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00:00In a world gripped by tyranny, where power knows no bounds and liberty is seemingly beyond grasp, defiant freedom fighters emerge from the shadows to challenge the status quo.
00:12With unwavering determination, risking all and defying the odds, these are the stories of those who plotted the downfall of some of the world's most notorious regimes.
00:22Can a group of unlikely heroes change the course of history and successfully kill a dictator?
00:30To be continued...
00:59In 1971, throngs of journalists and news crews have gathered for an historical announcement by one of the world's most infamous leaders.
01:08But amongst the journalists, a hidden threat lies in wait. A conspiracy decades in the making.
01:14So this is a multi-leveled assassination plot. Therefore, it's got to work.
01:21For years, a network of spies, counter-revolutionaries, and underworld figures have plotted in the shadows, lying in wait to strike their deadly blow.
01:30It is not easy to get access to a dictator. It is not easy to get access to a man who is constantly surrounded by security.
01:40The plan is anything but simple. A multi-pronged attack to take down one of the most hated and powerful men in the Western Hemisphere.
01:48This isn't just an act of political opposition. This is an act of personal obsession.
01:54The primary plot is both brazen and ingenious. With the whole world watching, the assassins move on their target.
02:02This is the daring plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, the charismatic leader of Cuba.
02:09If successful, the consequences will extend far beyond the shores of this tiny Caribbean island.
02:14It will send shockwaves that will reverberate across the entire globe.
02:19For centuries, this island, situated around 90 miles off the coast of the United States, has seen its fair share of conquerors and tyrants.
02:31From 1511 to 1898, Cuba is part of the Kingdom of Spain.
02:37The island is known for its thriving sugar plantations that generate untold wealth for the Spanish crown.
02:43But this all comes to an end after the Spanish-American War.
02:47The United States very much sees itself as an imperial power, that it's competing with European great powers for imperial dominance.
02:57Cuba and the Caribbean are very much part of what the United States sees as its imperial sphere of influence.
03:03Now Cuba becomes, quote, independent, at least of Spain.
03:09The United States is now this very heavy presence.
03:13And during the early 20th century, that presence is seen to permeate corruption within the fabric of the Republic of Cuba,
03:22entwining politics with personal gain for the Cuban and American elites.
03:27A cycle of corrupt leaders rises and falls until a disillusioned military leader stages a coup d'etat.
03:33On March 10th, 1952, Fuliencio Batista IzaldÃvar, a former president of Cuba, seizes power, establishing himself as the de facto dictator of the island,
03:45while maintaining close ties with his wealthy neighbor.
03:49Batista, of course, is very cooperative with the United States.
03:53He's good for business.
03:54And most big business in Cuba is American-owned, particularly sugar.
04:00The United States has this huge hunger for sugar.
04:03There's a lot of money involved there.
04:06Cuba becomes a playground of sorts for the United States.
04:11It's a place where organized crime sets up shop.
04:13It's a place where big companies run the tourist industry and extract wealth,
04:19while leaving the vast majority of Cubans desperately poor.
04:23And so this kind of cooperation secures Batista a nice private income and bribes,
04:29and it makes the United States very politically friendly and protective of Batista.
04:35Under Batista's iron fist, corruption continues to thrive, and the people suffer.
04:41Many Cubans of all political stripes oppose Batista,
04:44but none of them are as forceful as the young lawyer turned revolutionary Fidel Castro.
04:53Fidel Castro was born in Biran, in the southeast of Cuba, to a wealthy Spanish farmer.
05:01While a member of the privileged class, his ideological leanings begin to shift
05:06during his law studies at the University of Havana.
05:10While at university, Fidel is exposed to leftist ideals.
05:14This is a time where the seeds of what is to come are sowed in Fidel Castro.
05:20In 1947, driven by anti-imperialist ideals, Castro joins an abortive attempt by Dominican exiles and Cubans
05:29to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow its ruling dictator.
05:34He then takes part in urban riots that break out in Bogota, Colombia, in April 1948.
05:40After his graduation, Castro began to practice law and becomes a member of the reformist Cuban People's Party.
05:46Hoping to be elected to government, in 1952, his plans are thwarted by Batista's coup d'etat.
05:53A year later, on July 26th, hoping to spark a popular uprising, Castro plans and carries out a failed attack on a Cuban military barracks.
06:04He is captured and sent to prison for 15 years.
06:07It is during that time that some of those leftist ideals become ingrained in Fidel Castro,
06:14and he starts to realize that the way forward is by bringing about a communist revolution.
06:22Approximately two years later, as a desire to present a more conciliatory image, Batista declares a political amnesty.
06:29Fidel is released and chooses to exile himself in Mexico.
06:32Here, he persists in his campaign against the Batista regime, collaborating with fellow Cuban dissidents.
06:39And on December 2nd, 1956, Castro and his revolutionaries return to Cuba to conduct the guerrilla warfare campaign
06:46against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra, a mountain range in the southeast of Cuba,
06:52slowly gaining support for his cause.
