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July 28, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
01:02:00
Cuban Exile recruited by CIA for Bay of Pigs Invasion | Félix Rodríguez | Ep. 158
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This is Rudy Giuliani and I am here with a truly, truly great hero.
Someone that I've admired for many, many years.
Someone whose history just sings out freedom.
This man has devoted his life, putting his life at risk to fight for freedom.
And it's Felix Rodriguez.
Felix was a colonel.
In the United States government.
And, you know, I'm gonna let him tell his life, but with what's going on in Cuba right now, and the confusion as to some, As to what is actually involved, I don't think there's anyone we could talk to that would have more of an insight into it than Felix, because he's devoted his life to fighting for freedom and liberty for his countrymen in Cuba, and then he's extended that to other parts of the globe, including for now his new country, the United States of America.
Felix, I have to tell you.
I've met a lot of people, and this is one of the highlights.
Thank you, Major.
You're a great hero.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
You've devoted your life to just fighting for freedom.
So let's go back to how it all started.
Where were you born?
Well, I was born in Cuba in 1941.
Then I came to this country back in 1954 for high school.
Why did you come to the U.S.
for high school?
Well, an uncle of mine really, I was offered by my other uncle to pay my studies in the United States.
And an uncle who had studied in France told me, he said, look, that's an opportunity I should not oversee.
You will regret if you don't do it.
So I accepted.
So I came when I was 14 years old in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Where'd you go?
What school was it?
Perky Omen Primary.
I spoke no English.
So it was very, very difficult at the beginning.
The first two years were seventh and eighth grade.
By science and all of that, I finally started getting to speak English and I finally graduated in 1960.
But before, in 1959, I heard there was something going on.
So this is all during the time great change is happening in your country, right?
Didn't Castro first make an attempt a few years earlier and fail?
Yes, that's when he went and attacked the Moncada.
That's on the 26th of July, as a matter of fact.
The 26th of July, what year?
Oh, that was in the 50s.
Yeah, like the mid-50s.
Right, the mid-50s.
So he tried that.
They actually assassinated a lot of soldiers.
He was put in prison, and Batista released him in December.
Then he went to Mexico with a group of other Cubans, and that's where Che Guevara joined him there.
And then they invaded Cuba at the Sierra Maestra.
And eventually, because the United States stopped all the weapons shipment to Batista, Batista had to leave and he just took over the regime.
So this is all happening while you're in New Jersey, getting an education.
Pennsylvania.
Were you back in Pennsylvania?
So this is all happening when you were in Pennsylvania.
Right.
And were you going back and forth to Cuba for the holidays?
Oh yes.
Since 1954, I went about four times every year.
Every year there was a week or more on vacation, I would fly to Cuba.
That's true.
So, did you see it coming?
When he took over, I never came back again.
I came back, but you're in the Bay of Pigs.
So did you see it coming?
Was it, did your family, your father, your relatives, did they see Castro eventually
taking over the country?
What they saw that he was communist.
One of the few people who really were aware that he was going to become a communist.
They saw he was communist before he took over.
I don't think people will remember that for the first year or two, there was some doubt as to whether he was a communist or not.
He denied it.
He said that he was not a communist.
To the world in general.
Until he was able to grab the power in Cuba.
When he did, then he declared himself Marxist-Leninist.
But you or your family knew from the very beginning that he was a committed communist, as was Guevara and the people around him.
So now you're in school and you find out that Castro has taken over.
Batista fled on December 31st, 1958, if I recall correctly.
It was December 31st, 1958.
Last day of the year.
You probably remember because of the scene in The Godfather.
When everybody's running out on New Year's Eve.
But in any event, so now Batista's gone, Castro's in charge.
What's happening with you in school?
You're a 17-year-old now?
At that time, I was even less than that.
But then, when I was 17, I started looking at the firing squad that was taking place in my homeland.
It was something ridiculous.
They had really no defense.
I saw the case of Sosa Blanco, where the witness was going to tell the tribunal that So Sablanco has killed his brother, appointed as the prosecutor, and told the prosecutor, you killed my brother.
He had to be told, no, it's the guy next to him.
So it was ridiculous.
It was not, no.
How many, how many of these, how many of these, what you call them, sham trials took place?
There were hundreds.
wonder of the day. And that's why I decided we had to do something about it. That's when I was
accepted to the university and arrived in Miami. And I learned that there was something to do,
you know, against Fidel. That's when I joined the Bay of Pigs.
Were you learning these facts from your family, from students, from your father,
who was telling you, because you're in the United States, and they're telling you about how Castro basically is slaughtering
people.
