380 And we had a mechanism with the resistance that they would have a guy to pick us up at the coastline.

00:16:24.280 They would walk us, like, several kilometers into the main highway.

00:16:27.520 Then a car from the resistance would pick us up and take off to, say, Hafsas in Havana.

00:16:31.360 And then there, we started working with the internal resistance against Castro.

00:16:35.100 And so, they changed the team and the strategy.

00:16:41.740 But what happened, in the end, on the ground?

00:16:45.780 Well, one thing that we always make comments about is that they never advised us of the invasion coming in.

00:16:53.240 We had enough explosive and equipment to be able to blow bridges on the way to the Bay of Pigs. 0.71

00:16:59.360 But they never confided on us.

00:17:01.000 They never told us anything.

00:17:01.940 Actually, I learned of the invasion coming on through the radio, through the Cuban radio, on the 17th of April,

00:17:07.640 when they started calling all the militias to join, you know, go to their military units and all of that.

00:17:12.620 We never received a thing from our stations in Miami until astronaut invasion took place.

00:17:18.860 And it was impossible to do anything at the time because Castro did something that was very intelligent,

00:17:23.160 especially in the main cities, including Havana.

00:17:25.940 They went house by house and block by block.

00:17:28.340 They surrounded with soldiers.

00:17:30.140 And if you were a male and you were not assigned to a military unit,

00:17:33.460 even if they had nothing that you were against the regime or anything like that,

00:17:36.400 they would pick you up and put you in a temporary, let's say, concentration camp.

00:17:40.540 Like baseball field with high fences had 250,000 Cubans. 0.76

00:17:44.800 Wow.

00:17:44.980 The Blanquita Theater, who has a capacity of 5,000, had 5,500 people in there.

00:17:50.080 So they were able to disarticulate the Cuban internal resistance, who was very well organized.

00:17:55.180 They pick up a lot of our people who were released later because they had no idea who they had.

00:17:59.360 But they destroyed the operational capability of our units.

00:18:02.500 Were the Soviets involved with intelligence with Cuba?

00:18:07.100 No.

00:18:07.460 Well, they supported them with intelligence, but that was strictly a Cuban operation.

00:18:10.720 Okay.

00:18:11.160 But they did support later.

00:18:13.100 And how active were they?

00:18:14.980 All along.

00:18:15.820 All along.

00:18:16.320 They seemed to be ahead of everything.

00:18:19.340 And the Czechoslovakian intelligence, all of those were very closely with the Cuban intelligence.

00:18:23.940 So you leave this, and you're not really working for the government.

00:18:31.400 You're kind of just a revolutionary at this time, if you will, or a freedom fighter.

00:18:35.700 We didn't know that we were working for the CIA.

00:18:37.840 You didn't know.

00:18:38.700 No.

00:18:39.040 Yeah.

00:18:39.380 Okay.

00:18:39.760 But you were actually.

00:18:40.480 But we were.

00:18:41.040 Okay.

00:18:41.300 And I read something where it said that you volunteered to go to work for the CIA.

00:18:47.860 I didn't know they took volunteers.

00:18:50.480 Well, it was not a way of volunteering.

00:18:52.320 You know, when you are in that system, you are part of it.

00:18:55.060 And then, you know, later I learned it was the CIA.

00:18:58.940 So I continued to work with them after the Bay of Peaks.

00:19:02.000 So after the Bay of Peaks was a fiasco, I had to seek political asylum in the Venezuelan embassy in Havana, which I spent like six months as a political asylum people.

00:19:14.420 And on the 13th of September of 1961, they flew us out of Havana with diplomatic coverage of being a political exile to Venezuela.

00:19:23.820 I spent a couple of weeks in Venezuela and early in October of 1961, the agency asked me to go back inside Cuba to reestablish contact with the resistance.

00:19:32.780 So I started traveling to Cuba with intelligence team in October of the same year.

00:19:38.900 I made like seven different trips to Cuba during that time, brought in teams and everything until after the Bay of Peaks.

00:19:45.140 And it was the Bay of Pigs that really kind of turned the psyche of Cubans, wasn't it?

00:19:52.160 That it was they kind of lost hope that.

00:19:54.960 Yes.

00:19:55.780 After the fiasco, a lot of people were helping us when they saw that no longer a success.

00:20:01.480 Then a lot of people retrieved the support from us.

00:20:03.800 They were afraid because they knew they were captured.

00:20:06.040 They were spending years and years and years in prison.

00:20:08.520 So actually, let me tell you, in 1962, I completely quit the CIA.

00:20:12.620 1962.

00:20:12.980 Yeah, I decided to get married to my present wife of 57 years.

00:20:17.000 Oh, good for you.

00:20:18.000 And, you know, what I told her before we got married, I said, look, if there is anything serious about you, I will go.

00:20:24.100 If you agree on that, we get married.

00:20:26.240 If you don't, we don't.

00:20:27.540 And she made the mistake of agreeing to that because it only lasted two months.

00:20:32.060 We were married on the 25th of August.

00:20:33.760 I started working, first of all, in a company who did manufacture some propaganda for a hotel and then in a meat company called Tobin Packaging Company.

00:20:41.680 In October of that year, I got a call from Tom Klein, a guy from the CIA who asked me to meet him at the parking lot of the Howard and Johnson across from the University of Miami.

00:20:50.840 So when I finished my work, that was two months after we got married, I go to this parking lot.

00:20:55.240 I sat in his car and he looked at me and said, Felix, the Marines are going to land in Cuba and we need you.

00:20:59.040 And I look at him and say, Tom, if the Marines are going to land in Cuba, what the hell do you need me for?

00:21:04.180 I said, well, we need you to parachute near a Soviet base in Santa Clara with a radio beacon to set it up in a pre-located area we're going to give you so that our Air Force can hit with precision the missile base. 0.92

00:21:16.340 Because at the time, they didn't have the GPS and navigation system we have today.

00:21:19.720 So I agree, and from that point on, they took me to a hotel.

00:21:24.020 I couldn't even call my wife.

00:21:25.700 She didn't know anything.

00:21:27.040 And they gave me the training from a table, my three-point of contact to jump in.

00:21:31.500 That was my parachute training during the time.

00:21:34.860 And then the day they brought the parachute, they were ready to go into Cuba.

00:21:37.840 That's when Khrushchev backed down.

00:21:39.340 If he had delayed for 15 hours, we had to land in there and nothing happened.

00:21:43.580 But we were lucky that he did that before we were able to land inside Cuba.

00:21:47.960 So then after that, you know, I was without a job, so I continued to work from the CIA from there on.

00:21:53.240 Well, who else asks you to jump out of a plane and stop the Cuban Missile Crisis?

00:21:59.420 Tell me about Che and who he was.

00:22:02.900 You see people wearing these T-shirts of Che.

00:22:07.780 And to me, it is like wearing a T-shirt with Hitler's face on it.

00:22:13.580 He was not a good man.

00:22:16.100 And somehow or another, he's been turned into a good man and a product.

00:22:19.900 Right.

00:22:20.600 Who was he?

00:22:21.900 Well, he was a cold blooded assassin.

00:22:24.780 Let me tell you how I got there.

00:22:26.240 In 66, I went to Venezuela on behalf of the agency to set up some communication equipment.

00:22:30.860 In 67, they called me to a meeting in Miami with an interview, like 16 Cuban. 1.00

00:22:35.220 And then they got two of us to go to Bolivia to advise the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

00:22:39.880 And the reason they were using Cuban was because we were not U.S. citizens.

00:22:44.360 Ambassador Henderson, who was a U.S. ambassador, had a prohibition of American citizens participating in combat or areas of danger because Vietnam was already taking place.

00:22:54.880 And there were people coming back in plastic bag from Vietnam.

00:22:57.460 And they didn't want that to happen from South America.

00:23:00.680 So, I remember that after my interview with this guy who selected me, and later on, I asked him, why did you select me?

00:23:06.800 He said, what question I asked you at the end of every interview was, when will you be ready to go to Bolivia in this case for an operation?

00:23:14.180 Everybody told him I need a few days, whatever.

00:23:16.720 My answer to him was, if I have time, I'll go to my home.

00:23:19.760 I say goodbye to my wife, to my kids, bring my clothes, and we go.

00:23:23.420 We don't have time.

00:23:24.620 I give me the phone.

00:23:25.520 I call Ross and tell her I have to go.

00:23:27.260 And if we don't have time, let's go.

00:23:28.440 I'll give you her number.

00:23:29.400 And you call her and you tell her I have to go.

00:23:31.720 I guess nobody ever told him that.

00:23:33.800 That's why he selected me to go to Bolivia in that operation.

00:23:36.580 Wow.

00:23:37.380 So, we landed in Bolivia.

00:23:41.140 First of all, the first day that we arrived, they took us directly from the airport to see President Barrientos.

00:23:46.680 Stop for a second.

00:23:47.800 Because you're telling me the story now of capturing him.

00:23:50.560 Right.

00:23:50.640 Tell me who he was.

00:23:54.800 Tell me the butcher that he was.

00:23:57.880 So, people have an understanding of who Che really was in Cuba.

00:24:03.240 He was really, I think, a frustrated individual.

00:24:07.460 He developed a love for assassinating people.

00:24:10.820 He even wrote his father saying that he had tasted that and he loved to kill people, which he did. 0.93

00:24:15.900 He was responsible for hundreds of execution at La Cabana Fortress.

00:24:19.380 He personally executed a lot of people himself, personally.

00:24:24.260 There were two incidents that I learned from later on.

00:24:26.740 One was a lady who I met in a funeral home in Miami. 1.00

00:24:30.580 And she was telling me when she learned that I was in Bolivia at that time that her son was 17-year-old in 1961.

00:24:37.480 They had picked him up and they were going to execute him.

00:24:39.380 And she went to see Che at La Cabana and asked him for mercy.

00:24:43.020 So, Che looked at her and said, what is the name of your son?

00:24:46.420 And she gave the name.

00:24:47.200 When is he going to be executed?

00:24:48.720 It was a Monday.

00:24:49.640 They said, this coming Friday, Commander.

00:24:51.840 Please save his life.

00:24:52.860 He's not going to do it again.

00:24:54.600 So, he called for an assistant.

00:24:55.780 And she thought she had saved his life when he told the assistant, well, get the lady's son now and execute him now so she doesn't have to wait until Friday. 1.00

00:25:04.300 That was his version of mercy.

00:25:06.840 That's right.

00:25:07.480 And she fainted.

