Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Dunton, Aren, I'm not done, Zaren Burnette.
Speaker 3: You left out the third.
Speaker 1: Yea and the Walter.
Speaker 3: And the sir and the esquire, Elizabe Dutton. I got
Speaker 3: a question for you, mcgaro. Do you know it's ridiculous? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do, I do.
Speaker 3: I was really just counting on you not knowing.
Speaker 2: I know, and then you just get to run with it. No, nobody,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna throw a wrench in this. You know what
Speaker 2: a mocha pot is?
Speaker 3: Is that where you pour that stuff in your.
Speaker 2: No, that's a that's a netty pot. Now, this is
Speaker 2: an Italian coffee pot. Don't know what it is, but
Speaker 2: it's sort of like got a decagon shaped to it,
Speaker 2: and it has a chamber in the bottom of it
Speaker 2: and that's where you put the water, and then it
Speaker 2: has a basket for the grounds and then up top
Speaker 2: like the heat draws the water up through through.
Speaker 1: Steam coffee that way. You know, you've seen them.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's a silver silver, yeah, and so it's
Speaker 2: a big deal. There's like two hundred million of them
Speaker 2: have been made. Are you getting nervous? No, you should
Speaker 2: not back. So this thing, this thing was invented by
Speaker 2: Luigi di Ponti in Italy in the thirties, and then
Speaker 2: the patents were purchased by Alfonso Biletti, and Alfonso had
Speaker 2: a boy, Renato, and in the mid forties, Renato took
Speaker 2: over the company and he just marketed the heck out
Speaker 2: of these and that's why they become like this standard
Speaker 2: bearer for you can make an almost espresso like coffee.
Speaker 1: It's very rich, robust, is like Ilio.
Speaker 3: Is that the brand that makes stuff for.
Speaker 1: This kind of like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is like if you see it, you'll
Speaker 2: know it anyway. So Renato Biletti he passed away at
Speaker 2: the age of ninety three in twenty sixteen. I know,
Speaker 2: and his children, he has three kids. They had him
Speaker 2: cremated and his cremaines were put into a giant Mocha pot.
Speaker 3: Oh nice. See this is like the Pringles guy he was.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was buried inside a large urn shaped like
Speaker 2: his stove top coffee maker.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a little bit ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: This comes to us.
Speaker 2: This is not only an international story because it's from Italy,
Speaker 2: but it was given to us by Helga in Germany.
Speaker 3: Ah, Donka Helga, So.
Speaker 2: I yes, Donka to you? Don Ka Shane Darling, Donky Shane.
Speaker 3: Do you remember Cecil Parking fall? You toy your dress?
Speaker 1: What a mess?
Speaker 3: I confess anyway, that is a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it is.
Speaker 3: That's why I said it got a hell a ridiculous
Speaker 3: one for you. Hit me for more than forty years.
Speaker 3: The Central Intelligence Agency aka the Agency, aka the company
Speaker 3: aka the CIA. They and their spies, they tried to
Speaker 3: kill the same man six hundred and thirty four.
Speaker 1: Times, six hundred and thirty four.
Speaker 3: Yes, And this man he was just like you know,
Speaker 3: he was a one time baseball pitching prospect.
Speaker 1: Like Jason Bourne. Huh Jason Bourne.
Speaker 3: No, No, he was a real person. But do you
Speaker 3: see his path diverge. Isn't a real person, not totally
Speaker 3: a real person. He's real to you. Yeah, so that
Speaker 3: counts well. This guy, he's real, like to everybody, right
Speaker 3: and he uh he as I told you, a baseball
Speaker 3: pitching prospect, but his path diverged from baseball and eventually
Speaker 3: he becomes a revolutionary and you would know him as
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro. Y know, Elizabeth, I know you're worried, like, wait,
Speaker 3: six hundred and thirty four murder attempts. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 3: like we're going to just smash through our like one
Speaker 3: percent murder. Well, spoiler alert, the CIA never successfully assassinated
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro. Amazing, but boy, how did did they try?
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 3: Heiss and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Elizabeth Sarin, the former head
Speaker 3: of the Cuban Intelligence. This dude was named Fabian Escalante.
Speaker 3: He stepped out of the shadows where spies exist and
Speaker 3: he publicly claimed that the Yankees tried to kill Fidell
Speaker 3: six hundred and thirty four times.
Speaker 1: The baseball team, not the.
Speaker 3: Baseball team from New York, No, the Yankees as in.
Speaker 1: US Americans, the Yanks, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Exactly, the Yankees. So this cat Escalante, he had the
Speaker 3: receipts right because he's the head of the Cuban intelligence.
Speaker 3: He knows where the bodies are buried right now, being
Speaker 3: the former head of Cuban intelligence, he broke down how
Speaker 3: all of the attempts went by president for forty years.
Speaker 3: He lists them out for you so very quickly. Dwight D.
Speaker 3: Eisenhower kicks it off in nineteen fifty nine. He took
Speaker 3: thirty eight attempts. John F. Kennedy he followed him. He
Speaker 3: took forty two attempts. LDJ took seventy two attempts. They're
Speaker 3: ramping up by the time we get to Nixon. Nixon
Speaker 3: goes for a record one hundred and eighty four attempts.
Speaker 3: Jimmy Carter clocks in. It's sixty four attempts. Record is
Speaker 3: broken by Reagan with one hundred and ninety seven attempts.
Speaker 3: On Castro's life, Dan George H. W. Bush keeps it
Speaker 3: solid with a nice little conservative sixteen, and then Bill
Speaker 3: Clinton ends the era with twenty one of his own.
Speaker 1: This is like fifty ways to leave your lover.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, Bill Clinton trying to kill Castro. I'm like,
Speaker 3: my dude, seriously, the Cold War is over. What's the
Speaker 3: point here? Are you just trying to get in on
Speaker 3: that JFK energy? Yes, Like, look my obsession it runs
Speaker 3: that deep. I want to be like the kid. So anyway, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: you may be thinking Zarin, of course, the head of
Speaker 3: the Cuban version of the CIA would say some nonsense
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: Six hundred and thirty four attempts that can't be true.
Speaker 3: That must be revolutionary propaganda, isn't it. Zaren great questions, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: Thank you. Normally I would agree with you normally, but
Speaker 3: this is totally the propaganda. But we don't have to
Speaker 3: believe Escalante, not in this case. Do you know why
Speaker 3: because we have the Church Committee and its Senate hearings.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, do you know the Church Committee is familiar with.
Speaker 3: The Church Committee is a big marquee Congressional investigation in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies. It was famous for pulling back the
Speaker 3: veil on countless crimes committed by the CIA. Now, most
Speaker 3: of them were overseas, some of them were domestic. They
Speaker 3: worked both foreign antheistic, which is totally against the law.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we don't have to take the Cuban's word
Speaker 3: for it because we have the CIA and the FBI,
Speaker 3: and the US Senate and the House road representatives. They
Speaker 3: all said the same thing. So you know, here, let
Speaker 3: me just read to you from this file that I
Speaker 3: have over here marked secretize only this is from the
Speaker 3: National archives. It is no longer secretized only, but it
Speaker 3: originally was. Now, this is a CIA document that records
Speaker 3: the agency's countless attempts to kill Castro, and I quote.
Speaker 3: This reconstruction of agency involvement in plans to assassinate Fidel
Speaker 3: Castro is at best an imperfect history because of the
Speaker 3: extremes insitivity of the operations being discussed or attempted. As
Speaker 3: a matter of principle, no official records were kept of
Speaker 3: planning or approvals or of implementation. So they're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we kept it. Hush hush, right, hush hush. Now, despite
Speaker 3: this apparent difficulty with the with you know, basically documenting
Speaker 3: their investigation, they still were able to produce one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty three page report documenting all the ways they
Speaker 3: tried to kill Castro.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, and how many was it?
Speaker 3: Six? Six hundred and thirty four?
Speaker 1: Huh so they're doing a couple per page?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. It was like the script from Airplane. It
Speaker 3: is just joke after joke every like was it one
Speaker 3: joke or three jokes every minute of pre Airplane? It
Speaker 3: was like that. But murders attempts love it, Okay, sow.
