The CIA's OPERATION 40

It's June 23rd 1972 president Richard Nixon and his white house chief of staff Bob Haldeman were captured by the Oval Office voice activated tape recorders uttering the words that would make up the now famous so-called Watergate Smoking Gun tape this recorded meeting would serve as the main piece of supposedly hard evidence linking the Nixon Administration to among various other crimes the botched Burglary by CIA agents FBI agents and Cuban Exiles into the Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate complex 6 days earlier one specific passage in the tapes spoken by President Nixon has continued to perplex

researchers and authors since the original release of the tape over 50 years ago in discussing the recent Breakin at the Watergate building Nixon turns to the topic of e Howard hunt the CIA agent who had led the operation from The White House plumber unit his comments are in reference to the unfolding Scandal and Nixon's worries regarding Hunt's knowledge of fundamental CIA Secrets most importantly as Nixon puts it the quote unquote whole Bay of Pigs thing on screen now is the exact word forword transcript of what President Nixon said I have cleaned this up a bit

and I will read out what it says without all the ums and the S here it goes quote very bad to have this Fellow hunt he knows too damn much and he was involved we happen to know that and that it gets out that this is all involved in the Cuban thing that it's a fiasco and it's going to make the FBI CIA look bad it's going to make hunt look bad and it's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing which we think would be very unfortunate for CIA and for the country at

this time and for American foreign policy and he just better tough it and lay it on them end Quote now many have interpreted this as Nixon proposing a last ditch attempt to Blackmail the CIA to cover up the ongoing Watergate scandal in this moment according to Watergate Skeptics it is likely that the president realized as many including myself have come to believe as well that the whole botched burglary has been orchestrated by the spy agency itself to facilitate Nixon's downfall now with his back against the wall Nixon proposes the mutually assured Destruction ultimatum in essence

the leaking of CIA Secrets related to among other things the Bay of Pigs invasion and E Howard hunt the Watergate burglar if the CIA does not work to clean up their mess for the purposes of our current investigation I want to ask the open question what was this so-called quote unquote whole Bay of Pigs thing that Nixon felt would worry the CIA and substantially impact US foreign policy many including Nixon's Chief of Staff Haldeman later in life have come to speculate that the secret Nixon held had to do in some way with the cia's role

in the assassination of President John F Kennedy which had fundamental links to the anti-castro operations of the 1960s as we're going to see in detail this was also a mystery that dick Nixon himself had worked covertly to uncover during his preceding 5 years in the white house as we know now was Nixon thinking of threatening a real investigation into The killing of JFK and not another waren commission cover up now in many ways Nixon's Bay of pig secret could easily just have been interpreted as one of the many major Revelations concerning the parallel history of

events during The anti-castro Craze in the early 60s in a lishment histories we are told a version of events for example a failed Invasion outlandish assassination plots Cuban Exiles and ultimately a Cuban leader that seemed to be impervious to every Assassination method in the book this traditional history provides an incomplete picture of the cia's anti- Cuba operations obscuring a secret paramilitar of the CIA going on in parallel now this paramilitar of the agency in the Caribbean in the early 60s would act as the basic training or in some terms the soft Run for the class

of operators and assassins that would undertake both the secret war in Laos and The Phoenix Program in Vietnam in The decade to come and of course the future assassination programs of the latter Cold War the cia's Cuba show which was operational for roughly four years from 1960 to 64 took on two simultaneous Dimensions which often intersected but remained distinct in their overall missions the first and more overt program was the paramilitary and Guerilla Warfare component of the project to affect regime change these operations ran the gamut from fomenting A popular Uprising against Castro's government in

Cuba through the use of well-placed infiltrators all the way up to a full-scale conventional amphibious assault which was of course attempted during the Bay of Pigs invasion these programs for the most part remained an Open Secret throughout Florida and eventually across the United States as the scale and scope of the program continued to expand to this day the cia's Cuba operations in the early 60s Are often viewed through this lens as simply training and financing of Miami based Cuban Exiles in their quest to overthrow Castro after the Bay of Pigs Fiasco the Cuban Guerilla operations

were reorganized under operation Mongoose and took on the form of sabotage and terrorism against Cuba and directed downwards from the White House directly this became Bobby Kennedy's show and his obsession you have all likely heard of the Bay of Pigs invasion And operation Mongoose as the two principal components of the anti-castro CIA program and I don't believe that to be a coincidence as we will see later the Bay of Pigs invasion and Mongoose although relevant only provide a surface level picture of the true nature and purpose of the Cuba show which may have been what

Nixon was referring to when he threatened to leak the quote Whole Bay of Pigs thing the Guerilla Warfare paramilitary component of the Cuba show Would transmute into the core team of paramilitary experts in charge of the secret war in Laos half a decade later this brings us to our second component of the CIA Cuba operations being of course the assassination program now importantly there is some Nuance to this I may have suggested that the paramilitary operations are all that we hear about and that the assassination program is completely covered up but that is obviously not

the case Mainstream sources and even official CIA history papers do openly acknowledge the assassination plots devised against Castro even going so far as to acknowledge a short relationship between the agency and Mafia figures to this end however I will argue that the common conception of the Castro assassination plots as outlandish James bondan schemes that involved Professor gget trickery to kill the Cuban leadership remains a limited hangout what was really Happening in Florida Louisiana and Central America in the early 60s was the development and organization of the early iteration of the cia's future counter Insurgency rural

pacification programs in simple unvarnished terms the roll out of the first CIA Search and Destroy operations and agency Finance death squads the most famous of these future programs being of course The Phoenix Program in South Vietnam and then later the support of the Nicaraguan Contras in the 70s and 80s and to a broader degree contras throughout Central America this will all be made clear throughout our investigation specifically today so all this to say even if the Cuba show was not strictly used as a testing ground for the agency's future operations it did have the effect