00:25:08.780 Later on, I met a few months ago a lady whose father was later executed in Cuba who was in the police.

00:25:15.900 And she claimed that she was at 10 o'clock in the morning, this line, to be able to see his father, La Cabana Fortress.

00:25:22.220 And this lady who was with her started calling Che when he arrived.

00:25:25.900 And when she arrived, she said, please, Commander, you know, my son has been in prison now for two weeks.

00:25:30.300 I haven't been able to sleep in these two weeks.

00:25:32.460 Please save his life.

00:25:33.360 He's very young.

00:25:34.360 He has the same thing.

00:25:35.320 What is the name of your son?

00:25:36.100 He called and assisted to bring her son right in front of her.

00:25:39.240 And there was a bunch of people waiting to see their different families who were in prison there.

00:25:43.620 And he told the kid, get on the floor, USOB.

00:25:47.960 You have your mother two weeks without sleeping because of you.

00:25:50.980 He put out his pistol and shot him in the head.

00:25:52.880 Oh, my gosh.

00:25:53.580 He said, all the people in the line started calling an assassin.

00:25:56.120 And they stopped it.

00:25:56.820 That day, nobody could see.

00:25:58.140 They disbanded everybody.

00:25:59.800 They could not go in and visit their prisoners.

00:26:03.120 That was the type of man that he was.

00:26:13.620 Do you have any thoughts on why he has been turned into such a hero?

00:26:20.020 Well, Cuba is responsible to a great extent for the propaganda they made worldwide, using 0.99

00:26:26.740 the picture with his barrette that became like a symbol.

00:26:32.180 But people really doesn't know who really he was.

00:26:34.800 The people of Cuba still know who he is?

00:26:37.380 A lot of people in Cuba are beginning to know now who he was.

00:26:40.000 Yes.

00:26:40.220 But before, no.

00:26:41.700 Even in the school, they have to say, pioneros por el comunismo, seremos como el Che. 0.85

00:26:45.640 You know, pioneers for communism would be like Che every day before they start classes 0.99

00:26:50.160 in the moment.

00:26:51.420 So it was a continuous indoctrination, you know, like a big figure who died for the revolution

00:26:55.780 for the poor, which was not the case at all.

00:26:58.840 All right.

00:26:59.500 So now you're in Bolivia.

00:27:01.160 And you go meet the president.

00:27:03.080 It's what year?

00:27:04.300 That was in 1967.

00:27:05.760 67.

00:27:07.100 And everybody's looking for Che.

00:27:10.480 Right.

00:27:11.060 First of all, let me tell you, they found out that Che was there when they captured Debray

00:27:15.780 and Bustos.

00:27:16.380 There were two, one Argentinian journalist and an intellectual from France who were captured.

00:27:20.900 Because before, they had to believe that Che had been killed in Africa.

00:27:24.280 Che was in Africa in 1964-65.

00:27:27.180 All the military equipment that he received in Africa was from Red China. 0.89

00:27:31.540 Che was pro-Chinese. 0.85

00:27:32.560 And that's why Cuba had completely abandoned him and were under destruction to try to get 0.99

00:27:37.800 him captured or destroyed in Bolivia.

00:27:41.360 Because Cuba depended on the Soviet Union and Che was pro-Chinese. 0.70

00:27:45.580 So the thing that I can tell you this definitely was like that was, first of all, the radio station,

00:27:51.400 the radio that they gave him to transmit back to Cuba when it arrived to Bolivia was broken.

00:27:55.800 He could not communicate with Cuba.

00:27:57.900 The head of the Communist Party in Bolivia, Mario Monge, who had met with Fidel two months

00:28:03.280 before, went to see Che on the 31st of December of 1966, where they had dinner together for

00:28:10.400 New Year's Eve.

00:28:11.180 And they retreated all the support from the Communist Party from him, even told the people

00:28:15.260 from the Communist Party who were accompanying him that if they stayed with him, they would

00:28:18.840 be expelled from the Communist Party.

00:28:20.580 And then the man that they had to help him, his name was Renan Montero, an intelligent from

00:28:25.180 the Cuban, intelligent section, who was in place in La Paz, who got tremendous contact.

00:28:31.080 The guy was even invited to some of President Barrientos Paris at the presidential ballot.

00:28:36.300 Once Che was in, all 17 people, they retrieved him back to Cuba with the pretext that his 0.99

00:28:40.780 visa had expired.

00:28:41.920 And he had acquired the Bolivian citizenship.

00:28:44.860 So it's a strong indication he was sent there to be killed.

00:28:47.500 Definitely.

00:28:47.720 So this is bizarre.

00:28:51.200 The guy who they still have on sides of buildings, his face in the beret.

00:28:57.440 Right.

00:28:57.860 Jay, they say they love him.

00:29:00.180 They're still making him into a hero.

00:29:02.760 But it was Cuba that wanted him dead.

00:29:04.620 Right.

00:29:04.940 And Russia.

00:29:06.200 Absolutely.

00:29:07.380 Okay.

00:29:07.640 Do you know why?

00:29:08.620 Why did he flip?

00:29:09.700 Or was he always against Russia?

00:29:11.560 I think he was always a sympathizer of Mao.

00:29:14.640 Who is even a bigger monster.

00:29:16.680 Well, but let me tell you, in 1963, when he went to that trip through a year, they gave

00:29:24.620 him a reception at the Cuban embassy in Cairo.

00:29:28.140 And one diplomat who was there, who later defected, told us that during that thing, he actually

00:29:33.400 went to a fifth fight with the Soviet ambassador because of ideology, ideology, because he was

00:29:38.280 pro-Chinese.

00:29:38.780 So definitely, he was in no good turn with the Soviet Union whatsoever.

00:29:44.100 So they send him to Bolivia.

00:29:45.560 Yes.

00:29:46.200 To be killed.

00:29:47.540 And how does this involve you now?

00:29:50.660 Well, I was supposed to be advising the 2nd Ranger Battalion in intelligence with them,

00:29:56.060 give them the capability.

00:29:57.560 When they learned that Che was there, and of course, the Bolivian army was very poorly

00:30:01.680 prepared, they sent a Special Forces team, an MTT from Panama, headed by Papi Shelton,

00:30:08.140 a major from Tennessee, who trained a 2nd Ranger Battalion, specialized in counter-insurgency.

00:30:13.660 So those were just two factors, the Special Forces training this battalion, and we representing

00:30:18.280 the intelligence community, supporting them in intelligence, not only in La Paz, but also

00:30:23.620 in the operational area.

00:30:25.120 So I became like an advisor to the 8th Division headquarters at the area where he was operating.

00:30:30.420 And I was working directly with Colonel Centeno Anaya, the commander of the division, and

00:30:34.100 Mayor Hernando Saucedo, who was the head of intelligence.

00:30:36.820 So whenever they captured some documents and things like that, I went with them to oversee

00:30:40.900 the documentation, do the exploitation of the documentation, et cetera.

00:30:44.840 So that became very effective.

00:30:47.900 For example, there was an encounter of a commander of the Cuban guerrilla, Juan Vitalio Acuña Nunez,

00:30:55.260 who got separated from Che to do a sort of exploration on the other side of the Rio Grande.

00:31:01.560 And he was trying to come back to where Che was on the 4th Division headquarters.

00:31:05.700 And of course, the Rio Grande is very difficult to cross when there is raining season.

00:31:09.740 They have to know where, otherwise, even the guerrilla law, some people trying to cross

00:31:13.240 it by themselves.

00:31:14.320 So they went to this campesino, Colo Norato Rojas, to tell him where to cross.

00:31:18.860 And he already was working for the army.

00:31:21.320 So he went to a captain nearby and told him the location where they were going to cross.

00:31:25.300 And they basically annihilated the whole guerrilla with the exception of three guys.

00:31:28.420 One left by the river.

00:31:30.040 One was captured.

00:31:30.980 It was Paco, Jose Castillo Chavez.

00:31:32.640 And Nesto McMurray was executed after he was captured.

00:31:35.140 And we knew from the briefing in Washington that Paco wanted to defect, to leave, because

00:31:39.740 he was not a guerrilla.

00:31:41.300 He was a communist, but not a guerrilla.

00:31:43.300 He was told he was going to execute with the Soviet Union.

00:31:45.580 When he arrived to this place, they gave him a rifle, you are a guerrilla.

00:31:48.980 So Paco would be an excellent individual to be able to talk to.

00:31:52.140 So I was able to save his life when he was brought to Vallegrande and brought him with us.

00:31:58.280 And he was the one who gave us all the information on how Shea would move, who became very, very

00:32:03.020 important to us later on.

00:32:05.520 He told us, for example, when Shea moved from point A to point B, he divided his guerrilla

00:32:09.600 in three groups.

00:32:10.840 About five or six guerrillas would go ahead of him, what they call the vanguard in front,

00:32:14.900 one kilometer ahead.

00:32:16.040 He would be in the middle with the strength of the troops.

00:32:19.020 And then in the back, one kilometer behind, another five or six guerrilla.

00:32:22.060 He gave us all the name, Zudo, that they were using at the time.

00:32:25.700 So later on, in late September of 1967, when there was an encounter of a Lieutenant Galindo

00:32:31.780 with the guerrilla, they got three guerrillas killed.

00:32:35.520 So we went to meet him in Pucará to receive the three bodies.

00:32:38.580 And the name of the three bodies coincided with the vanguard of Shea.

00:32:42.100 One was Coco Pereo, the leader on the Bolivian side.

00:32:44.440 The other one was Mario Gutierrez Adari, a Bolivian doctor.

00:32:49.100 And the other one was Miguel, a Cuban captain, whose later we learned was Manuel Hernández

00:32:53.840 Osorio.

00:32:54.300 So he was a member of the vanguard of Shea.

00:32:56.600 Then when I talked to Lieutenant Galindo, he told me, my captain, I saw the guerrilla

00:32:59.880 in the distance.

00:33:00.880 I started preparing the ambush, and suddenly the guerrilla surprised me.

00:33:04.180 What he saw was Shea's group.

00:33:05.460 The vanguard was coming up.

00:33:06.560 So that confirmed that was Shea's group.

00:33:08.740 So with this information, I went to see Colonel Centeno Nyan, ask him to call the training

00:33:13.380 of the battalion short, who was basically finished already the whole training, and bring it

00:33:17.400 to operation.

00:33:18.720 Because we knew that Shea was in the area.

00:33:20.620 And he did so.

00:33:21.420 So on the last part of September, actually in the first of October, the battalion was

00:33:26.820 deployed in the operational area.