Speaker 3: Starting back in nineteen seventy three, the Senate Watergate Committee investigation.
Speaker 3: It starts looking into these rumors of the Watergate break
Speaker 3: ins and what Nixon was eventually going to be impeached for. Now,
Speaker 3: the American people, they learned through the Watergates that their
Speaker 3: nations leaders and our spies had been conducting these clan
Speaker 3: destined operations. Right to put it mildly, they were constitutionally corrupt.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The next year, in nineteen seventy four, Seymour Hirsch, this journalist,
Speaker 3: investigative journalist, he goes and writes a story for the
Speaker 3: New York Times and expose that reveals that the CIA
Speaker 3: has been spying on Americans. Back then, this was shocking
Speaker 3: to us. We're like, oh, the frenchman with a cigarette
Speaker 3: tell me something I did me to know, you know.
Speaker 3: But at that time, congressional investigations get launched. It's a
Speaker 3: big deal, Elizabeth, I'm telling you. The next year, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, it gets nicknamed the Year of Intelligence. This
Speaker 3: is due to hold the investigations into the CIA, the FBI,
Speaker 3: the NSA, even the irs gets dragged in. Right now,
Speaker 3: this all comes under the Church Committee, led by Idaho
Speaker 3: Democratic Senator Frank Church. Now that's the name exactly. Now,
Speaker 3: his committee was the real deal, serious, like I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get to the heart of the matter. He had one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty six full committee meetings, that's not normal,
Speaker 3: forty subcommittee hearings, eight hundred witnesses, eleven sorry, one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten thousand documents were perused. And yes, finally in
Speaker 3: April seventy six, the committee publishes its report. Now, most
Speaker 3: of these times we've seen these reports, they're always big.
Speaker 3: It could be best to be used as a door stop,
Speaker 3: but this one was a door buster. It just went
Speaker 3: up there and kicked the door in. Because the Church
Speaker 3: Committee hearings declared that dating back to FDR and continuing
Speaker 3: right on through the early seventies, there had been one
Speaker 3: endless program of spying and destabilization of democracies, both at
Speaker 3: home and abroad. Yeah, so they basically just determined that
Speaker 3: regardless of the party in power, they had been running
Speaker 3: just pretty much any anti democratic effort they could, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't just tricky Dick Nixon. So the Church Committee
Speaker 3: then reveals like all sorts of stuff that people we
Speaker 3: know about them. Now, So there's a famous operations by
Speaker 3: the CIA like mk Ultra. Yep, this comes out in
Speaker 3: the Church Committee hearings. That's the CIA's mind control program
Speaker 3: where they basically took a bunch of involuntary you know, volunteers,
Speaker 3: and they use them for human experiments, right to determine
Speaker 3: how do we mind control people with like drugs and like,
Speaker 3: you know, psychic abuse. Then they went on they did
Speaker 3: co Intel pro That was the FBI's program. That was
Speaker 3: Jaegar Hoover's little pet project to hold black people down
Speaker 3: and pretty much any other social justice campaign. So he
Speaker 3: had agents infiltrating the like the Panthers and all these
Speaker 3: other social justice and civil rights organizations, and then artists
Speaker 3: artists as well, and then he does the divide and
Speaker 3: conquer you ghet them with the breakup social movements, rumors
Speaker 3: and drugs and bad cop busts or whatever. Right. Then
Speaker 3: there was the CIA's program, This is the one I
Speaker 3: wanted to tell you about, which is family Jewels.
Speaker 1: Family Jewels, that's what they called it.
Speaker 3: Family Jewels, like kick them in the So this cute
Speaker 3: little name was the CIA's nickname for their decades long
Speaker 3: program to assassinate foreign leaders leaders leaders multiple So the
Speaker 3: Church Committee, they published a sub report. One of the
Speaker 3: forty was called the Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.
Speaker 3: It outlines the CIA's attempts to kill No Dn Diem
Speaker 3: of South Vietnam, Patrese La Mumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo
Speaker 3: from the Dominican Republic, and the big big batty, the
Speaker 3: bearded one, Fidel Castro. So if you'd like to read more,
Speaker 3: then you could check out CIA Covert Operations two, The
Speaker 3: Year of Intelligence in nineteen seventy five. Book. It's a book.
Speaker 3: It's a huge book printed by the CIA.
Speaker 1: As a movie.
Speaker 3: I know, like what it like electric boogaloo?
Speaker 1: Yes exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you also, if we want some lighter reading,
Speaker 3: you can go to the National Archives of Elizabeth. I
Speaker 3: book mark some sites for you. But I know you're like, Zaren,
Speaker 3: tell me more about the six hundred and thirty four
Speaker 3: failed attempts to kill Castro. They're all one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It sounds like I'm guaranteeing you that. So all right,
Speaker 3: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ike, Yeah, that's where it starts, right,
Speaker 3: who is his vice president? Virulent anti communist, tricky Dick Nixon.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: So Richard Nixon, he took it upon himself and he
Speaker 3: met Castro. He met Fidel in person in Washington, DC
Speaker 3: in April nineteenth, nineteen sixty. Now he sits down with
Speaker 3: Castro in the Vice President's office in the Capitol. The
Speaker 3: two men sit together for three hours. Right now. This
Speaker 3: is right after the Cuban Revolution is been successful.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So Nixon is like, no, now look here, Fiddel, we
Speaker 3: don't want to get that funny business with the Soviets.
Speaker 3: If you're prepared to let Pepstery and my friends back
Speaker 3: into Cuba, we can play ball. You like ball, don't
Speaker 3: you a Fidel? And beg. Fiddel's like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: even know about this Bison. Right, but the guy, you know,
Speaker 3: at this time, Cast's opinion of America it begins to
Speaker 3: swiftly reverse. He actually liked America, well, reasonably, he liked America.
Speaker 3: He liked the ideals of America. He was against US imperialism,
Speaker 3: but he liked America. Right. And then he met Richard
Speaker 3: Nixon and he's like, so much for all that we
Speaker 3: have to know, I'm not you know about this. In
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty nine, Fidel wins his revolution, and what does
Speaker 3: he do to celebrate? He comes to New York, and
Speaker 3: he comes to New York. He's like, hey, in the
Speaker 3: way of YORKA and he's like partying, right, and he's
Speaker 3: like everyone's like he's he's walking around in the revolutionary dogs,
Speaker 3: like right out of the jungle. Right. He has yet
Speaker 3: to declare himself a communist at this point. So America
Speaker 3: they love him. He goes to the Bronx Zoo. He's
Speaker 3: hand feeding tigers. He's chatting with anyone on the streets
Speaker 3: in New York in English. Bind you. He gets a
Speaker 3: whole tell room and Harlems. He can be by the
Speaker 3: people right until he's this huge hit. The New York
Speaker 3: Times writes about him. They're calling him quot quote, this
Speaker 3: young man is larger than life. You know. Now for
Speaker 3: some contacts and contrast, the time goes and compares his
Speaker 3: revolution to our revolution. They say that Castro stepped onto
Speaker 3: the world stage. Quote not only out of another world,
Speaker 3: the world of fierce Latin passion, but also out of
Speaker 3: another century, the century of Sam Adams and Patrick Henry
Speaker 3: and Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps because he stirred
Speaker 3: memories long dimmed of a revolutionary past, and recalled a
Speaker 3: new order once deeply felt.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, damn New York Times.
Speaker 3: All about the castra. Right. Meanwhile, you got Richard Nixon
Speaker 3: is like, you know, I met with Fordell, we talked awhile,
Speaker 3: and I think we should kill him. So that was
Speaker 3: his take, right, that's Nixon's whole of you. Now this
Speaker 3: you may be wondering, Saren, why is Nixon so kill crazy?
Speaker 3: I know he doesn't like communists, but they killed him.
Speaker 3: What's up with them? Well, you have to understand that's
Speaker 3: like his love language. Right.
Speaker 1: He wasn't the first to say kill him pretty.