of elevating the careers of the men who would undertake both of the massive paramilitary programs in Laos and the nightmarish rural pacification Programs in both Vietnam and Central America in the upcoming decades behind the boom and bang and James Bond mythology lies the honing and Perfection of a paramilitary CIA because of course today you're watching as would put it the whole Bay of Pigs thing I will do my level best to stand up for freedom and democracy around the world by keeping the United States of America strong and by keeping our eyes wide open as

we welcome change in the world by keeping Our eyes wide open the cia's anti-castro program was first proposed by a largely forgotten and often over looked operator in the agency the first agency policy proposal dated December 11th 1959 was actually one of assassination calling for the quote unquote elimination of Castro the drafter of The Proposal was the director of the Western Hemisphere division at the CIA one Colonel Joseph Caldwell King once a West Point graduate in the mid1 1920s he proceeded to work for his father's Mining Company in Mexico before joining Nelson rockefeller's Office of

the coordinator of interam American Affairs during World War II which has largely been viewed in recent years as an intelligence front that used business cover to place spies across Latin America his experience working in Mexico as a mining executive and as one of Nelson rockefeller's spies during the war likely landed him a spot at the new CIA in 1947 yet JC King remains a frustratingly obscure figure According to some sources from his post as the head of Western Hemisphere he naturally had a role in the gu M and coup in 1954 but again any further

details or specifics are missing King was a mid-level executive not a major player but still a langly bureaucrat and planner JC King appears in the cia's history as the first person to suggest specific action against the Newly emerged Castro regime his original December 11 1959 memo called for assassination or as suggested earlier the elimination of the Cuban leader CIA director Alan Dulles approved the memo but only after sanitizing the document using a pencil Crossing out the words eliminate and replacing it with the more passive word removal as we can see from the very beginning of

the anti-castro operations we are presented with two histories the first an obscure CIA Executive high up in the agency but almost invisible in the history calls for the assassination of Castro then the parallel more respectable history shows the ever diligent and trustworthy wory Allen Dulles Crossing out the assassination language instead rephrasing the document towards a more conventional CIA coup was JC King simply taking the Fall For The agency's prominent men who likely wanted an assassination but could not come out and Say it this is not the only time that King could be used as a

Fall Guy later during an internal interview with Richard Bissell the deputy director of plans and the main architect of the Bay of Pigs invasion Bissell claimed that it was J C King and not himself who first advocated the use of Mafia elements in the assassination and later in the paramilitary portions of the anti-castro operations maybe JC King was a true operator or maybe he was just putting His name on the record for his bosses JC King's initial memo did get the ball rolling as according to official CIA history on January 8th 1960 the CIA first

discussed the creation of an official anti-castro branch of the western fere Division and on January 18 1960 director of CIA Alan Dulles instructed DDP Richard Bissell to create the Western Hemisphere Branch 4 known by the cryptonym wh4 according to the paper wh4 Originally quote totaled 40 persons with 18 at headquarters 20 at Havana station and two at Santiago base end quote this initial 40 members was likely wear the commonly used name for the later assassination Core group was born that being the now Infamous operation 40 as we will discuss much more later back in these

early days of the Cuban Revolution the CIA still had a presence in Cuba itself and the 20 agents assigned to Havana and the two in Santiago would Work on the first recruitment efforts in assembling the Exile Army later that year the Bay of Pigs invasion planning started in the last year of Eisenhower's presidency as a joint CIA White House venture accordingly the top of the organizational structure saw a joint effort between Alan Dulles from the CIA working alongside vice president Richard Nixon acting as the political liaison on the project below Nixon and Dulles was Richard

Bissell as previously mentioned The deputy director of plans at the CIA and by all accounts a Dulles Protege many viewed Bissell as being the natural successor to Dulles in the top spot at the CIA as he was a true spy Spy like his mentor he came from the same ivy league background as his boss graduating from Yale in the 1930s and had been one of the founding members of the CIA Bissell by this point in his career had amassed an impressive resume of experience in spycraft he had first Entered the spotlight as the main langly

planner of the Guatemalan kudeta in 1954 operation PB success which overthrew the democratically elected government of yakobo arbz additionally Bissell had been given authority over both the You2 spy plane program and the evolving spy satellite program at the the CIA by 1960 Bissell had been in the role of deputy director of plans for a little under 2 years replacing the legendary Frank Wisner arguably the main architect of The cia's Cold War regime change operations in the early days therefore with a growing portfolio of Duties his prominence as a CIA old boy and as Frank wisner's

successor as DDP Bissell would Relish in the opportunity to head the planning for the first anti- Cuba operations from his new role and what eventually would evolve into a full amphibious assault in a year's time although on paper the cia's Bay of Pigs invasion can trace its Origins back to One memo in 1959 from the Obscure Colonel JC King of the Western Hemisphere division Richard Bissell had likely heard these ideas and Concepts swirling Around The High Society circles and Gatherings that he often attended in the Washington DC area you see much like his boss Alan

Dulles and his close Confidant Counter Intelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton Bissell belonged to the close-knit and elitist East Coast establishment which had once dominated The US intelligence and statecraft apparatus the faction of old boys in Washington DC was coined as the Georgetown set named after the Posh suburb of Washington DC where many of these Spooks lived Richard Bissell featured prominently as a gregarius schoer within the parties of this informal grouping since the early 1950s this group of prominent former OSS agents government bureaucrats establishment journalists and Politicians met informally at cocktail parties and functions in the

Posh Georgetown suburb of Washington DC continuing the Osos social Legacy of the oss the Georgetown set quickly emerged in the post-war years as a separate Forum of CIA agents asset journalists and bureaucrats to meet and collude on intelligence operations at the center of the Georgetown set were some of the foremost early CIA Executives Frank Wisner the first head of the office of Policy coordination and the second deputy director of plans otherwise known as the Director of covert operations in the CIA would represent the center of the Georgetown set until his descent into madness in 1958

followed by bouts of electroshock and his eventual suicide in 1965 future CIA director under Nixon Richard Helms attended these parties alongside Tracy Barnes Richard bissell's deputy and a major organizer of the Bay Of Pigs also present was the future overseer of the cia's early incursions into La one Desmond Fitzgerald it's been a while but you'll remember him from part four of my LA series as the man who authorized the first operations to arm the Mong in Laos also later to be involved with the anti- Cuba activities in Miami Allan Dulles and his Counter Intelligence Chief

