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The Bay of Pigs Disaster · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
0:15
Speaker 1: and Jerry's over there somewhere and the Stuff you Should Know,
0:19
Speaker 1: and it's about this recording session is off to his
0:23
Speaker 1: auspicious to start as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Chuck, am,
0:26
Speaker 1: I right, yeah, nice little UH tie in there, Thank
0:32
Speaker 1: you very much. It's it's what I'm paid to do.
0:36
Speaker 1: I think so didn't know what they pay us for
0:38
Speaker 1: to be witty and incisive? I think so. I think
0:43
Speaker 1: so too, so, Chuck, I know, Um, to my astonishment
0:49
Speaker 1: that you were not alive during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
0:52
Speaker 1: You came along a good decade after that, from what
0:55
Speaker 1: I understand, in full of years, I didn't want anything
0:57
Speaker 1: to do with it now, and I can under stand why,
1:00
Speaker 1: because it was about as big a stinker as far
1:04
Speaker 1: as foreign policy and military intervention goes UM. Certainly, the
1:09
Speaker 1: US has made bigger blunders. A lot more people died
1:13
Speaker 1: um through some of our UH misadventures abroad, but this
1:18
Speaker 1: one is perennially the one that's pointed to is like
1:21
Speaker 1: this is really a case study and how terribly wrong
1:26
Speaker 1: things can go and how decisions were made basically every
1:30
Speaker 1: level and at every stage. That that made sure that
1:33
Speaker 1: that the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was the United
1:36
Speaker 1: States supporting uh an invasion of Cuba by Cuban dissidents UM,
1:42
Speaker 1: that that it's about as bad as it can go.
1:45
Speaker 1: That that was like the perfect example of that. Yeah,
1:48
Speaker 1: it almost makes you think that if there was a
1:51
Speaker 1: God who cared about American politics, that that God was saying,
1:57
Speaker 1: don't invade Cuba, over and over again, don't invade Cuba.
2:01
Speaker 1: And you know I can. I'm pressing all the buttons here.
2:04
Speaker 1: Everything's going wrong, warning, warning, don't do it right? Or
2:09
Speaker 1: God really loves Fidel. Well maybe so, because that was
2:16
Speaker 1: the whole point, the whole reason that America supported this
2:20
Speaker 1: UM covert action. Really it went a lot further than
2:23
Speaker 1: support like drummed up a covert action UM led by
2:27
Speaker 1: the CIA. The military was secretly involved, it was illegal internationally,
2:33
Speaker 1: But the whole reason was to get rid of Castro
2:37
Speaker 1: because UM on New Year's Day of what ninety nine,
2:43
Speaker 1: Fidel Castro took control of Cuba from then existing president
2:49
Speaker 1: Fulgencio Batista and Batista Chuck I wrote up on this guy.
2:54
Speaker 1: He was a bad dude. He was a dictator. He
2:57
Speaker 1: was actually he was the president of Cuba twice. The
3:00
Speaker 1: first time he was corrupt, but the country is still
3:03
Speaker 1: prospered under him, and he was he still looked out
3:05
Speaker 1: for people. The second time, after an eight year period abroad,
3:09
Speaker 1: when he came back, he was just bad news. But
3:13
Speaker 1: as far as America was concerned, Uh, they were like, well,
3:16
Speaker 1: he he lets American companies own most of like the
3:19
Speaker 1: stuff in Cuba, so we're okay with them. When Fidel
3:22
Speaker 1: came along, he said, nuts to that, we're getting the
3:25
Speaker 1: American involvement out of Cuba and Cuba is going to
3:28
Speaker 1: take care of Cuba from now on. And America said,
3:31
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how we feel about that. Yeah. And
3:33
Speaker 1: you know, we had our chance to be buddies with
3:36
Speaker 1: Castro uh at the beginning, Like he came to the
3:39
Speaker 1: United States and toured America and we we gave him
3:43
Speaker 1: the the Heisman and he was huh, gave him the heisman,
3:51
Speaker 1: the Heisman trophy. It's an expression, Oh, I've never heard
3:57
Speaker 1: that before. You ever seen the hero got you? Yeah? Yeah, sure, sure, No,
4:02
Speaker 1: I thought you were still like like in like describing
4:05
Speaker 1: his grand tour and how great it was. I got you.
4:08
Speaker 1: And then we gave him an honorary Heisman Trophy award.
4:11
Speaker 1: That's that's where my mind weird, like that's what they
4:14
Speaker 1: paid me for. Now. It's an expression. Yeah, it might
4:18
Speaker 1: predate you if I feel like it was an expression
4:20
Speaker 1: like in the nineties. No, I totally get what you meant.
4:25
Speaker 1: It was the context that through me. Okay, well we
4:27
Speaker 1: gave him the Heisman, and uh, he wanted buddy, And
4:32
Speaker 1: that's when Kruschef came along and he was like, well, look,
4:34
Speaker 1: Americans aren't gonna be my buddy. I'll be a friend
4:36
Speaker 1: with you. And that's kind when all got started. We
4:39
Speaker 1: had our shot. Yeah. Supposedly, though, the Bay of Pigs
4:43
Speaker 1: invasion itself was one of the things that really drove
4:46
Speaker 1: Castro into the arms of Kruscheff. So the whole idea
4:49
Speaker 1: was to get rid of Castro because we were afraid
4:51
Speaker 1: he was going to go toward Kruscheff and give the
4:53
Speaker 1: Communists a foothold in the Western hemisphere, basically in our backyard.
4:59
Speaker 1: Um and bye bye. Carrying out this bay of pigs invasion.
5:03
Speaker 1: We made sure that that happened. It's one of the
5:05
Speaker 1: great ironies of this whole thing. Yeah, because Castro wasn't
5:09
Speaker 1: looking to be a puppet of the Soviets. That was
5:13
Speaker 1: not on his docket. Um, and the Soviets really needed him.
5:17
Speaker 1: I think at the time they they didn't have I mean,
5:21
Speaker 1: I think they had less than five I C b ms.
5:24
Speaker 1: I don't think they had anything that could even get
5:26
Speaker 1: to the United States at that point. An I c
5:28
Speaker 1: B M is the worst kind of BM. Uh. Actually,
5:34
Speaker 1: I think the fiery HOTBEATM so the worst kind. Yeah,
5:37
Speaker 1: you're right about that, although it's anyone had an ICBM
5:40
Speaker 1: because you'd probably be in big trouble. Maybe. But but
5:44
Speaker 1: Russia needed the Soviet Union needed Cuba way more than
5:49
Speaker 1: Cuba needed them at the onset. Wow, that's really interesting.