And whatever he had thought before, he turns out right from the very beginning to be a monster.
Yeah, but it was in American television.
I was looking at a lot of those things in American television.
So you picked that up.
Oh, absolutely.
American television covered things that were even unfavorable to communism.
Yes, at that time.
At that time.
But in any event, you become aware of the fact that basically this caster has become a tyrant.
Right.
And you're living under a tyranny.
So where are you in school now?
Well, I was just before graduation when I went to the Dominican Republic, and after that... Why did you go to the Dominican Republic?
Well, I was in Mexico visiting my parents in early 1959, and there was a captain by the name of Cortez who came from the Dominican Republic to recruit former military people that were in Mexico.
I knew a lot of those military people.
I was friends with them, even though I was much younger than they were.
When they started recruiting, I volunteered.
And you were too young, weren't you?
Yeah, 17.
And what did you do?
Can you tell us what you did?
I told the guy I wanted to go.
He said, fine, you need a visa.
And that's when they had to go.
And since I was 17, my father had to sign an application.
So when I brought it to him, he said, look, you are too young.
I don't want to sign it because I might be signing your death sentence.
So I say, all right, I am going to sign it for you.
So he said, well, I'll respect that.
And I did it in front of him, but I will not sign.
So in front of him, I pull out my Rodriguez.
I got my visa.
And on the 4th, actually on the 4th of July, I flew from Miami to the Dominican Republic.
On the 4th of July.
Yes.
And that was for training?
That was training to go to Trinidad, a city that was taken then by, supposedly by the rebels in our favor.
It turned out that it was Fidel troops who did that.
I was very lucky, but when the helicopter came to pick up about five of us to go there to Trinidad, I was one of the ones that was picked up.
But then there was another friend of mine, Martin Perez, who was older than I was, and his father got to the helicopter and said, you are too young.
My son has more experience.
So he got me out of the helicopter.
And his son spent the next 28 years in a Cuban prison.
He just died a few weeks ago.
I'm sorry.
So a lot of stories like that, huh?
A lot of that in your life.
Yes.
Family members killed by Castro?
No.
Fortunately, none of them.
Friends?
None of my family.
Friends?
Friends, yes.
So, You're now in the military.
What military are you in at this point?
No, no.
After the Bay of Pigs, actually.
No, no.
Before the Bay of Pigs.
No.
Before the Bay of Pigs, I was in the military.
You were trained, though.
No.
Well, in the Bay of Pigs, I was trained.
So then, how did that come about?
How did you find out about the Bay of Pigs?
It was top secret.
When we were in Miami, there was already by voice that there was some area that you can go and get recruited.
So a friend of mine already knew about that place.
He told me about it.
We went together and we got recruited.
We'll be back in just a few minutes.
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Welcome back to our interview with Felix Rodriguez.
So it was top secret, but it wasn't that top secret.
No, no.
People knew about it.
So that's how we joined.
So did a lot of young Cuban-Americans join?
Yes.
And where did that training take place?
Well, it took place, the original one was taking place in Guatemala.
Then as time went by during that year, the end of 1960, they sent us to what the Special Forces of the Brigade, I was part of that, to Panama for additional training.
And after that, we came back to Miami to infiltrate Cuba.
Actually, when we were in Panama, I and a friend of mine, Segundo Borges, volunteered to kill Castro.
So when we got to Miami, they accepted the operation, and they gave us one rifle, a very powerful rifle with 20 rounds of ammunition, you only need very few, and we tried to infiltrate Cuba.
Actually, the boat that we used was a beautiful jet.
And we were told that it belonged to Sergeant Shriver, a relative of President Kennedy.
So you went in a couple of days before though, a little before?
No, I went in actually in February, late February.
And then the actual invasion was when?
17th of April.
So you were there for quite some time before?
Working with the resistance.
Your purpose was intelligence and organization?
Right, bringing weapons and explosives and everything to the island.
And you were not detected during that period?
No, I was looking.
We were close sometimes, but we were lucky that never were detected.
And you were able to communicate back to Miami?
Yes, we had radio operators that communicated back to the base here in Miami.
Like I said, and then when the whole thing failed, I was lucky that the lady who was driving me had contact with the Spanish Embassy.
So, it would be nobody better to ask this question, why did it fail?
Well, the air support.
First of all, the original operation was not Landing the original operation was on the Eisenhower administration when President Eisenhower was told in 1960 that they were planning to bring offensive missile into the Cuba.
He ordered the CIA to destabilize the Castro regime.
And that's when they started an operation that was nothing to do with the landing.