James Jesus Angleton were also known to drop by in the Georgetown parties making some of these Gatherings a real who's who of the early CIA Spooks now what made the Georgetown set particularly unique was the inclusion of a wide array of CIA sponsored journalists amongst their ranks these included Thomas Braden which we originally met in my CIA history episode on French gladio Philip Graham who I should mention worked in the OSS as an assistant to Wild Bill Donovan and then later worked for the world bank before becoming a Washington Post Journalist David K Bruce another

former OSS agent and esteemed Ambassador and of course the alsop brothers Joseph and Stewart it was Joseph elop specifically the journalist of choice of the China Lobby that hosted many of these Georgetown parties David talbat in his book Brothers characterizes Joseph elop's Georgetown house as a salon of sorts hearkening back to the old salons of pre-revolutionary France where the aristocratic Elites would gather and Share ideas and network with academics and artists the closeness of the Spooks and the journalists worked symbiotically the journalists would get the latest scoops on global events allowing them to publish the

first stories on the latest happenings in the Cold War hotspots and for the spies having immediate access to Washington's most prominent press Corp allowed them to quite effectively control the media narrative surrounding future targets for operations in many Ways we could see the Georgetown party scene as the origin point of the fabled CIA operation mocking bird which is said to Encompass all alleged and confirmed CIA operations working to manipulate media narratives and to influence the press to publish favorable stories to business interests at these parties were several CIA sponsored journalists and the top propaganda staff

of the CIA who was a man named cord Meyer James Angleton Deputy cord Meyer was Instrumental in setting up several CIA propaganda fronts such as Radio free Europe under the international organizations division of C CIA he was also the man who allegedly coined the now Infamous term the quote unquote compatible left or in other words left-wing organizations that were seen as compatible and thus workable allies at least temporarily for the CIA to employ in opposing communism and the radical left these compatible left Entities were often Social Democratic parties moderate trade unions or any other ostensibly

leftist group that was compatible with capital and finally next to these top CIA spies and their friendly journalists was a codery of the top American bureaucrats and government officials included in this mix were most of the Truman administration's top staff Dean aers William alvil Harman John McLoy and of course Paul nits the author of NSC 68 in 1950 the original blueprint For a permanent War economy in the United States these American luminaries would continue to advise presidents until at least the 1980s providing a direct line between Paul policymaking and the CIA through these informal and

clandestine Georgetown meetings even future President Kennedy was alleged to have attended a few of these Georgetown functions Kennedy himself a prominent member of a Massachusetts Elite family was adjacent to the perennial Blue-blooded members of the Georgetown set these parties would allegedly have a significant impact on Kennedy's future presidency for one the presidential candidate was approached by journalist Joseph alsop the same alsop who had covered the Lao crisis first under rumored CIA cover in 1959 allop made a strange recommendation to the young Senator at the Democratic Convention in LA in 1960 it was reported that he

recommended Kennedy choose Lynden Baines Johnson the Senate Majority Leader from Texas and his defeated opponent in the 1960 Democratic primaries to be his running mate against vice president Richard Nixon this is a somewhat puzzling recommendation Johnson was by no means a member of The George Circle instead belonging to the petrof fueled political Elite in Texas Johnson was a Protestant Texan who may have simply been a strategic suggestion by allop to help Kennedy carry states in the South that he otherwise would have struggled to win as a Catholic northerner but regarding JFK and the CIA throughout

the 1960 presidential campaign rumors persisted that Alan Dulles or at least one of his subordinates was feeding internal intelligence to the Kennedy camp regarding Cuba likely through Georgetown sources such such as the constellation of journalists and bureaucrats that attended these same circles these rumors Were largely attributed to Kennedy's statements on the campaign Trail lambasting Nixon for not taking a harder stance on Cuba Nixon who was heavily involved in the top secret Bay of Pigs invasion planning was bound by this secret and could not retaliate when Kennedy implied that the White House should be arming and

funding the Miami Cuban Exiles a program that I'll remind you was underway at the time under Nixon's office there due to his Proximity to the ongoing planning Nixon was forced to feain weakness on Cuba to protect the ongoing operations and Kennedy flanked the vice president on the issue looking like the hardliner whether this had a decisive impact on the election which was the closest in US history at the time is unclear but it did however Force Kennedy to follow through with his strong campaign rhetoric against Castro and his firm commitment to arm the Exiles while

Kennedy campaigned on strong action in the Caribbean the duck president Ike stepped aside and in 1960 the CIA prepared the Bay of Pigs operation for either the incoming Nixon Administration or the new face Kennedy DDP Richard Bissell moved his pieces into place in early 1960 JC King head of the Western Hemisphere division at CIA assigned Jacob Esterline as the task force chief of the new wh4 group The Working level team devising simultaneously both the Castro assassination and and Cuban Invasion operations Jake eserine was an agency veteran having started his career in OSS Detachment 101 in

Southeast Asia as a paramilitary expert clearing the way for Miami based Colonel Paul helwell and his OSS Detachment 202 boys to establish themselves there EST Line's paramilitary expertise was put to use post-war in the CIA as he was then shipped to several posts across Latin America he was reportedly a paramilitary Adviser for the cia's PB success the overthrow of guatemal and president yakobo arbans in 54 as I previously mentioned as I mentioned before though in the previous part the PB success group was largely transferred over to the Bay of Pigs operation some six years later