5:53
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that, because I know that
5:55
Speaker 1: America was terrified of communism in the Soviet Union in particular,
5:59
Speaker 1: but also you know, um, they didn't consider China to
6:03
Speaker 1: be slouch is really as far as the spread of
6:06
Speaker 1: communism goes. But the Soviet Union seemed really interested in
6:10
Speaker 1: spreading Soviet style communism throughout the world, and at the
6:14
Speaker 1: time colonialism was really kind of um the I guess
6:18
Speaker 1: the European colonial powers were losing their grip on places
6:21
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia and Africa, and so there were all
6:25
Speaker 1: these countries, um, including ones in Latin America that were
6:28
Speaker 1: kind of I don't want to say up for grabs,
6:30
Speaker 1: because I don't mean to undermine, you know, the the
6:33
Speaker 1: agency of the people who lived and ran these countries,
6:36
Speaker 1: but they were, you know, these were the these were
6:38
Speaker 1: becoming the two superpowers in the world, so you you
6:41
Speaker 1: could fall under their influence that at the very least economically,
6:44
Speaker 1: if not politically. UM. And so the US was really
6:48
Speaker 1: worried about the spread of communism. And one of the
6:50
Speaker 1: things that Dwight Eisenhower IKE, who was president in the
6:54
Speaker 1: late fifties, warned about was the domino effect where once
6:58
Speaker 1: you know, you had one country turn communists, it would
7:01
Speaker 1: spread to another neighboring country, and then another and another,
7:03
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, half of Africa's communists. So
7:06
Speaker 1: we need to be worried about this kind of thing.
7:08
Speaker 1: So America was really starting to enter like the fear
7:12
Speaker 1: of that Cold War panic in about the late fifties
7:15
Speaker 1: early sixties. Yeah. And here's the thing too, When I
7:18
Speaker 1: say that Russia didn't have capabilities to strike from where
7:22
Speaker 1: they were, I'm not sure if we knew that. I'm
7:25
Speaker 1: sure there are historians that that know that answer, but
7:28
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if America knew that. So as I
7:30
Speaker 1: think that they just you couldn't take any chances. Basically
7:34
Speaker 1: you had to get um Cuba off the map for
7:39
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union and not like in like sink the island,
7:42
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. No, and at the
7:44
Speaker 1: very least you could leave the island in tech leave
7:46
Speaker 1: the island. There's a lot, like a lot of valuable industries,
7:49
Speaker 1: and like the mob was running casinos down there right
7:51
Speaker 1: before Castros get rid of Castro seemed to be the
7:53
Speaker 1: whole thing. Castro and Sha Gavar, Right. So this occurred
7:58
Speaker 1: to the eyes and our administration CIA, who hatched a
8:03
Speaker 1: plan that had the ominously c I a E. Title
8:08
Speaker 1: of a program of covert action against the Castro regime.
8:13
Speaker 1: And they presented this thing, I believe in them in
8:17
Speaker 1: like nineteen sixty one, the very beginning of nineteen sixty one, um,
8:22
Speaker 1: and they went to Eisenhower and they said, look, this
8:24
Speaker 1: guy really, we all know that he has to go.
8:27
Speaker 1: But here's what we think is the best way to
8:29
Speaker 1: do this. We need to get rid of Castro, but
8:33
Speaker 1: we need to do it in such a way that
8:34
Speaker 1: it appears that the Cuban people have are are dissatisfied
8:39
Speaker 1: with his rule and they've turned against him. We need
8:42
Speaker 1: to keep our hands off of it. And and for
8:45
Speaker 1: one reason, because I mean that just kind of seems
8:47
Speaker 1: like a lot more legitimate of revolution, doesn't it. Like
8:51
Speaker 1: the Cubans rose up against Castro, so they really didn't
8:54
Speaker 1: want Castro around, so nobody should swoop in to help Castro.
8:58
Speaker 1: But then, secondly, the US is not allowed to dabble
9:01
Speaker 1: in other countries affairs. It's illegal internationally to invade a
9:06
Speaker 1: sovereign country unprovoked or without reason. And so this was
9:10
Speaker 1: not a good It wouldn't have been a good look
9:12
Speaker 1: for the US to be caught doing this. So they
9:13
Speaker 1: figured the best way to do it would be to
9:15
Speaker 1: train a bunch of Cuban dissidents and have them just
9:18
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, and not only that, they wanted to
9:21
Speaker 1: create a new government, they wanted to um disperse propaganda
9:27
Speaker 1: anti Castro propaganda. I mean, it was basically, we want
9:31
Speaker 1: to topple a regime and install a new government of
9:34
Speaker 1: our choosing. Uh, and this is completely illegal. And Eisenhower said, sure,
9:41
Speaker 1: go ahead. Um, this sounds good to me because what
9:43
Speaker 1: we can't risk is them buddying up too much with
9:47
Speaker 1: Kruchef and have nuclear weapons. All of a sudden parked
9:50
Speaker 1: right off our coast, just right. So they went to Miami.
9:55
Speaker 1: Which where else would you go to recute recruit Cuban defectors.
9:59
Speaker 1: Perfect place because they were defecting and there were a
10:01
Speaker 1: lot of unhappy Cubans that didn't like Castro that uh,
10:06
Speaker 1: that left, and and they were they were there just
10:09
Speaker 1: sort of waiting to be called upon and very willing
10:12
Speaker 1: to be called upon by the CIA, as it turns out. Yeah,
10:16
Speaker 1: and apparently when they started like amassing this group of
10:21
Speaker 1: of recruits, they first started training them in the Everglades
10:24
Speaker 1: in Florida, and they learned things like cryptography and demolitions
10:28
Speaker 1: and guerrilla warfare and all that stuff. But um, it
10:31
Speaker 1: was I guess an open secret or maybe common knowledge
10:35
Speaker 1: is a better way to put it among Cuban dissidents
10:38
Speaker 1: in Florida that the CIA was was training a group
10:42
Speaker 1: down there with the CIA, Bless their hearts, they tried
10:46
Speaker 1: to at least um make it seem like they weren't
10:49
Speaker 1: from the CIA, which is a very CIA type thing
10:51
Speaker 1: to do. So the agents, the CIA agents, said that
10:55
Speaker 1: they were from a very powerful company that was bent
10:58
Speaker 1: on on removing Communism from the world, and um, yes, sure.
11:04
Speaker 1: But then one of the Cuban dissidents with CEI agents
11:07
Speaker 1: says what And the c I agent said what and
11:09
Speaker 1: the cat was out of the back. Yeah, and these
11:11
Speaker 1: were not um, you know, they had to train these
11:14
Speaker 1: guys up. There were there were a bunch of students. Obviously,
11:17
Speaker 1: if you think about dissidents leaving Cuba, you can have
11:20
Speaker 1: a lot of student involvement. But there were also just professionals.
11:24
Speaker 1: There were doctors and lawyers and farmers. Um. There were
11:27
Speaker 1: people that were had no money. There were people that
11:30
Speaker 1: had quite a bit of money for Cuba, and they
11:33
Speaker 1: all didn't like Castro though, but none of them, almost
11:36
Speaker 1: none of them had any kind of prior training and
11:40
Speaker 1: they were I mean, why this hasn't been made into
11:42
Speaker 1: a movie yet is just flabbergasting to me, because this
11:46
Speaker 1: has all the elements of a great movie. Yeah, especially
11:50
Speaker 1: if you do it from the view of the dissidents
11:53
Speaker 1: who were trained into a paramilitary group. I think that
11:55
Speaker 1: would happen to be your protagonists. Yeah, because it's been
12:00
Speaker 1: touched on before, like it was in The Good Shepherd,
12:02
Speaker 1: that that Matt Damon movie about the origin of the
12:05
Speaker 1: cia UM they touched on. You know, it's been a
12:08
Speaker 1: I believe it's been referenced at least. But yeah, you're right,
12:11
Speaker 1: there's no blockbuster movie. You know, we're like the Rock
12:15
Speaker 1: and like Cuban guys who are like you know, they
12:20
Speaker 1: also form a bromance too. That that that um that
12:24
Speaker 1: really kind of is a subplot to the whole thing.
12:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's that's how they ruin it, isn't it
12:30
Speaker 1: with the romances. Just that they're by casting the Rock
12:34
Speaker 1: and vind Everything he just said sounded awful and exactly
12:37
Speaker 1: how it would probably happen. I think Vin Diesel actually
12:40
Speaker 1: released a record recently which I say props to him. Man,
12:45
Speaker 1: he's multifaceted. He's a double threat. Is the name of
12:48
Speaker 1: his one man band, Diesel Fuel. Because if not, it
12:53
Speaker 1: should be. It's not a bad one. You want to
12:57
Speaker 1: take a break. Uh yeah, I think says it's a
12:59
Speaker 1: good great time for a break. Thanks man, I thought
13:02
Speaker 1: you'd say that. So we're gonna take a break everybody,
13:04
Speaker 1: in case you hadn't heard, and we'll be right back George.
13:28
Speaker 1: So uh, Dave russ helped us out with this one,
13:31
Speaker 1: chuck um and he uh said, we need to be
13:34
Speaker 1: sure to give a shout out to Jim Rasenberger, who's
13:38
Speaker 1: a author of the book The Brilliant Disaster JFK. Castro
13:45
Speaker 1: in America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs, which
13:49
Speaker 1: is um. I've seen his work referred to multiple places,
13:53
Speaker 1: so he wrote a pretty good book about it, and
13:56
Speaker 1: I guess Dave Russ um learned a lot from him.
13:59
Speaker 1: So thanks a lot, Mr Razenberger. But um, at where
14:04
Speaker 1: we left off was there was a group of Cuban dissidents.
14:07
Speaker 1: I think they reached uh the ranks of like four
14:11
Speaker 1: um before they stopped recruiting that were being trained in
14:15
Speaker 1: the Everglades. But they said, hey, we found this way
14:18
Speaker 1: better camp in Guatemala. Let's move everybody there to the
14:22
Speaker 1: to the rainforest because it's a little more like Cuba's
14:26
Speaker 1: um climate. And uh and we kind of owned Guatemala
14:30
Speaker 1: right well, Guatemala was at the very least very much
14:33
Speaker 1: friendly to American interests by this time, because we had
14:35
Speaker 1: already overthrown uh the I think the ellendeen A government,
14:41
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Um, like, we had just done
14:44
Speaker 1: that and installed like a pro American regime. So yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: this would have been a perfect place to have a
14:49
Speaker 1: secret CIA training camp for Cubans to train to invade Cuba.
14:55
Speaker 1: That's right, thanks to bananas reference to our past epio
15:00
Speaker 1: seut on pr. That was such a good one. I
15:03
Speaker 1: think that's my all time favorite, live at all time favor.
15:06
Speaker 1: Huh m hmm. I don't know. I'd have to. I
15:10
Speaker 1: have to look at the list and really give it thought.
15:13
Speaker 1: It's that one's up there. I also love the the
15:16
Speaker 1: Kellogg brothers. Those are probably my top two. That was
15:19
Speaker 1: a good one too, for sure. Why we have to pick,
15:23
Speaker 1: Let's just say, yeah, it's so weird and foreign. Remember
15:26
Speaker 1: when we would go in the room with fifteen hundred
15:28
Speaker 1: other people and uh, I'll hug each other. I just
15:33
Speaker 1: broke out in like a cold sweat man at the
15:35
Speaker 1: idea of that. It's like, it's funny when you watch
15:37
Speaker 1: TV shows and they were filmed you know, prior to
15:40
Speaker 1: the pandemic, You're like, you're standing too close together. Somebody
15:42
Speaker 1: put on a mask. Yeah, you're making me nervous. You
15:45
Speaker 1: have anxiety dreams too, about proximity. Uh no, I have
15:51
Speaker 1: anxiety dreams about politics. See. I have a lot of
15:54
Speaker 1: anxiety dreams lately. I mean not lately, for the past
15:56
Speaker 1: nine months, every like once a week or so about somebody,
16:00
Speaker 1: you know, being all up in my grill and I'm like,
16:02
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Get
16:04
Speaker 1: away from me? Stand back, sir, Which is ironic, because
16:09
Speaker 1: I love being close to people physically, I know. I
16:12
Speaker 1: think that's probably why you have anxiety, is because there's
16:14
Speaker 1: a tension there, like if you were naturally like stay
16:18
Speaker 1: over there. I gotta tell you that that part of
16:21
Speaker 1: the pandemic has been kind of easy for me. Some
16:23
Speaker 1: standoffice to begin with, you know, Oh goodness, so chuck Um.
16:29
Speaker 1: One of the things that I thought was kind of
16:31
Speaker 1: cool about this this group of people, Um, this group
16:34
Speaker 1: of Cuban dissidents who were trained into a paramilitary group.
16:37
Speaker 1: The CIA had the foresight to give them serial numbers
16:40
Speaker 1: starting at number pretty funny, so that if anyone of
16:43
Speaker 1: them were caught. They could say, well, my serial number,
16:47
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, oh my god, there's people ahead
16:50
Speaker 1: of them, how and how who knows how many after them?