It was a colonel graduated from West Point, Napoleon Valeriano, who used the name of Vallejo from Philippine origin, who had been very successful against the Hawks of the Philippines.
And he started three groups called the Infiltration Team, then they had the Black Teams, and the Occupational Force.
His idea was to promote guerrilla warfare in the Escambray, who already had people in there, to the extent that there were a lot of people, recruits in there, then bring the Black Teams that were highly trained, We were before the special forces bringing people into the mountains.
When that happened, these people were very good in paramilitary operations.
They were supposed to be able to receive weapons by air and then by sea.
And once we had enough people on their arms to secure a small area, They will bring the rest of the brigade with a powerful radio station and a provisional government, civilian provisional government, offering free elections and democratic elections within a year.
And the idea was that that would be recognized by the OAS, U.S., and that's the end of Castro.
Now, when did the plan change?
Obviously, this infiltration from within didn't go on.
But we had the elections in November and then the Eisenhower administration was out with Nixon and Kennedy came in.
So Kennedy decided to continue with the operation, but he didn't want to go with an operation that was designed by the Republicans.
So first of all, he tried to Which was not too bad to take the city of Trinidad and do the same thing that they were planning to do with the radio station, all of that.
But at the end they told him that it was very difficult to deny the U.S.
participation because there would be a lot of press in the area, which is ridiculous.
Nobody can believe that a group of exiles could amaze tanks, planes, and troops like that.
But nevertheless, they convinced the president like that and they terminated the operation for Trinidad and they went to the Bay of Pigs.
And they went to the Bay of Pigs instead.
Right.
But the Bay of Pigs, we had to control the air to be successful, and they knew that.
So the first airstrike that took place eliminated 90% of Castro's air force.
But then the remaining planes were going to be eliminated on the following day with 16 planes.
Then Adelaide Stephens from the United Nations was presented proof because the administration was saying those were planes from Castro attacking target and then leaving to the United States.
But then the Cuban government showed proof that there were different planes, that the one from Cuba had a plastic nose and the one attacking there were Metal nose with a 50-caliber machine gun nose.
So at last Stephen told his administration, unless they put a stop to the airstrike, he will resign to the UN.
And to be able to keep him there, they put the stop to the airstrike, they controlled the air, and they sank the boat.
They, meaning the Cuban government?
Yes, controlled the air, and they were able to sink the boat with all the ammunition, everything that was... So the change was made during the operation?
Right.
No, before the operation.
Kennedy was the one who took the decision to land at the Bay of Pigs.
No, but then, was that supposed to be with air support?
Right.
So after the landing at the Bay of Pigs, As far as the people that landed, they would have expected there'd be air support.
Yeah, they were told that, yes.
And you thought there'd be air support.
Yes.
And you were in the interior.
I went in Havana at the time.
So you had been there for some time.
Right.
So then you have the first day, the second.
When was the decision made to cut off Air support.
There'd be no air support.
Well, before that, that attack that was supposed to take place with 16 planes was the one that would have stopped because of the Lie Stevenson attitude.
And during that time, that's when they destroyed the boat that was carrying all the ammunition, the fuel, everything, the radio station.
And there was not a contingency plan to actually resupply the brigade.
So they fought like tigers for 24 hours.
They accomplished every single target they were given on 24 hours, but then The ammunition they have for 24 hours, they extend them for 48.
So when they run out of ammunition, they have to run into this.
So they ran out of ammunition.
It wasn't resupplied.
Right.
And the air support they were supposed to get, after how long were they going to get the air support?
We never got it.
It was supposed to happen from the very beginning.
Right, but it never happened.
It never happened at all.
There was no air support at all.
And they had a Task Force Alpha in front of the Bay of Pigs.
They had the USS Carrier Essex standing by, and they had painted black all the names of the U.S.
Navy.
They were ready to go, but the President never gave the OK.
So the men involved in this must have felt double-crossed.
Yes.
I mean, I remember.
I remember at the time.
So now, how do you get out of Cuba after this accident?
Well, when that happened, it was a tremendous problem to survive in the cities because what Castro did was he sent his troops and they surrounded every single block in Havana.
And if you were a male, And if you were not connected with a military unit, they would put you in temporary concentration camps.
Like they were a baseball field with 200,000 Cubans in there.
So everybody that wasn't part of Castro's army or team was presumed to be guilty.
Right.
Until they could find out.
They were able to disarticulate the internal resistance.
They were able to do that.
I was lucky that the lady that was with me had contact with the Spanish embassy.
So one member of the Spanish embassy came where we were and said, look, they're coming to surround this house.
So we went with him, hiding his apartment.