06:54His guerrillas start providing services to peasants, to people in rural places that are ignored by the government.
07:05So his popularity is beginning to grow in the countryside, and eventually he gets the kind of momentum
07:10that allows him to come into Havana, and Batista has to run, has to get out of there.
07:17Through strategic maneuvers and tactical brilliance, Castro's forces overthrow Batista in 1959.
07:24Cuba is now in the hands of Fidel Castro.
07:27One of his first acts is to offer his neighbor a hand in friendship.
07:32Castro goes to the Americans seeking support.
07:36The Americans, in a Cold War mindset, want to exclude anything that has the whiff of socialism.
07:42And so this is ultimately what drives Castro towards the Soviets.
07:46So the Cuban Revolution is not an isolated movement.
07:50It's connected to a much larger issue, and that's the Cold War.
07:56The Cold War is a war of ideas.
07:59The United States of America is propounding liberalism.
08:03It wants to promote democracy.
08:05It wants to stand for the protection of human rights.
08:08The Russians, on the other hand, are being painted as individuals who are taking away those civic and political rights.
08:14This contest of ideas, liberalism versus communism, the United States, the USSR, is essentially what the Cold War is.
08:22While not directly in combat, thanks to the fears of a world-ending nuclear war, these two superpowers play out their struggle on the world stage, fighting a clandestine war for the hearts and minds of entire nations, including Cuba.
08:37For the United States in particular, the Western Hemisphere is extremely important, partially because these are countries that the United States was trading with.
08:46The biggest fear that Americans have is the so-called domino theory, that if you let communism take hold in one country, communists will spread like a virus to the next one, next one, next one.
08:59With Cuba now in control by the anti-Western imperialist Castro, many in the United States fear he harbors hidden sympathies for the Soviet Union.
09:09In the high-stakes game of the Cold War, having a Soviet ally this close to their shores is unacceptable to the Americans.
09:17Something must be done.
09:19There was that fear that just right there at the doorstep to America would be this communist stronghold, and that would upset the power balance in the U.S.-Russia world game.
09:27The biggest potential threat is stationing nuclear missiles right off America's coast.
09:33Fidel Castro's ascent to power triggers alarm bells within the covert corridors of the CIA, igniting a web of intrigue at the center of which is CIA Director Alan Dulles and Co-Director Richard M. Bissell.
09:47CIA head Alan Dulles was fixated on the idea that Cuba could become an epicenter of revolution throughout the American sphere of influence.
09:56There are also economic reasons why the Americans wanted Castro out.
10:11Early on, the Castro regime began to nationalize Cuba's industries, including the incredibly lucrative sugar trade.
10:18American business interests that once owned large parts of Cuba's industries are expelled.
10:23All their vast investments are gone.
10:26And now the United States realizes that he is hostile to our interests, and maybe he needs to go.
10:33Sensing a growing urgency, high-ranking U.S. foreign policy officials engage in secretive deliberations, crafting plans to overthrow the Castro government as early as December 1959.
10:46The CIA receives formal authorization for a covert operation against the Castro regime signed by President Eisenhower on March 17, 1960.
10:57There are lots of people who should be unhappy about the government.
11:01Let's see if we can support them, and then they can do the actions.
11:05And we're not there. It's not us.
11:08And what the CIA does is they decide to use Cuban exiles.
11:12When Castro came into power in 1959, thousands of Cubans fled to Miami and elsewhere to avoid a communist state.
11:19Many were forced to.
11:21You've got motivated people that have a reason different than your own for wanting him gone.
11:26The CIA decides to use them, and they take them to Guatemala for training bases.
11:31And they train them in everything from armed combat to assassination, espionage, intelligence gathering, but also in propaganda.
11:41As the operation unfolds, the first strike is to undermine Castro's public image.
11:46The CIA hopes that in doing so, the Cuban people will lose faith in their new leader and overthrow him.
11:52These plans range from conventional propaganda to the absurd.
11:56The concept of affecting Castro's image as a way of weakening his power makes sense.
12:02Some of the plans to how to do it and operationalize it.
12:06There was this idea of putting thallium into his shoes.
12:10That would cause all his hair to fall out.
12:12You've got to remember that the Castro movement were known as the Barbudos, the bearded ones.
12:19If we can show people Castro's real face, his little baby face, people might not be as charismatically influenced by him.
12:28Due to the unpredictability of the chemical compounds and Castro's unpredictability, the CIA abandons these complex plots.
12:37As the clock ticks, the CIA chooses a more conventional way to neutralize Castro before the dictator becomes a bigger threat to their interests.
12:45So Castro definitely has a dark side. Castro is ruthless and he cracks down on all facets of Cuban society.
12:54People are rounded up, mass jailings, execution, expulsions. And what that does is it serves to build a resistance.
13:04There are a lot of people that want to see Castro dead. But his cruelty and ruthlessness also have another side.
13:11He's so brutal that a lot of people are afraid to try to revolt against him or to rise up against him because of what would happen to them and their families.