16:53
Speaker 1: When in fact, again it was in fact, I think
16:55
Speaker 1: their patch said and that had a little air pointing
17:00
Speaker 1: to it, and then right beside that it said, you see,
17:04
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was very elaborate patch. It was
17:08
Speaker 1: very colorful too, and as a matter of fact, it
17:11
Speaker 1: stood out a little too much. And then underneath it
17:13
Speaker 1: said and there's more to come, get it right. What
17:18
Speaker 1: was under that under that was it's totally not a
17:21
Speaker 1: made up number. And then below that there was an
17:24
Speaker 1: arrow that went all the way to the top. Start
17:27
Speaker 1: over again. So they were actually called Brigade twenty five
17:32
Speaker 1: oh six, and they named themselves after the serial number
17:36
Speaker 1: of one of their fallen comrades who died in training
17:39
Speaker 1: camp in Guatemala. He slipped on a slippery trail during
17:43
Speaker 1: an exercise and fell into a ravine. And what was
17:46
Speaker 1: his name? His name was Carlos Rafael Santana. Carlos Santana
17:51
Speaker 1: slipped on a banana peel. Oh that Rafael really threw
17:55
Speaker 1: me off, but yeah, appeal, no it didn't. But they said,
18:01
Speaker 1: this is very said, so we're going to name our
18:02
Speaker 1: brigade after him, and they did. So that's what they've
18:05
Speaker 1: always been known by from that moment on this invasion
18:08
Speaker 1: force of Cuban dissidents as they were known as Brigade
18:12
Speaker 1: twenty five oh six. And one of the really amazing
18:15
Speaker 1: things about Brigade six is, despite being, like you said,
18:19
Speaker 1: you know, a group of doctors and lawyers and farmers
18:23
Speaker 1: and fishermen and students and coming from all walks of
18:27
Speaker 1: life and socio economic status, they actually were trained into
18:32
Speaker 1: a pretty decent paramilitary group. They fought bravely, they fought
18:36
Speaker 1: really well, they held their own as we'll see, and
18:39
Speaker 1: they were doomed from the start, not really by any
18:43
Speaker 1: any of their own fault, which must have been incredibly
18:46
Speaker 1: frustrating for them. Yeah, I imagine. So, I mean, they um,
18:53
Speaker 1: like I said, they weren't too hard to recruit, like,
18:55
Speaker 1: they were eager to do this job, and they really
18:57
Speaker 1: wanted to get Castro out of there. And you you
19:01
Speaker 1: might think when a new president comes in that things
19:04
Speaker 1: might change, they might kind of revisit this plan. I
19:07
Speaker 1: think maybe this's not the best idea. I'm pretty excited
19:11
Speaker 1: because I get to do my Kennedy. So I'm glad
19:13
Speaker 1: I got out of there. I have no idea what
19:15
Speaker 1: he sounded like. Uh, he sounded like this problem. But
19:25
Speaker 1: Kennedy one in sixty um in no small part due
19:29
Speaker 1: to the fact that he was He touted being very
19:32
Speaker 1: tough on communism and on Cuba, and so I said,
19:35
Speaker 1: let's get him in here. Yeah he was. He came
19:39
Speaker 1: off as more hawkish about communism in Cuba than Nixon did,
19:44
Speaker 1: which is funny against Nixon, and Nixon said that he
19:48
Speaker 1: basically lost because Kennedy seemed like he would do more
19:52
Speaker 1: about Cuba. And that's kind of, um, one of history's
19:56
Speaker 1: great ironies because Nixon, because Kennedy used Nixon and UM
20:01
Speaker 1: and Ike of being too soft on Cuba, of letting
20:04
Speaker 1: this castro fella take power and letting him a mass
20:07
Speaker 1: power and not doing anything about it. And Nixon had
20:10
Speaker 1: to sit there and take it because he had been
20:12
Speaker 1: sworn to secrecy about this plot to train Cuban dissidents
20:16
Speaker 1: and in vague Cuba, and he couldn't he couldn't be like, actually,
20:21
Speaker 1: that's not true. We've got this really great plan. Let
20:24
Speaker 1: me tell you. Viewing audience all about it, so he
20:28
Speaker 1: had to he had to defend this position of being
20:32
Speaker 1: soft on Cuba even though he knew they weren't. Well,
20:34
Speaker 1: Kennedy got to just run circles around him because Kennedy
20:37
Speaker 1: was an unproven guy who seemed more hawkish on Cuba,
20:40
Speaker 1: and some people point to that is how Kennedy was.
20:42
Speaker 1: So when Kennedy when he came in, yeah, I had
20:45
Speaker 1: no idea about about that. When he came in, he
20:48
Speaker 1: really wanted to prove himself in that respect. And the
20:51
Speaker 1: CIA said, are you sitting down, because we'd like to
20:53
Speaker 1: drop this opportunity into your lap. And they let him
20:56
Speaker 1: in on this plan to um in Vague, Cuba with
21:00
Speaker 1: with Brigade six, and Kennedy said, are um great. Yeah,
21:09
Speaker 1: They said here's our plan. Uh, Mr New President and
21:12
Speaker 1: he said the area you can stop calling me that,
21:17
Speaker 1: Mr President will suffice. And they said, we're gonna take
21:22
Speaker 1: seven and fifty of these men and we are going
21:25
Speaker 1: to do a D Day style invasion at dawn on
21:29
Speaker 1: the beach head in the Bay of Pigs, named so
21:32
Speaker 1: because well that's the name of it. It's Bahia de
21:36
Speaker 1: Concinos in Spanish. It's on the southern side of Cuba,
21:41
Speaker 1: and he said it sounds delicious, And they said, we're
21:45
Speaker 1: gonna land on that beach head. We're not gonna we're
21:48
Speaker 1: just gonna route down there and not take Havana or anything.
21:52
Speaker 1: Because here's what's gonna happen, Mr. President. They're gonna get
21:55
Speaker 1: news of this in Cuba and all these anti Castro
21:59
Speaker 1: Cubans there are gonna know that this is their their moment,
22:03
Speaker 1: and they've got some army dudes that are involved. They
22:06
Speaker 1: got some military personnel that are anti Castro, and they're
22:09
Speaker 1: gonna say, all right, now is our time. We're gonna
22:12
Speaker 1: rise up to overthrow Castro. And then that's when our
22:16
Speaker 1: seven and fifty men, who are by the way, totally
22:20
Speaker 1: disguised as Cuban dissidents, like we're gonna paint planes like
22:24
Speaker 1: American planes, like they're from Cuba and stuff like that,
22:27
Speaker 1: like no one's ever gonna know. It's the perfect plane. Yeah,
22:29
Speaker 1: we've printed we've printed up t shirts for him to say,
22:31
Speaker 1: down with Castro, with Castro. And he said, that's when
22:35
Speaker 1: they're gonna join the fight and join this general revolt
22:40
Speaker 1: and might take a couple of weeks. Bing bang boom,
22:42
Speaker 1: easy peasy, and Kennedy said, all right, so that there
22:47
Speaker 1: was a key to success in there. That the whole
22:50
Speaker 1: thing hinged on and from what I can tell, kind
22:53
Speaker 1: of unwarranted lee. But that was the idea that when
22:58
Speaker 1: these dissidents attacked Cuba and the word got out that
23:03
Speaker 1: that Cuba was being attacked, that the Cuban people would
23:06
Speaker 1: be like to heck with Castro, get him, and would
23:09
Speaker 1: it would ignite this revolt? And from what I saw,
23:12
Speaker 1: this was based on a hunch. It wasn't based on
23:14
Speaker 1: intel or anything. It was based on a hunch or
23:18
Speaker 1: even a hope you could possibly say, which that alone
23:23
Speaker 1: is a sign that you may be working on a
23:25
Speaker 1: really bad plan, because anything short of sparking a revolution
23:30
Speaker 1: internally in Cuba means that this is going to fail.
23:35
Speaker 1: Like Cuba small, but Castro had a really extensive army,
23:38
Speaker 1: tens and tens and tens of thousands of professional soldiers,
23:43
Speaker 1: plus another I think a hundred thousand UM militia members
23:47
Speaker 1: like what we would probably call like the National Guard
23:49
Speaker 1: or reservists here UM. So even if there were five
23:54
Speaker 1: thousand people or however many, they made it seem like
23:59
Speaker 1: they were probably going to be overwhelmed if if Cuba
24:03
Speaker 1: didn't rise up, and they had no reason to believe
24:05
Speaker 1: that Cuba would rise up, they were just hoping. So
24:08
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's strike one. Yeah, it's a big
24:11
Speaker 1: time intelligence failure. Another key to this, and you're gonna
24:14
Speaker 1: just put a pin in this one, listener, is air strikes.
24:18
Speaker 1: They were like, listen, here, we got these dudes on
24:20
Speaker 1: the beach. They're gonna be rooted down and they are
24:24
Speaker 1: gonna be bombed to heck in back by Castro's air force,
24:28
Speaker 1: which is small, but he's still got these planes. And
24:31
Speaker 1: he said, so we got to take out that air
24:32
Speaker 1: force or else their toast like they're sitting ducks out there.