And then I seek political asylum in the Venezuelan embassy, which I spent like six months before they allowed me to leave as a political asylum.
Very different Venezuela.
Oh, yes.
Very different.
It was different.
You wouldn't go to Venezuela.
No, today it would turn me over.
So How long did you stay in the embassy?
Six months.
Before you came to the U.S.
or to Venezuela?
I got to Venezuela on the 13th of September.
And then you came to the United States?
And then I came to the United States after six months, and within a month I was back in Cuba with a team to be able to bring in and out in another point.
So I went to Cuba about six times with an infiltration team, with people, ammunition, things like that, after the Bay of Pigs.
Never detected?
Never detected by them when you did this?
No, no.
And what were the purposes of this?
Well, they were reestablishing the contact with the resistance inside and also bring some equipment there.
But that was in a different, completely different area.
It was an area of Cayo Paredón Grande, which is on the north coast of Cuba.
And we contacted with a farmer, a fisherman inside that will come up in his boat, who was legal, and pick up the weapon, hide it, and they go back inside Cuba.
Now, tell us about the situation in Bolivia.
How you got involved in that?
Well, I got a call from a CIA officer, Larry Sternfield.
He wanted to meet with a group of us, 16 of us here in Miami.
We didn't even know that Che Guevara was in Bolivia at the time.
So I interrogated and interviewed all of us, and then he selected two to go.
I asked him, you know, because we basically all of us had the same training.
I said, why did you select me?
He said, well, you told me at the end.
At the end of every interview, he will tell you, if I select you, when will you be ready to be mobilized?
And everybody will tell him I need a week, a few days, whatever.
My answer was, if we have time, I'll go to my house, I'll go back to my wife, my kids, pick up my clothes, I'll come back and we'll leave.
If we don't have time for that, you give me the phone, I call Rosa and tell her I have to leave.
If we don't have time, let's go, I'll give you her number and you tell her that I have to leave.
And I guess nobody have told him that.
That's why he selected me.
Did you know what it was for?
Yes, at that time he told me that Che Guevara was... We're going to take a short break and then we're going to find out about, this is probably another one of the more important things you did for us.
Thank you.
We'll be back in just a few minutes.
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Welcome back to our interview with Felix Rodriguez.
As you can tell, this is an exceptional life.
And we've only just begun.
So after the Bay of Pigs, Felix, and before the Bolivia situation, so you're called upon to go in and out of Cuba on a fairly, almost seems like a fairly regular basis.
To do things.
Right.
I did it for a while.
Before Bolivia, I also went to, actually to Venezuela, to help set up communication for Casadores.
It was a special anti-guerrilla unit that was operating against a group of Castro's guerrillas that had landed in there.
And then after Venezuela, that's when I went to Bolivia.
So now they call upon you for this other mission in Bolivia.
You get picked for the mission, as you explained to us.
Right.
Do they explain to you before they pick you what the mission was in Bolivia?
Yes, they explain basically that it was an operation.
They believe Che Guevara was there.
They already had sent a special forces unit to train a special military unit that they had not that capability.
And they wanted to send the intelligence capability to that special battalion.
So this was like what we would relate to bin Laden, trying to get bin Laden.
So now you get selected with another gentleman for the intelligence mission.
Right.
And then what happens?
Do you have to go for training at this point?
They brought us to Washington, D.C.
to a safe house to give us to read everything related to the guerrilla, the people that formed the guerrilla, what was going on in there.
And specifically they told me, by any chance you were able to capture Che Guevara alive, try to keep him alive at all costs and we will have a helicopter, whatever.
To take him out of Bolivia to Panama for interrogation.
That was very, very clear to me.
So the idea was to see if he could get intelligence from him.
I mean, maybe unlikely, but still a possibility.
You never know, right?
Right.
I mean, yeah, you never know if a person is going to...
At that point in life, are they going to talk?
Aren't they going to talk?
And he would have been quite a resource.
Although, don't you think it's unlikely?
The main reason the CIA wanted him alive was because he had problems with Fidel Castro.
Che was pro-Chinese and Cuba depended solely on the Soviet Union.
So when he went in the 60s, 64, 65 to Africa, to the Congo-Belga, all the The weapons that he received was from Red China.
He didn't receive anything from the Soviet Union.
And when he finished, it was a failure that he didn't want to go back to Cuba.
He went to Prague, to the Czech Republic.
And then they had to send people to convince him to go back to Cuba and then offer him this operation in Bolivia.
But you can tell from the beginning they wanted him to be executed.
For example, they meaning Cuba, Fidel specifically.