Speaker 3: No, but pretty much Eisenhower. But he's the vice president
Speaker 3: under US, so he was collaborating with the CIA. So
Speaker 3: basically it is kind of Nixon's pet project. He's like,
Speaker 3: before I get the carbon bombing, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 3: just take out one man with my old pal. So
Speaker 3: the thing Nixon, he spots this commy threat, right, and
Speaker 3: it's one with a Spanish accent. So that's just irritating
Speaker 3: him and scaring him. So he's it's doubly dangerous to
Speaker 3: his way of thinking because it'll inflame Latin America. And
Speaker 3: he's got big plans for PepsiCo, right, So he's like,
Speaker 3: we got to get this these you know, the factories
Speaker 3: an't gonna build themselves communists. So Fidel he does what
Speaker 3: Nixon fears most. He sides with the Soviets, all right,
Speaker 3: so he declares himself with communist So now the CIA
Speaker 3: comes up with the plan, we have to destabilize Castor's revolution.
Speaker 3: So what's their answer, Elizabeth, Let's give him acid. So
Speaker 3: their first plan is to give Fidel LSD. How do
Speaker 3: you think the CIA acid party played out for Fidel?
Speaker 1: Not good, Bob.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break and I'll tell you all
Speaker 3: about uh, Fidel's LSD acid test with the CIA. All right, Elizabeth, right, Tiger,
Speaker 3: we're back, all right, Claude, you're ready to hear about
Speaker 3: the CIA's LSD distribution program in Cuba. At the beginning
Speaker 3: of the kill Castro campaign, the agency wasn't so blood thirsty.
Speaker 3: And they told you they first started out with the
Speaker 3: goal of let's just embarrass.
Speaker 1: Castros, like pull down his pants or something.
Speaker 3: Basically, that was their whole idea. They're like, if we
Speaker 3: pant over the world, bare bottom, he'd be.
Speaker 1: That'll show him, that'll learn him good.
Speaker 3: This was still the Eisenhower era. It was a more
Speaker 3: innocent America.
Speaker 1: It was wholesome. Pantsing is a wholesome activity.
Speaker 3: Very fifties, yes, very yeah. If he had, like if
Speaker 3: they could have driven over to Castro's house and just
Speaker 3: like knocked over his mailbox with like a small bat
Speaker 3: and a convertible, they would have done that.
Speaker 2: We'll get someone to like snap his bras straps in
Speaker 2: the hallways exactly.
Speaker 3: Put a kick me sign on the back of Cuba.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll get them.
Speaker 3: So Castro has been known to give super long speeches
Speaker 3: to his people, and I mean super long, like seven
Speaker 3: eight hour, nine hour long speeches. Right, So in August
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, CIA is like, that's our plan. We'll get
Speaker 3: them while he's talking. So this is a few months
Speaker 3: before the Kennedy Nixon election in nineteen sixty. We're in
Speaker 3: August nineteen sixty, right, CIA they planned for quote, a
Speaker 3: scheme to contaminate the air of the radio station where
Speaker 3: Castro broadcast his speeches with an aerosol spray of a
Speaker 3: chemical that produces reactions similar to those of like surgic
Speaker 3: acid LSD. So they're going to try to get him
Speaker 3: while he's on the radio and have him freak out.
Speaker 1: Vapors breathing in aerosolized LSD.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, and then have them have like a bad
Speaker 3: trip live on the air.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So somewhere along the way of them like loading up
Speaker 3: their acme brands bugspray cannon with LSD, They're like, you
Speaker 3: know what, this is a dumb idea. So then they
Speaker 3: were like, okay, let's move on a new plane.
Speaker 1: And then now they got all these cans of LSD spray.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just sitting around. They're like, what we do about this? Well,
Speaker 3: it's probably still in their warehouse. Yeah, just kicking back
Speaker 3: there with like the I don't know, the Ark of
Speaker 3: the Covenant, just a big warehouse, yeah, next to the
Speaker 3: LSD for Cuba. So uh, let's see after that, what
Speaker 3: did they do? Do you know what? They move on
Speaker 3: to more pantsing. They go, what if we made his
Speaker 3: beard fall off? That would totally get him.
Speaker 1: Probably in the shampoo.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Basically they're like, so the CIA is like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, his beard is like a it's like a
Speaker 3: symbol of power for him. It's talismanic. We need to
Speaker 3: get rid of that. So they turned to New Jerseys
Speaker 3: find his chemical makers, Like what do you got? Boys?
Speaker 3: Got right? They're like, oh, we got this new stuff fallium.
Speaker 3: They're like, tell me more about it. So the CIA
Speaker 3: quote the idea was to dust thallium powder into Castro's
Speaker 3: shoes when they were put out to be shined. The
Speaker 3: scheme progressed as far as procuring the chemicals and testing
Speaker 3: it on animals. So they're rubbing fallion on animals to
Speaker 3: see if that would work on Castro's feet to make
Speaker 3: his beard fall off. Right now, the idea was Castro
Speaker 3: was going to go to the UN to speak in
Speaker 3: New York in nineteen sixty the Sea. They planned to
Speaker 3: sneak into his hotel. They would find his room and
Speaker 3: then they would find his shoes left outside his room
Speaker 3: to be shined. Then they would, like the spy would
Speaker 3: dump some thallium powder in his shoes outside of the
Speaker 3: hotel room.
Speaker 1: Does he strike you as the shoes shine? Kind of?
Speaker 3: It's so ridiculous. It's like they're trying to poison their dad.
Speaker 2: How long does it take for the to kick in?
Speaker 2: And I mean I would assume all of us here
Speaker 2: it's not just a beard.
Speaker 3: Removing exactly would be like a full depilatory.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's got.
Speaker 3: He'd be losing armpit hair. I have no idea. I
Speaker 3: didn't go into the research.
Speaker 1: Can't imagine that.
Speaker 3: I imagine a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Oh, I would think it'd be longer than that, but
Speaker 1: I don't think. I mean, I'm no scientist.
Speaker 3: Do you work at Dow Chemicals? Sometimes anyway, the CIA
Speaker 3: they move on to their next plan because they're like,
Speaker 3: all right, Castro's beard is safe for now, what should
Speaker 3: we do next? So what is their next plan? Exploding cigars?
Speaker 1: Oh, you're kidding.
Speaker 3: They're like the wiley eye wiley coyote of Assassin.
Speaker 1: They went to like a magic shop and.
Speaker 3: Hand could we use a double sided coin flip?
Speaker 2: And he gets he's gonna sit down at the un
Speaker 2: and their loudest fart sound you ever heard.
Speaker 3: Will lean out whipp be cushioned darts will fly out
Speaker 3: of they They turned to uh, basically, you know, James
Speaker 3: Bond has quh So the CIA is like, who's our
Speaker 3: quarter master? So they're like they go find the guy
Speaker 3: and deepen the CA bowels of the basement. They're like, hey,
Speaker 3: are you the quartermaster. Guy's like, nobody ever comes down
Speaker 3: here anymore, not since the war. They're like, oh, we
Speaker 3: got a plan for you, buddy. So they have this
Speaker 3: guy and his name is Edward Gunn. Edward Gunn, that's
Speaker 3: gun with two ends.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: I think he got the job just because of his name.
Speaker 3: They're like, Edward Gunn, you're hired, Eddie gun you were
Speaker 3: working at the CIA, buddy. So, Teddy gun he's the
Speaker 3: head of the CIA's R and D department, Right, the
Speaker 3: CIA has a good I guess, a big R and
Speaker 3: D department.
Speaker 1: Bigger than Search and development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bigger than Batman I'm imagining. Right, So he's the
Speaker 3: one in charge of inventing the exploding cigar. So he
Speaker 3: Teddy Gun, my man, Edward. He decides to exploding guitar, sorry,
Speaker 3: exploding guitar, exploding cigar. How do I make an exploding cigar?
Speaker 3: He's like, that's kind of impractical, but I can do it.
Speaker 3: So he's like he's trying. He's trying. He's like, you
Speaker 3: know what, No, this doesn't work as a chemist. This
Speaker 3: is just too difficult. I'm going to go on to
Speaker 3: the simpler poison. The cigar.
Speaker 1: They yeah, So he's.