00:33:28.280 Four companies.

00:33:29.300 One stayed in Vallegrande to support them with communication, food, and ammunition.

00:33:33.700 One company commanded by Captain Lopez Leighton was along the Rio Grande, so they could not

00:33:38.260 cross to the other side.

00:33:39.840 Once commanded by Celso Torelli, another captain who later became president of Bolivia.

00:33:45.020 He was a reaction force.

00:33:46.340 And Captain Gary Prado was the one doing the search in the area.

00:33:50.000 They actually started on the 1st of September.

00:33:52.780 And on the 7th of September, in the evening, they got information from farmers that there

00:33:56.960 were these people, guerrillas in this area.

00:34:00.360 So on the 8th, they surrounded the area.

00:34:03.160 On the 8th, when they advanced it, that's when Shea was there.

00:34:05.660 And that was the firefight took place.

00:34:07.380 And he was captured alive.

00:34:08.820 And were you there?

00:34:12.000 I was at, on the 7th, I was in Vallegrande, setting up some PRC-10 radios on Bolivian combat

00:34:18.920 planes, because they didn't have frequency compatible, and they could not get air-to-ground

00:34:24.080 support to the troops.

00:34:26.080 So I borrowed three PRC-10 radios, starting installing every one of those aircraft.

00:34:30.000 So on the 8th, I had that radios already in place.

00:34:35.040 And then when they told us that Papa Canzado, who was the leader of the guerrilla, was captured

00:34:39.280 alive, and we didn't know whether it was Shea or was Inti Peredo, Coco's brother, I flew

00:34:45.060 in the back of one of the 86s and the head of operations, Cerrato, in the back of the

00:34:48.640 other, and we were confirmed that Papa Canzado was the foreigner.

00:34:51.480 So we knew that Shea was there.

00:34:53.580 So that day, Colonel Centeno dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Sely to be able to gather all the

00:34:57.360 documentation, trying to interrogate Shea.

00:35:00.280 And we had a dinner at the hotel in Vallegrande, and I asked the coroner if I could accompany

00:35:04.720 him.

00:35:05.080 Everybody wanted to go with him.

00:35:07.100 But I had an excellent relationship with all of them, so he agreed that I accompanied

00:35:10.580 him.

00:35:11.100 And on the following day, that was the 9th of October, it was a Monday, we flew in a

00:35:16.100 small helicopter, who was piloted by Jaime Nino Guzman, a Bolivian mayor, and we landed

00:35:21.480 right next to the schoolhouse where he was.

00:35:23.920 And there was all of these officers waiting for us in there.

00:35:26.600 We came into the room.

00:35:27.620 And then Che was on the floor, on the left side, under a little window.

00:35:35.520 In the back of the room was the dead body of two Cubans, Major Pantojo, Captain Pantojo,

00:35:40.900 another Cuban officer.

00:35:42.220 And he started asking questions to Che, Che will look at him and didn't say a word.

00:35:46.560 He didn't answer even, nothing.

00:35:48.640 To the point that the coroner said, look, you are a foreigner.

00:35:50.820 You invaded my country. 0.90

00:35:52.180 At least you can have the courtesy to answer me.

00:35:54.440 He didn't say a word.

00:35:55.160 So he came out, and then I asked him if I could get all the documentation from Colonel Sely

00:36:00.240 to photograph for my government.

00:36:01.960 So he gave me his bag.

00:36:03.620 We had a German diary, a big book, of course, written in Spanish, but it was bought in Germany,

00:36:09.160 where he wrote his diary.

00:36:11.000 He had some photographs of the family, some medicament for his asthma.

00:36:14.560 He had some small, very small code books, numerical code books that he used to communicate,

00:36:19.260 to be able to transmit and receive from Cuba.

00:36:21.560 Of course, he could not transmit, but he could receive from Radova, Havana, Cuba.

00:36:25.200 It was given to him by the Chinese.

00:36:27.640 He had some little booklet with typewritten message that he had received from Cuba,

00:36:31.920 signed by Ariel, that we thought was Fidel.

00:36:34.340 And later on, Benigno, who was one who defected and lived in Paris,

00:36:37.960 and we became friends, told me that it wasn't Fidel.

00:36:40.700 It was Juan Carretero, the head of communication for Che during that operation.

00:36:44.700 So I got all of that, and I started photographing all of those documentation.

00:36:48.600 Then I left it with a soldier.

00:36:49.900 I came back to talk to him.

00:36:52.000 So I stood in front of him and said,

00:36:53.360 Che Guevara, vengo hablar contigo, come to talk to you.

00:36:55.220 And he looked to me from the floor, very arrogant, and said,

00:36:57.020 Nobody talks to me.

00:36:57.820 Nobody interrogates me.

00:36:59.380 So when I saw that attitude, I looked at him and said,

00:37:01.300 Commander, I didn't come here to interrogate you.

00:37:04.140 I admire you.

00:37:05.080 You used to be head of a state.

00:37:06.260 You are like this because you believe in your ideals,

00:37:08.280 even though I know they are mistaken.

00:37:10.480 I came here to talk to you.

00:37:12.160 So he looked to me for a while to see if I was laughing, if I was serious,

00:37:15.340 and he said, Can I sit?

00:37:16.400 Can you untie me?

00:37:17.640 So I asked a soldier to untie him.

00:37:19.500 So we untied him, sat in a little bench across from where I was,

00:37:22.980 and we started talking.

00:37:24.320 Now, whenever I asked him a question that was of tactical interest to us,

00:37:28.400 he would say, You know, I cannot answer that.

00:37:30.140 But I did push him in, for example, in his stay in Africa.

00:37:33.880 He didn't want to talk about it.

00:37:34.900 I said, Well, you don't want to talk about it,

00:37:36.380 but your own people said you had like 10,000 guerrillas,

00:37:39.060 and they were very poor soldiers.

00:37:41.140 It was in the Congo.

00:37:42.080 And he looked at me and said, Well, if I had 10,000,

00:37:44.820 it really would have been different.

00:37:45.900 But you're right.

00:37:46.560 They were very poor soldiers.

00:37:48.180 Then we talk about the Cuban economy.

00:37:50.040 And he started blaming the embargo for the Cuban economy.

00:37:52.740 Okay, now, hang on.

00:37:53.500 Because he was trained as a doctor, right?

00:37:57.040 Yeah, he never graduated, but he was trained as a doctor.

00:37:58.960 Okay, so trained as a doctor, and then he becomes a revolutionary,

00:38:02.500 where he's killing people.

00:38:04.320 And then once the revolution is over in Cuba,

00:38:07.540 didn't Fidel come to a group of people and said,

00:38:09.940 Hey, who knows anything about finance?

00:38:11.920 And he raised his hand.

00:38:12.960 No, it wasn't like that.

00:38:14.380 It wasn't like that.

00:38:15.140 How did it happen?

00:38:16.120 He told me.

00:38:16.700 When he told me at that point in time that the Cuban economy was like that

00:38:20.600 because of the embargo,

00:38:22.540 I look at him and say, Commander, it's ironic in your part to say that,

00:38:25.620 because you were the minister of economy,

00:38:29.180 and you were also the president of the National Bank,

00:38:31.360 and you are not even an economist.

00:38:33.360 So he looked at me and said,

00:38:34.380 You know how I became president of the National Bank?

00:38:36.180 I said, I have no idea.

00:38:37.580 He said, I was standing one time.

00:38:39.340 I understood Fidel was asking for a dedicated communist.

00:38:41.860 I rose my hand, and he was asking for a dedicated economist.

00:38:46.240 So I honestly believe he was trying to pull my leg.

00:38:51.000 He didn't want to answer the question.

00:38:52.400 But later on, when I met Benigno in Paris,

00:38:56.260 we had an interview in Paris.

00:38:58.440 He told me it was true.

00:38:59.280 He was right next to Camilo Sinfuego himself,

00:39:01.400 and she understood he was asking for a dedicated communist,

00:39:03.920 and rose his hand.

00:39:05.060 That's how he became the head of the National Bank.

00:39:07.280 Didn't feel free.

00:39:08.280 They didn't want to correct himself.

00:39:10.380 Oh, unbelievable.

00:39:11.260 Yeah.

00:39:12.360 All right.

00:39:13.220 So you're talking to him.

00:39:15.940 You're having conversations with this guy that took your country, 1.00

00:39:19.900 killed, I'm sure, some of your friends,

00:39:21.880 destroyed so much.

00:39:27.040 You know that the people who have him want him dead.

00:39:33.240 How are you feeling at the time, looking across the table at Che?

00:39:36.880 What does that feel like?

00:39:38.780 Well, first of all, I had mixed feelings.

00:39:41.660 When I arrived there, I said, well,

00:39:43.920 he should die the same way that he killed so many people.

00:39:46.380 But then when I saw him, he looked like a beggar and all of that. 1.00

00:39:48.580 I felt sorry for him.

00:39:49.620 At the same time, we were told in Washington,

00:39:53.420 they want to share life no matter what.

00:39:55.680 And I believe now the reason was because they knew of the problems that he got

00:39:59.300 with the Soviet Union.

00:40:00.560 So that's probably why the agency wanted him alive.

00:40:03.760 I even thought for it.

00:40:04.620 For what reason, do you suppose?

00:40:06.280 Because he was pro-Chinese.

00:40:08.500 He didn't get along with the Soviets at all.

00:40:10.360 And Cuba depended on the Soviet Union.

00:40:11.280 Maybe he would have information.

00:40:12.760 I don't think he would have done it.

00:40:15.420 But the agency felt that maybe he would talk to them about that because of that feeling,

00:40:19.300 that situation.

00:40:20.320 Wasn't he the guy who said we should use a nuke on New York City?

00:40:23.740 And he said that it would be worthwhile millions of people to die if it was going to implement

00:40:28.660 socialism in the United States.

00:40:30.760 He said that at the United Nations.

00:40:32.600 Wow.

00:40:33.880 And somebody here thought that, oh, maybe this guy will turn on.

00:40:38.720 They forgot all of that.

00:40:39.740 Yeah.

00:40:40.660 Okay.

00:40:41.360 All right.

00:40:42.060 Okay.

00:40:43.940 I even thought at the time, Glenn, that because they wanted him desperately alive, that I

00:40:49.700 could cut the landline.

00:40:50.780 We had a telephone line at that time in Igueras.

00:40:53.300 I could cut the landline.