The radio that they gave him to transmit back to Cuba is only one.
Normally it would be more than one in case it goes bad.
And when he arrived in Bolivia, it didn't work.
It was broken.
On the 31st of December of 1966, Mario Monge, the head of the Communist Party, met with Che.
And he had met with Fidel two months before in Havana.
And he retrieved all the support from the Communist Party, from Che, to the point to tell the people from the Communist Party that were with him, that if they stayed with Che, they would be expelled from the Communist Party.
And there was a Cuban officer who was very well-known, who had established himself in La Paz to be able to help Che in there.
He's the one who received him and 17 other Cubans, Renan Montero.
And once Che was inside with everybody, they recalled him with the pretext that his visa had expired.
And this guy had acquired the Bolivian citizenship.
Well, I mean, these were very shrewd people.
So Castro obviously ordered that.
Oh, yeah.
That's not going to happen without Castro knowing all the details.
Right.
So he wanted to get rid of his old pal.
Yeah, because he depended on the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union didn't want him to be successful.
So was it the Soviets that was pressuring Castro to get rid of him?
Yeah, because Che was pro-Chinese and the Soviet and the Chinese hate each other.
Yeah.
And now Che, This is a very shrewd guy.
Also, he doesn't pick up this.
He gets sent there with only one phone.
The phone doesn't work.
Well, he learned that when he got there.
Everybody's supposed to be there.
All of a sudden, it disappears.
Right.
It's like, you know, when the mafia takes you to the woods, you drive into the woods with the mafia.
You know what's going to happen, right?
Right.
So you get there.
And then tell us what happens.
Well, I started working with the S-Division headquarters.
There was already in La Esperanza, in Old Sugar Mill, a group of Bolivian soldiers from the 2nd Ranger Battalion being trained by Papi Shelton, who was a major from Tennessee, from a group of special forces, what they call MTT, Mobile Training Team, to set up and train this battalion operation.
And this was an attempt for communists to overthrow Bolivia.
the 8th Division at the headquarters, Colonel Centeno Anaya, to help them in intelligence.
So I was the personal advisor to Major Saucedo, who was the head of intelligence.
Whenever they capture a prisoner, they call me to go with him to interrogate them.
And this was an attempt for communists to overthrow Bolivia.
Absolutely.
This was part of what the original mission for Castro was to spread communism all through
Absolutely.
Which actually turns out to have been a failure.
Totally.
But I mean, his idea, he was going to spread first in Central America, then in Northern South America, and then in... Right.
And Venezuela was one of the places they were trying to do it.
Well, that's why they selected Bolivia, because Bolivia had boundaries with five different countries.
He was successful there.
They could go to Brazil, they could go to Paraguay, they could go to Argentina, Chile, and Peru.
So how did the confrontation with Che come about?
Well, first of all, they had no idea where he was.
But then they were able to capture one Bolivian guerrilla called Paco, Jose Castillo Chavez.
He was brought in alive.
And I was able to save his life.
They were ready to kill him.
With the general, I was able to save his life and to give it to us for interrogation.
And Paco gave us all the information on how Che would move around in the field.
Whenever he moved from point A to point B, he divided his guerrilla in three groups.
What they call the vanguard, the center, and the rearguard.
The vanguard is like five or six guerrillas that would move one kilometer ahead of him, with the growth of the troops he was in the middle, and then one kilometer behind another five or six guerrillas.
In case there was an encounter, he would be able to maneuver out of it.
So in late September, there was a firefight between an army unit commanded by Eduardo
Galindo Granchant, and he was able to kill three members of the vanguard.
And they happened to be Coco Peredo, the leader of the guerrilla, Mario Gutierrez Jardaga,
who was a Bolivian doctor, and the other one was Miguel, a Cuban captain whose name was
Manuel Hernandez Osorio.
And we had him already cataloged as a member of the vanguard.
So he had lost three of his people?
Right.
But then we know that he was there, because Lieutenant Galindo tells me, Captain, I saw a group of guerrillas, and I started preparing my ambush, and they surprised me.
What he saw actually was Che Guevara's group, but the vanguard was already coming up the hill.
You were going to surprise them?
You were going to ambush, and they ambushed you?
No, no.
We ambushed them, but they were surprised when the vanguards showed up and they thought he was coming way before behind them.
So with that, I knew that Che was there.
Confirmed.
So I went to see Colonel Centeno.
There was still two weeks for basic graduation for the battalion.
All the training was completed.
And I told him, we have to move the battalion immediately because we know exactly where Che is right now.
So I convened the colonel.
So they cut that graduation procedure.
And they mobilized the battalion on the 1st.