Speaker 3: Like, no, he didn't have Google back then, so he
Speaker 3: had to figure out how much poison do I have
Speaker 3: to put in the cigar to do this? Right? So,
Speaker 3: once again returning to the secretized only files of the CIA,
Speaker 3: Teddy Gunn quote has a notation that on August sixteenth
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty he received a box of Cuban cigars
Speaker 3: to be treated with a lethal material. He understood them
Speaker 3: to be Fidel's favorite brand. So now that the CIA's
Speaker 3: Q has a box of Fidel's favorite cigars, and what
Speaker 3: does he do with them? Well, he decides, with the
Speaker 3: help from the CIA's chemist, what's the best poison to
Speaker 3: put into this?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 3: Right, So they decide shellfish poison, that's the one. Wait, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like shellfish poison, that'll get them, right. But there's
Speaker 3: a problemgic, it's just one of the strongest poison. It's
Speaker 3: like like blowfish poisons, like one of the strongest poisons. Right,
Speaker 3: So they're like this, this will work for Castro. Right,
Speaker 3: there's a problem with it because Castro would have had
Speaker 3: to have been sucking on the cigar like it was
Speaker 3: a McDonald's shake just to get enough of that poison
Speaker 3: into him. So the CIA moved on to a poison
Speaker 3: that would be a little simpler, just so they could
Speaker 3: transfer over the skin really easily. And that one was botox, well,
Speaker 3: not actually botox, it was the active ingredientlinus toxin. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so Teddy Gun his boys at the chem lab, quote,
Speaker 3: they did contaminate a full box of fifty cigars with
Speaker 3: botulinus toxin, a virulent poison that produces a fatal illness
Speaker 3: some hours after ingestion. So now the kem lab has
Speaker 3: doused the cigars, so that quote, the cigars were so
Speaker 3: heavily contaminated that merely putting one in the mouth would
Speaker 3: do the job. The intended victim would not actually have
Speaker 3: to smoke it. So now they're like, no flame necessary,
Speaker 3: kill stick, right, so they're all excited. Teddy Gun he
Speaker 3: takes his poison cigars, hands them over to the director
Speaker 3: of the CIA, who then puts them in a safe
Speaker 3: and forgets all about them.
Speaker 1: What I thought he was gonna be likeny pop one
Speaker 1: in his mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, right, So he took him home and
Speaker 3: his children got into him. No, nothing like that, Teddy Gun.
Speaker 3: He he goes off, you know, and working on other projects. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the Kennedy years and the Nixon years, they go through
Speaker 3: different phases of how are we going to kill Castro? So,
Speaker 3: like in nineteen sixty three, the CIA entered what I'm
Speaker 3: calling it's underwater assassination period. So that's like Picasso's blue period. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so this was when the agency tried to create an
Speaker 3: exploding seashell. Yeah. So the CIA so comical, exactly those
Speaker 3: ridiculous stuff. Ever, the CIA knew that Castro loved to
Speaker 3: go scuba diving, so they're like, we can kill him there.
Speaker 3: So they're like, what do we do? So some spies
Speaker 3: were like, what if we made a seashell that's secretly
Speaker 3: a bomb?
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Some people were like, oh, I love that man. So
Speaker 3: they decided they'll hide an exploding seashell in the sea
Speaker 3: just where Fidel will find it. But not just anywhere.
Speaker 3: It has to be somewhere that Fidel's scuba dives. So
Speaker 3: the first they've got to like watchhere Fidel scuba dives,
Speaker 3: or they're just like following Fidel for a while. They decide, okay,
Speaker 3: we know the place where he's going to be. So
Speaker 3: they just tried, how are we going to place it.
Speaker 3: This is when they run into a problem. Quote. The
Speaker 3: scheme was soon found to be impracticable. None of the
Speaker 3: shells that might conceivably be found in the Caribbean area
Speaker 3: was both spec tacular enough to be sure to attract
Speaker 3: Castro's attention and large enough to hold the needed volume
Speaker 3: of explosives.
Speaker 1: Just like the big round bomb with the it's like
Speaker 1: you see a scallop with the.
Speaker 3: Fuse, it's actually burning underwater. So they can't find a
Speaker 3: seashell sexy enough for Castro, So they're like, what are
Speaker 3: we going to do? Oh? I forgot. There was also
Speaker 3: a midget submarine that they had developed, and that was
Speaker 3: how they were going to place the exploding seashell. But
Speaker 3: the ca is a little midget sub It was basically
Speaker 3: like a leash of keys. It just didn't have the
Speaker 3: range right it had. It needed too much fuel to
Speaker 3: be able to make the trips. So they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't going to work.
Speaker 2: So and the director's kids smoking cigars the piloting exactly.
Speaker 3: If they've been road testing it forever.
Speaker 2: It's like they just get like a really lovely shell
Speaker 2: from like the South Pacific and just put it out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then he'd think what where did this come from?
Speaker 1: And then you're obviously going to go.
Speaker 3: I should So the CIA, without your help, they move
Speaker 3: on to poisoned wetsuits, and they're like, this is will
Speaker 3: we need is a lethal suit. So they started developing
Speaker 3: this This mind you is at this point where after
Speaker 3: the post Bay of Pigs, Right, so the Kennedy brothers,
Speaker 3: Bobby and JFK they have had had their plan to
Speaker 3: invade Cuba fail, and they're now taking a few months
Speaker 3: off to rethink their plans, so they don't try to
Speaker 3: kill a castro for a couple months, and then they
Speaker 3: get right back to it. Yeah, so like we got
Speaker 3: to get back on our old energy. So they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: what are we gonna do. They go to this guy,
Speaker 3: James Donovan. He's a lawyer who that the US has
Speaker 3: in charge of negotiating with Cuba for the release of
Speaker 3: the prisoners from Bay of Pigs, from the whole fiasco.
Speaker 3: So the CIA is like they approached this guy and
Speaker 3: they're like, came in, you're the prisoner exchange Lary. He's
Speaker 3: like yeah, I'm going down and he's like, you're gonna
Speaker 3: talk to Fidel and all that. He's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They're like, care would you give him a poisoned wetsuit
Speaker 3: as a gift And he's like what now? From the
Speaker 3: Secret Eyes Only file, I quote, the technique involved dusting
Speaker 3: the inside of the suit with a fungus that would
Speaker 3: produce a disabling and chronic skin disease madua foot and
Speaker 3: contaminating the breathing apparatus with tuberculo basillai. So the poisoned
Speaker 3: wetsuit was brilliant. They're like, this is it. We finally
Speaker 3: got it right, and it's really bad. Exactly. The skin's
Speaker 3: gonna get all itch. He's gonna be terrible. So they decide, okay,
Speaker 3: let's go to do this. But this plan also goes nowhere.
Speaker 3: Why Elizabeth, you're the one telling the story. The lawyer's
Speaker 3: too smart for him, Donovan, he refuses to do wet
Speaker 3: work for the CIA. He's like no. He finds out
Speaker 3: exactly they're whole planned to give for Fidel, and he's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I know I'm gonna do. He gives Fidel a non
Speaker 3: poisonous sweatsuit of his own, so that would be suspicious
Speaker 3: if he gives him a second websuita darn it. He
Speaker 3: out bought us prisoner exchange lawyer one CIA zero. So
Speaker 3: after all these early failed attempts to SEEIA moved on
Speaker 3: to its most effective assassination campaign. And do you know
Speaker 3: what that one was? They asked Fidel's mistress to kill Castro.
Speaker 3: Oh right, finally they get their like their brains together,
Speaker 3: like somebody's actually gonna be close to him, right sometimes
Speaker 3: right next to him. So twenty sixteen, Vanity Fair, they
Speaker 3: sat down with this woman. Her name is Marita Lorenz,
Speaker 3: and she was with Elslilmer, Lover and Homegirl. Laid out
Speaker 3: just whopper of a story, right, I'm telling you, Like
Speaker 3: most of it seems to be true. Some of it is,
Speaker 3: like are you surreal? But it doesn't matter. You know,
Speaker 3: who cares whether it's fact or fiction. We know most
Speaker 3: of this is true because it shows up in a
Speaker 3: CIA file. So for the rest of it, who knows
Speaker 3: who cares. But according to Marita Lorenz, she was just
Speaker 3: minding her own business, being young and German and fabulous.