13:20He would kill everyone.
13:23Meanwhile, the CIA undertakes Project ZR Rifle, a discreet initiative designed for strategic actions,
13:29including the potential elimination of foreign leaders deemed as adversaries.
13:34It was the first time in a non-hot war environment that an intelligence agency inside the United States had set out an explicit program designed to remove people from power.
13:48Fearing international repercussions, particularly from the United Nations, the plan remains shrouded in the highest levels of secrecy.
13:56To this end, plausible deniability becomes the guiding principle of American clandestine operations, ensuring that responsibility can be disavowed if necessary.
14:07The premise of plausible deniability is that I can throw my hands up and say it wasn't us.
14:13Everybody might see through it, but in general, there's not enough proof depended on you from a legal, judicial perspective.
14:21The United States was presenting itself globally as the defender of human rights and democracy.
14:28And so to be seen as targeting leaders for assassination, interfering in the sovereignty of other countries was a bad look.
14:37That's what Soviets did, not Americans.
14:39In their hidden conflict against Castro, the CIA forms an unlikely alliance, turning to a group of organized criminals engaged in various illicit activities across the U.S., such as extortion, racketeering and smuggling.
14:54I literally think they were sitting around going, well, who do we know that can do this?
14:59Well, the mafia kills people all the time.
15:01I know that the mafia is already angry at Castro.
15:04I think it could add to the plausible deniability because now you've got a narrative you can tell the public about why the mafia cared.
15:11He expelled, basically, organized crime.
15:14He seized the casinos.
15:16The brothels are all shut down.
15:19You know, the challenge for organized crime is if we take this guy out, how does that help us to come back?
15:24The next guy isn't going to necessarily let us come back.
15:27We need a partner.
15:29And what better partner than the U.S. government and the CIA?
15:31To establish contact with the influential mafia bosses, the CIA enlists Johnny Rosselli, a key member of the mafia's Las Vegas Syndicate.
15:41Acting as a crucial intermediary, Rosselli gains access to the inner circle.
15:46Meanwhile, Robert Mayhew, a representative of international businesses in Cuba seized by Castro, emerges as the go-between for the CIA, mafia and American big business.
15:57Mayhew is somebody that can connect mafia, intelligence, the CIA, all for the joint purpose, politics makes for strange bedfellows after all, of removing Fidel Castro.
16:10In a clandestine meeting on September 14th, 1960, held in a New York City hotel, Mayhew and the CIA present an offer to Rosselli, a sum of 150,000 U.S. dollars for the removal of Castro.
16:23All these forces, the mafia, the government, big business, internal dissent, all these things are now aligning against this one figure, Fidel Castro.
16:36The guy should be dead very quickly.
16:39The mafia proposes a sinister plan to carry out the mission, poison pills.
16:43The CIA develops a poison pill. But how do you get close to Castro? Enter Juan Orta. He worked with Castro. He's an intimate. He can get access to him. So the idea is to put a poison pill in Castro's coffee.
16:57Juan Orta Cordova was a corrupt official in Castro's government, but was in debt to the mafia.
17:03They spent months getting this guy geared up, recruiting him, supplying him. And the moment an opportunity comes, he chickens out.
17:12While the mafia faces setbacks in their initial attempt on Castro, the CIA leans on one of their best to get the job done.
17:20David Attlee Phillips, chief of Western Hemisphere Division. He had tremendous experience in World War II and post-World War II in covert action.
17:27David Phillips recruits a number of Cuban exiles to facilitate the ending of Castro's reign. One of the most dedicated to the cause is a man named Antonio Vesiana, a prominent figure in the anti-Castro Cuban exile community.
17:43This is a man who lost all of his economic wealth at the time when the sugar industry was nationalized in Cuba. And he really has it out for Fidel Castro.
17:51Soon after meeting Phillips, Vesiana undergoes an intense two to three week course in psychological warfare and sabotage. But Vesiana is not the only Cuban undergoing intense training.
18:03So if you're going to use exiled Cubans to overthrow the government, ultimately that's likely going to take place in an armed insurrection. So we set up training camps in order to begin to turn these exiles into soldiers.
18:16Again, deniability is so important that it's not connected to the U.S. It has to be this kind of indigenous revolution. Basic premise was that the moment they land, the entire Cuban nation will rise up against Castro.
18:34In fact, it's called Pollyanna syndrome. You just won't look at the reality that Castro is very popular.
18:39On April 17, 1961, more than 1400 anti-Castro paramilitaries embarked from Guatemala and Nicaragua, sailing toward their destination.
18:50Under the cover of night, the main invasion force lands at Playa Heron, a village on the southern coast of Cuba located in the Bay of Pigs.
18:58However, thanks to tips from the Soviet KGB and informants inside the anti-Castro movement in Miami, Castro knew the invasion was coming and prepared for a counterattack.
19:10Less than 24 hours after the invasion, Castro personally assumes command of over 20,000 Cuban troops, and within three days, the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces crush the invasion.
