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Like something out of a dime store novel or a Hollywood Cold War thriller, the story of William Alexander Morgan has it all — adventure and romance, mobsters and spies, and a cast of characters that includes J. Edgar Hoover, Chè Guevera, and Fidel Castro. The film is a quintessential American story of a man who reinvented himself, transforming from a failure to a hero and celebrity.
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00:21The execution set for the evening of March 11, 1961,
00:25was in many ways unremarkable.
00:30More than 200 had taken place
00:33at Havana's La Cabana prison
00:35in the previous two years.
00:40Waiting in his cell,
00:41the prisoner could hear the approaching car
00:44that would take him to his death.
00:53William Morgan had cut a dashing figure
00:56fighting Infidel Castro's revolution.
01:00Featured in publications around the world,
01:04the mysterious Americano transformed himself into a celebrity.
01:09The American Comandante.
01:13Now, if it happened that you haven't offered a diary for sale,
01:20I don't believe that you should cash in on your ideals.
01:24Morgan is a classic example of the American myth of reinvention.
01:30that you can shed your history and reinvent yourself and become somebody.
01:40I found in him what I had looked for in life.
01:44And I think he also found it in me.
01:49We loved each other intensely.
01:52I cannot erase his memory from my heart
01:55and my respect for him.
01:59Dear Mom, I want you to know that I have been prepared for this as long as I have been
02:05in prison.
02:07For after all, it is not when a man dies, but how.
02:15From the time he gets into the death car to the time the death car delivers him to the dry
02:21boat,
02:22he is praying.
02:25He refuses to be blindfolded.
02:27And he refuses to be handcuffed.
02:30After the priest starts to leave,
02:32he says, Father, wait.
02:34And he takes a rosary off.
02:35And he gives the rosary to the priest.
02:39And at that point in time, he steps back.
02:57In 1942, the circus came to Toledo, Ohio.
03:05Alexander Morgan captured the excitement in a short film,
03:08with his son as protagonist.
03:19The spectacle must have triggered what Loretta Morgan called her son's vivid imagination.
03:29A year later, 14-year-old Billy ran off to join the circus.
03:36He was someone who, from when he was a very little kid, always dreamed of becoming somebody.
03:42He had these almost interior fictions that he wanted to kind of will into reality.
03:48His father found him in Chicago and brought him home to Toledo.
03:55He was not like most kids.
03:59He was rambunctious.
04:02He was impetuous.
04:04You couldn't tether him.
04:05You couldn't tie him.
04:15William Morgan grew up in a family where there was discipline and where there was expectations.
04:23His father was an engineer, master's degree.
04:26His mother was a bright lady.
04:30Known as Miss Cathedral for her good works at the local Catholic church,
04:35Loretta Morgan was more forgiving of Billy, waiting patiently for him to straighten out.
04:42Every time he was in trouble, she was there for him.
04:46Even with times when the father, Alexander, would want to impose harsh discipline, she would intercede.
04:54He was raised a Catholic boy.
04:57He was born with these values.
05:00But he was always at war to some degree with these values, but they were always there.
05:05By the time William entered high school, he had been in trouble with the law and thrown out of two
05:11schools.
05:13He quit in his first year and enrolled in the Merchant Marine.
05:20He gets mixed up with thugs and hoodlums on the Toledo docks and the waterfront.
05:26Toledo had a very developed underworld of people who were connected to the mafia, of people who were gangsters.
05:34And he touches that world.
05:40In 1946, on his 18th birthday, Morgan joined the army and shipped off to occupied Japan.
05:51He meets a Japanese woman, gets involved with her, goes AWOL, gets caught, gets put in the brig,
06:00and then does something that most of the soldiers didn't do, which was overpower to guard and escape from the
06:06brig.
06:10Morgan was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to five years of hard labor.
06:16He served three years in a federal prison, then returned home.
06:24His family had quintessential Midwestern patriotic values, and the idea that he would be dishonorably discharged produces a deep shame
06:33in his family,
06:34and a deep shame that he feels as well.
06:37I sincerely want him to be a boy that I can justify being proud of, Loretta Morgan said.
06:44Not one to hang my head in shame for having given him birth.