00:40:54.340 When the helicopter arrived, I would tell the pilot that Mike Orman was able to convince

00:40:59.160 President Barriento to get him alive.

00:41:01.760 And I know he had no communication with the Valle Grande.

00:41:05.620 And once we brought his body alive, then nobody could do that.

00:41:08.460 But at the same time, I thought what happened in Cuba when Batista released Fidel Castro and

00:41:13.420 what happened to my country.

00:41:15.180 So I talked to my son and said, look, if you do that and he survived and later on he goes

00:41:19.900 to other places, a lot of people killed, you will feel responsible for it.

00:41:23.640 Let history run.

00:41:24.840 This is the decision from the Bolivian government and not yours.

00:41:28.100 Because they have him.

00:41:29.160 They caught him.

00:41:29.740 But they not only wanted to kill him, they wanted to behead him?

00:41:39.020 No.

00:41:39.520 Let me go by step.

00:41:41.340 First of all, when we were there, Colonel Centeno was in the operational field.

00:41:46.860 While he was there, we received a phone call in Igueras.

00:41:49.520 And they asked for the highest ranking officer.

00:41:51.260 I had the rank of captain.

00:41:52.320 There were only two lieutenant.

00:41:53.180 And that's why he received the order from the Barrientos regime to kill him.

00:41:57.160 There was 500, 600.

00:41:58.940 500 was shit.

00:42:00.540 600 dead.

00:42:01.900 700 keep him alive.

00:42:03.400 So we received a specific instruction to eliminate him.

00:42:06.640 When Centeno came back, before he left in the helicopter, I called him aside and said,

00:42:10.820 me, coronel, this order from your government to eliminate the prisoner.

00:42:14.380 Now, the order from my government has tried to keep him alive at all costs.

00:42:17.240 And we have helicopters to be able to move him out from here and up to Panama for interrogation.

00:42:22.300 So he looked at me and said, Felix, my name was Felix Ramos.

00:42:24.720 I said, Felix, we have worked empirically.

00:42:26.240 We're very grateful to you.

00:42:27.580 But this is order from my president and my commander in chief.

00:42:30.620 If I don't comply, I'll be fired.

00:42:31.860 He looked at his watch and he said, the helicopter is going, after I leave, the helicopter is going

00:42:36.320 to come several times, bringing food of ammunition and taking our dead and our wounded.

00:42:41.420 After two o'clock in the afternoon, he's going to come back to pick up the Che Guevara dead 0.95

00:42:44.960 body.

00:42:45.780 You can execute him.

00:42:47.420 Actually, so you can, I used to see him any way you want.

00:42:50.520 Because we know how much harm you have done to your country.

00:42:53.160 But I want your word of honor that you would bring me back dead body of Che after two o'clock. 0.97

00:42:57.300 Wow.

00:42:57.580 So I said, my coronel tried to make them change their mind.

00:42:59.800 But if there is no change, I will guarantee you'll bring you back the dead body of Che. 0.95

00:43:03.100 We embraced and he left.

00:43:04.420 And sure enough, the helicopter came several times.

00:43:06.620 At one point, the pilot came to where I was with a camera from Mayor Saucedo and told

00:43:10.580 me, my captain, Mayor Saucedo, wanted a picture with the prisoner.

00:43:13.960 So I look at him and say, Commander, do you mind?

00:43:16.360 I say, no.

00:43:17.100 That's when we took him around in the schoolhouse.

00:43:19.320 And that's when I gave my camera to him.

00:43:20.840 And that's the picture I gave you.

00:43:22.580 And then I took his camera.

00:43:24.000 I just put 2,000 speed and closed the lanes.

00:43:26.320 The picture never came out.

00:43:27.740 Because I thought, if these people will release him, release the picture, and he's there telling

00:43:34.340 everybody that he died from combat wounds, it's going to be embarrassment to the Bolivian

00:43:37.820 government.

00:43:38.820 So that picture never came out.

00:43:40.640 So the helicopter left.

00:43:41.860 And we start waiting to see what happened.

00:43:44.020 Around 1230 in the afternoon, this lady came with a little radio on her hand. 0.86

00:43:48.220 Mi Capitan, Mi Capitan, when are you going to kill him?

00:43:50.740 I said, lady, why did you say that?

00:43:51.940 I said, look, we just saw you a photograph with him right in front of the schoolhouse here.

00:43:55.500 And look, the radio is already giving the news that he died from combat wounds.

00:43:59.200 So at that point, I thought there was nothing else to wait for.

00:44:02.180 So I walk into the room.

00:44:03.460 I stood in front of him.

00:44:04.600 It was sitting a little bench that we had put him.

00:44:07.400 And I look at him and say, commander, I'm sorry.

00:44:09.300 I try my best.

00:44:10.980 He's ordered from the high Bolivian command.

00:44:12.920 Did he know what you were talking about?

00:44:14.160 He knew exactly what I was saying.

00:44:15.200 He turned white like a piece of paper.

00:44:17.660 I had never seen somebody to lose the expression like he did.

00:44:20.020 But then he composed himself and said, it's better this way.

00:44:22.760 I should have never been captured alive.

00:44:24.800 And he pulled the pipe that he had on his side out and said, I'd like to give this pipe

00:44:28.120 to a soldadito who treated me well.

00:44:30.280 And at that point in time, Sergeant Mario Teran, who was the one executing people, burst

00:44:33.880 into the room.

00:44:34.380 Yo quiero la pipa, mi capitán.

00:44:35.460 I want the pipe.

00:44:36.560 And Che, he goes, no, tino te la doy.

00:44:37.920 No.

00:44:38.560 So I have to order him twice to leave the room, which he did.

00:44:40.840 And Che had the pipe here.

00:44:42.120 So I look at him and say, commander, would you give it to me?

00:44:45.300 He thought for a few seconds.

00:44:46.460 He goes, si, tisi te la doy.

00:44:47.620 He gave me the pipe.

00:44:48.480 I put it here.

00:44:48.940 What did he say?

00:44:49.240 Yes.

00:44:49.880 What?

00:44:50.800 He said yes.

00:44:52.420 And he said yes.

00:44:53.440 He gave it to me.

00:44:54.200 Okay.

00:44:54.400 I put the pipe here and said, if I can, do you want anything for your family?

00:44:58.300 Then actually, what I will say in a sarcastic way, he said, if you can't tell Fidel that

00:45:03.300 he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America, which is, to me, it's like telling

00:45:08.280 him, you know, you abandoned me, but this is going to be successful no matter what.

00:45:11.840 And then he changed the expression and saying, if you can't tell my wife to remarry and try

00:45:15.760 to be happy.

00:45:16.580 That was his last word.

00:45:17.900 He approached me, we shook hands, we embraced, and he stood in attention thinking I was going

00:45:21.720 to be the one to shoot him.

00:45:22.700 And let me tell you, that was a very emotional situation for me because as a soldier, as

00:45:28.000 a military guy, we don't order the execution of a prisoner.

00:45:33.140 But this was a very unique situation, which is pretty hard to take, to go out.

00:45:37.660 And when I came out, I told the sergeant, it's order from your high command to eliminate

00:45:41.340 the prisoner.

00:45:41.920 Don't shoot from here up.

00:45:43.240 Shoot from here down because he's supposed to die from combat wounds.

00:45:46.100 See me, Capitan.

00:45:46.740 See me, Capitan.

00:45:48.060 It was exactly one o'clock in the afternoon Bolivian time when I left.

00:45:51.060 I went to the area where I was taking the photograph of the diary.

00:45:54.600 At about 1.15 exactly, I heard the burst.

00:45:57.400 And that's when he was killed.

00:46:10.440 Did they not take his hands or?

00:46:14.220 That came later on.

00:46:15.900 Okay.

00:46:16.060 Well, after that, after a couple of hours or so, then.

00:46:21.500 What did they do with the body?

00:46:22.440 Did you go back?

00:46:23.280 Yeah.

00:46:23.460 Well, a couple of hours later, Gary Prado and Celso Torelli, the two captains, came and

00:46:28.940 we all went to see the dead body for the first time.

00:46:31.740 He was on the floor facing the ceiling.

00:46:35.180 His face was covered with mud.

00:46:37.140 It was probably because he hit the ground and the ground was muddy.

00:46:39.860 You know, we had a lot of mud in there.

00:46:45.780 And then we went around the body and Celso Torelli had a little stick and said, you son

00:46:50.320 of a bitch, you have killed so many of my soldiers. 1.00

00:46:52.920 And then Gary Prado said, me, Capitan, we have finished the guerrillas in Latin America.

00:46:57.100 And I told him, me, Capitan, we haven't finished them.

00:46:59.180 At least we have delayed them for a long time.

00:47:02.400 At least what?

00:47:03.840 We have delayed them for a long time.

00:47:05.480 Okay.

00:47:05.840 Guerrillas.

00:47:06.400 Yes.

00:47:06.680 So they left.

00:47:07.800 So I asked for a bucket of water.

00:47:09.820 So they bought a little bucket of water.

00:47:11.540 I went down.

00:47:12.200 I cleaned his face.

00:47:13.360 I took all the mud out from his face.

00:47:15.380 I tried to close his jaw with my handkerchief, which later on blew with the helicopter air.

00:47:20.620 And I tried to close his eye, which I could not.

00:47:22.720 It would pop up again.

00:47:24.060 Why did you feel it was necessary to do that?

00:47:26.440 I don't know.

00:47:26.800 It's something like...

00:47:28.240 Common decency?

00:47:29.160 Yeah.

00:47:29.720 Good for you.

00:47:30.140 I felt, you know, I have to do that.

00:47:31.200 Good for you.

00:47:31.940 And then they brought the stretcher.

00:47:34.520 We put the body in the stretcher.

00:47:35.960 We put it to the right side of the helicopter.

00:47:38.180 I remember we were tying it.

00:47:40.280 And then the major, Neymar Guzman, told me, my capitán, moving forward, you know, to

00:47:44.380 balance the helicopter.

00:47:45.280 So I put my hand under his body and I pull up.

00:47:47.760 When I got the hand out, I was completely covered with blood.

00:47:50.900 Apparently, they hit the aorta.

00:47:52.480 And because it was a plastic stretcher, the blood concentrated there.

00:47:56.880 I remember, I didn't say a word, but I remember thinking, say, there are people who

00:48:00.300 have blood in their hand.

00:48:01.200 I have the hell of a lot of.

00:48:02.240 And I cleaned the hand on the right side of my pant, finished tying him down, jumped

00:48:06.620 into the helicopter a little bit to the left side to balance.