24:37
Speaker 1: We got to take out the air force. We've got
24:39
Speaker 1: to take out the air force, which is and I mean,
24:42
Speaker 1: it wasn't like out of the question. Like Castro had
24:45
Speaker 1: a big, a big army of ground troops, but his
24:49
Speaker 1: air force was fairly paltry, pretty small, and it was
24:53
Speaker 1: entirely within the realm of possibility to strike um all
24:57
Speaker 1: of his planes. And if they did do that, that
25:00
Speaker 1: would give this amphibious landing force a real fighting chance
25:04
Speaker 1: to make their way inland. UM and if this revolution sparked,
25:09
Speaker 1: then then there you have it. So um that that
25:13
Speaker 1: that was definitely doable. Um. The problem is Kennedy when
25:18
Speaker 1: he came in, he was really ambitious about getting rid
25:21
Speaker 1: of communism and making a name for himself, is tough
25:23
Speaker 1: on communism and you know, delivering on what he had
25:26
Speaker 1: campaigned on. But at the same time, he was also
25:30
Speaker 1: really aware of international image political image of the United States,
25:38
Speaker 1: and so he said, I'm really worried that this is
25:41
Speaker 1: going to be like like Chuck said, he knew who
25:44
Speaker 1: you were, Chuck, Um that that this is gonna be
25:47
Speaker 1: too being bang boom, Like there's gonna be a lot
25:49
Speaker 1: of blowing things up, and it's gonna be obvious that
25:53
Speaker 1: the United States is involved in this, and we just
25:55
Speaker 1: can't have that. So let's go smaller for one. And also,
26:01
Speaker 1: this place where we're going to land, Um, it's a
26:05
Speaker 1: little too close to Trinidad, which is a pretty pretty
26:08
Speaker 1: populous town in Cuba. This seems a little hostile and aggressive.
26:12
Speaker 1: Let's move it to the middle of nowhere, this place
26:14
Speaker 1: called the Bay of Pigs um and and start there.
26:18
Speaker 1: And that was a really big, big issue for the
26:21
Speaker 1: plan because one of the reasons they chose that landing
26:24
Speaker 1: site near the city of Trinidad in Cuba is because
26:27
Speaker 1: it was near the mountains and so if the guerrillas
26:29
Speaker 1: um amphibious landing failed and it was broken up, they
26:33
Speaker 1: could flee to the mountains and then regroup and start
26:36
Speaker 1: launching a guerrilla war from the mountains. Instead, this place
26:41
Speaker 1: that the Bay of Pigs was nowhere near anywhere. It
26:44
Speaker 1: was near swamp land, and I think there was sixty
26:46
Speaker 1: miles of swamp between the Bay of Pigs and the mountains,
26:49
Speaker 1: so there was no melting into the mountains to escape.
26:51
Speaker 1: It was all or nothing when they moved that landing site.
26:55
Speaker 1: And that was another big thing that Kennedy did, along
26:58
Speaker 1: with saying make it smaller. It could seem more like
27:01
Speaker 1: Cuban dissidents are the ones who are really behind us. Yeah.
27:04
Speaker 1: And the third thing he did was said, I don't
27:05
Speaker 1: like this dawn invasion thing. He's like, this has got
27:08
Speaker 1: to happen under the cover of night. We got to
27:11
Speaker 1: be out of there by dawn. We can't have any
27:15
Speaker 1: inkling that we're involved in any way. And I know
27:18
Speaker 1: that paint job on these planes is is pretty good,
27:22
Speaker 1: but it looks a lot better at night, guys, So
27:25
Speaker 1: let's go in there at night. And this was this
27:28
Speaker 1: is like a month out, and the CIA was like, dude,
27:31
Speaker 1: we had a plan here, and you're telling us to
27:33
Speaker 1: make it smaller, put it in a different place, to
27:36
Speaker 1: change our time of invasion. And this is a big deal, Like,
27:41
Speaker 1: this is not how things work. You can't just change
27:43
Speaker 1: everything a month out and expect it to go down
27:47
Speaker 1: the way you wanted to. And this was this was
27:50
Speaker 1: everybody's chance to back out entirely, Like this was the
27:53
Speaker 1: moment where somebody could have and should have stood up
27:57
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, this has got disaster and
27:59
Speaker 1: all over it. Now, we can't, we can't do this.
28:02
Speaker 1: We need to not just we just need to back
28:04
Speaker 1: out and not go through with it at all. And
28:06
Speaker 1: nobody did it. No, And this has all the hallmarks
28:10
Speaker 1: of any like corporate project where you've been working on
28:13
Speaker 1: something in this plan and developing like this, this whatever
28:17
Speaker 1: it is you're developing, and then somebody comes along and
28:20
Speaker 1: says change this, this and this and completely alters it.
28:23
Speaker 1: But then you try to go ahead with the with
28:25
Speaker 1: the idea anyway, and it doesn't fit, it doesn't work
28:28
Speaker 1: enough fundamental things have changed that it just isn't like
28:32
Speaker 1: the original any longer. And usually, just speaking from experience,
28:36
Speaker 1: when that happens, you just scrap it and start all over.
28:39
Speaker 1: Don't do the project. Yeah, New Coke's a great example.
28:43
Speaker 1: Actually New Coke's terrible example. Let's go with um sliceice.
28:48
Speaker 1: So Apple Slice started out as something called Aspen. It
28:52
Speaker 1: was an apple flavored cola and people loved it, but
28:56
Speaker 1: then they took it away. And when Slice came out
28:59
Speaker 1: as a a new um citrus based soft drink, I
29:03
Speaker 1: think Pepsi owned it. They threw Apple Slice in, but
29:07
Speaker 1: it was really Aspen, but they just threw it in
29:09
Speaker 1: and rebranded as Apple Slice. It didn't work because it
29:11
Speaker 1: was something else and they had just tried to clamp
29:15
Speaker 1: it on to the existing framework without adjusting it or
29:18
Speaker 1: altering it. And Apple Slice went the way of the
29:20
Speaker 1: dinosaur when Aspen had been so beloved. So the Bay
29:25
Speaker 1: of Pigs invasion is on. Kennedy felt like he he
29:29
Speaker 1: had to do something because the Soviets were buddying up
29:32
Speaker 1: to Castro and he could not take the risk of
29:35
Speaker 1: them installing nuclear weapons right there, ninety miles off the coast.
29:41
Speaker 1: So they pressed forward um. A few days before the invasion,
29:47
Speaker 1: the Oh six were moved from Guatemala's where they were
29:51
Speaker 1: going to launch from, which was a CIA camp in
29:53
Speaker 1: Nicaragua called Happy Valley. Very ironically, and just a few
29:58
Speaker 1: days before the invasion, the New York Times published a
30:00
Speaker 1: story about the operation basically out of the whole thing,
30:05
Speaker 1: and Kennedy had to say something, So he said a
30:09
Speaker 1: bunch of words that were lies. He said, fist, I
30:13
Speaker 1: want to say they will not be under any circumstances
30:16
Speaker 1: or conditions and intervention in Cuba by the United States
30:19
Speaker 1: Armed Forces. This government will do everything it possibly can.