19:27So the Bay of Pigs invasion is doomed from the start. First off, we did not have the military plan it. The military should plan a military invasion. The CIA planned it, and they don't have experience in that, and thus they got everything wrong.
19:43It's low tide, which means the rafts hit the reefs, the rafts flip. A lot of men, their guns are at the bottom of the water. They come dragging ashore. The Cubans are tipped off. Castro's waiting for them.
19:53People do not rise up, but the Cuban militia does.
19:57The planners fail to realize that there's a one-hour time difference in the time zones, so everything is off by an hour.
20:03And even the then president of the United States pulls the plug.
20:07John F. Kennedy, he gets cold feet on the morning of the invasion and calls the air support off.
20:13All that dooms this mission, and it becomes one of the biggest embarrassments, arguably, in the Cold War in American military history.
20:21It showed America's hand when precisely the point was to keep things under the radar.
20:27There is proof or evidence now that the United States of America is involving itself in regime change in the Central Americas.
20:35It allows for people around the world to call out the United States on its double standards and its hypocrisy.
20:40Dictators always benefit from the sense of external threats, and when that shows up on your doorstep, it is exploited.
20:48It gave Castro the ability to claim that the Americans wanted him dead and wanted to end the revolution, and this caused people to rally around him.
20:58Kennedy, however, realizes the mistake, and he does something honorable, and that is he owns up.
21:04He pretty much accepts responsibility, which is something politicians rarely do.
21:08However, behind the scenes, heads roll.
21:10He removes a lot of the leaders from the intelligence community and the people that planned in it.
21:15CIA, at this moment in time, is really angry at Kennedy.
21:18They're angry that some of the promises that had been made outside of CIA to deliver on resources during Bay of Pigs didn't happen.
21:26Castro's forces completely annihilate or capture all the insurgents who are trying to overthrow the government.
21:33Kennedy cuts a deal with Castro to try to get these exiles back in exchange for medicine, food, and all sorts of goods, but also a pledge.
21:41The United States will not overthrow the Castro regime.
21:45However, what Kennedy does not make is a pledge that we won't try to assassinate him.
21:50The Kennedy administration takes on an aggressive stance in its quest to overthrow Castro, following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
21:59Leading the effort is President Kennedy's brother and Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy.
22:04Kennedy spearheads a clandestine operation dubbed Operation Mongoose.
22:10The operation promotes sabotage and assassination as its primary tools to remove Castro.
22:16The plan is to take Castro out at his presidential palace in Havana in October 1961.
22:22Again, David Atlee Phillips is put in charge of the operation together with Cuban exile Antonio Veziana.
22:29The CIA is thinking a few things.
22:31One, it needs to be low cost.
22:33Two, it needs to be low stakes.
22:35Three, it needs to be something that does not necessarily get tied back to the CIA.
22:41In April of 1961, the CIA operative Phillips, with an air of urgency, instructs Veziana to organize an audacious assassination plot against Fidel Castro within the heart of Havana.
22:54Castro is a media hound.
22:56The joke is the most dangerous place in the world is between Castro and a camera.
23:00Castro can't resist long speeches and publicity.
23:03Consequently, whenever dignitaries visit the presidential palace, Castro has a big ceremony.
23:08He's highly visible.
23:09So what the plotters decide is you rent a place across the street, giving him a direct line of sight.
23:15Veziana smuggled his way back into Cuba and is ready to strike.
23:19The conspirators have an apartment strategically rented near the northern terrace of the presidential palace.
23:24Soon they get to hear that a lavish reception is being held in the palace in October.
23:29The plotters know Fidel will be there, and the time to strike is now.
23:33So the idea is, it's very easy.
23:36We'll just fire a bazooka rocket, take him out.
23:40Done.
23:42The bazooka, I cannot explain. I don't know what they were thinking.
23:46If you're sitting in an apartment and your backblast area is not clear, you're going to blow a hole through that wall,
23:53maybe the wall behind it, and incinerate everything and anybody that's in the way of that backblast.
23:58And everybody's going to know where this happened from and at least some level of who did it.
24:03Imagine the thousands of people in the street, the explosion, the carnage.
24:07There would be nothing left of Fidel Castro.
24:09For Castro's supporters, a public assassination would make a martyr out of him.
24:14For his critics, it posed the risk of presenting them as extremists, as terrorists.
24:21Not a good plan, a poorly thought out plan.
24:23Despite the risks, the plotters are going ahead with their audacious and dramatic plot.
24:28The opportunity to take out Castro is too good to pass up.
24:32However, when the evening of the attack comes, tension breaks out in the apartment.
24:36The guy is going to fire the bazooka. His mother-in-law has been living in the apartment and is there.
24:41The mother-in-law doesn't like the idea. Her life is endangered.
24:45Finally, the moment they've been waiting for. Fidel is on the balcony and at the podium.
24:50Vesciana is across the street with the bazooka. Castro's in his sight. But Vesciana gets cold feet. And at the last minute, he doesn't pull the trigger.