Actually, on the 1st of October, they were deployed.
There were four companies in the battalion.
One stayed in Valle Grande to support them with ammunition and food.
There was one company commanded by Raúl López Leito, a captain, to cover the Rio Grande, so he wouldn't move to the other operational area.
One commanded by Celso Torrelli, who was a captain who later became president of Bolivia.
And he was there to help as a reaction to the company doing this searching around, who was Gary Prado.
It was amazing how far it went because it was the 1st of October.
On the 7th of October, they have a campesino come back and told them that there were voices at Quebrada del Lloro, that's where Che was.
So on the evening of the 7th, they surrounded La Quebrada del Lloro.
And on the 8th, when they started advancing, it was a Sunday, Che was there.
That was the firefight when he was captured alive.
And actually, when he faced our troops, he told them, don't shoot, I am Che.
I am worse to you, more alive than dead.
So they brought him to the point of Ligueras.
They communicated information to us.
We didn't know at the beginning whether it was Shea or not, because they would say only Papá Canzado, which is the leader of the guerrilla, was captured.
They didn't know whether it was Shea or was Inti Peredo, the Bolivian leader.
So I flew in the back of one of the AT-6s and another head of operation, another one, and we confirmed it was the foreign.
How did you do that?
How did you confirm?
By radio.
I had installed some PRC-10 radios on this plane, which didn't have compatible frequency before, and they told us it was the foreigner, it was Shea.
So I came back to Valle Grande, I talked to Colonel Centeno.
We had a dinner that night.
I brought a couple of bottles of scotch that I had bought for a special occasion, and then I asked the colonel if I could go with him.
Everybody wanted to go with him.
So that day, he dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Salish to go down and secure all of Shea's pertinences, all of his items and things.
And then on the following day, he and I, we flew in the helicopter into Higueras.
We arrived there about 7.30 in the morning.
All these officers were in there.
We got into the room.
He was sitting, like, next to the door with a little window on top, tied, his hand and legs were tied in the floor.
And in the back of the room, there was two dead bodies of two Cuban captains.
One was Oslo Pantoja, another one.
So when we came in, I came with the colonel, three other officers.
The colonel was the one doing all the talking.
He took a chair, started asking questions.
Look, he didn't say a word.
Nothing.
To the point that he got mad.
He said, look, you are a foreigner.
You are invading my country.
At least you can have the courtesy of answering me.
Not a word.
So he left.
So I have the colonel that could give me all his documentation to photograph for my government.
So he ordered Lieutenant Colonel Sellers to give me a chest bag.
It was a bag like this, very thick, with camel color.
Inside it had a German diary, a big book, of course written in Spanish.
That was his diary.
He had some pictures from his family.
He had some medicaments for his asthma.
He had some very small code book, numerical, with glue around it that we call one-way path from China.
China provides that to him.
And, you know, I'm photographed from his family, things like that.
So I took that to start photographing.
Then I came back to the room.
I stood in front of him.
I said, Che Guevara, I'd like to talk to you.
And he talked to me very arrogant from the front.
He said, nobody talks to me.
Nobody interrogates me.
So when I saw that attitude, I said, look, I didn't come here to interrogate you.
I'd like to talk to you.
I admire you.
You used to be head of a state in Cuba, and you're here because you believe in your ideals, even though I know they are mistaken.
I just came to talk to you.
So he looked at me for a while to see if I was making fun of him.
When he saw that I was serious, he said, can you untie me?
Can I sit?
So I called a soldier at the outside and said, untie Commander Guevara.
He looked at me and said, untie Commander Guevara.
So we untied him.
We sat in a little bench and we started talking.
Cuba would say that he would say, I don't talk to traitors.
And he spitted on me.
That's not the way it happened.
There are some people from our exile here that say that he pledged that he was afraid.
That didn't happen here.
And we actually had a talking to each other with mutual respect.
Every time I try to talk something about tangible that we had to do with the tactical operation, he said, you know, I cannot answer that.
But we did talk about differencing.
For example, I was telling him that he was telling me about the Cuban economy because of the embargo.
I said, Commander, that's ironic you tell me that because you were the president of the National Bank and you were the minister of industry.
You are not even an economist.
He looked at me and said, do you know how I became president of the National Bank?
I said, I have no idea.
So I was sitting one time with Camilo Cienfuegos.
I understood Fidel was asking for a dedicated communist.
I raised my hand.
And he was asking for a dedicated economist.
So, you know, I really, I didn't say, I thought he was making fun of me.
But later on, when one of his three, three of his survivors, Colonel Dariel Alcor Ramirez Benigno, he defected.