06:55As an ex-con and army deserter, Morgan had few opportunities to remake his life in Toledo.
07:05The only place he could really get a job was with the mob.
07:11He was a driver or a runner who would look out for their gambling houses.
07:16He was tough. He was a pretty good shot.
07:19And they needed people like him. They needed street soldiers.
07:24So Billy Morgan could fill the bill.
07:29Once again, he left town and joined a circus.
07:32He became a fire eater, married a snake charmer, and with her had two children.
07:40In those days, Morgan later said, I was a nobody.
07:46In 1954, at age 26, he settled down in Miami, where he found work as a clown and bouncer at
07:54a famous nightclub.
07:56It was there that William Morgan first heard of a revolt on the island of Cuba.
08:06Two years earlier, General Fulgencio Batista had seized power on the eve of a presidential election.
08:14Miami became the center of opposition to Batista, beginning to crystallize around a charismatic young lawyer.
08:25Fidel Castro is leading a drive to raise money for a revolution. Batista is the target.
08:33They want him out. They want to free Cuba.
08:37All of a sudden, William Morgan gets captivated by these young men who are risking their lives,
08:44telling William these great stories of going back and fighting this revolution.
08:51Then he gets an offer to help smuggle arms into Cuba.
08:56Many of these guns were army surplus.
08:58They were snatched up by the mob and they were sent down to Cuba.
09:03He really wanted to be a soldier.
09:06He was 30 years old and probably wasn't going to get another chance.
09:11Certainly not with the U.S. Army.
09:13And so I think he saw this as an opportunity to go fight, to become part of something and attach
09:19himself to something that seemed important and seemed exciting.
09:25Morgan's journey to join the Cuban revolution began with a lie, told to a group of young exiles in Miami.
09:36He tells him that he had a friend from the army that he had fought in the Korean War with.
09:42Of course, Morgan was never in the Korean War.
09:44This man had saved Morgan's life and during a trip to Cuba, when this man was smuggling guns to Cuba,
09:54he was caught and he was killed by Batista's guards and he was fed to the sharks.
10:00And Morgan was going to avenge his friend Jack Turner's life.
10:09In late December, Morgan abandoned his wife and children and headed to Havana.
10:18Fidel Castro was now leading the revolution from the Sierra Maestra Mountains in eastern Cuba.
10:25Morgan wanted to fight with Castro, but his camp was too far and the roads were crawling with Batista's soldiers.
10:33His contact in Cuba suggested an alternative.
10:39Halfway between the city of Havana and Castro's Sierra Maestra, in a mountain range called the Escambray, a new guerrilla
10:47group was coming together.
10:51William Morgan arrived at their camp in January 1958.
10:59Three in the afternoon.
11:01That's when he arrived.
11:04This American, who couldn't speak Spanish at all.
11:11He was fat. Not at all the William that he later became. He weighed more than 200 pounds. No one
11:19thought he would last with us.
11:22Everyone wanted him gone and they made his life difficult.
11:27They were going to kind of torture him for the first several days of his entree there.
11:32And he gets in there and he starts running up and down the hills.
11:36He's got sores all over his body.
11:39He's huffing and puffing.
11:42He's frustrated. He's mad.
11:45Morgan was taken to see Eloy Gutierrez Manoyo, a 23-year-old former student leader who now commanded the Escambray
11:54Second Front.
11:55Fidel Castro in his 26th of July movement wasn't the only group that had risen up against Batista.
12:02There were other groups.
12:04Manoyo's Second National Front of the Escambray was one of the other really important groups.
12:10He said, fighting requires more than firing a rifle, Morgan told Manoyo.
12:16He offered to teach the inexperienced guerrillas what he had learned in the army.
12:25He built this scaffolding, the same training he received in the American army.
12:30And he started teaching people martial arts and how to throw knives.
12:36He had an incredible ability with knives.
12:42He would throw them and hit a little line he'd drawn on a tree.
12:46Later I found out he learned it at the circus.
12:55In the mountains, Morgan found his place.
12:59He was no longer a mobster, an ex-con, a circus act.
13:05He wants to get away from his past.
13:07And he kind of, through demonstration and through proof and loyalty, gets accepted.