25:02You can have Fidel in sight and you can have the ability to kill him. But if you recognize at the last minute that there's significant collateral damage that can undermine your plausible deniability and maybe kill people that you care deeply about, you may pull the plug on your operation awful quick.
25:22After the failed attempt, Vesciana escapes to Miami, vowing that he will get Castro or die trying.
25:29But working against the anti-Castro forces are the dictator's dedicated protectors, the Department of State Security, also known as G2.
25:39G2 is Fidel's intelligence arm led by a pretty brutal guy, Fabian Escalante.
25:44Escalante expertly orchestrates an intricate web of intelligence gathering networks throughout Cuba, operating with precision and cunning.
25:53He strategically deploys his team to extract vital information and successfully apprehends dozens of plotters.
26:00What we see repeatedly across different plots is that the person who's supposed to enact it gets cold feet.
26:07And that's because of every plot that we're not talking about that the G2 stopped.
26:13The publicity and the public executions, everything that goes along with that, is a really strong deterrent.
26:21And it makes each individual think, well, if all of these other ones have failed, how am I going to succeed and live?
26:27With his nearest neighbor trying to kill him, Castro looked further afield for allies.
26:33The U.S. government's attempts to isolate and undermine the Cuban revolution further pushed Castro towards the Soviet Union
26:39and its leader, Nikita Khrushchev, for protection and support.
26:43A decision that would put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
26:47The Americans deployed mid-range nuclear missiles in Turkey.
26:55As close as Havana is to Washington, Turkey is to Moscow.
27:00So Castro has an important ally, the Soviet Union.
27:04They're funding Castro, they're propping him up, they're aiding him in every sense of the term.
27:08The Soviets want to put missiles in Cuba, a mere 90 miles off the coast of South Florida,
27:13which could hit the United States' east coast like that.
27:17Thus, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
27:20Taking place over 13 tense days from October 16th to October 29th, 1962,
27:26this harrowing confrontation embroils the United States and the Soviet Union
27:31in a battle of wits and nuclear brinkmanship.
27:34The intensity of the situation was amplified by the imposition of a U.S. naval blockade around Cuba.
27:41Ships are carrying missiles that could annihilate the east coast of the United States and putting them in Cuba.
27:47Kennedy was embarrassed by the pay of pigs, so this time he's going to act firmly.
27:51Imagine being a Russian officer sailing in a cargo ship with hidden missiles,
27:56and you look out on the horizon and there's aircraft carriers, there's destroyers,
28:00and they're announcing that there's submarines underneath the water
28:03and everyone is locked and loaded, ready to go.
28:06In that high-stakes game of chicken, the Russians, the Soviets, blinked first and turned around.
28:13Luckily, it did not escalate into World War III.
28:17The deal in the end was the Americans quietly, Khrushchev agreed, that he wasn't going to trumpet this,
28:22but the Americans will take out the missiles in Turkey, he'll take out the missiles in Cuba.
28:28Both leaders can claim victory, they can both exhale, and the world lives.
28:33To the Americans, the Cuban Missile Crisis proved that Castro was a threat,
28:37a threat that needed to be taken out.
28:40So again, the key to getting Castro is you need someone close to him
28:44that doesn't rouse suspicion by getting close to him.
28:47So what they've done is a behavioral analysis of the individual they want to assassinate.
28:52What are the behaviors that are common, that are repetitive?
28:55Where is the weakness in the routine where we can get close enough to get through the security,
29:00be within the circle of trust, and enact the plan?
29:03As it turns out, we know that Castro likes certain creature comforts.
29:09And one of those is he's got a spot that he likes to go to, to go get a milkshake.
29:14The CIA is able, through some mob contacts and others, to get in touch with one of the chefs there.
29:21So when Castro shows up, they're going to put poison in the milkshake.
29:25March 1963, Castro enters the Havana Libra and orders a chocolate milkshake.
29:31Perez, the chef who had been working that day, rushes to the freezer where he kept the poison pills hidden.
29:37Success hangs in the balance.
29:40If he can successfully slip the pill into Castro's chocolate milkshake and deliver it to him,
29:45the operation will be a success and the dictator will be gone.
29:49Perez tries to take the pill out of the freezer and it's frozen in ice.
29:53The pill breaks, it's falling to pieces. Thus, he can't put the pill in the milkshake.
29:58Fidel enjoys his chocolate milkshake and survives yet another assassination plot.
30:05One of the things we didn't think about was, how do we store this stuff correctly?
30:09You've got to store it so it's concealed, right? You can't have somebody else come across it.
30:13So they made the decision to store it in the freezer in order to have it near the other components necessary for making a milkshake.
30:20And along the way, the amount of time involved it was in, the humidity in the Cuban environment, the lack of frost-free freezers.
30:28The pills ultimately froze to the side of the freezer. The chef had to have been shaking in his boots the whole time.
30:34So one of the challenges of trying to assassinate Castro is Castro's extremely paranoid, as are all these dictators.
30:41He's also unpredictable. He doesn't trust anyone. He changes his schedule constantly.