Speaker 3: It's just this self possessed woman of wealth and family connections, right,
Speaker 3: She's out in the big wild world all by herself.
Speaker 3: She's there in Miami and she meets this man named Eduardo.
Speaker 3: Right now, she says, this man, he's an a memorable man, right. So,
Speaker 3: he always wore white suits. He had the air of money.
Speaker 3: He was very quiet and elegant. From her guests, he
Speaker 3: was the money man for this clandestine operation that was
Speaker 3: going on that she only knew the veguest outlines of right,
Speaker 3: But much later on she would recognize this man and
Speaker 3: and his white suits when he was constantly on television.
Speaker 3: About a decade later during the Watergate hearings, this man
Speaker 3: was e. Howard Hunt of the Watergate break infat Oh,
Speaker 3: so how did the inside man for Nick Sin's bungle
Speaker 3: get chummy with Fidel's Castro's lover? Right? Well, it's a
Speaker 3: small world, Elizabeth, and when you're rich and powerful, it's
Speaker 3: even smaller. So Howard Hunt was chummy with the head
Speaker 3: of the CIA, Alan Dallies. And the common link between Dallas,
Speaker 3: Hunt and Marita was a man named Frank Sturgis. Now
Speaker 3: he would also become later known and famous as one
Speaker 3: of Nixon's plumbers, one of the break in men for Watergates. So,
Speaker 3: this early pre Watergate team is getting the band together
Speaker 3: before they make it big. And prior to all this,
Speaker 3: prior to meeting Marita, Sturgis had worked for the mafia.
Speaker 3: He was their man in Cuba. He was the He
Speaker 3: worked for the Mayor Lansky outfit. So he was big
Speaker 3: in the casino business under Battista. And he's like, you
Speaker 3: know this, he's basically like hanging with Cuba's tourist population. Yeah,
Speaker 3: fleecing them. Nobody cares, right, not nobody in Cuba because
Speaker 3: they're all like, oh, we're all exploiting everybody. It's a party.
Speaker 3: Water's great. So Sturgis, he can smell this change in
Speaker 3: the winds, right, So what does he do In nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty seven, He gets close with Comandante Fedel and he
Speaker 3: starts running guns to the island through his organized crime contexts,
Speaker 3: and then that puts him in go with Fidel. So
Speaker 3: this is just in time for the Cuban Revolution to occur,
Speaker 3: and now he's on the right side of history.
Speaker 2: So he's running guns that are going to toss out
Speaker 2: the casinos that were his lifelood.
Speaker 3: Well, he didn't really see it as that way because
Speaker 3: nobody understood what Fiddel was going to do it In
Speaker 3: the early years because he didn't really come off as
Speaker 3: a communist early. He was just a revolutionary working against imperialism.
Speaker 3: He was an anti imperialist more so than a communist
Speaker 3: at first. So the mafia was fine working with him, right,
Speaker 3: They were like, oh, maybe he'll give us a better
Speaker 3: deal than Batista. Then he did about so Castro ap
Speaker 3: points Sturgis the head of the casino industry in Cuba,
Speaker 3: So this is like early on. So then he eventually
Speaker 3: sturg just gets made the head of the Air Force
Speaker 3: intelligence for Cuba. Really, yeah, Fidel's going whole hog on this.
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, mafia run everything. I don't care. It
Speaker 3: turns out though Sturgis was secretly a CIA spy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he is.
Speaker 3: Sturg just told Vandy fair quote, I was a double agent.
Speaker 3: I was recruited by the CAIA in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 3: and stayed in Havana until June thirty, at nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 3: So he's like running at like, yeah, past this, the
Speaker 3: six months past a successful revolutions boom, because it was
Speaker 3: a what do you call it? New Year's Day nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty nine when the revolution basically wins. So he's there
Speaker 3: till June thirtieth of that same year. But in that
Speaker 3: time he meets Marita, whose family had interests in Cuba,
Speaker 3: so he gets charmed by her. She's this, you know,
Speaker 3: bon Vivan, successful, wealthy, beautiful young woman. Surgis does the
Speaker 3: next logical thing. He introduces her to his buddy, this
Speaker 3: notorious ladies man, Fidel Castro. The two hit it off.
Speaker 3: They start this tempestuous love affair. Later a CIA assassination attempt.
Speaker 3: So on November eighteenth, nineteen sixty three, Marita gets a
Speaker 3: call from Sturgis. He wants her to come meet him
Speaker 3: at a hotel in Miami. She assumes this is more
Speaker 3: of his gun running business, which she's familiar with, so
Speaker 3: she agrees to come along. This is where she meets
Speaker 3: future JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 1: Oh you're kidding, yes.
Speaker 3: Marina recalled it. The group of gun runners and conspirators
Speaker 3: took three cars. They drive from Miami to Dallas. She
Speaker 3: rides with Sturgis and another car was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 3: The caravan stops at some shabby little motel in Dallas.
Speaker 3: The group gets two adjoining rooms. Marina told Vanity fair quote,
Speaker 3: I thought we were going to hit an armory like
Speaker 3: we were here to do in operation. I thought they
Speaker 3: were going to use me as a decoy, That's what
Speaker 3: I was told. Star just brings in the bag with
Speaker 3: disguises and another bag with automatic weapons and starts clipping
Speaker 3: them together. It seemed different this time because of the
Speaker 3: instructions Frank give. Nobody can make phone calls, no brods,
Speaker 3: no booze, no contacts with the outside. So while they
Speaker 3: are in this crummy little hotel room putting together of
Speaker 3: their guns, Marita she sees Oswald for the first time.
Speaker 3: Now before this, this is obviously before he's going to
Speaker 3: get famous. She has no idea who he is, so
Speaker 3: she just happens to stick in her memory because of
Speaker 3: how memorable he is. She said, quote, this guy comes
Speaker 3: into the room. He's like a little mob punk. Hey,
Speaker 3: a short, balding guy with a cocky hat, heavy set,
Speaker 3: with a cleft on his chin. Elizabeth, you'd later know
Speaker 3: this guy is Jack Ruby. Let me tell you. Apparently
Speaker 3: he Jack Ruby was a charmer because he took two
Speaker 3: steps inside, saw me lounging and said, who's that broad?
Speaker 3: I said, you'll punk. So they don't hit it off
Speaker 3: right now, she wants to leave the shabby motel. I
Speaker 3: was furious. Hell he spoke to me. I had been
Speaker 3: sitting in crowded car. I have PMS. I said this, Frank,
Speaker 3: I'm going home. Give me some plane fare. So he's busy.
Speaker 3: Frank sturge is busy trying to keep Jack Ruby happy.
Speaker 3: And because they're not too far from where Marita is
Speaker 3: standing in the motel parking lot waiting to go to
Speaker 3: the airport or wherever, sturgees is leaning on the trunk
Speaker 3: of a car, talking in low tones to Jack Ruby.
Speaker 3: At this point, Jack Ruby leaves in a huff. Right,
Speaker 3: who shows up? E Howard Hunt. She claims he gives
Speaker 3: Surgis money and then he went and he spoke with
Speaker 3: another guy at the motel, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: the door was opened between the two rooms. Oswald was
Speaker 3: sitting in the other room with the other guys on
Speaker 3: the bed, just casually sitting there waiting for instructions. That
Speaker 3: was the last time I saw him, that is until
Speaker 3: a few days later when his face was all over
Speaker 3: the news. Right anyway, That's how Rita explains how she
Speaker 3: met E. Howard Hunt and he connected her with the
Speaker 3: CIA and set her up to kill Castro. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: So do you want to take a little break and
Speaker 3: then I'll tell you to kill Castro? Yes? All right, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: we're back. Yes, how was that role call of nineteen sixties?
Speaker 1: Names?
Speaker 3: Right? I mean? And by the way, this is like
Speaker 3: the the JFK assassination. There's a trove of documents that
Speaker 3: the CIA had and they released under President Trump, and
Speaker 3: so I pulled for a lot of this from these documents.