13:12And they don't know who he is and in the end they're like, it doesn't really matter.
13:16He's one of us. He's fighting for us. He's willing to bleed for us. He's willing to die for us.
13:24Morgan's life as a guerrilla fighter began inauspiciously, with a misunderstanding.
13:31Manoyo gives orders not to fire on the six soldiers that they see coming up the side of a gully.
13:41And he doesn't understand the order, so he fires on them.
13:47Morgan's shot revealed the group's position.
13:55Batista's army gave chase, forcing the second front into a long trek across the rugged mountain range.
14:04Men bond in combat, going hungry, facing danger.
14:11There was a certain affinity among all of us, including William Morgan.
14:17With a tremendous spirit, a spirit of sacrifice.
14:29A few days into the march, Morgan's time as a fighter almost came to an end.
14:34When 200 soldiers caught up with the guerrillas.
14:40They suddenly realize that they're in deep trouble.
14:44Morgan helps come up with some of the tactics.
14:48He helps them form into a U formation to hide behind a ridge.
14:57And Morgan, at one point, kind of stands up.
14:59They kind of see this crazy white dude with blue eyes and scraggly hair running forward.
15:06And it really bolsters them.
15:10And in that moment, they are able to prevail.
15:15It was the first time the peasants saw that we could beat the army.
15:19And that gave us extraordinary prestige.
15:23I consider it one of the decisive battles of the Escambrai War.
15:28Had we lost, the second front would not have survived.
15:33It was a critical moment for Morgan being accepted within the group.
15:37And really slowly, gradually emerging as a leader.
15:49July 1958.
15:52Dear Mom.
15:53This will be the first letter that I have written to you since I left in December.
15:58I know you neither approve nor understand why I am here.
16:03Even though you are the one person in the world who understands me.
16:09Loretta Morgan first learned of her son's Cuban exploits in a New York Times story about the Second Front.
16:16And the mysterious American fighting in their midst.
16:22The whole point of this letter is to let you know why I fight here.
16:28I am here with men and boys who fight for a freedom for their country that we as Americans take
16:34for granted.
16:39He witnesses a series of atrocities that really moved him.
16:47They get called in a small town.
16:50By then Batista's soldiers had already been there.
16:55Batista's soldiers had come up the river to these houses.
16:59They assassinated the women.
17:02They cut the lips off the face of one of them.
17:05And they burned more than 11 houses.
17:12At the end of the day, Morgan had seen something that really caught him to his core.
17:20And he realized for the first time, this isn't about me.
17:24This is about them.
17:28I do not expect you to approve, but I believe you understand.
17:33And if it should happen that I die here, you will know it was not for foolish fancy.
17:39Or as dad would say, a pipe dream.
17:45I do think that is, without question, a beginning of a profound change in Morgan.
17:50I don't think it happens overnight, it doesn't happen in a week.
17:53But you could see a steady progression and change, a deepening of his character.
18:05I saw that all the peasants loved and respected him.
18:09And that filled my mind and my heart.
18:12In the mountains, I saw a wonderful man standing in front of me.
18:20Olga Rodriguez fell in love with William Morgan in the summer of 1958.
18:27A student activist from the nearby city of Santa Clara,
18:31she had fled to the Escombray just ahead of Batista's secret police.
18:42They were going to kill me as they had so many others.
18:46We were students.
18:48We had to defend our country.
18:51We would go out on the streets to protest, yelling.
18:55We don't want dictators.
18:56We don't want Batista.
18:58We want the Constitution.
19:02Rodriguez was the first woman to join the second front guerrillas.
19:06The second of six children, she had grown up in a family poor enough to know hunger.
19:16At our house, it was a plate of cornmeal for the entire day.
19:21Because my parents made so little money.
19:24From the time I was little, I helped my mother.
19:29I used to clean a house for seven pesos a month after school.
19:35She is the one that brings him that message of social justice, of making a difference in the lives of
19:41poverty-stricken Cubans.
19:43And he hears it in a way that he hadn't heard it yet.
19:55By the fall of 1958, the fighting in the Escombray was favoring the rebels.