30:24
Speaker 1: I think it can meet its responsibilities to make sure
30:27
Speaker 1: that no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba. Days
30:32
Speaker 1: before they were about to do that very thing. Yeah,
30:36
Speaker 1: and and not just days before the actual invasion, but
30:38
Speaker 1: one day before that planned aerial strike that was to
30:43
Speaker 1: take out all of Castro's planes, which was again, as
30:45
Speaker 1: far as the CIA analysts were concerned, essential to the
30:49
Speaker 1: success of the plan. Well, that New York Times article
30:53
Speaker 1: made Kennedy pretty kg um and worried. It took a
30:57
Speaker 1: lot of the confidence that he might have had, as
31:00
Speaker 1: small as it was to begin with, in the plan,
31:03
Speaker 1: and so he said, just for no really good reason,
31:06
Speaker 1: just kind of reacting from what I can tell, he said,
31:08
Speaker 1: we were gonna have six Team bombers, let's just cut
31:10
Speaker 1: into like eight instead, And so those six Team bombers
31:14
Speaker 1: went out. And the whole key was, I think you
31:16
Speaker 1: said before that they were going to paint these bombers
31:19
Speaker 1: to make them look like stolen Cuban planes. And the
31:22
Speaker 1: premise was that some Cuban Air Force pilots had were
31:25
Speaker 1: revolting against Castro when they had carried out this strike.
31:29
Speaker 1: So they actually did have Brigade twenty five or six
31:32
Speaker 1: members fly these planes, but they were American planes painted
31:35
Speaker 1: to look like Cuban planes. They carried out the strike,
31:38
Speaker 1: they only got about I think half of Castro's planes, unfortunately.
31:42
Speaker 1: And then as part of the ruse, they flew to Miami,
31:45
Speaker 1: landed and said we're defecting to Cuba or from Cuba,
31:49
Speaker 1: wink wink. And so the press was brought out for
31:51
Speaker 1: a press conference, and apparently the press immediately was like
31:54
Speaker 1: that sure looks like a pretty fresh coat of paint,
31:58
Speaker 1: and somebody else said, yeah, aren't Cuban machine guns mounted
32:01
Speaker 1: to the wings. These are mounted in the nose like
32:04
Speaker 1: American planes, and Kennedy was like, everybody, get out of here,
32:07
Speaker 1: Get out of here. No one's calling you anymore for
32:10
Speaker 1: any press conferences. And so it was very clear that
32:14
Speaker 1: the US was actually doing what the New York Times
32:17
Speaker 1: article was was saying, and that it was basically happening now.
32:20
Speaker 1: So Castro definitely had a pretty decent heads up of
32:24
Speaker 1: what was coming. Yeah, I mean Castro, that was all
32:27
Speaker 1: the proof he needed. And he was like, hey, U
32:29
Speaker 1: n um, the US of A broke their charter because
32:33
Speaker 1: they attacked us, and what say you? And the US
32:37
Speaker 1: representative to the U, n Adlai Stevenson, said, I don't
32:40
Speaker 1: know anything about this, because he didn't. He was in
32:42
Speaker 1: the dark about this whole thing. And he was really
32:45
Speaker 1: upset about this, obviously because the CIA was doing this
32:49
Speaker 1: all very very privately. Uh. And then Kennedy made one
32:53
Speaker 1: more big, big decision is they said, listen, you sent
32:56
Speaker 1: half the planes that we wanted, so we only destroy
33:00
Speaker 1: half their air force. That's how that works, sir, he said.
33:03
Speaker 1: They said, so we need to send in another air
33:05
Speaker 1: strike because they still have half their air force and
33:08
Speaker 1: that they're still sitting ducks. It'll just take them twice
33:11
Speaker 1: as long to make them dead. And he said, uh,
33:16
Speaker 1: you know what, we we can't do it. We cannot
33:18
Speaker 1: go in with a second whoa wow, that is not
33:22
Speaker 1: at all what Kennedy sounded like, Chuck. He said, Uh,
33:28
Speaker 1: I don't think we should go in with a second
33:30
Speaker 1: air strike. This is getting slightly heated, and uh, we're
33:33
Speaker 1: all very frightened and hawney, Yeah, that's what they pay
33:39
Speaker 1: you for, Chuck. There's like a myth that the c
33:45
Speaker 1: I A UM planned this whole thing, and the reason
33:48
Speaker 1: it was so botched and terrible it was because some
33:51
Speaker 1: CIA analysts had basically done the whole thing in some
33:55
Speaker 1: secret bunker um without any kind of input, in like
33:59
Speaker 1: this very isolated UM project. And that's not at all
34:03
Speaker 1: how it worked. Um that you know, there was basically
34:06
Speaker 1: a lot of people really throwing in a lot of
34:09
Speaker 1: opinions and thoughts to to planning it. It was signed
34:11
Speaker 1: off by eyes and how it signed off by Kennedy. Um.
34:14
Speaker 1: The CIA was definitely not blameless. In the first place,
34:18
Speaker 1: they were blamed. They were they were blamable for interfering
34:21
Speaker 1: in another country's you know, affairs like that. But as
34:25
Speaker 1: far as this operation goes, there were some blunders on
34:28
Speaker 1: the CIA side, and one of the big ones, big
34:31
Speaker 1: ones is that some youtwo spy planes that they flew
34:34
Speaker 1: over Cuba to take pictures of the Bay of Pigs,
34:37
Speaker 1: this new landing site. When the analysts were looking at
34:40
Speaker 1: the photos, they said, all this like like dark colored
34:44
Speaker 1: um stuff like in the shallows off of the coast,
34:47
Speaker 1: about a hundred yards off the coast or a hundred
34:50
Speaker 1: meters that's just a seaweed bed. So we don't need
34:54
Speaker 1: to worry about that. Well, when they finally staged this invasion, Chuck,
34:59
Speaker 1: they found that that was not the case at all,
35:01
Speaker 1: that the seaweed was actually coral, and these transport ships
35:06
Speaker 1: ran aground on coral because the CIA botch that so badly.
35:12
Speaker 1: And I feel like we might have gotten a little
35:13
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves, because I've put the people in the
35:17
Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs now, and we should back up a
35:19
Speaker 1: little bit. We should take a break, and then we
35:21
Speaker 1: should launch the invasion day of what do you think
35:24
Speaker 1: it sounds good? Alright, So Chuck, it's the day of
35:49
Speaker 1: the invasion. They launch Brigade oh six. And remember the
35:54
Speaker 1: whole thing, the whole point of this is that the
35:56
Speaker 1: US is not supposed to be clearly involved, so they
35:59
Speaker 1: have to do this at night, Like Kennedy requested to
36:02
Speaker 1: get the American ships out of there. Um. So you've
36:05
Speaker 1: got American supply ships holding supplies for this amphibious force
36:08
Speaker 1: of Cubans Brigade six, and they're starting to run aground
36:12
Speaker 1: in the coral reef. And that was just the first
36:14
Speaker 1: of many many problems that they ran into that day. Yeah.