He was in Paris.
Telemundo brought me there to an interview between two enemies.
And then he wanted to talk to me in private, and that's absolutely true.
He told me that he was there with Camilo, and she understood he was asking for a combination.
And that's how he became head of the bank.
And he raised his hand. He was asking for a dedicated donor.
Did he acknowledge the friction with Castro?
No. No. But he never talked well about Fidel either.
He didn't mention anything about that.
Then I asked him, why do you select Bolivia?
He said three criteria.
One, Bolivia was a very poor country.
He would believe that an imperialistic United States would not be interested in Bolivian economy.
If it was Venezuela, yes, because of the oil.
So that's one criteria.
Second, the army was very poorly trained.
He was right.
The first combat that he had, the soldiers would throw their weapons, they were captured, they were taking the weapon from them, give them one hour indoctrination, take all his uniform, his boots, and send them back with their underwear.
And third, most important to him, he had boundaries with five different countries.
If you could take Bolivia, it was easy to support the revolution in those five countries I already mentioned.
So, what happens now?
I mean, he's... Well, I am coming back and forth.
I don't know what's really going to happen.
Then I got a call from one of the lay person in there and say, there is a phone call for the highest ranking officer.
At the time, I had the rank of captain with the Bolivian Army.
There was only two lieutenants there.
So when I went to the phone, they say, 500, 600.
That was a very simple code that we developed.
500, check.
600, kill him.
700, keep him alive.
So they repeated 500, 600.
It was when Centeno came down and said, my commander, it's an order from your high Bolivian command to eliminate the prisoner.
The order from my government is to try to keep him alive.
He said, Felix, my name was Felix Ramos.
He said, Felix, we have worked empirically.
We're very helpful.
Thank you to you.
But this is an order from my president, my commander in chief.
He looked at his watch and he said, the helicopter is going to come several times bringing food and ammunition and taking our wounded and our dead.
But it's after two o'clock it's going to come back.
I'd like you to bring me the dead body of Che Guevara, and you can use the CIA in any way you want, because we know how much harm we have done to your country.
So I sent me coronel to try to make them change their mind, but if they do not change their mind, I reveal my word of honor, I will bring you back the dead body of Che, and he left.
And sure enough, the helicopter came back doing that.
And that's why the picture was taken, because the pilot came with a camera from the head of intelligence and told me, Captain, Major Saucedo wants a picture with the prisoner.
So I look at him and say, Commander, do you mind?
He said, no.
So we took him out and gave my camera to him.
And actually, when I put my hand around him and said, look at the little bird that was sent to the kids in the queue, he started laughing.
I thought that he was laughing when the picture was taken, but he was not.
And then I get the other guy's camera and close the lens on every scene because I knew that they were going to say that he was dying in combat and I didn't want a picture floating around there.
Was he alive with this measure?
And then he left.
That's the picture that we have from there.
So I start waiting more and more and then finally...
There was a lady when I was finishing photographing the dart at about 12.30 in the afternoon.
I said, Capitán, ¿Cuándo lo van a matar?
When are you going to call him?
He said, Lady, why do you say that?
He said, Look, we just saw you photograph with him from the schoolhouse here.
And look, he put the plastic radio that she had.
The radio is already giving the news that he died from combat wounds and he was still alive.
So I knew at that time that it would not be a counter-order.
So I entered into the room.
I stood in front of him.
I look at him and say, Commander, I'm sorry.
I tried my best.
This is ordered from the high Bolivian command.
That man turned white like a piece of paper.
So he composed himself and said, it's better this way.
I should have never been captured alive.
Then he had his pipe here.
He put the pipe out and said, I'd like to give this pipe to a soldadito who treated me with dignity.
At that point in time, Sergeant Teran, who was the one executing the people, burst into the room.
Yo, quiero la pipa, mi capitán.
I want the pipe.
He said, no, a ti no te la doy.
I won't give it to you.
So I had to order three times for the sergeant to leave the room.
Finally, when he left and she had the pipe here, I said, commander, will you give it to me?
He thought for a few seconds and he said, si, a ti si te la doy.
I will give it to you.
So I got the pipe in here.
He said, is this the one you want for your family?
Then I can tell you definitely that in a very sarcastic way, he said, well, if you can't tell Fidel that he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America.
Say that again, please.
Then he told me, if you can't tell Fidel, he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America.
And then he changed and said, if you can't, tell my wife to remarry and try to be happy.
He approached me, we shook hands, we embraced, and he stood in attention thinking I was going to be the one to execute him.