20:05In one year, the second front had grown from a handful of guerrillas to an army of more than 500
20:12men and women that controlled one-third of Cuba's largest province, Las Villas.
20:23William Morgan, now a Comandante and Minoyo's second-in-command, had not lost a single battle.
20:32He had charisma as a leader, and he was exceptionally brave.
20:36He commanded a guerrilla group he called the Tigers.
20:40And the Tigritos adored William Morgan.
20:45They have a tremendous degree of confidence in themselves.
20:50They know how to engage in encounters with the military, and they know how to win.
20:56They do become extraordinarily successful against all odds by the end of this.
21:06In every battle, I was with him.
21:08And there were men.
21:10I always had the image of a man of great discipline, who had to be obeyed.
21:18To the east, Fidel Castro's 26th of July guerrillas had secured their own territory.
21:25Castro asked Che Guevara, an Argentinian who was his second-in-command, to extend the war west, and bring the
21:33Second Front under Castro's control.
21:37They didn't really need the 26th of July's help in the Escambri.
21:41They were fighting their own war, and they were doing a pretty good job of it.
21:46But here comes Che.
21:47It's October 1958, and Che wants to take over.
21:53As he entered the territory of the Second Front, Che Guevara was captured, and brought to their headquarters at gunpoint.
22:03It would take weeks for Eloy Gutierrez Manoio and Che Guevara to agree to an operational pact.
22:11Guevara would take Santa Clara, and Morgan would take Cienfuegos.
22:17But a rift now existed between Castro and those loyal to Manoio, including William Morgan.
22:29The time is now 2.30 o'clock, Wednesday morning. The place is the city square of Cienfuegos.
22:39Fidel Castro has been speaking for over an hour. He will probably speak for another hour, or perhaps even more.
22:53On January 2nd, 1959, Fidel Castro's victory caravan began to make its way across Cuba.
23:02Batista had fled two days earlier.
23:05And by the time Castro arrived in Cienfuegos, Morgan and his men had taken the city.
23:13I heard you say a moment ago that you're going to feed the entire city of Cienfuegos. What's the story
23:19on that?
23:19Well, we're feeding the entire city of Cienfuegos.
23:22There isn't any food supplies that are just starting to move because of the general strike,
23:27and because of the bad condition of the roads after we blew up the bridges.
23:32Bill, you've only been married for about a month now. How did you happen to meet your wife?
23:36Well, she came up to the mountains running with the secret police behind her.
23:43She was working in the revolutionary movement and put a couple of bombs down in the city,
23:48and the secret police wanted to take off her head.
23:50So she came up here and worked as my secretary, and then from there we got married.
23:56Olga was actually getting upset because he wasn't spending any time with her, but he couldn't.
24:00He took a very real, serious mission when he took on Cienfuegos to keep order, and he took great pride
24:08in that.
24:10Morgan had not slept for days, and after a year in the mountains, he was looking forward, he said, to
24:16a shave and a long sleep.
24:20It's a very American notion that you can shed your history and reinvent yourself.
24:26When he comes down from the mountains and people are touching him, he's astonished.
24:30He feels this enormous emotion. They don't care about who he was.
24:35They don't care who he was back when he was running with a mob in Toledo.
24:39You know, none of that matters anymore.
24:41He gets a call from this hometown paper that Toledo played, and that's probably, for him, that's the call he'd
24:48been waiting for,
24:48because now he has a chance to show his parents.
24:52I made it. Look what I am right now.
25:04Fidel Castro entered Havana on January 8, 1959, to thunderous acclaim.
25:11He had promised a return to democracy, free elections, and respect for individual freedoms.
25:20Dr. Castro, it is reported that you feel that your role in the revolution is about over, and that you
25:26plan perhaps this return to civilian life.
25:28Is this true, and if not, how soon do you think it will be before you can do that?
25:33If for my country it is necessary that I renounce to any position, I would gladly renounce to any position,
25:41because sincerely I don't ambition power, money, nothing, only to serve my country.
25:53Behind the scenes, Castro worked to consolidate power around his closest confidants, including his brother Raul and the Marxist Che
26:02Guevara.
26:04Manoyo and his second front were excluded from important government positions.