Speaker 3: This is all CIA stuff except for what her quotes.
Speaker 3: Those are the only things that are not from the CIA.
Speaker 3: So back to the story. Let's see how Marita Lorenz
Speaker 3: decides to kill Castro. Yes, okay, So now that they say,
Speaker 3: have their amateur assassin to see, handed Marita Lorenz some
Speaker 3: poison pills that they had developed to kill Castro. Right,
Speaker 3: so she says, the agency also gave her these confidence pills,
Speaker 3: which she called gut pills.
Speaker 1: They gave her confidence pill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently there's like some speed pills, like she said,
Speaker 3: and I quote, it's some kind of the CIA gives
Speaker 3: you that makes you feel very strong and courageous, indifferent
Speaker 3: like speed. With her two handfuls of the pills, she
Speaker 3: goes down to Cuba, and but she doesn't know if
Speaker 3: she can kill her world famous lover yet she's like
Speaker 3: on the fence about can I don't know. So well,
Speaker 3: that's not exactly true. She knew almost immediately that she
Speaker 3: couldn't do it. She was hoping that she could. That
Speaker 3: was really how I guess the best way to put it.
Speaker 3: So she says, and I quote, I knew the men
Speaker 3: that I saw the outline of Havannah. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: I hopped in the jeep and went to the Hilton,
Speaker 3: just simply walked in, said hi to the personnel at
Speaker 3: the desk, and went upstairs to the suite room too
Speaker 3: far to zero eight. I went in and waited. So
Speaker 3: now she's waiting to kill Castro in the Aana Hilton
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Say oh yeah, so it just gonna be like chaos city.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, globally.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she's there waiting for Fidell, sent by the CIA
Speaker 3: to kill him. Fidel thinks she's there to love him
Speaker 3: up right, because last time they saw each other it
Speaker 3: was passionate awesomeness. Right, So Marita she waits and she waits,
Speaker 3: and she has no one feels going to get there.
Speaker 3: Finally Fidel arrives. Right, his first question is he wants
Speaker 3: to know why she was so quick to leave the
Speaker 3: last time he saw her. Oh, so it's like a
Speaker 3: whole romance novel for Fidel. Right. So meanwhile, Marita and
Speaker 3: I returned to her quotes. I tried to play it cool.
Speaker 3: The most nervous I have ever been was in that
Speaker 3: room because I had agents on standby and had to
Speaker 3: watch my timing. I had enough hours to stay with him.
Speaker 3: Ordre Emil killed him and prevent him from making a
Speaker 3: speech that night, which was already pre announced. That's her plan,
Speaker 3: so Neil kill him, ditch speech exactly. There's one problem
Speaker 3: she she can't do it. She can't kill him. She
Speaker 3: just loves them. She loves Fidel. Right. He was very
Speaker 3: tired and wanted to sleep. He was chewing a cigar
Speaker 3: and he laid down on his bed and did you
Speaker 3: come here to kill me? Just like that? He says, Oh, God,
Speaker 3: Fidel knows she's the assassin, so he knows why she
Speaker 3: came back to Q. But it wasn't to love him up.
Speaker 3: It was to lug him down right right into the ground.
Speaker 3: So he knows the CIA center. So what is Marie
Speaker 3: to do? Well, what is the best? She says. I
Speaker 3: was standing at the edge of the bed. I said
Speaker 3: I wanted to see you, and he said that's good.
Speaker 3: That's good. Then he leaned over, pulled out his forty
Speaker 3: five and handed it to me. Fidel hands her. Is gone, right,
Speaker 3: Fidel's like the Steve McQueen of world leaders. Right. It's
Speaker 3: just too cool for school. But so is Marina because
Speaker 3: she cocks the handgun Fidel handed her. I flipped the
Speaker 3: chamber out and hit it back. He didn't even flinch,
Speaker 3: and he said, you can't kill me. Nobody can kill me,
Speaker 3: and he kind of smiled and chewed on his cigar.
Speaker 3: So there it is. This is the closest the CIA
Speaker 3: has gotten to actually killing Fidel, and Fidel's mocking the
Speaker 3: assassin to their face. But the assassin, she loves the target,
Speaker 3: So even with gun in her hand, she still can't
Speaker 3: do it. She's like, I felt deflated. He was so
Speaker 3: sure of me. He just grabbed me. We made love.
Speaker 3: I contemplated staying to start talking to him later after
Speaker 3: his speech, but it would be too late because he
Speaker 3: rambles on for like eight ten twelve hours. That was
Speaker 3: the hardest part. I wanted him to beg me to stay,
Speaker 3: but he got dressed and left and I just sat
Speaker 3: there by myself a while. I left him, not I
Speaker 3: told him I would be back. She doesn't actually go back,
Speaker 3: but anyway, she doesn't kill him the next time she
Speaker 3: sees him. Right at this point, Elizabeth, we're somewhere now
Speaker 3: the high four to five hundred range of attempts on
Speaker 3: his life, and none of them have worked. Right, And
Speaker 3: this is as closest we've gotten. Gun in hand. Assassin
Speaker 3: in a room with him still fails because Fidel like
Speaker 3: loves up the assassin.
Speaker 1: Confidence pills just pumping through her body.
Speaker 3: Exactly speed love. So anyway, who can the CIA turn to?
Speaker 3: Now entered La Cosa Nostra aka the American Mafia, the
Speaker 3: Old School Mob. So this plot dated back to JFK,
Speaker 3: Bobby Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. But after they
Speaker 3: were embarrassed on the world stage, Kennedy brothers wanted Castro
Speaker 3: taken out and they were willing to work with the
Speaker 3: Mob to make their dark dream come true. They're like
Speaker 3: embarrass us with the Bay of Pigs. We're taking them out.
Speaker 3: So According to the CIA files quote under five nine
Speaker 3: sixty two, Kennedy discussed with the director a number of matters,
Speaker 3: including admissioned by CIA that Robert Mayhew had been hired
Speaker 3: by the agency to approach sam g and Conna to
Speaker 3: have Castro assassinated at a cost of one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars. So the mob boss, the CIA approached
Speaker 3: sam Gy and Conna. He was the head of the
Speaker 3: Chicago family huge, right. He was also Sinatra's guy. Sam
Speaker 3: Giacana was the guy that daddy Joseph Kennedy, the old
Speaker 3: school Irish bootleg mobster. He reached out to sam g
Speaker 3: and Connie. He's like, look, I need you to help
Speaker 3: me secure my son's a nineteen sixty presidential election. Right,
Speaker 3: because he was at the time, John Kennedy was not
Speaker 3: the presumptive favorite. He was a young senator. He was
Speaker 3: the dark horse, if you will, right, But his daddy
Speaker 3: was a mobster. So he's like, look, so he approaches
Speaker 3: sam g and Conny. He's like, look, I need to
Speaker 3: win the West Virginia primary. So Samji and conn is like, okay,
Speaker 3: we can make that happen. And according to everybody in
Speaker 3: the know, Frank Sina true was the go between between
Speaker 3: San Giancanna and Joe Kennedy who made this happen. He
Speaker 3: puts together the Democratic nomination by having to get a
Speaker 3: victory in the West Virginia primary. Sinatra gets the favor
Speaker 3: from Sam Giancana. So what did the Kennedy brothers do
Speaker 3: now that they get the White House? They returned the
Speaker 3: favor by initiating reco investigations on the mob out of
Speaker 3: boom So. Anyway, but Ciangi and Coana wasn't the only
Speaker 3: mob boss the Ceia worked with. They also had Santo
Speaker 3: Trafficante from the family which was big yes in Atlantic City, Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: And also he was the head of the Miami Cuba family,
Speaker 3: so he helpfully spoke Spanish. That was good. He also
Speaker 3: wanted to control of the Cuban casinos back, so that
Speaker 3: was his move, and he wanted to get rid of
Speaker 3: the communists. He was a virulent anti communist. Third man
Speaker 3: on this job was la mob fixer who was busy
Speaker 3: working the Hollywood unions against the studio bosses. A dude
Speaker 3: named handsome Johnny Rosselli.
Speaker 1: Oh johnnysell Roselli you know now.