Jacob Esterline was no exception as he was called from his posting in Venezuela in early 1960 to become the cia's main on the ground director in the evolving Bay of Pigs invasion estrine Would organize and direct not only the Elite Training for operation 40 but also the more broad combat trading provided to the larger Bay of Pigs invasion Force first organized largely under Brigade 2506 in rural Guatemala throughout 1960 the newly bolstered CIA JM wave station in Miami worked to engage the local Cuban Exile community in South Florida following the Cuban Revolution a consistent stream

of Cuban migrants for the most part opposed to Castro Established themselves in and around Miami creating a bustling Little Havana in the Sunshine State although United in their anti-castro sentiments these groups represented a constellation of different micro factions and political positions ranging from anti-communist leftists all the way to ultra reactionary members of the former Batista regime this wide array of assets were fostered by the agency as the main contingent of soldiers used against Castro in the Bay of Pigs and Beyond although Eisenhower gave a near unrestricted green light to the CIA to conduct their operations

in the Caribbean the use of Cubans in the operations did provide a natural veil of cover and of course the everloved plausible deniability for the United States in their secret war against the new Cuban regime The Invasion Army quickly grouping up in rural Guatemala would be Presented to the world as a Grassroots Cuban effort at least that was the idea anyway pretty quickly the entire region including Fidel Castro himself were made keenly aware of the cia's very direct role in funding training and arming the Bay of P Brigade 2506 despite the use of mostly Cuban

Assets in the actual Invasion itself the Bay of Pigs invasion was a massive Open Secret by the time it kicked off on April 17th 1961 and as we will see this may have been somewhat Intentional as the Bay of Pigs invasion acted as the first widely publicized CIA failure in the Cuba project failures that largely overshadowed the other less public successful developments in this m year so how did the Bay of Pigs Invasion become an Open Secret and a reported agency failure and what would the agency gain from such an obviously flawed plan well let's

dive in although the CIA would recruit their Invasion force in Florida the agency was technically still Not allowed to operate on domestic soil and thus had to find a foreign host for their training camp Richard Bissell was eventually able to secure a plot in Guatemala a country which I will remind you had some 6 years earlier witnessed a CIA funded coup in its C Capital the Bay of Pigs training camp was provided by a Guatemalan Plantation owner named Roberto aljos brother to the Guatemalan Ambassador in Washington DC Carlos aljos the abandoned coffee plantation that Would

by August 19th 1960 be home to the first 100 or so Cuban Invaders was to be known as base tracks and the Army trained there would be Brigade 2506 headed by one Manuel arime Dr Manuel arime bua the Cuban physician who had once fought alongside Castro against Batista and even served briefly in the Revolutionary government fled Cuba in 1959 and ended up in Mexico there he was first recruited by CIA man Bernard Barker who I must note here would become A future Watergate burglar in 1972 and will by no means be the last that we

will be coming across today anyways well spoken and clean-cut Dr arime would be the public face of the CIA anti-castro program and his organization the M de reol or Mr for short would be chosen as the major sponsored political organization intended to form a quote unquote government in arms on the Cuban Coast because you see and this is a Major misconception about the Bay of Pigs invasion but the plan was more nuanced than simply invading Cuba and overthrowing the government the plan hashed in Langley and sought to temporarily embed AR's mrr government in Cuba and

to have them declare themselves as a quote unquote government in arms according to international law once an autonomous entity is able to secure a region of land by arms for 72 hours and declare itself a government the Neutrality Act becomes void and foreign powers can thus support the government in arms overtly as if they are the legitimate government of the state therefore the Bay of Pigs operation was meant to be the Prelude to a wider official US intervention likely by Marines with air support at least this was the idea on paper when an invasion force

of some 10,000 men did still seem achievable despite early optimism by the end of the year-long buildup to the Bay Of Pigs the Exile Army only ever topped a little over 1,500 combatants placed on the ground in South Florida by Richard Bissell as the quinquin political officer of the operation was the ubiquitous e Howard hunt who would be in charge of the early Bay of Pigs recruitment efforts out of the JM wave station in Miami you'll remember hunt as it was his involvement in Watergate that alarmed Nixon as we covered at the beginning of This

episode although his role in the operation in Miami remains vague as the political officer it does appear that hunts or as he was known by the Cuban Exiles Eduardo's role was likely to act as the cia's liaison with the Cuban Exile groups in Florida and to coordinate weapons and cash to the desparate factions and parties I should note that Eduardo hunt was reported to have been in contact with certain mob figures around the Miami area even as Early as 1960 according to the classic biography of Frank the Irishman Sheeran titled I heard you paint houses

now adopted by Martin Scorsese into the film the Irishman Frank Sheeran a bodyguard and close mob associate to Jimmy hofa and Russell buffalino of the Pennsylvania outfit was witnessed and participated in a gun shipment to a reported CIA figure going by hunt in the Miami area at least that's what he alleges take this with whatever Legitimacy you choose to it could also just be Sheeran trying to boost his legacy despite the lofty Tales hunt and his CIA colleagues recruitment efforts in Miami were continuously plagued by rumors within the Cuban community of a massive CIA Army

waiting in the jungles of Guatemala additionally penetration was a constant issue as Castro embedded agents throughout the Miami area to spy on exile and agency efforts and to report back to Havana it's been alleged That even mob boss Santo trafficante a future CIA mob Ally was himself working as a double agent for both Castro and the CIA at during this period we'll get more into that next time this penetration of Castro agents ran across the entire operation and from the beginning Castro was aware of Yankee plotting nonetheless by November 4th 1960 days before the presidential

election the first 430 cub and CIA paramilitary staff had established Themselves in Guatemala gathered at Fort Trax in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Western Guatemala as you can see on the map on screen the camps sit's conditions were miserable found 7,000 ft up in the air the provided Plantation was on volcanic ground soil that would quickly transform into difficult to Traverse mud following the constant Heavy Rain most problematic to the operation itself was the base Camp's proximity to several other active coffee plantations staffed By mostly local indigenous workers if knowledge of Base tracks had not

already reached Castro via Miami spies the news then quickly made its way to Havana via either a Guatemalan spy or a Cuban double agent in the camp now nonetheless base tracks was built and although The Invasion Force remained small the training went ahead the plan had just shifted away from Guerilla training towards an amphibious assault not too dissimilar to the island hopping Miss in The Pacific Theater of World War II slowly small vehicles and weapons were brought in by the CIA Finance shell companies likely overseen by figures such as Miami CIA pay Master Paul helwell

the first paramilitary trainers arrived in the early fall most of them CIA contract workers and former assets from the agency's gun running operations during the Cuban Revolution from this point Guerilla training had not been completely eliminated from the plan Instead the CIA gave SEL Elite Training to a smaller group of Exiles the ones deemed the most hardened ideological and battle tested CIA trainers at Fort tra began to separate the top of the Exile crop into a separate side group what emerged from this smaller band of Commandos was the critical side project to the Bay of