26:10They had done their job, they were successful, but certainly they weren't being invited to be part of what was
26:19coming next.
26:20They were being left out.
26:23From Cien Fuegos, Morgan watched tensions rise.
26:28As soon as he arrived at his suite in the Capri Hotel in Havana, he was drawn into the fray.
26:38In March, an American by the name of Frank Nelson came here and got in contact with me, and he
26:47said,
26:48Frank, I have some people who want to give you a million dollars, and I'll be very blunt about it.
26:53I said, fine, but who do you want me to kill?
26:56Frank Nelson, in a way, is a ghost from his past, because he's connected to some of the mob figures
27:02who knew good old Billy Morgan.
27:04That's how they called him.
27:05Now, the mob, you have to understand, was very upset with Castro because he was threatening to close all their
27:11casinos and shut down their playpen.
27:14Nelson delivers a message to Morgan, and that message is, would you be willing to execute, kill, assassinate Fidel Castro?
27:27The idea originated with the Dominican Republic's president, Rafael Trujillo.
27:33Known as one of Latin America's most brutal dictators, Trujillo had given refuge to Batista after his flight from Havana.
27:48Morgan immediately told the Second Front Commanding Officer, Eloy Gutierrez Minoio.
27:54Morgan saw the Second Front himself, Minoio, as a counterbalance to Che, that they could play that important role, and
28:01I don't think even though there were signs they were being marginalized, they hadn't lost complete faith that that would
28:06be the case.
28:08Morgan and Minoio went to see Fidel.
28:14Fidel was immediately interested.
28:17One million dollars is a lot of money.
28:19In 1959, one million was like 20 million today.
28:23So, who's behind all of this?
28:29In late May, on Castro's orders, Morgan flew secretly to Miami.
28:37The first meeting that we know that's documented in FBI records is in the DuPont Plaza Hotel, at least two
28:44months after he meets with Fidel Castro.
28:47In the meeting is the Dominican Council in Miami, an old mafia chieftain from Cleveland, and the former police chief
29:00in Havana, and they start to talk.
29:03And now this plan of just an assassination attempt is now growing into a takeover of the country, a coup.
29:13The plan had three parts.
29:16An uprising by Batista's supporters in Havana.
29:20An insurrection in the town of Trinidad led by Minoio and Morgan.
29:25And an invasion force dispatched by Trujillo from the Dominican Republic.
29:32When Morgan informed him of the plot, Castro decided to set a trap.
29:37To crush the Batista loyalists in Cuba and teach Trujillo a lesson.
29:43Fidel Castro said to Morgan, draw it out.
29:46Let's see everyone who could be involved or might get involved in this.
29:51Morgan and Olga and their entourage, along with key people that Fidel plants with them,
29:58are now moving into this opulent home, million-dollar home in Havana.
30:03He's gonna have microphones in the lamps.
30:06He's gonna have reel-to-reel tape recorders going so that not one word uttered in any room will not
30:12be tape recorded.
30:15And then Morgan has to now bring in the Batistianos, those that were supporting Batista.
30:21And they have to play everyone as if they're going along with this plan.
30:30Morgan flew once more to Miami on July 27th to firm up details and gather weapons.
30:40Acting on a tip from an informant, the FBI was waiting.
30:46Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover had been monitoring the conspiracy from the start,
30:51convinced that Castro was a communist and needed to be removed.
30:56Pulled in for questioning, Morgan told the FBI that he was in Miami on personal business.
31:02But he confirmed that he'd been approached by a foreign government
31:06with an offer of one million dollars to overthrow Castro.
31:12J. Edgar Hoover got the Miami field office watching this, paying attention, seeing what will happen.
31:19Clearly Hoover thinks that there may well be an important conspiracy happening here.
31:25They firmly believe that Morgan is working against Castro.
31:29They really believe that Morgan had aligned forces with Rafael Trujillo,
31:33who was an American ally at the time.
31:37But Morgan double-crossed Trujillo.
31:40The day he returned to Havana, Morgan arranged to meet the conspirators at his house.
31:45As Castro arrived, they were all arrested.
31:54Immediately, Castro, Morgan, and Manoyo flew to the town of Trinidad
31:59to act out the second part of the plan, the insurrection.