30:46He's got eyes and ears spying on everyone. So how do you get close to Castro? Enter Kubela.
30:52He was close to Castro and was a high-placed bureaucrat during the days of Batista.
30:57And Kubela has ties with the mob. Therefore, he's recruited through the mob by the CIA.
31:03And the CIA develops a poisoned fountain pen. This is straight out of James Bond.
31:09And Kubela meets with a CIA operative in Paris. And the idea is he can get close enough.
31:14And while presenting the pen, he can just stab Castro with the pen. End of story.
31:19As the CIA plots to assassinate Fidel thickened, history would take an ironic turn.
31:25While Kubela was receiving the poisoned pen in Paris, an assassin's bullet strikes in Dallas.
31:32President Kennedy, the man who had sought to end Fidel Castro, has himself been slain.
31:37And when Kubela learns that Kennedy was assassinated that day, all plots are off.
31:42And Castro survives, ironically, yet again.
31:47From 1964 to 1970, Fidel's intelligence arm G2 stops hundreds of attempts on Fidel Castro's life.
31:54Cuba is now a fortress, and anti-Castro plots fail to materialize any serious threat to the dictator on his home soil.
32:02Repeated failed attempts at assassinating Castro make the CIA feel extremely desperate,
32:08because not only are they made to look extremely bad,
32:12but second, it calls into question their legitimacy as a superior cutting-edge intelligence agency.
32:19Meanwhile, overseas, Cuban exile Antonio Viziana continues to plot in the shadows,
32:25with Alpha 66, an anti-Castro paramilitary organization.
32:30So one name that continually pops up in the effort to assassinate Castro is Viziana.
32:35And the fact that he seems to be discredited and fails time and time again doesn't dissuade the CIA.
32:41They're still working with him.
32:43The idea of Alpha 66 and its leadership is to do what the CIA failed,
32:49essentially destabilize the Castro regime.
32:52They're an insurgency, and so they use terroristic tactics.
32:57In 1971, Viziana's years of intricate plotting come to fruition.
33:02For the first time in years, Castro plans to leave Cuba for a visit to Chile.
33:07This is the opportunity Viziana has been waiting for.
33:10The Cold War is a global chess game, and the concern of the domino theory is once communism is in place in Cuba,
33:17then it goes to Nicaragua, then it goes throughout the Americas.
33:21A leader named Allende comes to power in Chile, and he has communist leanings.
33:26Castro planned to visit Allende to give his fellow leftist critical political support.
33:32On Castro's tale was CIA's David Atlee Phillips and Antonio Viziana.
33:38Viziana knows Castro is unlikely to be successfully assassinated in Cuba.
33:44Therefore, here is an opportunity.
33:46Castro doesn't travel outside of Cuba very often.
33:49This is a security nightmare for his bodyguards.
33:52It's also very high profile.
33:54The world is watching.
33:56The CIA sets its sights on a daring mission.
34:00To assassinate Fidel Castro during his visit to Chile.
34:04The operation is cloaked in secrecy.
34:07CIA operatives and members of the anti-Castro exile community plot under a cloak of shadows
34:13in cities across the Americas, from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela, to Santiago, Chile.
34:19As the meetings unfold, a number of plans take shape.
34:23Soon, the plotters construct a multi-pronged assault on Fidel to ensure the success of their mission.
34:29Option one was that they were going to attack Castro from the Hilton Hotel,
34:35which overlooked the presidential palace where Castro was going to pass by.
34:42The plotters calculate that this plan will most likely fail to unfold,
34:46as Fidel often changes his routes before events.
34:49The second plot is the most intricate and most likely to succeed.
34:53In Caracas, Venezuela,
34:55Veciana is able to acquire journalist accreditation from one of the Venezuelan TV channels.
35:00These credentials are given to would-be assassins Marcos Rodriguez and Diego Medina,
35:06hardline anti-Castro Cubans.
35:08Before the operation in Chile, both men are trained in precision shooting
35:13and become adept at handling a television camera.
35:16The plan is to gain entry as media during Fidel Castro's final press conference in Chile.
35:22There's a lot of equipment. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of movement.
35:25You can bring people in who are badged as credentialed individuals fairly easily.
35:30You can create backstories of them as reporters.
35:33And so you can sneak things in like firearms.
35:36Hidden in the cameras are small pistols.
35:39Once given the signal, the men are trained to reach for their hidden guns
35:43and open fire on Fidel at close range.
35:48A lot of these assassination plots are anonymous.
35:52But this assassination plot is up close and personal.
35:56Talk about a spectacular and high-profile way to remove Castro.
36:00One can only imagine the tension among the audience, among Castro, among his bodyguards,
36:06and especially among those two men who are supposed to pull the triggers.
36:11Bessiana and his associates also had two additional contingency plans
36:15in case the press conference shooting failed.
36:17Both plots entailed ambushing Fidel with grenade attacks at various airports
36:22during his journey back to Cuba.
36:24So this is a multi-leveled assassination plot.