Pags Invasion operation 40 I should begin by stating that the term operation 40 from my research is never mentioned by name in any Declassified or Official agent material although it is never mentioned by name by official agency sources several agency employed Cuban Exiles have over the years referred to The elusive op 40 and have shed some light on the purpose of the group in a sense operation 40 seem to act more as an umbrella term or a shorthand for the most elite division of Cuban assets for the purposes of this video and Clarity I will

use the operation 40 label as a Catchall term for this organization of elite Cuban assets sets separated from the Brigade 2506 Invasion Force interestingly operation 40 has actually been depicted in popular media most prominently in the First Call of Duty Black Ops game as one of the playable factions in the Cuba level and the associated multiplayer map this is where I first heard of this term as a teenager the game even included a piece of fictitious collectible Intel that Includes JC king's name and authorization to create operation 40 it appears that the game's writer did

their homework of course it should go without saying that this depiction does still clearly whitewash the broader implications of this program as we will see the Call of Duty depiction of operation 40 as an Elite Squad of Americans and Cubans sent on a rambol likee mission to kill Castro remains unsurprisingly only one dimension of the Often misinterpreted and misrepresented Squad according to Exile sources operation 40 was one of the first CIA foray into creating from scratch the intelligence agency of another state this group was organized initially to become the new intelligence operatus of a post

Castro Cuban regime in reality however with Castro remaining in power the original operation 40 crew gathered between 1960 and 61 would become a sort of In-House private intelligence Network Within the CIA this sounds like a contradiction right how can a state intelligence agency like the CIA have a private element within well as I have described before the the Cuban Exiles in operation 40 would become the sort of contract workers and outsourced assets for many of the cia's most controversial operations of the next decades these were not US citizens which critically established a veil of plausible

deniability when using these agents most Of these men had been former Bautista regime hardliners often having a past either in the Cuban army or in Batista's secret police the US trainers of operation 40 from my understanding sought to Prov provide allaround operator training to the new Cuban Spooks including Guerilla Warfare spycraft sometimes pilot training and counterinsurgency tactics commonly op 40 is seen as a CIA assassination unit and there is some truth in that but that was Only one aspect of the training provided to the new Cuban Intel assets Arthur Schlesinger Jr the Kennedy administration's inous

historian and a special assistant to the president wrote maybe the most damning memo about operation on June 9th 1961 to Kennedy Aid Richard Goodwin hey there this is eyes wide open uh actually from the present or future whatever you want to call it anyways originally when this video came out on patreon some months Back I only had access to a reproduction of the alleged memo a typed copy from a brigade 2506 veterans website you can see that on screen now originally I tried to track down the original memo but was unable to find it when

the video first aired I sech searched and searched to no avail but one of my patreon supporters here who I'm going to shout out cuz I got his uh permission to David myON thank you was able to put in a request the National Archives records Administration where the memo was stored well they got back to him and now as you can see on screen is the scan of the original Memo from Schlesinger to Dick Goodwin in its entirety importantly I do believe that this alongside a tweet I made a few months ago is the first

time that it has appeared online in its entirety so most importantly thank you David from myself and from everybody that is watching right now for digging this up I actually want to say uh a Special shout out to David because he's actually helped me with some other research over on patreon we've actually become um pretty good friends just chatting about different topics uh he seems to be really interested in the same things as I am on this channel so uh thank you again David for all your help um and I guess I could just take

this time to say if you are a patreon supporter and haven't cheed out the Discord yet there are some pretty good Discussions going on over there as well as a sneak peek into my research process so anyways let's get back to the memo and let's get back to the topic on hand the memo is possibly the most transparent account of operation 40 from an official government Source Schlesinger States the following quote it was called operation 40 because originally only 40 men were involved later the group was enlarged to 70 end quote I should note here

that other Sources claimed that later the group capped out at about 90 Cuban Spooks by 1962 anyways Schlesinger continues quote the ostensible purpose of operation 40 was to administer liberated territories in Cuba but the CIA agent in charge a man known as Felix trained the members of the group in methods of third deegree interrogation torture and general terrorism end quote now this is interesting because the official Exile leader of operation 40 was former Cuban Colonel vinante Leon however ever by the time of Schlesinger's memo Leon had died at the Bay of Pigs invasion and must

have been replaced by this man named Felix which has to be none other than Felix Rodriguez a future operator in Southeast Asia chavar is reported assassin in Bolivia and later a key player in Iran Contra he would also be suspected and Accused by many of involvement in the death of DEA agent Kiki kamaren but that's a whole other Story that I don't have time for today Felix Rodriguez had been the son of a rich landowning family in pre-revolutionary Cuba according to his own words his entire family had either been killed or imprison following Castro's rise

to power left orphaned the young Rodriguez linked up with sometime CIA asset Frank Sturgis and fought under him as an anti-castro Guerilla in Cuba before smuggling his way out to Miami in 1960 and joining operation 40 Rodriguez In a sense would become a war junkie fing across the globe for the CIA over the next next decades building his mythology as a crusader against communism anyways this Schlesinger memo is the only place where I've seen Felix Rodriguez noted as the leader of op 40 but it makes sense given Rodriguez's prolific career with the CIA after the