32:05They got fake bombs going off, fake fuselades.
32:09They got a radio where they're communicating with Trujillo and sending out false reports.
32:13This is the Cold War, right?
32:15I mean, this is the beginning of this kind of enormous spy games and tricks and mirages and counter ploys
32:20and ploys.
32:23When the first transport plane carrying men from the Dominican Republic landed in Trinidad,
32:29Castro decided to put an end to the operation.
32:34Castro surrounds the plane.
32:36They shoot out. Some of the men are dead from both sides.
32:41They end up getting a ton of weapons from Trujillo.
32:45They had already identified more than a thousand people that were going to be involved in this coup attempt.
32:50And he started making arrests all over the island.
32:54I don't think that there's any doubt that Morgan and Gutierrez Manoyo helped the revolution survive in that moment.
33:02And also really unmasked the degree to which there were forces opposed that had tremendous power behind them.
33:10I don't think so.
33:16On August 15th, Fidel Castro revealed the details of the conspiracy on Cuban television.
33:29Morgan and Castro are at center stage.
33:33The international media is there.
33:35Of course, the U.S. press.
33:37And Morgan is now the central figure in this international conspiracy.
33:42We went down to Las Vegas and started a fictitious war.
33:48We started turning off telephones and lights and shooting shots in the dark and all those kind of things.
33:52This is all this last week.
33:54That's right. This has all been a fake.
33:55It's all been a big show for Trujillo.
33:57And he fell for it.
33:58He started it. He paid for it.
34:03He's furnished the guns for it.
34:06He's made the contacts for it.
34:07His embassy has been ended up to his neck.
34:10And he believed it.
34:13He's truly enjoying the moment.
34:16He helped save a regime that he believed in.
34:19He's a hero.
34:20He's doing autographs.
34:22People are begging him for just a few moments for interviews.
34:40Morgan's sense of his own importance probably made things more dangerous for him.
34:45I think he had a big ego.
34:47And I think that becoming a celebrity after the Trujillo conspiracy was not necessarily healthy for him.
34:55I think he thought that he was probably as big a figure as anyone else in Cuba at that point.
35:01And had real power.
35:04And what he didn't realize is that he really didn't.
35:11Just days after Castro's press conference, the US State Department revoked Morgan's citizenship.
35:20It's really Hoover working behind the scenes who helps get his citizenship stripped in very unusual circumstances.
35:27Because he hadn't actually technically broken any American laws.
35:32J. Edgar Hoover thought that they had a serious attempt to get Castro out.
35:38When it turns out to be a double cross, clearly Hoover feels betrayed.
35:46Morgan saw himself and the revolution in kind of American terms.
35:51And then when he lost his citizenship, it was a profound blow to that sense.
35:57It also was a deeper problem in terms of his own personal survival.
36:10In September 1959, Los Angeles television reporter Cleet Roberts arrived at Morgan's house for an interview with the American Comandante.
36:22Mr. Morgan and I are sitting in what you might call an armed camp.
36:26I can hear voices just outside the window here of the guards, the men who are guarding him.
36:32There are more machine guns lying on a table here just in back of Russ Day in the camera than
36:37I've seen since I was in Hungary.
36:40There must be a price on your head, Bill.
36:43Half a million dollars at the moment. If they can deliver me alive to Senator Mengel.
36:47That's what Trujillo is offering for you?
36:49That's the going price in Miami right now. I imagine it will go up over a period of time.
36:53How does it feel to have a half million dollar price on your head?
36:56Well, it isn't too bad. They have to collect it and that's going to be hard.
37:00Morgan always has a certain bravado and he maintains a lot of that bravado.
37:04But I also see somebody already who is being buffeted by forces that are extremely powerful and are whirling him
37:12to some degree.
37:14We're beginning to hear, and you know what's coming, you know what I'm going to talk about.
37:17We're beginning to hear that there's communist influence around here.
37:21The Cuban people are not communist.
37:25They would never go along with a communist government under any circumstances.
37:31Their history shows that over a period of time they've always been pro-democratic very strongly.
37:37They're individualists.