36:34Therefore, it's got to work.
36:36In total, Bessiana and his co-conspirators have four plots in action.
36:41But with this many people involved, managing to distance themselves
36:44from direct involvement becomes extremely difficult.
36:47One of the keys to a lot of these plots is plausible deniability.
36:52You can't trace this directly back to the CIA, to the President of the United States,
36:57for obvious reasons.
36:59So Bessiana has another layer in this multi-pronged assassination plot.
37:03He's going to have the two gunmen killed so they can't talk.
37:06So they recruit a local police chief who can make sure that these two are arrested
37:11and are quickly executed and that their stories never get out.
37:15As the fateful day draws near, the first of the four assassination plots unravels.
37:20The would-be assassins tasked with carrying out the grenade attack from the hotel balcony succumb to fear
37:26and they hastily flee Chile.
37:28Bessiana seethes with unbridled fury, his rage consuming him.
37:32Yet three other plots remain, each holding the promise of success,
37:36the most viable being the planned assassination at the press conference.
37:40They're going to do it simply. We're just going to take a handgun and we're going to, you know, shoot him.
37:46But just before Fidel takes to the podium, a wrench is thrown into the plan.
37:50Diego Medina also loses his nerve.
37:53Right away, one of the guys runs away.
37:55The other assassin decides he's going to go, but he's not going to bring his gun in.
38:01He's too afraid to bring the gun in.
38:03Marcos Rodriguez changes the plan.
38:06His idea is to build trust that he is a legitimate member of the media
38:09and strike at Fidel's last press conference.
38:12But before that can happen, Rodriguez rushes himself to the hospital.
38:16I got appendicitis. I can't come back tomorrow.
38:19Oh, damn, I would have killed Castro tomorrow if only I didn't have this tummy ache.
38:25Vecciana confronts the doctor treating Rodriguez and finds out that while Rodriguez does have appendicitis,
38:31it is not as painful as he is letting on and can be treated at a much later date.
38:36Both gunmen back out.
38:38It's very possible that the reason why is the gunmen figured out that they were going to be killed.
38:43Vecciana's plan to kill Fidel Castro is in ruins.
38:47Not only has the plot in Chile failed, but the assassins he picked to strike Castro at the Lima, Peru,
38:53and Quito, Ecuador airports get cold feet and abandon the conspiracy.
38:58Castro leaves Chile untouched and scores an important political victory for his cause.
39:04Vecciana, meanwhile, is now at odds with his most powerful ally, David Attlee Phillips.
39:10One of the problems with recruiting someone like Vecciana is he's a loose cannon.
39:14By concocting this plot whereby this police chief in Chile will quickly kill the two assassins,
39:22Vecciana adds another wrinkle to it.
39:24He gets fake identity, if you will, that these two gunmen are working for the Soviet secret police.
39:30While pinning it on the Russians may have suited the CIA,
39:35what it would have meant is some kind of counteraction by the Russians on American soil.
39:41And that's probably why the CIA was extremely furious with a rogue asset like Vecciana.
39:49Phillips ends his association with Vecciana in 1973.
39:53To show good faith, Phillips gives Vecciana over a quarter of a million dollars
39:57as a way of acknowledging his contributions to the cause of anti-communism.
40:02But the CIA is done with Vecciana. He becomes too reckless and too dangerous to back any further.
40:08The CIA was involved in potentially countless efforts to assassinate Castro
40:14and to remove other world leaders that didn't serve American purposes.
40:18One plot after another went south, and it's becoming a global embarrassment.
40:23So in 1976, Gerald Ford, the president, signs Executive Order 11905,
40:28essentially ending political assassinations.
40:32That marks an important moment, of course obviously for Castro,
40:36but for American prestige during the Cold War.
40:40Now operating independently and no longer supported by the CIA,
40:45Antonio Vecciana remains committed in his pursuit to overthrow Castro,
40:49but runs afoul of American authorities.
40:52July 24th, 1973, less than two years after the Chile plot,
40:58Vecciana is arrested in Miami.
41:00The charges? Smuggling a staggering 25 kilograms of pure cocaine
41:05from Bolivia into the United States.
41:07Turns out if you are a CIA asset,
41:12you learn that you can use some of those same tools
41:16to do things that are against the law in America, too.
41:19And Vecciana had a problem in the sense of he was greedy,
41:24and so he created his own clandestine network supporting drug trafficking in the United States
41:30and got busted for it.
41:32Very, very convenient for the CIA
41:34because then he is brought on charges for drug smuggling
41:37and not necessarily all the botched assassination attempts.
41:411974, in the Southern District of New York,
41:45Vecciana is found guilty of drug smuggling
41:47and sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment spanning seven years for each count.
41:52But the sentence is accompanied by a special parole term of three years.
41:57He gets a rather light sentence. Was that because he knew too much?
42:00Vecciana certainly may be cashed in his get-out-of-jail cards.
42:05Once released from prison, Vecciana continues his work with Alpha 66,
42:10looking to strike the fatal blow against his sworn enemy, Fidel Castro.