Cuba show and his closeness to the Future Jam wave station Chief Ted Shockley as we'll get into a bit later Schlesinger concludes this thought by stating quote the liberal Cuban Exiles believe that the real purpose of operation 40 was to quote unquote kill Communists and after eliminating hardcore felistas to go on to eliminate first the followers of Rey then the followers of Verona and finally to set up a right-wing dictatorship presumably under artee end quote from Schlesinger's memo in June 1961 we get a picture of operation 40 as a sort of Death Squad to Be

Unleashed in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs we also get a glimpse at the true plans for the CIA to install a pro agency puppet dictator in our te to replace Castro Schlesinger's memo was further corroborated in December 1977 at the house select committee on assassinations which interviewed William Turner a former FBI man who was dismissed by the bureau in 1961 after suing Hoover and losing he became a private investigator with his First beat being the JFK assassination in 1964 he would eventually work on former FBI agent and current New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's

investigation team in in the mid1 1960s when he would make his breakthroughs in the Kennedy case bringing guy banister David Ferry and Klay Shaw to the Forefront anyways in the 1977 hsca interview of Turner which I have linked below Turner shared some details he Gathered from a past interview he conducted with CIA Cuban Exile in operation 40 asset Felipe de Diego Felipe de Diego would emerge in the American psyche as one of e Howard Hunt's Watergate assets having been caught breaking into the office of Dr Lewis J Fielding to allegedly steal the psychiatric files on

one Daniel ellberg the man who leaked the Pentagon papers again Watergate is a whole can of worms and there's a lot to say about this but I will exercise some restraint here what is important here is that day Diego started in operation 40 and ended up in Watergate under e Howard hunt again the whole Bay of Pigs thing in his interview de Diego claimed that he attended special forces training at Fort Benning Georgia before the Bay of Pigs invasion indicating maybe one of the potential sites that the elite Cuban Squad were being trained once separated

from the Guatemala Camp he claimed the following Quote operation 40 was the intelligence branch of the 2506 Brigade and brought along assassins since it was believed that some of the Cuban leaders would have to be eliminated permanently end quote this passage brings up a recurring conception of operation 40 not only as a targeted assassination Squad but as some sort of coordinated death squad used to purge Villages as the Brigade 25 6 swept across Cuba these same tactics would reemerge in Vietnam Under The Phoenix Program administered once again by operation 4 agents and Exiles in a

May 1961 interview Manuel Rey an exile leader of the MRP stated that operation 40 assets were to quote follow behind the invading troops and quote unquote Purge the captured cities and towns end quote he further condemned the entire show and claimed that one member of the group was a quote unquote war criminal in Cuba mind this is the testimony of a Cuban Exile in 1961 right in the thick Of the anti-castro fever who is broadly sympathetic to the Brigade 2506 Invasion and wholly antagonistic to Castro this Testament shows how even within the radical Cuban Exile

Community operation 40 was perceived as a group of Assassins Thugs and war criminals of course their post Cuba activities would not help in this perception the CIA trainers of operation 40 assets are also indicative of the wide scope of training that was likely impressed upon the Elite Squad According to De Diego and many other testimonies e Howard hunt the PB success agent Miami political officer and future Watergate burglar was one of the agents in charge of training we can deduce that hunt brought spycraft and regime change experience at the table and was likely the intelligence

expert on the training staff hunt would famously as I've mentioned bring many of these op 40 operators into the White House plumber unit in the late 60s and early '70s Under Nixon the CIA assassination trainer on operation 40 was a man who I have yet to discuss in detail but remains one of the most bone chilling and ruthless CIA agents to emerge from the early agency his name was David Sanchez Morales also known by his nickname El Indio born to a Mexican father and an indigenous mother Morales started his career in the Army enlisting in

1946 and serving until at least 1950 according to his Declassified Personnel Record morales's brother also served as a first lieutenant and Jet Pilot instructor in Arizona for David he spent his army career at Fort Brag military base in North Carolina one of the major bases that would train future Army Special Forces Morales started his career at CIA sometime in the early 50s it is unclear how an obscure Army Corporal was screened to become one of the agency's Premier experts on assassination but I'm sure the story is Disturbing with various postings throughout Latin America Morales worked

alongside fellow future PBC success and Bay of Pigs operatives e Howard hunt and David Atley Phillips his bilingualism in both English and Spanish was likely an asset especially later working with Cuban Exiles before being brought on to train the Cuban Exiles in operation 40 David Morales had worked for two years at The Havana station in Cuba where he had formed significant contacts with the Anti Castro underground and Bautista government officials hunt and Morales would reunite in Miami to train the cadres of operation 40 according to an interview with Dave Morales conducted on May 25th 1961

only a month after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion he notes that the principal group were 39 selected Highly Educated Cubans who were trained as case officers to form the future intelligence service once again if we include Morales into the 39 we are Given the 40 of operation 40 in the interview he refers the 39 recruits by the term amots which is likely the cryptonym for operation 40 addition Ally he details am fast and am chur the former being a Counter Intelligence Division and the latter being a political division which alt together these three groups

would form the future Cuban intelligence agency in a western friendly Cuba altogether this would be about a 200 man Agency with the amots Operation 40 Squad being the covert operations men within this new agency Morales would build a reputation in Miami and around Langley as a cold operator and a assassin according to Thomas Klein's future Deputy at JM wave in Miami and a close associate of Morales quote if you saw Morales walking down the street of a Latin American Capital you knew a coup was about to happen end quote unlike other CIA operators who remained

aloof or Dismissive when asked about their role in major scandals and assassinations Morales would allegedly openly discuss his role in the assassination of both kennedies stating in 1973 that he quote was in Dallas when we got the son of a [ __ ] and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard end quote such blatant admission of a direct role in the slaying of the brothers is shocking and morales's candidness surrounding the events may have caused his sudden death By a quote unquote heart attack in 1978 a few weeks before he was