Speaker 3: He would later become the Chicago's mob guy in Vegas
Speaker 3: and Gi and Con and Johnny Rosselli went way back.
Speaker 3: They actually started out together with al Capone's outfit, so
Speaker 3: they had been like deep in the gangster world, right,
Speaker 3: So they'd also worked together in Cuba and they put
Speaker 3: the casinos, and they'd worked in Vegas and so now
Speaker 3: they were working the White House together. So, by the way,
Speaker 3: this plan for the CIA and the Mob to team up,
Speaker 3: it kind of predated Kennedy. It had started with Eisenhower
Speaker 3: and in September nineteen sixty the plan becomes real. This
Speaker 3: is before Kennedy is elected, so it's definitely pre dates Kennedy.
Speaker 3: But the agency had used a CIA cutout to contact
Speaker 3: the mob. This guy was the Robert Mayhew, who was
Speaker 3: also a fixer for Howard Hughes. So when he wasn't
Speaker 3: doing errands for the CIA, that's what he worked for.
Speaker 3: So this cat Mayhew, he reaches out to Sam G
Speaker 3: and Kanna and Handsome Johnny. Like I said, small world, right,
Speaker 3: once you were so powerful, it's like still a very
Speaker 3: small roll. The decks epently, So Howard hues this fixer.
Speaker 3: He reaches out to Sam G and Kana handsome Johnny.
Speaker 3: He goes, hey, I'll give you guys one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars to kill Castro. By the way, that's
Speaker 3: CIA money, so that's guaranteed. And they're like, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: The gangsters consider their offer. They're like you know what, No,
Speaker 3: and they're like, what do you mean No. He's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: we'll do but we'll do it for free. I'm like yeah,
Speaker 3: because the mob would. They want to consider it a favor,
Speaker 3: because it's like, you know, someday, and that day may
Speaker 3: never come. I may come to you, the US government
Speaker 3: and ask you for a favor. So of course the
Speaker 3: worst thing that can happen happens. What's the worst thing
Speaker 3: can happen? J Edgar Hoover finds out about the CIA's
Speaker 3: deal with the mob. All right, No, because the CIA
Speaker 3: is plotting with the mob, and the FBI just happens
Speaker 3: to stumble upon it. They aren't aware, nobody tips them off.
Speaker 3: But here the best way for me to tell you this, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: picture it. Yeah, please close your.
Speaker 1: Eyes, yes and picture it.
Speaker 3: Yes. It's nineteen sixty one. You are a maid working
Speaker 3: the Sands Casino in Las Vegas. You've left behind your
Speaker 3: previous life as a dog groomer to the Hollywood stars.
Speaker 3: It was getting to be a bore. Not the dogs,
Speaker 3: the stars. So now you're laying low, working as a
Speaker 3: maid as you plot your next move. You're pushing your
Speaker 3: cart down a long and quiet hallway. The lush casino
Speaker 3: carpeting swirls and flourishes beneath your feet. You gaze into
Speaker 3: its ornate patterns of color. It splashes overwrought design. Is
Speaker 3: your feet rhythmically plod along the wheels. They also have
Speaker 3: their own rhythm. You plan to start at the end
Speaker 3: of the hallway. You reach the corner room. You're well practiced.
Speaker 3: Hand opens the hotel room door without even a jingle
Speaker 3: from your pass key. You push open the door with
Speaker 3: your backside and you back into the hotel room. But
Speaker 3: you hear voices, oh, you freeze. You spin around. The
Speaker 3: room is not empty. You see three guys in flashy
Speaker 3: shark skin suits. One is seated, Two other guys are
Speaker 3: standing behind him like sentries, kind of flanking him. The
Speaker 3: guy in the sharkskin suit is talking with two other
Speaker 3: men in gray flannel suits, which is odd choice for
Speaker 3: Vegas since of the weather but whatever. The guys in
Speaker 3: the gray flannel suits they look like complete squares. The
Speaker 3: others look like mobsters. The guy in the sharkskin suit,
Speaker 3: he doesn't see you at first, so he keeps talking.
Speaker 3: Look simple, it's real simple. You bug Dan Rowan's room.
Speaker 3: You see, I just want to know if he's getting
Speaker 3: handsy with that dame from the Maguia sists phyllis. It's
Speaker 3: a little small favor from mister Ginkhana. So the guy
Speaker 3: in the sharkskin suit stops talking. He turns to see you.
Speaker 3: And what the others are all looking at? Which is you?
Speaker 3: So now everyone is staring at you and no one
Speaker 3: is speaking. You're all just staring at each other. Clearly
Speaker 3: you were not supposed to be in this room, Elizabe
Speaker 3: I would say, you quickly apologize to everybody in the room.
Speaker 3: You spin around and you screw it out of the room.
Speaker 3: You push your maker through the doorway and quickly follow it.
Speaker 3: The hotel door closes behind you. You're out. You're free.
Speaker 3: Oops eazy, you say to yourself, and then you decide
Speaker 3: to go start in the other room across the hall again.
Speaker 3: You open the door, you push it open. You know
Speaker 3: this room is empty because you saw the vacancy on
Speaker 3: the room charts. So you push open the door and boom.
Speaker 3: Two guys in short sleeve button down shirts are sitting there.
Speaker 3: Both guys wearing ties like idiots, you know, like that
Speaker 3: desert business casual. So they freeze in place like the
Speaker 3: last room. I'm telling you, they're wearing headphones. They're shocked.
Speaker 3: They stare back at you from their little eavesdropping field station.
Speaker 3: You don't say a word, neither do they. You slowly
Speaker 3: back out of the room as if you were never there,
Speaker 3: and the door shuts behind you. This time, you decide
Speaker 3: you'll start at the other end of the hallway. Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: you've just been witnessed to the FBI listening in on
Speaker 3: the mobsters as they convinced the CIA to do a
Speaker 3: favor for Chicago mob boss to see if his side
Speaker 3: piece was, in turn having an affair with her own
Speaker 3: the guy from Martin and Rowans laugh in what so
Speaker 3: Sam Jean kind of thought that Phyllis McGuire from the
Speaker 3: McGuire sisters having an affair with Dan Rowan from laughing, and
Speaker 3: so he asked the CIA, hey, bug that guy's room
Speaker 3: in Vegas, say and they did it, and you, yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: this is a favor. They may have to come to
Speaker 3: you one day for So when the FB guys find
Speaker 3: out that they've been surveilling CIA guys working with the Mob,
Speaker 3: they are giddy as a schoolgirl and they go running
Speaker 3: DEAFBI director Jaygar Hoover now he's super geek to get
Speaker 3: the CIA operatives on charges of collaborating with the Mob.
Speaker 3: This will embarrass everybody. He loves it. CIA is like, wait, wait, wait, look,
Speaker 3: we're guilty with an explanation. So, in the CIA's own
Speaker 3: words from an internal memo, we know, quote, can we
Speaker 3: plausibly deny that we plotted with gangster elements to assassinate Castro? No,
Speaker 3: we cannot. So they're just like, we have no possible
Speaker 3: deniability and we're gonna have to go with our old
Speaker 3: school why so, the CIA was also like, look, chill,
Speaker 3: Jay Hagger, can we talk just agency to agency? We
Speaker 3: need Sam g and Conn and Handsome Johnny. They're the
Speaker 3: ones who are helping us to kill Castro and Jaeger
Speaker 3: Hoover's like, oh, killing commies. Why didn't you say you're
Speaker 3: speaking my lad? Carry on? So Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, though,
Speaker 3: finds out from a memo from a Giddy, I have
Speaker 3: a secret Jaegger Hoover, right, so he goes. When Bobby
Speaker 3: finds us out, he's pissed because now he's gonna make
Speaker 3: the Kennedy brothers look bad. And they barely got in
Speaker 3: the White House. They had to work with the Mob
Speaker 3: to get there, so they're worried that this is going
Speaker 3: to make them look bad. So what does he do.