00:48:08.960 And then a soldier came and said, my mayor, my mayor, Father Schiller's want to see it.

00:48:12.520 He was a Catholic priest.

00:48:14.500 So we waited like two, three minutes with the engine running.

00:48:17.020 Here come this priest on top of a mule all around, close to the right side.

00:48:21.540 I almost got decapitated by the helicopter.

00:48:23.800 It was this close from the blade.

00:48:24.860 He came down from the mule.

00:48:26.320 He looked at him and gave him the last bend, which I took a couple of pictures with a

00:48:30.040 Minox camera that I had left when he was giving the...

00:48:33.000 That's right.

00:48:33.780 And I thought to myself, this guy was an atheist.

00:48:36.480 Nevertheless, he received the last ritual from the Catholic Church.

00:48:39.980 And from there, we took off.

00:48:41.460 We landed in Vallegrande.

00:48:43.560 There was...

00:48:44.240 When I left, there was nobody there.

00:48:45.400 There was 2,000 people on the runway.

00:48:47.340 There were like 15 additional planes.

00:48:49.460 Four additional C-54 military planes with all the generals and admirals.

00:48:53.580 Everybody was there and depressed.

00:48:55.560 There was like 15 small planes from different CBS, NBC, whatever, in the area.

00:49:02.060 So my friend who had arrived, took the body, and they took it to the hospital, Nuestro Señor

00:49:05.860 de Malta.

00:49:06.580 And I stayed with the pilot and the head of intelligence.

00:49:09.880 That evening, we had a meeting in the headquarters in that area.

00:49:13.560 When I arrived, a general was telling this colonel, if Fidel denied this is Che Guevara, we

00:49:19.280 need tangible proof of it.

00:49:20.540 Cut his head and put in formaldehyde.

00:49:22.280 Oh, my God.

00:49:22.840 I said, my general, you cannot do that.

00:49:24.240 I said, why not?

00:49:25.200 He said, supposedly, Fidel denied this is Che Guevara.

00:49:27.580 You are a head of a state.

00:49:28.820 You cannot show the head of a human being as proof.

00:49:31.340 He said, well, what do you suggest?

00:49:32.960 He said, my general, you want some tangible proof of it.

00:49:35.560 Cut one finger.

00:49:36.560 We have the fingerprint from the Argentinian federal police, and they can be checked.

00:49:40.340 So he ordered both hands to be cut.

00:49:42.700 Both hands to be cut.

00:49:43.700 So I left there because I had to take all of the documentation back to Santa Cruz and

00:49:48.940 from there to La Paz.

00:49:50.520 And my friend stayed, and he claimed that in about three or four o'clock in the morning

00:49:53.640 when there was no press around, the doctor came, and they cut both hands and put him from

00:49:58.520 Malajai.

00:49:59.480 And then in a pickup that they called Volqueta, they drove the body of Che and two more. 0.82

00:50:04.200 There were three bodies all together to the very end of the runway.

00:50:07.520 And that's where they had a bulldozer who was expanding the runway for bigger planes to

00:50:11.040 land.

00:50:11.700 They dug a huge hole in the very middle of the runway, and they dropped Che and two

00:50:15.880 bodies there.

00:50:16.660 And they called him out.

00:50:17.260 Now, when Fidel claimed that he found Che Guevara's body on the side of the runway, there were

00:50:21.660 seven other bodies next to him.

00:50:23.160 I don't know who the hell he got out of there, but he wasn't Che, believe me.

00:50:26.840 So he kind of was buried like Jimmy Hoffa.

00:50:29.680 But his hand turned out in Cuba because the Minister of Interior, Arguedas, took the hand

00:50:35.260 to Fidel.

00:50:36.320 So at least if they put that in his burial place, he would have a part of Che in there 1.00

00:50:40.540 because the hands were turned over to Cuba.

00:50:42.940 But the body, that was not Che Guevara's body.

00:50:45.940 Wow.

00:50:47.140 Okay.

00:50:48.180 So that's 67, 68?

00:50:51.780 67.

00:50:52.340 67.

00:50:53.300 October 9, 1967.

00:50:55.600 Right.

00:50:55.960 And then you volunteered to go to Vietnam.

00:51:01.100 No, after that, they sent me, first of all, for a short time to Ecuador, which I trained

00:51:06.220 in Italian, equal to their secret service.

00:51:09.060 So we trained them.

00:51:10.720 And then I was sent to Peru to an anti-guerrilla unit in Peru where my little training

00:51:15.760 for the October crash took place.

00:51:19.100 Because I arrived in Peru, in Masamari, the same area where the CIA was training this special

00:51:26.260 police unit as a paratrooper unit.

00:51:29.580 The special force already has trained them.

00:51:31.040 So when I arrived the first weekend, the commander of the police unit, Danilo Agramonte, said,

00:51:36.600 Mr. Advisor, are you a paratrooper?

00:51:38.800 And I embarrassed him.

00:51:39.880 He said, yes, sir.

00:51:40.580 I am your advisor.

00:51:41.480 He said, how many jump?

00:51:42.340 I said, 100.

00:51:43.160 I never jump from a plane in my life.

00:51:45.220 So I went to see a friend of mine, Javier de Vincenzo, who was a captain.

00:51:48.460 I said, look, how you put the thing on?

00:51:50.100 He looked at me and said, you have never jumped?

00:51:51.440 I said, no.

00:51:52.400 I said, you are nuts.

00:51:53.100 You're going to get killed.

00:51:53.800 I said, bullshit.

00:51:54.360 You know, I got the training already.

00:51:55.740 So let's go to my room and let's jump from a table.

00:51:58.180 My three point of contact.

00:51:59.500 Right.

00:51:59.760 And that's what I did.

00:52:00.620 And then I jumped with them like 13 times.

00:52:02.880 Wow.

00:52:03.220 And I got my wing from the Peruvian police.

00:52:06.480 But then I was supposed to be there two years.

00:52:08.860 Then the military coup of Velasco Alvarado took place in late 1968.

00:52:15.040 And with that, we were surrounded by the army because the police unit was not in agreement with the coup.

00:52:23.020 As a matter of fact, the commander wanted to ask a plane for training.

00:52:26.100 And he was going to jump the police into the presidential palace to regain the presidency to President Belaunda Terry, who was the constitutional president of Peru.

00:52:35.560 And he asked me, Mr. Avairo, will you jump with us?

00:52:37.680 I look at him and say, this is a training exercise, right?

00:52:40.340 The guy said, right.

00:52:41.060 I said, of course, I go with you.

00:52:42.620 But, of course, then the army never sent the airplane for us to train.

00:52:46.160 And then when we rotated for Christmas, because Velasco Alvarado turned to the Soviet Union, all the military assistance was terminated.

00:52:53.660 And that's when I volunteered for Vietnam.

00:52:55.480 I went there in early 1970.

00:53:00.580 Then in 76, were you still with the CIA when you were in Vietnam?

00:53:06.820 Yes.

00:53:07.680 I was with the advisor to the PRU, Provincial Reconnaissance Unit, in Vietnam.

00:53:11.820 Which meant what?

00:53:12.660 What did you do?

00:53:13.420 It was a special paramilitary unit that we had in every single province all over Vietnam.

00:53:19.720 I was assigned to Region 3.

00:53:21.620 Region 3 is the 11 provinces around Saigon, the most important region.

00:53:25.120 And we had every one of those units were former Viet Cong and Chuhoy, people who had turned out from the Viet Cong area. 0.78

00:53:31.340 And they were very effective against the Viet Cong because they knew them. 0.98

00:53:34.300 They knew the tactics and everything.

00:53:36.020 Yeah.

00:53:36.120 So we advised them, we provided them with intelligence, and we run operation with assets from the U.S. Armed Forces against the infrastructure of the Viet Cong in the area.

00:53:45.520 During that time, it was shut down five times.

00:53:47.420 But, you know, I came out fine.

00:53:52.100 Well, eventually I had to be evacuated because of a back problem because of this helicopter accident.

00:53:56.460 You were shot five times, did I hear you say?

00:53:58.860 Yeah.

00:53:59.820 It was during over two years.

00:54:02.100 I spent a whole tour a year and a half.

00:54:03.940 They extended for another year and a half.

00:54:05.340 But then, because of my back problem, they evacuated me back to the United States in April of 1972.

00:54:12.880 And 75 or 76, you leave the CIA.

00:54:17.100 Right.

00:54:17.220 76, I left the CIA.

00:54:18.580 And that's because there was a death threat.

00:54:23.080 Yes.

00:54:24.520 First of all, for example, while I was still there in Vietnam from 1970 to 71,

00:54:30.880 I was called by the U.S. station, told me not to fly directly to Miami because they had a Cuban intelligence defector in Paris

00:54:37.840 who claimed they were going to hijack the plane of the Cuban involved in the assassination of Che Guevara.

00:54:42.620 Wow.

00:54:42.940 So I flew to Atlanta.

00:54:43.980 Even though Cuba wanted him dead.

00:54:47.000 Yes.

00:54:47.300 But today it's a symbol.

00:54:48.620 Right.

00:54:48.960 To be able to get somebody who claimed that their hero was killed.

00:54:53.300 So I did fly to Atlanta, took a car, went back to Atlanta.

00:54:56.540 And they have a cousin in Atlanta.

00:54:57.860 So I stayed, there was a flight going back to Vietnam who left, actually, Dallas, Dallas, San Francisco.

00:55:04.480 And there was another one who was Houston, Houston, San Francisco, an hour later.

00:55:07.720 So I took the one an hour later to stay with my cousin one more hour.

00:55:11.360 When I arrived to Saigon, nobody was waiting for me.

00:55:13.800 So I went to do hotel chains.

00:55:15.280 I got to the U.S. Embassy.

00:55:16.640 And they look at me and say, what are you doing here?

00:55:18.300 I said, I'm supposed to arrive today and nobody was waiting for me.

00:55:20.520 I said, no, no, no.

00:55:21.400 Your plane was hijacked to Cuba.

00:55:23.040 The one we had in the program that you were going to fly from there to San Francisco.

00:55:26.540 So even after when I was evacuated, later on, they sent me to Argentina.

00:55:32.240 What the agency did, they gave me a passport for me and my wife that said that we were born in Colorado.

00:55:36.840 That's the only time I was a born United States citizen for less than a year.

00:55:40.620 Because in case our plane got hijacked, they could reclaim me as a U.S. citizen by birth.

00:55:45.320 And they offered to change your name and change your life and you were like, nah.