37:43Thirty miles from Havana, at an abandoned fishery,
37:47Morgan put in place his own vision of the revolution.
37:52A business venture with the Cuban government to raise frogs for export.
37:58Their legs sold as a delicacy.
38:06So William became a civil, if you may, comandante, growing frogs.
38:13But he was so proud of the frogs he was growing.
38:17And it was funny because at one time he had an argument with one of Castro's guys.
38:24And he says, what are you saying?
38:26My frogs have more cojones than your soil deers.
38:32Morgan wasn't as disappointed as people like to think he was.
38:37He had a little daughter by then, Loretta, and his wife, Olga, was relatively happy.
38:44So at that point in time, Morgan is at least trying to find a way to live in Cuban peace.
38:52I think Morgan is still holding on to a shred of hope that this revolution is going to follow the
39:00values and ideals that he had hoped for.
39:02You know, that it was going to respect the individual freedoms that were so important to him.
39:07But he began to see a bunch of things he didn't like.
39:10He saw comandante Uber Matos be arrested for saying that communists were taking over the government and put in jail.
39:20He saw newspapers closed and nationalized.
39:25The Soviet vice premier swoops into Havana and, surprise, he's there for almost three weeks
39:32and he signs a $100 million trade agreement with Fidel Castro.
39:37That changed everything for a lot of people because now they started thinking we can't trust this government.
39:42Something is happening here.
39:47We were lied to, betrayed.
39:50I didn't know anything about communism or socialism.
39:55And it was staring me in the face.
39:59Che Guevara running the National Bank, nationalizations, jails filling up with prisoners.
40:07I didn't fight for that.
40:09And I would point it out to William.
40:12Of course, he saw it too.
40:19By the spring of 1960, war had returned to Cuba.
40:25In the Escambray Mountains, an insurgency had taken hold.
40:31Led by former anti-Batista revolutionaries angry about the socialist direction of Cuba's government,
40:37the rebellion was joined by coffee-growing Guajiros.
40:43Peasants are absolutely opposed to what they understand as communism.
40:48And what they see it as doing to them is taking what little they have.
40:56We did not establish the Escambray Front.
41:00But among those who had risen up in arms, we're good people.
41:06We were the rear guard.
41:08We had to help in any way we could.
41:12Morgan had been so vocal about the fact that this was not going to be a communist regime.
41:19That when things started to change in late 1959 and early 1960,
41:26was he going to stand up for what he said that he had been fighting for?
41:30Or was he going to turn his back on those ideals and go along with the flow of what Castro
41:37was trying to do at that point?
41:40William never delivered arms.
41:43He couldn't.
41:44He would have been recognized.
41:48I did.
41:49I'm a woman, and I could do it.
41:54In March, convinced Castro was headed towards communism,
41:59President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to begin training 1,400 Cuban exiles for an invasion.
42:09The landing site in central Cuba was thought to be near the mountains of the Escambray,
42:14where the CIA planned for the exiles to join up with local rebels.
42:20It's a well-known fact that the CIA delivered arms to the Escambray Mountains several times,
42:26and some of those drops were directly for Morgan's people.
42:30So there is reason to believe that William Morgan had connections to the CIA during that period.
42:39Morgan's activities soon escalated from simply moving weapons to establishing a guerrilla group of his own.
42:49June is the turning point.
42:51That's when he learns about the existence of Soviet trainers coming over to work with the Cuban army.
42:59Now he realizes Castro not only forged diplomatic relations with the Soviets,
43:05he is now bringing Soviet military advisors over to Cuba.
43:13Morgan was a person with big dreams and a vivid imagination.
43:18And I think that he could convince himself that he was capable of almost anything.
43:24He keeps telling people that there are 3,000 to 5,000 men.
43:28He often says 5,000, sometimes when he's being a little more realistic,
43:31he says 3,000 or 4,000 who will follow him, whatever he tells them to do.
43:38He wanted me to be the political chief.
43:42He was the military chief.
43:44And I said, I won't take up arms with you in the Escambray,
43:48because even though I don't agree with Fidel Castro,
43:52it's not the right time.
43:54And besides, your group has been infiltrated.