36:19
Speaker 1: I mean, coral is not the kind of thing, you know,
36:21
Speaker 1: a hundred yards out uh from the beach head that
36:24
Speaker 1: you can deal with very easily. It's like it's not
36:26
Speaker 1: like they were like, all right, well just walk on
36:28
Speaker 1: this razor sharp coral and get everything in there. Everything's
36:31
Speaker 1: getting wet. All this radio equipment is uh, and these
36:34
Speaker 1: weapons are getting water logged and drowned out. A lot
36:38
Speaker 1: of it was inoperable by the time they finally got
36:40
Speaker 1: to the beach. Um. So it was just it was
36:43
Speaker 1: the whole thing had gone sideways at this point. Um. Yeah,
36:47
Speaker 1: like like before literally before dawn, the whole thing had
36:50
Speaker 1: gone sideways. That's right. And by the time dawn breaks, Uh,
36:55
Speaker 1: Castro knows what's going on. He knows that the Bay
36:59
Speaker 1: of Pigs has as I had a beachhead landing, while
37:02
Speaker 1: not quite a coral landing, and that they were still
37:06
Speaker 1: unloading stuff and struggling to get their their stuff onto
37:09
Speaker 1: the beach when the air force gets there, Castro's air Force,
37:12
Speaker 1: and they opened fire on a supply ship named the
37:15
Speaker 1: Houston and killed about twelve men and everyone else got
37:20
Speaker 1: back in the water. Um. I love here that Dave says,
37:23
Speaker 1: shark infested waters. It's always shark infested, right, never likes
37:28
Speaker 1: sparsely populated with you like a few sharks here and there.
37:31
Speaker 1: It's always infested there everywhere. So um, more of these
37:37
Speaker 1: planes start coming in and the Rio es Candido, which
37:41
Speaker 1: was the biggest supply ship they had, had tons of
37:44
Speaker 1: explosive explosives, tons of airplane fuel. It was just a
37:48
Speaker 1: big bomb waiting to go off. And that's exactly what happened.
37:52
Speaker 1: Took a direct direct hit from a bomb and just exploded.
37:56
Speaker 1: Like this is the big scene in the movie. I
37:58
Speaker 1: guess where the rock is on the beach saying like
38:01
Speaker 1: can you believe that? Bro right? I see him saying wolverines, yeah,
38:08
Speaker 1: but with a Cuban accent. L Wolverines. So so he said,
38:14
Speaker 1: he they say what it is, and remember there's Cubans
38:16
Speaker 1: in Red Dawn. Oh that's true. What was Cuba, wasn't it? Yeah?
38:21
Speaker 1: And they said what wolverine was in Spanish? But I
38:23
Speaker 1: can't remember, but I guarantee a few of our listeners
38:26
Speaker 1: will let us know. Chuck. Well, the CIA at this
38:28
Speaker 1: point says, um, realize this what's going on, and says,
38:33
Speaker 1: all right, the supply ships need to get out of
38:35
Speaker 1: there and get into international waters. Stat and it's they
38:40
Speaker 1: didn't pull the troops, but it's it's basically a retreat
38:43
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah. And so the Cubans realized this,
38:47
Speaker 1: and like at least one of them, Peppe san Roman said,
38:50
Speaker 1: like he got on the radio to a CIA handler.
38:53
Speaker 1: He said, do not desert us. And see, I said,
38:56
Speaker 1: oh we're not, we're not. We just forgot something back
38:59
Speaker 1: in the United States. We gotta go get it. We'll
39:00
Speaker 1: be right back. And they just kept backing off into
39:03
Speaker 1: international waters, and they definitely deserted these Cuban dissidents who
39:07
Speaker 1: had been um landed on the beach. Um that was
39:12
Speaker 1: so like the Cubans are trapped there, and they um
39:18
Speaker 1: fought like their whole thing was to just hold the
39:20
Speaker 1: beach and then wait for this this UM, this revolution
39:24
Speaker 1: to to spark by their presence, and they actually did.
39:27
Speaker 1: They've held that beach for like two days, despite the
39:30
Speaker 1: fact that Castro sent everything he had at these guys,
39:34
Speaker 1: but they still managed to hold the beach for a while. UM.
39:38
Speaker 1: And during this this time, while they were holding it, UM,
39:42
Speaker 1: the military brass and the CIA went to Kennedy and
39:45
Speaker 1: they said, look, these guys are getting slaughtered. We need
39:49
Speaker 1: to provide some bombing cover. So we've got these bombers.
39:53
Speaker 1: Remember how you cut the number of bombers in that
39:55
Speaker 1: first air strike by half. Well, we've got some other ones.
39:59
Speaker 1: Let's get him out air and UM, we'll just have
40:02
Speaker 1: to also provide some some air cover from some fighter jets. UM.
40:06
Speaker 1: So they did. Kennedy finally relented and said, okay, but
40:10
Speaker 1: just as with everything that's possibly gone wrong with this
40:14
Speaker 1: UM had so far, it's going to continue with this
40:17
Speaker 1: bombing grade. Because the bombers took off from Nicaragua from
40:21
Speaker 1: the base in Nicaragua and the air cover that was
40:24
Speaker 1: supposed to meet up with them was not ready because
40:27
Speaker 1: they apparently miscalculated. They didn't take into account the time
40:32
Speaker 1: zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba. No one's exactly sure
40:35
Speaker 1: what happened, but they showed up an hour early and
40:38
Speaker 1: just cruised on by over to Cuba and started getting
40:41
Speaker 1: shot down. Everything I saw said time zone. Okay, I
40:46
Speaker 1: saw that too, But the thing is, it doesn't make
40:47
Speaker 1: sense if the if if they were an hour behind,
40:51
Speaker 1: then wouldn't they have been an hour late rather than
40:54
Speaker 1: an hour early. That's what I saw. Well, I just
40:57
Speaker 1: saw time zone error, so it could been aye, But
41:02
Speaker 1: whereever it was, they showed up an hour basically an
41:05
Speaker 1: hour early, and and they got shot down. But the
41:07
Speaker 1: problem that I saw with that, in particular, Chuck, was
41:10
Speaker 1: these were not Brigade or six pilots. They were Alabama
41:14
Speaker 1: National Air National Guard pilots, straight up Americans who were
41:19
Speaker 1: flying a bombing mission over Cuban now at this point
41:21
Speaker 1: in this botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and they got
41:24
Speaker 1: shot down, were killed and captured. Their bodies were captured
41:28
Speaker 1: by Castro who basically paraded them around Cuba for the
41:32
Speaker 1: international press saying this is an American look, the Americans
41:35
Speaker 1: are bombing, and America denied. They denied, um ordering or
41:43
Speaker 1: having these Americans bomb Cuba until the nineties. It was
41:47
Speaker 1: a real disgrace for America's government for decades. Yeah, Castro
41:52
Speaker 1: recovered the body of Captain Thomas Willard ray Um, and
41:57
Speaker 1: the only reason it came out was because it was
41:59
Speaker 1: declassified in the nineties, at which time the sea His body,
42:03
Speaker 1: by the way, was returned to his family by Cuba
42:06
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, and then when it was declassified
42:10
Speaker 1: in the nineties, ray was awarded the CIA's highest honor
42:15
Speaker 1: of the Intelligence Star, which is just almost even more
42:19
Speaker 1: shameful to kind of just slap uh an award on
42:23
Speaker 1: this guy that you denied, you know, even sending him
42:25
Speaker 1: to his death for you know, however many decades. So
42:30
Speaker 1: it was a real one of the more shameful moments
42:33
Speaker 1: in in US political and military history. Yeah, because they
42:37
Speaker 1: went for a decade saying, no, this guy just went rogue.