00:55:54.760 Yeah, in 75, they assassinated Centeno Anaya, the one who was his advisor in Paris.

00:56:00.100 And they put the so-called Commando Che Guevara.

00:56:02.620 They assassinated a colonel, Roberto Quintanilla in Hamburg, Germany, who was the consul general for Bolivians.

00:56:09.160 Leave the same message, Che Guevara's commando.

00:56:11.600 And then they called my home and using my earliest name, Felix Ramos, you are next.

00:56:16.360 That's what they told me.

00:56:16.960 So I told the agency.

00:56:18.300 So they came back and said, look, we are going to change your name.

00:56:20.660 We're going to send you to another state.

00:56:22.220 But, you know, with two kids at the age that they were, it was a trauma for them to be able to move them from their school,

00:56:28.400 their friends to another unknowing place with a different name.

00:56:31.500 So I told the agency I couldn't do that.

00:56:33.340 So we got to an agreement.

00:56:34.520 And what they did was they built a garage in my home next to my car, which was to stay inside the garage at night.

00:56:41.540 I got a license to carry concealed weapons, which was very difficult at the time to get.

00:56:46.340 They put iron fences in my house all around the area.

00:56:52.800 You know, they gave me a telephone in the car that was, at the time, it was 10 years of waiting period.

00:56:58.040 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:56:58.980 And I actually, when I applied for the phone, they told me, called me in 10 years.

00:57:03.300 I told the agency.

00:57:04.560 And when I called back, the guy said, Mr. Rodriguez, I know who the hell you are.

00:57:07.260 Your phone number is on, so we'll be connected.

00:57:08.980 They answered tomorrow.

00:57:10.000 I got in 48 hours my phone.

00:57:11.920 Wow.

00:57:12.280 I signed a relief.

00:57:13.140 If I got killed connected to service, my family will not claim anything because I refuse what they really consider a security package for me.

00:57:23.560 But they did give you one other thing at the time.

00:57:25.580 They gave you a silver star.

00:57:30.680 When I came from that, they gave me the intelligent star for valor, which is for what they call extraordinary service of heroism from Vietnam.

00:57:38.820 That's amazing.

00:57:39.460 I received like nine cross of gallantry from the Vietnamese Army and also a Naval Medal of Honor from the Vietnamese Navy because I have started the rocketing of the boat of Saigon.

00:57:51.240 I started the rocketing of the city of Saigon, too.

00:57:53.320 That was very, very difficult.

00:57:54.280 Nobody had been able to do that before.

00:57:55.940 How did you do that?

00:57:57.220 Well, the one on the boat was, you know, they were having a unit shooting at the boat whenever they came in.

00:58:02.780 And all those boats coming in were escorted by the Navy Sea Wolf gunship.

00:58:06.520 Whenever they saw the explosion, they never got anything.

00:58:08.840 I was able to capture one of these paramilitary units of the Viet Cong that they call zappers. 0.97

00:58:13.120 And when they had, they had, they put the rocket in a wooden platform and then they run an electrical cable about 50 meters.

00:58:20.200 And they had a point of reference.

00:58:21.560 So whenever they had the point of reference, they, from a 50 meter distance, they activated the rocket who hit the boat.

00:58:26.680 Now, the gunship was hitting the explosion.

00:58:28.680 Nobody was there.

00:58:29.320 So I got on the following day, all the guys from the Navy gunship, I put a red smoke grenade in the middle, a yellow 50 meter on both sides so they can see, take a look at the distance.

00:58:38.400 And from there on, every time they saw an explosion, they would hit on both sides.

00:58:41.480 We never know what they were operating.

00:58:43.020 And they were able to kill like six teams.

00:58:44.560 And they had no idea what was going on.

00:58:46.180 Wow.

00:58:46.320 So we stopped the rocketing of the boat.

00:58:48.540 So we got the Medal of Honor from the Vietnamese Navy.

00:58:51.160 And then the rocketing of the city of Saigon, we couldn't find the people in the unit we were looking for until we captured one guy who told us where they were actually at the base camp.

00:59:01.400 We never looked in that area because it's a very high tide, water of tide.

00:59:04.880 It will go like 15 feet and nobody could live there.

00:59:07.100 So we never looked for them in that area.

00:59:09.300 So this guy told us they had 55-colon drums soldered one on top of the other.

00:59:13.360 So at night, when the water started racing, he would go on top of that drum and live there.

00:59:17.320 When he went down, he walked through the rocket, 122 rocket, into the area of Saigon City and then went back into that hole.

00:59:24.360 So we started looking into that area.

00:59:25.860 And then it was very easy because they were walking and it was fresh mud so we could see the step.

00:59:29.940 We were able to eliminate most of them.

00:59:31.660 And in the 4th of December of 1970, we were able to kill Tutank, the head of the unit that was doing the rocketing of Saigon.

00:59:39.660 And then after that, they were not able to hit one single rock into the city until after I left.

00:59:44.240 So from 1960, 61 to 76,

01:00:10.100 did you ever see or feel at any time that the United States was being dishonorable?

01:00:18.740 No.

01:00:19.920 As a matter of fact, when you talk about the Bay of Pigs, there are some Cubans, especially from the brigade, who claim President Kennedy was a traitor.

01:00:28.820 I don't believe he was a traitor.

01:00:30.280 I believe he was a young president because you are a traitor because you do something purposely.

01:00:34.280 I don't say he purposely wanted the Bay of Pigs to be a failure because it was a failure to his administration.

01:00:38.340 I think it was a young president with no experience and very, very badly advised.

01:00:43.820 And because of my experience with our teammate, after we went to, because when the president received us at the Orange Bowl in late 1962,

01:00:51.500 after he pulled the brigade out, he promised us to give us, return our flag very soon in Free Havana.

01:00:57.420 Actually, I was able to shook the president's hand because he came to say hello to the survivor of the infiltration thing.

01:01:03.520 So I remember shook the president's hand, told him, we shall return.

01:01:06.440 Of course, you know, that was a symbolic thing.

01:01:09.100 And then he opened the Armed Forces of the United States for the brigade.

01:01:12.020 So I was one of the 212 officers from the brigade who went to Fort Benning, Georgia, as a second lieutenant commissioned by the president.

01:01:18.420 When we finished that, our teammate asked me to go with him to a special operation in Central America sponsored by the president.

01:01:26.360 Okay.

01:01:27.200 And I asked him at the time, I said, look, Manolo, you know, what guarantee do I have that the president is behind this operation?

01:01:32.860 He asked me, what guarantee do you need?

01:01:34.620 I said, well, you want me to leave the army and go into this motel to get a training from the CIA on communications?

01:01:39.780 Give it to me in uniform, being paid by the U.S. government.

01:01:42.180 You do that, I'll resign, I'll go with you.

01:01:43.720 So he told me, fine, go and see your supervisor and tell him you want a special communication training.

01:01:48.520 So I go and see this Major Angel Torres, who was a Puerto Rican in charge of training, and say, Major Torres, Lieutenant Rodriguez, I'd like to change to a special communication training.

01:01:56.600 I was supposed to go for intelligence training.

01:01:58.520 So he looked at me and said, look, Lieutenant, first of all, there is no such thing as a special communication training.

01:02:04.180 Second, if it were, there is no time to change.

01:02:06.420 You are going to Fort Hallow in Virginia for intelligence training.

01:02:09.120 And third, who told you?

01:02:10.220 He said, sir, I cannot tell you.

01:02:11.200 He threw me out of his office, which is normal.

01:02:12.560 So I go to Miami on vacation, and about a week later, I got a call from Aurora Street, the recruiting center.

01:02:18.360 Call immediately Major Torres.

01:02:20.100 So I call Major Torres, say, Lieutenant Rodriguez, come to Fort Benning immediately.

01:02:23.580 We have here Mr. Musa, Mr. Flanagan, to give you your special communication training.

01:02:28.140 So I went back to Fort Benning.

01:02:29.700 They got us a room inside the base.

01:02:32.040 I was two other guys that was with me.

01:02:34.100 They gave us the training, and then we resigned to the commission, and we went with him to Central America.

01:02:38.060 But then the president was assassinated.

01:02:40.480 And later on, Johnson told the member of the brigade that the promise of the president to liberate Cuba died with the president.

01:02:46.980 Those who wanted to stay in the armed forces, they were welcome.

01:02:49.800 But there was no longer a commitment to do that.

01:02:52.260 But Bobby Kennedy was very, very much committed on that.

01:02:55.600 Bobby Kennedy was different than his brother.

01:02:57.580 He seemed like a decent guy.

01:03:00.220 When we were working the operation in Central America with our team in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, running raids against Cuba in 64, 65,

01:03:07.500 Bobby Kennedy was what led us on between us and the CIA for that operation.

01:03:11.860 And when the president was assassinated, our teammate went to see him in Washington.

01:03:15.060 And the first two words that he told him said, my brother had two big enemies, the mafia and Fidel Castro.

01:03:20.540 And I believe it was the last one who assassinated him.

01:03:24.820 And what do you think?

01:03:25.940 I think so.

01:03:27.280 I think that the president had...

01:03:28.640 So you don't think that it was Lee Harvey Oswald?

01:03:30.640 It was Lee Harvey Oswald with another shooter who probably was a Cuban captain who was an expert in shooting, 0.99

01:03:38.740 also spoke fluent English, Fabian Escalante, who was in Dallas that day.

01:03:45.140 And then it's documented that he left in a private plane for Mexico after the assassination.

01:03:48.980 Of course, even I saw one time in the paper, one assistant of President Johnson claiming that they did have information from the Bureau of the Cuban participation on the assassination of the president.

01:04:00.360 And they had to cover it up for national security reasons.

01:04:03.020 If they had to admit that a country like Cuba had participated in the assassination of an American president, they had no choice but to invade.

01:04:10.180 And they still had some offensive missile inside Cuba.

01:04:12.560 They didn't want to face that.

01:04:13.640 So they covered that for national security.

01:04:15.200 So I believe that Fabian Escalante was the second shooter.

01:04:18.580 Wow.

01:04:20.480 I mean, you are at event after event after event.

01:04:24.800 You leave 76.

01:04:26.680 Then in 85, you come back and you are part of something that becomes a gigantic deal.

01:04:35.600 The Contra scandal.

01:04:38.540 You were down in El Salvador.

01:04:39.920 Well, actually, when I started that, it had nothing to do with the Contra.

01:04:45.380 I had a helicopter concept that I developed in Vietnam against the guerrillas.