44:05Castro deployed tens of thousands of men against less than 1,000 in the resistance,
44:11and planted two informants in Morgan's security detail.
44:21He knows that some of his friends are starting to be rounded up.
44:25So he knows the risks.
44:27He was deeply worried about his family.
44:29And you can see where he is trying to assure possible places for them to go in exile.
44:38And you can see communiques and letters that reveal that he has that concern.
44:42So he knows how dangerous it is.
44:47We knew we were in trouble.
44:49Deep trouble.
44:51I was pregnant with Olgita.
44:54And there we were, towards the end,
44:57waiting for whatever came.
44:59What could happen to you?
45:01You can go to prison,
45:04or be executed,
45:05because they executed anyone then.
45:10He had lived much of his life in disrepute,
45:13and with shame, and with dishonor.
45:17He wasn't prepared to walk away or abandon what he had become in Cuba,
45:24and the revolution that he had fought for that had remade him.
45:29On October 21, 1960,
45:33two weeks after the Cuban government learned that a group of exiles
45:37was preparing to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs,
45:40Morgan was called to a meeting in Havana.
45:47We had plans for dinner at 7.30.
45:50And when I saw that it was 4, then 6,
45:54and William wasn't home,
45:56I said to myself,
45:59something smells bad here.
46:05Morgan had been betrayed by Castro's spies.
46:09He was arrested and taken to La Cabaña prison.
46:14Olga was placed under house arrest.
46:18Two months later, on December 31,
46:21she was taken to see her husband.
46:25He told her to escape,
46:26and she assures him that she's going to be getting out,
46:29that she has a plan, she's been working on it for a long time,
46:32and she's going to see it through.
46:38His peace was knowing that our daughters and I were safe.
46:42I was wearing the blue dress that he loved so much.
46:48I gave him a hug and a kiss.
46:57The trial was a sham,
47:01because in important cases,
47:05Fidel had already told the jury what sentence to meet out.
47:11I would go to La Cabaña and witness the trials.
47:18Three out of five jurors were asleep.
47:23That gives you a very good sense of how the trial went.
47:42He had already been condemned and he wanted to talk to someone.
47:47It was a dungeon.
47:50He was alone in the cell.
47:54He did not seem even nervous.
47:58Totally relaxed.
48:00And he gave me a letter to his mother.
48:06Dear Mom,
48:07I know this will come as a thing very hard for you to understand,
48:12but I have made my peace with God
48:15and can accept whatever happens with my mind clear and my spirit strong.
48:22Loretta was always there for him.
48:25So it's no surprise when she sees the end for her son
48:29that she would try to do whatever she could to save her son's life.
48:34That meant going to members of Congress
48:36and trying to get through to the Cuban government,
48:39writing the White House,
48:41even to go to the highest hierarchy of the Catholic Church,
48:45to try to do whatever they could to intercede in the Savior's son.
48:51My actions and my life, I leave for others to judge.
48:55And to you and Dad, I leave my love and respect.
49:00I hope you forgive me, as you always have.
49:169.30 in the evening, March 11th.
49:20He said goodbye to me.
49:23I didn't know he was dead.
49:26I saw him in my room.
49:28He kissed me on my cheek.
49:31I felt the warmth.
49:33That was his goodbye.
49:40When Morgan was shot,
49:42he had been conspiring against what he thought of as a revolution betrayed.
49:48But I think he didn't regret a moment of the time that he had spent in Cuba
49:52or all that he had done.
49:53And I think there were many, many Cubans who still remain grateful to him.
50:00Castro had no interest in telling Morgan's story.
50:03He wanted him to be forgotten.
50:05He wanted him erased from history.
50:07And the CIA and the FBI classified all the files about Morgan.
50:13And so telling his story seemed deeply important in that
50:16you're recovering part of history that had been lost.
50:22In his lifetime, he had failed numerous times.
50:28That failure drove him to Cuba, to the revolution, to his own heroism, and his own death.
50:40But there was a redemption in that.
50:44Because, in the end, William Morgan became the person that he wanted to be.
50:51He was so proud and
50:53he was so proud that he was so proud of his work.
50:53If he knew he was very proud of his life, then he was so proud of his friend.
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