Speaker 3: He's furious, right, but at the same time he's like,
Speaker 3: but still a good idea. You guys keep doing that,
Speaker 3: So he gives his blessing to the idea he's super
Speaker 3: mad about. Right. In fact, some like Richard Helms, who
Speaker 3: was later the ambassador to Iran, but prior to that
Speaker 3: was the director of the CIA. He said and testified
Speaker 3: to the Church Committee that quote, the principal driving force
Speaker 3: was the Attorney General Robert Kennedy. There isn't any question
Speaker 3: about this. Oh wow, So it was Bobby Kennedy's mission.
Speaker 3: So my favorite part about this super team up between
Speaker 3: Mob and g men is how both groups wanted to
Speaker 3: be like the other. So the they fantasized about the
Speaker 3: Mob guys. They are talking about how they would kill Castro.
Speaker 3: They wanted the Mafia to have a bunch of hitman
Speaker 3: roll up with like Tommy guns and gun down Castro
Speaker 3: in the street. Yeah, they wanted like the Saint Valentine's
Speaker 3: past for Castro. Meanwhile, the Mafia, they're like, hey, we
Speaker 3: want some of them James Bond super spy gadget. So
Speaker 3: we wanted to give them to our assassins, so like,
Speaker 3: come in there to see I was like, Oh, we
Speaker 3: don't really do that, that's just the movies, guys. So
Speaker 3: finally their plan comes together. They actually have a legit idea.
Speaker 3: The Mob found the perfect man to do their wet work.
Speaker 3: Who is it? Inside man high level Cuban bureaucrat re
Speaker 3: enter Teddy gunn Cia s Q. He's like, what do
Speaker 3: you guys need? So the Mob told them we want
Speaker 3: a super spy assassination pen. So he's like, okay, superspy
Speaker 3: assassination pen coming up. So he starts working on a
Speaker 3: James Bond number four of them. Right, he rushes the
Speaker 3: order because the assassin's gonna leave soon, so he has
Speaker 3: to make this poison pen overnight. Oh wow, So he
Speaker 3: stays up all night. Luca Brayton his butt buns off
Speaker 3: trying to make this pen. He secrets a hypodermic needle
Speaker 3: into a pen and just like the mobsters, it suggested
Speaker 3: that maybe like a needle in, there was poison in
Speaker 3: it was hid in the neck. He's like, perfect, I
Speaker 3: got it. So they sent He sends over James Bond
Speaker 3: kill pen over the CIA. They rushed to the airport.
Speaker 3: They meet the diplomat at the airport, he gets the
Speaker 3: assassination kit just before he boards his flight to Paris.
Speaker 3: Hours later, he lands in Charles de Gaull Airport. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was orally, doesn't really matter. Anyway, He's on his
Speaker 3: way to Cuba. He meets someone at the airport, his
Speaker 3: point man. Together they make fun of the poison pen
Speaker 3: that the CIA gave him, and I quote from the CIA.
Speaker 3: Hector Sanchez arrived in Paris on the morning of November
Speaker 3: twenty second and met with the flipped Cuban bureaucrat Cubela
Speaker 3: late that afternoon. Sanchez states that he showed the pen
Speaker 3: syringe to Kubela and explained how it worked. Sanchez distinctly
Speaker 3: recalls the Kubela didn't think much of the device. Also,
Speaker 3: the CIA didn't include any poison in their poison pen.
Speaker 3: He would be assassin was expected to source his own poison.
Speaker 3: They did give him a recommendation, though quick Kubela was
Speaker 3: expected to supply his own and we merely suggested black
Speaker 3: leaf forty as an effective poison for use in the syringe.
Speaker 3: So it's just like, go find some black leave forty.
Speaker 3: So anyway, fate plays a hand because quote as they
Speaker 3: were coming out of the meeting, Sanchez and Coubela were
Speaker 3: informed that President Kennedy had been assassinated. Kubela was visibly
Speaker 3: moved over the news. Why do such things happen to
Speaker 3: good people? He asked, So there is our one percent
Speaker 3: in this story, President Kennedy. He gets assassinated. And perhaps
Speaker 3: the greatest irony of this is that many of the
Speaker 3: men who conspired to kill Castro met violent ends. JFK,
Speaker 3: Bobby Kennedy, sam Gy and Kanna and Johnny Rosselli all
Speaker 3: caught about it.
Speaker 2: So this the syringe was happening around the same time
Speaker 2: that the missive they.
Speaker 3: Were having multiple attempts. They weren't deserving one attempt, like
Speaker 3: they were basically both headed there at the same time.
Speaker 3: And then it just happened to be that Kennedy got killed,
Speaker 3: and that takes and then Castro goes out and makes
Speaker 3: a bunch of speeches basically ragging on the Americans for
Speaker 3: not seeing that coming. Surprisingly, also there is interesting stuff
Speaker 3: in the in the Kennedy stuff about possibly Castro's agents
Speaker 3: flipped the Kennedy assassins that were sent to kill Castro
Speaker 3: and he sent them back to kill Kennedy. There's a
Speaker 3: whole thing there, but we need to have more documents
Speaker 3: come out for confirmation on that, but it seems to
Speaker 3: be that there was people who flipped the other way. Anyway, Surprisingly,
Speaker 3: after the Church Committee's explosive report, there were new laws
Speaker 3: that prohibited the assassination of foreign leader. Reagan even signed
Speaker 3: one right. US presidents, though, still continue to try kill
Speaker 3: with Castro, even President Carter, which I surprised me because
Speaker 3: you know, he's kind of like the piece nick peanut
Speaker 3: farmer guy. But still he was out there. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not banging hammers into homes for humanity. I'm got
Speaker 3: there trying to kill Castro. Anyway, according to the former
Speaker 3: head of the Cuban intelligence called Jimmy, Carter clocked in
Speaker 3: his sixty four attempts, so that was big. Next Reagan,
Speaker 3: he broke the record one hundred and ninety seven attempts.
Speaker 3: We went over that, George Bush and Bill Clinton sixteen
Speaker 3: to twenty one respectively. And then Clinton. You know, he
Speaker 3: had the CAA go back to some of their greatest hits.
Speaker 3: He's like, can I get on that Kennedy energy. So
Speaker 3: he had them try to put pull an exploding podium
Speaker 3: move yeah, He's like yeah, So of course it failed, right.
Speaker 3: The British paper The Guardian reported quote as recentably as
Speaker 3: two thousand, when Castro was due to visit Panama, a
Speaker 3: plot was hatched to put two hundred pounds of high
Speaker 3: explosives under the podium where he was due to speak.
Speaker 3: Castro's personal security team carried out their own checks before
Speaker 3: he arrived and foiled the plot.
Speaker 1: Just because the podium had acme yes, exactly, it.
Speaker 3: Just like literally the drums or the but he got
Speaker 3: sticks of dynamite all bound together under the podium with
Speaker 3: the clock ticking and just like anyway. Finally, at the
Speaker 3: ripe old age of ninety, having outlived most all of
Speaker 3: his contemporaries except for Kissinger, many of the men who
Speaker 3: plotted to kill him. Castro finally kicked the bucket on
Speaker 3: November twenty fifth, twenty sixteen. And I can tell you
Speaker 3: one hundred percent with certainty that Cia had absolutely nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it. And how do I know this,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth hum because Castro died. So what's our ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: My ridiculous takeaway is that if you think you're going
Speaker 2: to be clever, you're too clever, yes a half yeah.
Speaker 3: And Wiley Kai is a terrible sassiny model.
Speaker 1: Bad role model.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for listening. You would always find us online
Speaker 3: at Ridiculous Crime dot com. That's our website, or you
Speaker 3: can find us on Twitter. Can you find us on Instagram?
Speaker 3: You can find us on the streets of Oakland at fast,
Speaker 3: but you can also email us at Ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com. Thanks for listening. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarain Burnett, produced and edited by
Speaker 3: Our Man and Havannah Dave Kustin, researches by Marissa the
Speaker 3: Librarian Brown and Andrea the Professor. Song Sharpened Tear, our
Speaker 3: theme song is by Thomas the Norseman Lee and Handsome
Speaker 3: Travis Dutton Executive produces our Ben Dwight Eisenhower tried to
Speaker 3: warn us Bowlin and Noel Scheckers Brown.
Speaker 1: Ridic say it one more time. Ridiculous crime is aroduction
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