42:15He would get another chance in 1979.
42:18This time, Castro was coming to his turf with a visit to the United Nations in New York City.
42:24The United States would not allow Castro to travel in the U.S.
42:27However, the United Nations is international soil.
42:30At this time, Jimmy Carter is the President of the United States
42:33and looks to build bridges with his troublesome neighbor.
42:36While Jimmy Carter certainly is not pro-Cuba,
42:39he is looking to ease tensions between the two states.
42:44Castro now is given some recognition as, you know,
42:48he is another head of state and we don't like him,
42:51but he is, you know, we can't get along with everybody.
42:54Castro can effortlessly visit the United Nations
42:58the way before it would have been unthinkable.
43:01With Castro coming to the U.S., coming to New York City,
43:04it offers Vecciana and others one more chance to get Castro.
43:08So Vecciana concocts yet another harebrained plot.
43:11It involves a woman that, according to him,
43:14saved his life, a Juanita, some largely unknown woman.
43:17The deadly weapon of choice for this operation?
43:20A contact detonator filled with C4 contained within a softball.
43:25The plan?
43:27As soon as Castro lands, Vecciana will follow his motorcade in his car,
43:31staying in communication with Juanita
43:33and the other plotters through a walkie-talkie.
43:35As the motorcade pulls up to the U.N. building,
43:38Juanita is to rush out of the crowd and throw the explosive ball at Castro,
43:42eliminating him and plenty of innocent bystanders who will be caught in the blast.
43:47To decide to bring an operation onto domestic soil and put American lives at risk
43:52is an indication of desperation.
43:55But what Vecciana doesn't know is that the plot is compromised.
43:59Members of the U.S. Secret Service have him under surveillance.
44:02Vecciana is picked up and threatened by American law enforcement.
44:06If he carries out the plot, he will face the maximum extent of the law for terrorism.
44:11This has become his life mission.
44:13And everybody who wanted Castro dead and encouraged him to kill him is now telling him no.
44:19Unperturbed by the threats, Vecciana continues with his plan.
44:23This isn't just an act of political opposition.
44:27This is an act of personal obsession.
44:30Vecciana is ready to commit to the plan.
44:32But as Castro's plane lands, Juanita backs out.
44:36Vecciana is on his own.
44:38I mean, at the end of the day, you're asking one person who's standing face to face with one of the most feared men in the world to kill that person.
44:47Vecciana has come up with one wild plot after another, recruiting all sorts of less than reliable individuals.
44:54And they all fail, every single one.
44:56It begs the question, why doesn't Vecciana just do it himself?
44:59I think there's two things that come out as you study Vecciana.
45:03One is he was grotesquely incompetent.
45:05And two, he was a coward.
45:07Vecciana arrives at the UN without incident.
45:10And Vecciana once again watched his target get away.
45:13While this would be the last chance for Vecciana, plots against Vecciana would continue into the 21st century.
45:19The final big spectacular effort to get Castro, while giving a speech in Panama, and the podium and venue are going to blow up spectacularly, even that goes south.
45:30Castro has bodyguards who are sniffing and snooping around everywhere, and they uncover the plot.
45:36The 2000 Panama plot was the last of hundreds of attempts on Castro's life.
45:42By the count of G2 head of counterintelligence, Fabian Escalante, his agency stopped 638 attempts to assassinate Castro.
45:51A number of those attempts were by Vecciana and his Alpha 66 group.
45:55It is not easy to get access to a dictator.
45:59It is not easy to get access to a man who is constantly surrounded by security.
46:05So there's a quote attributed to Castro where he says, if surviving assassination attempts was an Olympic sport, I would win a gold medal.
46:14Was it because Castro was a very, very lucky man?
46:18Or was it that he was protected very well by his security team, the G2?
46:25I would argue that it was probably a bit of both.
46:28But there's another explanation, and that is that the plotters are incompetent.
46:33You don't need to be a CIA director or a Navy SEAL team member to realize that most of these plots were harebrained from the get-go and doomed to fail.
46:45So I think it's a combination of reasons why Castro is in power for so long and survives plot after plot after plot.
46:55Fidel Castro would die not at the hands of assassins, but due to natural causes at the age of 90.
47:02He left behind a troubled and mixed legacy, bringing independence to Cuba, but at a heavy price to the Cuban people who live under a repressive regime to this day.
47:13David Adley Phillips retired from the CIA in 1975, and in the following decade would write a number of books about his exploits with the agency.
47:22While his efforts as chief of Western Hemisphere Operations saw success in many Latin American countries, he was never able to topple Fidel.
47:31He died in 1988.
47:33Antonio Veciana would get the last laugh living to see the demise of his foe Fidel.
47:38But it must have been bittersweet, as in the end, it was time that killed Fidel and not one of his many plots.
47:45In 2020, Veciana died in an elder care facility in Miami-Dade, Florida, never seeing his homeland of Cuba again.
47:53X2
48:05X2
48:06X2
48:08X2
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