01:04:49.520 It was very effective in Vietnam.

01:04:51.540 And I thought I could do that with the guerrillas in El Salvador.

01:04:55.060 So I turned to my friend Don Greg, who was my boss in Vietnam, who turned out to be then the national security advisor to Vice President Bush.

01:05:01.820 And he knew how effective this concept had been in Vietnam.

01:05:05.060 So he helped me with the administration to get contact.

01:05:08.080 For example, he sent me to talk to Thomas Motley, the Secretary of State for Latin America, Néstor Sánchez, Secretary of Defense for Latin America, to brief them on a concept I wanted to develop in El Salvador.

01:05:19.600 And then I met the head of the Salvadorian Air Force.

01:05:22.240 And I offered my service to, you know, to go there and try to implement this concept.

01:05:26.940 Of course, the general told me and said, fine, he saw my credential every single day.

01:05:30.360 There's a problem.

01:05:30.920 And I said, what's the problem?

01:05:31.780 He said, I cannot pay you.

01:05:33.560 I said, who's asking for pay?

01:05:34.740 I have my retirement from the agency.

01:05:36.060 The only thing that I need is a plate where I can operate from to implement my concept.

01:05:39.680 So he accepted.

01:05:41.220 Now, then there was a problem with General Gorman, three or four-star general of Southcombe, who was in charge of all this military assistance in Latin America.

01:05:48.020 And here is this guy, retired from the CIA, who wants to implement a military concept in his area.

01:05:52.580 Of course, he's of concern.

01:05:54.480 But erroneously, he had been told I was very close to Bush.

01:05:57.240 I was not.

01:05:57.820 I was close to Don Greg.

01:05:58.840 So he asked Admiral, who was in charge of advisor to Vice President Bush, that he wanted to talk to me.

01:06:08.000 So I went to Panama, briefed General Gorman, and then he sent me to El Salvador to brief Ambassador Pickering.

01:06:15.520 And then we all agreed for me to go down there.

01:06:17.420 So I moved into El Salvador to start preparing my helicopter concept.

01:06:21.720 And on the first day of my operation, which I actually programmed for the 17th of April, this date of the Bay of Peaks.

01:06:26.880 But then when the Salvadorians saw the intelligence that was good, they put me back to the 18th of April.

01:06:32.940 On that day, they sent some troops in the ground to the area that I had selected.

01:06:36.220 So when we arrived, there was nobody there.

01:06:38.040 But in the afternoon, we went to another area.

01:06:40.140 And we were lucky that we were able to capture Nidia Diaz, the commander of the PRTC.

01:06:44.780 She was the highest guerrilla commander ever being captured by the Salvadorians.

01:06:48.880 And she was the one who was responsible for the assassination of the Marines at the Zona Rosas in El Salvador.

01:06:55.000 The PRTC was her unit, Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos.

01:06:59.680 So we captured her, and she was then exchanged for President Duarte's daughter, who was kidnapped.

01:07:06.420 And she went to leave in Cuba.

01:07:08.000 Then she went back to El Salvador.

01:07:09.280 Now she's a congresswoman in El Salvador to this day.

01:07:12.660 From there on, the operation was very, very effective.

01:07:15.100 You met Ali North at this time, right?

01:07:18.860 Yeah, I had met him one time sent by a guy from the State Department to meet him in Washington.

01:07:24.260 But I had nothing to do with him at all.

01:07:26.280 But then what happened was, Glenn, at the end of 1986, at the end of 1985, he had a problem with some weapon that he had bought in Portugal for Honduras.

01:07:38.240 And Honduras had stopped all the operation in there because Calero's brother, who was the head of the country at the time, brought a plane from New Orleans with a uniform and things like that.

01:07:48.080 And he got a crew of television on the plane.

01:07:50.600 And they landed in Palmeirola Military Airfield.

01:07:53.300 So when the Honduras saw that, they were mad because, you know, everybody knew they were helping, but not that open to have a plane land at their military base and have the crew film everything.

01:08:01.340 So they sent the plane back with everything, including the crew, and they stopped the operation.

01:08:06.800 And North had a plane, a southern airplane in Portugal, loaded with weapons.

01:08:12.700 He could not bring it.

01:08:13.380 It was costing him a lot of money.

01:08:15.020 So he knew I had been very successful in El Salvador with the operation I was.

01:08:18.560 So he asked me if I could ask the Salvadorian to storage all of these military weapons coming from Portugal.

01:08:25.060 So I went to see the head of the Air Force.

01:08:26.920 He sent me to talk to the Minister of Defense.

01:08:28.740 I convinced them, and they allowed to do that.

01:08:30.800 Because that's how I got involved later on with the Iran-Contra thing.

01:08:33.800 They used the, brought the plane to our area.

01:08:35.860 They had storage there.

01:08:36.920 Then they asked me if they could do the maintenance of the aircraft in El Salvador, and they would provide everything.

01:08:41.680 So, you know, they agreed, and that's how I got involved in the Iran-Contra thing.

01:08:45.540 But Senator Kennedy, or Kerry.

01:08:48.360 Oh, don't talk to me about it.

01:08:49.380 I hate that son of a f***.

01:08:52.100 I'll tell you what I have.

01:08:52.840 Tell me what you really feel.

01:08:54.340 Okay.

01:08:56.180 Because of that, I had to testify in Congress.

01:08:58.240 They called me as a witness to testify in Congress.

01:09:02.920 I testify on the 27th, 28th of May, 1987, in open hearing in Congress.

01:09:09.060 During that time, there was one, actually, Republican senator who asked me if I had any information about the Sandinistas involved in narco-trafficking.

01:09:16.800 In early 1985, a police officer, a friend of mine who was in Daconic Police, who had a private company, then asked me to meet this guy, who was a money launderer for the Medellin cartel, who claimed that he could compromise the Nicaraguan resistance in narco-trafficking.

01:09:32.300 But he said he wanted to deal with the DEA, with the FBI, because they were penetrated.

01:09:35.940 He wanted to deal with somebody from the CIA or from the vice president's office who had to do with narco-trafficking.

01:09:40.980 So I met this guy, whose name was Ramón Milán Rodríguez.

01:09:44.100 He claimed he had a tape from an assistant of Daniel Ortega, who called him from Guatemala, asking him to jump bail to set up a money laundering operation for them out of Panama.

01:09:53.980 So I mentioned that during the hearing.

01:09:56.200 Kerry, who heard that, sent his assistant, Jack Blom, to find out where this guy was.

01:10:01.260 Now, Ramón Milán Rodríguez, this time, was in a federal prison with 45 years because of his narco-trafficking thing.

01:10:07.880 Because he was picked up in Miami with $10 million of the drug cartel to fly to Panama.

01:10:11.940 So they went to see him.

01:10:13.820 And what I understand, they told the guy, if you can compromise the vice president through Felix, it has to be true. 0.98

01:10:19.220 You cannot lie to us.

01:10:20.660 But if you can compromise the vice president through Felix, we are going to lower your sentence.

01:10:25.360 So the guy come back and say, oh, yeah, Felix was a patriot.

01:10:27.720 He didn't touch a penny of this thing.

01:10:29.460 But he got from us $10 million from the cartel for the contrast.

01:10:33.220 And in exchange, the vice president was going to be lenient with the Medellin cartel, which is ridiculous.

01:10:39.020 So after I testify in Congress, I am back in El Salvador.

01:10:41.940 And I am flying with the Salvadorian Air Force.

01:10:43.900 And my wife called me pre-upset.

01:10:45.820 It was my picture on the front page of the Miami Herald.

01:10:48.140 When I was in the Army as a second lieutenant, I claimed I received $10 million from the Medellin cartel.

01:10:52.920 I said, Ross, you know, that's BS.

01:10:54.800 He said, no, no, no.

01:10:55.440 You also have a subpoena from Senator Kerry's committee.

01:10:58.400 So I asked her to send this subpoena to El Salvador.

01:11:00.380 I got the subpoena.

01:11:02.200 I called his office.

01:11:03.820 I didn't talk to him.

01:11:04.580 Of course, I talked to an assistant.

01:11:05.680 I said, look, you don't need a subpoena with me.

01:11:07.240 But send the ticket in Easter because I'm doing mileage.

01:11:09.660 I'll go there and I'll talk to you.

01:11:12.440 So they sent the ticket in Easter.

01:11:14.020 I flew to Washington.

01:11:15.520 He was the majority of this committee in narcotrafficking and special operation.

01:11:20.160 And the minority was Mitch McConnell.

01:11:22.260 So there was an assistant, Mitch McConnell, a Jack Blum on behalf of Senator Kerry.

01:11:26.640 They deposed me for over four hours.

01:11:28.360 At the end of our testimony, we wanted an open hearing.

01:11:32.160 There's nothing to hide.

01:11:33.700 They wanted a closed hearing.

01:11:35.120 You say, why?

01:11:35.780 I retired back in 1976.

01:11:38.120 We're talking something that happened in 1985.

01:11:41.340 What is this secrecy?

01:11:42.620 No, he didn't want the truth to come out.

01:11:44.360 So they insisted on a closed hearing.

01:11:45.940 So it had to be a closed hearing.

01:11:47.540 So we went to a closed hearing.

01:11:48.820 I recall there were all the senators around.

01:11:50.240 They asked me if I wanted to say something.

01:11:52.080 So I look at Kerry and his face and say, Senator, this will be the hardest testimony of my life.

01:11:55.940 I already have testified in Congress today without a lawyer, without immunity.

01:12:00.380 I said, why do you say that, Mr. Rodriguez?

01:12:01.920 I said, Senator, it's very difficult to have to answer questions for somebody that you do not respect.

01:12:06.280 I don't respect you and what you are doing here.

01:12:08.600 Boy, he blew his top.

01:12:09.720 Oh, I bet he did.

01:12:10.820 Not because we disagree with you.

01:12:12.280 We are less patriotic than you are.

01:12:13.620 I said, Senator, you didn't even have the courage to throw your own medals when you were protesting the Vietnam War.

01:12:18.920 Mr. Rodriguez, I don't believe you see everything in the press.

01:12:21.340 I said, Senator, I know that a hell of a lot better than you do.

01:12:24.120 Then he told me, that was a veteran who asked me to throw his medal.

01:12:26.700 I said, bull****.

01:12:27.520 Everybody's perception was it was your medal that were throwing over the White House fans.

01:12:31.500 So we went back and forth.

01:12:32.520 It didn't go very nicely.

01:12:33.920 We finished the hearing, closed hearing.