called to testify before the house select committee on assassinations nonetheless Morales worked to train the operation 40 fronte group in the dark arts of assassination and counterinsurgency work that he would later under undertaken La under us aid cover training Mong gorillas Not only would Morales participate in the CIA secret war in Laos he would then also transfer into Phoenix in South Vietnam another CIA counterinsurgency project both under his former boss Ted Shockley the future exploits of the original operation 40 team throughout the 60s 7s and 80s would be a testament to the nature of the

training provided by both Howard hunt and David Morales alongside hunt and Morales were reportedly other CIA assets that remained officially off the books according to CIA statements such assets included Frank Sturgis who was Reportedly present according to Exiles and none other than Barry seal future CIA drug smuggling pilot during the Iran Contra era we know that Barry seal was present from a photograph uncovered by the late investigative journalist Daniel hopsicker he included this postcard in his book Barry in the boys taken on March 29th 1961 provided by Barry's Widow to the author on the back

Barry wrote quote I am probably going to stay at this picture a couple of days end Quote in the picture is the volcano overlooking Lake atitlan right next to base tracks in Guatemala this almost indisputably places Barry seal as at the very least a trainer likely an aviation trainer with the Bay of Pigs invasion now when it comes to the actual Cuban recruits of operation 40 I will end off with a couple of examples to show how prominent they became in the post Cuba era of the CIA but also Western Hemisphere intelligence more broadly Firstly

we have the likes of Raphael Chichi Cano originally a Frank Sturgis soldier in anti-castro Guerilla operations in pre-revolutionary Cuba probably alongside Felix Rodriguez as well Cano would remain one of the most prolific members of the original operation 40 Squad attaching himself closely to Future JM wave station Chief Ted shakley and especially his Deputy Thomas Klein as we will see later in the early '70s Cano would be one of the few CIA Cubans to end up embedded in the Mexican governmental oil company known as PMX kleines with the help of Naval intelligence asset and former CIA

agent Ed Wilson would work to embed his assets into PMX to provide business cover to their future arms and narcotic smuggling PMX was filled with CIA assets another of which was an agent named Ricardo Chavez a Mexican agent that had led a paramilitary squad with operation 40 Exiles in in of all places the Congo in The mid 1960s hunting CH gavara of course we can't mention pemex without also mentioning George HW Bush who in the early 60s around the same time that operation 40 was being established was himself in close dealings with the top staff

at PMX we will talk much more about Bush's connection to the Bay of Pigs in the next part of this series Cano as an ostensible PMX employee would work with shockly inclines now Ostensibly private business businessmen in the late 70s and early 80s on various International weapons deals all in strange ways tied to Iran Contra while the likes of cantero and Chavez went the white collar route working on CIA arms and narcotics shipment from the cover of do nothing jobs at PMX other operation 40 veterans like leader Felix Rodriguez transitioned to working as private Hitmen

and assassins to be employed by not only the CIA but also the Intelligence agencies of the western friendly regimes in in Central America under the infamous Operation Condor this is where operation 40 mercenary and future terrorist Orlando Bosch and his crew emerge Orlando Bosch and his Associates Orlando Garcia and ignasio Novo were suspected in the killing of Orlando leier in Washington DC on September 21st 1976 on contract from Chilean dictator austo Pino's intelligence agency Dena leier had been Minister of National Defense of Chile under president Salvador aende whom the CIA had helped overthrow in 1973

forced into Exile the former Defense Minister and Economist after a year in a Chilean prison left to the United States where he taught at the American University in DC letia became the most prominent critic of the US supported regime of austo Pinos in Chile out of the Bosch crew the most standout to me was Ricardo monkey Morales a Former operation 40 Commando who was known as the explosives expert Ricardo Morales has been heavily suspected of building the car bomb that killed Orlando leer Morales himself had actually been a part of the CIA Cuban Congo crew

until 1965 alongside Mexican CIA asset and future PMX employee Ricardo Chavez in the late 60s monkey Morales was arrested for several murders in the United States most prominently bombing charges in Miami in 1968 now According to a 1978 New York Times article Morales is referred to as quote unquote prosecution proof as he went free as an FBI informant shortly after Morales would appear as the lead witness in the 1968 trial of Orlando Bosch eventually convicted of firing a bazooka from K biscan at a Polish freighter headed for Cuba Bosch was paroled in 1972 and moved

to Venezuela and then the Dominican Republic where he headed an anti-castro terrorist group called the Coordination of United revolutionary organizations the most shocking and disturbing of their crimes was the bombing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976 killing 73 passengers It is believed that they were hired by Venezuelan intelligence or at the very least had cover of a Venezuelan private intelligence firm regardless the Orlando Bosch and Ricardo Morales group of operation 40 veterans were emblematic of how some of the CID assets were Reemployed as plausibly independent Condor agents used to assassinate political enemies and to engage

in Acts of Terror Gaton Fonzi in his research for the house select committee on assassinations noted that in the 1968 trial of Orlando Bosch for the Bazooka incident head witness Ricardo Morales brought forward a tape of an alleged secret meeting between the FBI informant and BOS in this recorded meeting Morales allegedly talked about a quote fellow Named hunt Who quote gave $15,000 to some representatives of Cuban power to place bombs end quote hunt here is most certainly e Howard hunt of operation 40 and later of the Watergate burglary could this be part of Nixon's whole

Bay of Pigs thing secret regarding hunt four years later another interpretation of course is that Ricardo Morales disillusioned by the CIA dropping him after the Congo operation in 1965 was attempting to rope the agency Into the Bazooka incident especially as he was now an asset of the FBI who offered him a Lifeline a lot to think about here but to wrap up with operation 4 40 on screen now I have one more photo to show you which is the cover photo from Daniel hopsicker Barry in the boys the photo was allegedly taken on January 22nd