42:39
Speaker 1: He he um, he went rogue, and his family was like,
42:43
Speaker 1: they he did not do that, stop lying, and they
42:46
Speaker 1: finally did after years. But yeah, it was it was
42:49
Speaker 1: a big, big black eye on them on America for sure.
42:53
Speaker 1: But even before that, the whole Bay of Pigs fiasco
42:57
Speaker 1: was a black eye on America UM and the Kennedy
43:00
Speaker 1: administration because by the time the UM the battle was
43:07
Speaker 1: over at the Bay of Pigs UM, I think a
43:10
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen people had died among the brigade members
43:15
Speaker 1: and Americans UM, but the rest, more than a thousand
43:19
Speaker 1: were captured and kept alive, and eventually we're UM. I
43:23
Speaker 1: think they were kept for a few years, but they
43:25
Speaker 1: weren't executed. Everybody just expected Castro to execute them all publicly,
43:29
Speaker 1: and he didn't. Uh. Instead, he decided to keep them
43:33
Speaker 1: as basically political pawns, didn't he Yeah, they kept them
43:37
Speaker 1: for twenty months uh, one thousand thirteen men, and eventually
43:43
Speaker 1: they start negotiating for a trade through an American attorney,
43:47
Speaker 1: James B. Donovan, And initially Castro said, I'll tell you
43:51
Speaker 1: what I'll give them in back for five hundred tractors,
43:56
Speaker 1: and I guess somebody on the Cuban side said it's
44:00
Speaker 1: not enough, man, like they're really really rich. And he said,
44:04
Speaker 1: all right, how about twenty eight million dollars And then
44:07
Speaker 1: someone said that's still not enough. We can take him
44:10
Speaker 1: for a lot more. They eventually settled on fifty three
44:13
Speaker 1: million dollars uh. In food and medical aid, which was
44:17
Speaker 1: raised by private and corporate donations, and they made that swap.
44:21
Speaker 1: And uh, I think Shakavara Um, who was Castro's sort
44:26
Speaker 1: of right hand man at the time, thank the United
44:29
Speaker 1: States very publicly and said, you know it, because of
44:31
Speaker 1: this trade, because of all this money and aid and food,
44:34
Speaker 1: you have have equaled the playing ground here and now
44:37
Speaker 1: we are America's equal. We are not in a grief
44:39
Speaker 1: little country any longer. And uh, that was a big,
44:42
Speaker 1: big deal. That was a lot of um. That was
44:45
Speaker 1: an influx of cash and and uh and food and
44:50
Speaker 1: medicine that Cuba really needed at the time. So it
44:53
Speaker 1: was it's like injury on our insult on top of
44:56
Speaker 1: injury after this basically, yeah, and not only that, the attack,
45:01
Speaker 1: the fact that Castro offended off attack, and then the
45:03
Speaker 1: fact that Castro negotiated another fifty three million dollars in
45:07
Speaker 1: aid from the attack helped Castro really solidify his power there.
45:14
Speaker 1: So like um, he might have been shaky at some
45:18
Speaker 1: point before the Bay of Pigs, he was not. Afterwards.
45:21
Speaker 1: He was a beloved leader who showed that he could
45:24
Speaker 1: and would defend Cuba. It also drove him toward Kruscheff
45:28
Speaker 1: if he had been on the fence about it before,
45:30
Speaker 1: he went full throated, uh buddy with the Soviets afterward,
45:35
Speaker 1: and then also on our side, just the huge again
45:39
Speaker 1: Black Eye gave America internationally on the world stage. But
45:43
Speaker 1: also the Kennedy administration just looked like fools and also
45:46
Speaker 1: weasels um. It drove JFK and his brother, Bobby Kennedy
45:53
Speaker 1: um to find another way to show that they were
45:56
Speaker 1: tough on communism. And a lot of people point to
46:00
Speaker 1: us going into Vietnam looking at Vietnam is the next
46:03
Speaker 1: place to stand up to communism. That that came directly
46:07
Speaker 1: from the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. That's
46:09
Speaker 1: rights and learning. No, not at all. Uh So that's
46:15
Speaker 1: it for the Bay of Pigs. There's a lot more
46:17
Speaker 1: to it. It was one of the more chronicled episodes
46:21
Speaker 1: in American history. So if you like this, well go
46:24
Speaker 1: read more about it. And since I said read more
46:27
Speaker 1: about it, I think Chuck is time for a listener mail.
46:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this you me and L. S. D. Hey, guys,
46:36
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank you both for bringing such great
46:38
Speaker 1: entertainment to my ears. I've been listening only for a
46:40
Speaker 1: few months, but I'm able to listen to several episodes
46:43
Speaker 1: a day while I work, so over the last couple
46:46
Speaker 1: of weeks, guys have been sort of messing around with
46:48
Speaker 1: micro dosing LSD and magic mushrooms, and it has been
46:52
Speaker 1: years since my last full blown LSD trip. Well, last weekend,
46:56
Speaker 1: I decided I wanted to take a full amount of
46:58
Speaker 1: LSD see where it took me. Oftentimes, there's an overwhelming
47:02
Speaker 1: feeling in the body just before the psychoactive part takes
47:05
Speaker 1: place for me, which sort of allows you, or allows
47:08
Speaker 1: me to gauge how you how the trip is going
47:10
Speaker 1: to go. Well, this particular time, the feeling in my
47:13
Speaker 1: body told me that I was going to have a
47:15
Speaker 1: bad time and lose my ability to govern where my
47:17
Speaker 1: thoughts meander. So I put on an episode of Stuff
47:20
Speaker 1: You Should Know and listen to you both talk about
47:23
Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock, which included the interview with Bob Nastanovich from Pavement,
47:28
Speaker 1: which was wonderful. Listening to you both talk really helped
47:32
Speaker 1: guide me through the initial peak of my LSD trip,
47:35
Speaker 1: which set the tone for the rest of my day,
47:36
Speaker 1: and it turned out great. You're both so level headed,
47:40
Speaker 1: and kind and spirit, and I just want to say
47:42
Speaker 1: thank you all caps for being who you are. You're
47:45
Speaker 1: truly both role models for me and the more I
47:47
Speaker 1: listen to you, the better human I become. So once again,
47:50
Speaker 1: thanks and that is from Mike Artinian. That's really amazing, Mike,
47:55
Speaker 1: thanks for that. I feel like Chuck. When we were
47:57
Speaker 1: recording that, we kept saying one another during the ad break, like, wow,
48:01
Speaker 1: people are gonna love tripping on this one. I think so.
48:04
Speaker 1: And I even asked Mike, I said, you know, I
48:06
Speaker 1: cannot read your name and he went, now, man, read it,
48:10
Speaker 1: read it and weep. That's right. Well, thanks again, Mike.
48:12
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. Glad that you came back down. Uh
48:16
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Mike and send
48:19
Speaker 1: us an email, you can send it off to Stuff
48:22
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know
48:29
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
48:32
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart
48:34
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
48:36
Speaker 1: favorite shows.