01:12:35.840 For 10 months, my uncle asked for an open hearing.

01:12:38.360 He would not give it to us.

01:12:39.720 Until Senator Mitch McConnell called me and asked me if I will go to Washington and ask on a press conference and open hearing.

01:12:46.820 So I did.

01:12:47.280 I went to Washington.

01:12:48.620 We had a hearing.

01:12:49.860 Not a hearing.

01:12:50.420 We had a press conference at the Senate.

01:12:52.160 And there I had a statement where I explained every detail of my connection with Ramon Millian Rodriguez, everything that transpired.

01:13:00.300 And at the end, I wrote, I hope this is for honest purposes and not for the political reason of Senator Kerry.

01:13:05.760 So on the following day, he gave us an open hearing.

01:13:09.380 On Friday.

01:13:10.540 That's the only day of the week they don't have any cameras in the Senate.

01:13:14.140 Yeah.

01:13:14.420 There was no cameras.

01:13:15.240 I was the last witness, which means by the time I went to testify, 90% of the press was already gone.

01:13:21.200 And there he apologized to me.

01:13:22.740 Oh, then he asked me, will you take a light detector test?

01:13:25.380 I said, of course, but I want you to give you one, too, because this is political.

01:13:28.060 I said, well, I won't take one.

01:13:28.960 I said, well, if you don't take one, I won't take one either.

01:13:31.100 But if you take a light detector test, I'll take it.

01:13:32.980 So he didn't.

01:13:33.480 So I didn't.

01:13:34.340 So that was the end of that.

01:13:35.220 Then he asked for, which is great.

01:13:37.540 He asked for one of the best polygraph operators in the country, Dr. Rafkin from the University of Utah.

01:13:43.940 They gave Ramon Millian Rodriguez a light detector test.

01:13:46.720 First question.

01:13:47.400 Did Mr. Rodriguez solicit for you $10 million from the drug cartel?

01:13:50.500 Yes.

01:13:51.260 Deceptive.

01:13:51.800 He was lying.

01:13:52.860 Second question.

01:13:53.740 Did Mr. Rodriguez gave you couriers in Central America to channelize this $10 million?

01:13:57.820 Yes.

01:13:58.640 Deceptive.

01:13:59.120 He was lying.

01:14:00.200 Third question.

01:14:00.900 Did Mr. Rodriguez receive in any way or form any money from the Medellin cartel?

01:14:05.640 Ramon Millian Rodriguez refused to continue with the light detector test.

01:14:09.260 How is Senator Kerry writing the congressional testimony?

01:14:12.420 First two, he has no choice.

01:14:13.780 On the third, he writes.

01:14:15.040 On the third question, whether Mr. Rodriguez received any money from the Medellin cartel,

01:14:19.480 the operator could not determine the veracity of the question.

01:14:22.460 And he leave it like that.

01:14:23.620 Wow.

01:14:23.860 So you listen to that, you say, well, maybe some truth to it.

01:14:25.840 But they never tell you that it didn't determine anything because the guy refused to continue with the light detector test.

01:14:30.880 That's why I hate the son of a bitch so much.

01:14:32.460 So let me just ask one, you know, 60 minutes question.

01:14:37.980 So what did you do with the $10 million?

01:14:41.220 That's what my wife has to ask me.

01:14:44.940 Why are we still living here, Felix?

01:14:47.300 If you have $10 million, I wouldn't be here now.

01:14:49.300 That's right.

01:14:49.900 That's right.

01:14:50.400 When the Berlin Wall fell, what went through your mind?

01:14:59.640 A lot of us thought that Cuba was going to be next, really.

01:15:03.180 And then, because of special circumstances, it didn't.

01:15:08.840 The Cuban intelligence has maintained a tremendous force in control in the island.

01:15:16.960 They went to a special period.

01:15:18.900 And then Venezuela came to supply the money that was cut off by the Soviet Union.

01:15:23.420 Did you foresee this resurgence of socialism like it like like is happening now?

01:15:42.900 I mean, the Venezuelans, that was a prosperous country.

01:15:49.220 It had its problems, but it was a prosperous country.

01:15:52.080 And they have just destroyed it, just destroyed it.

01:15:56.440 And people are starving.

01:15:58.960 Absolutely.

01:16:00.620 Let me tell you, that was a factor in the election in Costa Rica a few years ago.

01:16:05.520 Now, the leftist candidate who was in front of the polls, ahead of the traditional candidate in Costa Rica,

01:16:14.240 who was a sympathizer of Hugo Chavez, what the opposition did, they just started putting movies of Venezuela.

01:16:21.400 Here's Venezuela before socialism.

01:16:23.840 Here's Venezuela with socialism.

01:16:25.840 That guy didn't even go to the second round.

01:16:28.400 Wow.

01:16:29.020 He lost completely.

01:16:29.780 How do you feel about, I don't want to talk about politics per se, but none of the, or maybe there's one, of the Democratic candidates,

01:16:41.420 they won't say that they're free market based.

01:16:44.460 Many of them are saying that they're Democratic socialists.

01:16:48.100 It's amazing.

01:16:49.100 I don't know how anybody can believe in socialism after what happened in Cuba and what happened,

01:16:52.700 what's happening in Venezuela.

01:16:53.920 Like you say, the richest country in Latin America.

01:16:56.800 Cuba, in 1958, was one of the most prosperous nations in the continent.

01:17:03.340 They were the number two or three in the whole hemisphere.

01:17:08.040 I would tell people that come back from Cuba that they would not believe that during that time,

01:17:11.880 people would look at the newspaper to find out where the meat was cheaper.

01:17:14.880 No, there was meat that was cheaper.

01:17:16.500 They cannot understand that to be true because of the lack of everything in those countries.

01:17:21.780 But socialism destroyed the insensitive of people to work and destroyed the economy.

01:17:29.460 Nobody could have perceived that Venezuela with all the resources, the richest oil in the country in Latin America,

01:17:35.640 with the richest, largest reserve in oil nationwide, worldwide, could be the way it is today.

01:17:41.440 When they destroyed the private sector, they destroyed the capacity of people to really progress.

01:17:47.660 And it's amazing.

01:17:48.860 Are you optimistic for America or pessimistic?

01:17:56.020 I'm optimistic in a way.

01:17:57.520 I worry a little bit about what's going on, you know, like Bernie Sanders and all of this.

01:18:03.640 And I cannot believe the young people that support him.

01:18:06.900 He's declared socialist.

01:18:08.560 And look what socialism has done.

01:18:09.740 They should understand from history what's happened to this socialist country.

01:18:14.680 It has never worked.

01:18:16.200 It destroyed the economy.

01:18:17.620 It destroyed the...

01:18:18.660 What they do equally is bring poverty to everybody.

01:18:21.780 It's what they do.

01:18:22.660 That's the only equality that they bring.

01:18:24.900 And it's amazing that there were people that would support guys like him.

01:18:29.280 But I understand also there's a lot of American universities who have very lefty professors.

01:18:33.440 And they have been watching those people for years and years and years.

01:18:37.660 And that's why they really believe that socialism can work.

01:18:40.480 When in reality, we all know it doesn't work.

01:18:43.460 They'll point to Sweden and say, that's a socialized country.

01:18:49.700 They'll point to Sweden or, you know, the Netherlands and say, oh, this is a socialist.

01:18:57.100 Yeah, but we are not Sweden.

01:18:58.360 We are American.

01:18:59.380 That's the difference.

01:19:00.400 What's the difference?

01:19:01.160 The mentality, the people that we were formed here from different countries, the way we operate,

01:19:08.640 and the freedom that we have in here, the opportunity that we have people to progress in this country,

01:19:14.660 you don't see anywhere else in the world.

01:19:16.660 It all depends on you.

01:19:17.540 What I tell people is people should have the opportunity to progress.

01:19:22.440 They should have the opportunity for a school and all of that thing.

01:19:26.260 So they can...

01:19:26.920 But they can depend on you.

01:19:27.780 You cannot expect everybody...

01:19:29.860 Like, put an example of two brothers, one that work like hell from 8 o'clock in the morning,

01:19:33.760 12 o'clock at 9, the other one doesn't do anything.

01:19:35.600 You cannot expect both of them to have the same thing at the end of the month.

01:19:39.740 Right.

01:19:40.200 Because one have earned it, the other one has not.

01:19:42.720 Opportunity you should have, but then it depends on you as an individual.

01:19:45.000 You've lived in exile your whole life, almost your whole life.

01:19:50.260 Do you feel like you're an exile, or do you feel now just all American?

01:20:00.040 For many years, I always wanted...

01:20:02.760 And we all respect this country very much.

01:20:04.700 It gave us what we didn't have down there.

01:20:06.580 We love America.

01:20:07.360 But for many years, I thought, you know, I wanted to go back to Cuba to live in there. 0.89

01:20:11.880 Eventually, when that changed.

01:20:13.660 After so many years, my son and my daughter were born here.

01:20:18.180 We have a granddaughter going to university.

01:20:21.120 We have a grandson.

01:20:23.060 And now all my...

01:20:24.440 You know, I would just visit there.

01:20:26.180 And I consider America more my home than really in reality.

01:20:29.660 Tell me what you think is going to happen to Cuba.

01:20:35.260 It's hard to say it right now.

01:20:36.720 With the pass away of Fidel, and now the probability of passing away of Raul,

01:20:41.300 they will have to face a reality.

01:20:43.320 I don't think they will be able to maintain what they have today.

01:20:46.420 It could evolve.

01:20:48.540 I mean, nobody knows whether it's going to be a long time or a short time.

01:20:51.400 It could change drastically.

01:20:53.140 Drastically.

01:20:53.500 Especially now, if it looks like, in a way, Venezuela goes down from communism into a democracy.

01:21:01.420 And if it does, it will stop the barrel of oil that they are giving Cuba for free. 0.71

01:21:06.420 Okay?

01:21:06.840 And they won't be able to maintain that at all.

01:21:08.800 They will be forced to go to have changes.

01:21:11.720 Hopefully, then, we could start working on a democracy as we know it.

01:21:17.740 Felix, thank you.

01:21:20.400 It has been a real pleasure being with you here.

01:21:22.180 It is remarkable to meet a man that has been at the center of so much of American history.

01:21:31.520 Thank you, sir.

01:21:32.080 Thank you.

01:21:38.500 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

01:21:42.800 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:21:52.180 See you next time.

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The Glenn Beck Program - May 04, 2019

Ep 35 ｜ Félix Rodríguez ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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