1963 in Mexico City exactly 10 months before the Kennedy assassination the photo taken from Barry Seal's house by the author is labeled in the book as The only extent photo of the operation 40 Squad of course many are missing but if we take this at face value we gain some interesting insights now warning moving forward this is all speculation on the people depicted in the photo I have no way to be certain that these are in fact the people suspected a lot of this is my speculation including Daniel hopsicker and other people online so front

left on the table looks to be quite clearly Felix Rodriguez who was The purported leader of operation 40 Felix Rodriguez's origins in operation 40 presented a direct link between the development of an assassination team to assassinate Castro and to purge his followers and the future CIA rural pacification program in Vietnam known as Phoenix which Rodriguez would participate in the early ' 70s there he would be reunited in Saigon with his former JM wave boss Ted Shockley who would be directing Phoenix by this point Now next to Felix Rodriguez is who Dan hopsicker speculates and again

this is all speculation uh so he speculates that this is Porter Goss who served as CIA director from 2005 to 2006 under George W bush I have some comparison shots on screen now although Porter gos served in the Caribbean for the CIA during this time I'm not completely convinced that this is him it doesn't look that convincing but that's just me next to Porter gos of course is Barry seal and This one is almost undisputable to me the the resemblance is too close uh he was the CIA pilot we covered extensively in the last part

and who is portrayed by Tom Cruz in the huge limited hangout film that is American mate Barry of course was president at the Bay of Pigs and seemingly an honorary member of operation Ford although I do have an interpretation of this photo if we do accept the assumption that this is Barry seal and This is Porter Goos it does seems strange to me that all these Cuban Exiles are sitting around a table and next to the leader of operation 40 are two American CIA assets who are likely not direct members of operation 40 these two

clearly stand out here it's almost like they were guests of honor sitting next to the chief Felix Rodriguez dropping by Mexico City to meet the operation 40 crew and check in or deliver a briefing from Langley the Timing of this picture some 10 months before the Kennedy hit would also further fuel my speculation on what this could have been a meeting about anyways it might not come to a surprise now but Barry seal would allegedly pop up again in LA in the 1960s shipping dope for air America one last interesting connection is that Barry seal

in the late 1960s while allegedly working as a CIA Narco pilot was given a corporate cover as the youngest commercial commercial jet pilot In the world by none other than Transworld Airlines owned of course by Howard Hughes it's unlikely that Barry seal ever flew a commercial flight but nonetheless we see Howard Hughes poking out to help CIA assets a trend that we will continue to see throughout the Cuba show on the other side of the table is a man covering his face it has been proposed that this is Frank Sturgis you can identify him allegedly

by his signature pompadour haircut the Sometimes official sometimes unofficial IIA asset who was firstly Cuban gun running and later a Bay of Pigs trainer would also reemerge as a Watergate burglar in the 1970s once again bringing the whole Bay of Pigs thing back in Focus now I'm not entirely convinced this is Frank Sturgis either I should note the eyes don't seem right to me others have suggested that this may just be another Cuban member of operation 40 there was a name attached to it I wasn't Able to dig it up but maybe this could be

an interesting exercise to try to put a name to each of the faces there were a few faces here that looks somewhat comparable to some of the names that we've spoken about today there's one here that I thought kind of looked like Chi-Chi cantero but it's hard to tell so maybe this is something that I'll work on in the future but all that to say when establishment histories decry the ultimate failure of the CIA at the Bay Of Pigs they are only telling you half the story The stated objective of invading Cuba and setting up

a government in arms as we will see next time did end in Failure however behind the high profile and not so secret invading Force Brigade 2506 lay a much more Sinister program operation 40 which would cement a lasting Legacy into the cia's dirty business from the 1960s to the 1980s op 40 represented the cia's first foray into many Avenues it was Their first attempt at developing a foreign intelligence apparatus and in turn they selected some of the most hardened and coldblooded operators that would help the agency and other Allied agencies work off the books to

undertake their overtly criminal acts for the next decades operation 40 also saw the CIA begin to hone their assassination programs but not in the typical establishment sense but instead as a specifically trained death squad of Sorts that could quote unquote mop up the countryside while Brigade 2506 men charged across Cuba finally operation 40 would become a key piece of the JFK assassination tapestry as radical Cuban Killers became increasingly frustrated with the perceived inaction of the president to return to Cuba at least that's the official story to get the full picture we need to travel to

Miami Louisiana and Las Vegas where the CIA mob connection was being established by The private intelligence agent Robert Mayu a private intelligence asset of none other than Howard Hughes next time we're going to mobl and we're exploring the CIA and Cuban Exiles tumultuous relationship with the mafia and their place in the anti-castro Mythos thank you all for watching as always and please if you enjoyed this video in any way leave a like and a comment down below letting me know what you thought it helps a lot with the algorithm and as Always I really enjoy

reading your thoughts down below the video you watched today first aired to my patreon subscribers on June 28th 2024 I would not have been able to dedicate the time and effort away from friends and family producing this video without their generous support patreon supporters get all the videos for the upcoming season early before they Premiere here on YouTube season 3 will be premier ing throughout 2025 before it ends up on YouTube at the end of the year on screen now are the names of my producer tier patrons as you know when you watch Eyes Wide

Open on YouTube it is always ad free I do not make any money off of YouTube ads which allows me to say what I want and not worry about keeping my content within the confines of YouTube's stringent monetization policy that said I am completely dependent on individual support to do the work that I do so as always to the patreon supporters thank You very much for your ongoing and enduring support next week is another big one focusing specifically on the CIA Mafia assassination plots against Castro this will be the second longest documentary in season 2

as I take a deep dive into US organized crime Howard Hughes private intelligence Network and the so-called mythology of the CIA plots against Castro this is a massive hour and 20 minute episode that I can't wait to share with you all we really go deep Into some topics that I haven't really explored in the past but as for the show today this is all I've got so thank you so much as always for watching again a like and a comment goes a long way and as always remember to keep your eyes wide open take care