And let me tell you, that was probably a very difficult moment in my life, especially as a professional, as a CIA agent, because we don't kill people.
At the same time, I saw what happened to my country when Batista released Fidel.
I saw this order from the High Bolivian Command.
You are not here to command, you're here to advise.
That's their order, and let history run itself.
Tell people, because there's a...
In America, certain segments of America, there's a whole romantic notion of Castro.
Hollywood actors go and meet with him, take pictures with him.
Guevara, we have kids walking around with, you know, pictures of him like he's some kind of a You're a brave revolutionary.
So during that period of time, what was happening in your country?
What is it like?
Can you explain a bit what it's like in Cuba?
No, it was still executing people and everything.
There's total control of everything.
But I want to tell people, Major, one example of who really Che Guevara was.
Beside the fact that he publicly said that it would be worthwhile to throw an atomic bomb over New York, And half a million innocent people died to be able to implement socialism in this country.
Okay?
He has said that in the past.
But I'll tell you one example so people can really realize who he was.
About a year and a half ago, there was a lady who visited our museum in Hialeah Garden.
And she was the daughter of Lieutenant Castaño.
Castaño was a police officer in Cuba for an anti-communist unit.
He eventually was executed.
And she was visiting him on a Sunday at La Cabaña Fortress.
They arrived about 6 o'clock in the morning.
They don't enter until about noon to be able to be in front.
And she was fairly close to the front, about 11 o'clock in the morning.
There was a lady in front of him that saw Che Guevara coming in his Jeep.
And she started yelling, Che!
Che!
Che!
And Che finally came and said, Señora, what happened?
So she went to him and said, look, my son is 15 years old.
He's very young.
He's in prison.
There's two weeks that I don't sleep.
Please release him.
He has done nothing.
What's the name of your son?
So she gave him the name of her son.
He ordered one of his officers to go and get her son.
and bring it over.
When the song arrived, he hit him in the back, threw him on the floor.
He said, you are so big, your mother hasn't slept for two weeks because of you.
He put his pistol and shot him in the head.
And everybody in that line started yelling, casasino, casasino, comunista, you know, assassin, all of that.
And that day they stopped all the visiting for all the political prisoners that people were visiting.
That was the real Che Guevara, how cruel he was.
And this is driven by this obsessive Devotion to socialism and communism?
But besides that, he had an obsession about killing people.
Yeah.
What I recall, I had a friend called Miguel A. Sanchez, who was the one who trained Fidel in Mexico.
And we used to be together in the Dominican Republic at that time.
He used to tell me that Che, when he was in training, we'd ask him, because he was in Korean War, and he had killed people during combat.
And Che would ask him, what does it feel like when you personally shoot somebody and you see the blood coming out of him?
He had a fascination.
What do you feel when you do that?
And then he wrote his father after his first execution that he loved what he was doing, that he really enjoyed executing enemies.
So what was it like in Cuba then?
Castro takes over.
So we go from 1959 to, this is 1967 now, right?
Right.
What's it like in Cuba?
This thing, a total dictatorship.
You cannot say anything against the regime.
There were 100,000 political prisoners during that time.
The firing squad was still functioning.
A lot of people got killed.
So it was very difficult to be able to do anything against the regime.
How did they, did they use a firing squad for all executions?
Whenever somebody was against, and then the problem was also, because they were not professional tribunals or anything like that, if there was, let's say, a rebel from Fidel's army who had a personal problem with you because maybe you had a relationship with his wife, he will accuse you of being a Batista headman, and they will execute you.
And that's not normal.
And they didn't have such things as trials?
No.
Well, the trial was already predetermined.
They already knew it was going to be... You didn't have a lawyer?
You didn't have...
Well, when you have the lawyers, sometimes the lawyers say, you know, I have to defend this SOB.
So, you know, it was a system that is ridiculous.
There was no legality in what they were doing at all.
So, did you ever get to know what Castro, what was driving Castro?
Power.
He was not really a communist.
His brother was a communist.
Raul.
Before they went to Mexico for training, Raul had visited the Soviet Union.
But not Fidel.
Fidel could care less about communism.
He would select a system that would keep him in power forever.
And he was quite wealthy.
His family was fairly wealthy.
And he lived a wonderful life.
I mean, he had villas and girlfriends.
Especially after he became in Cuba, he owns everything.
He had yachts, he had boats, he had a house in other provinces.
He had like 80 different houses all over Cuba.
And actually, they tell me whenever he went to one of those houses, they had the food and everything ready for him.
With security, with a cook and everything.
Meanwhile, it's been consistent poverty in Cuba.
It's either poverty or abject poverty.
Right.
62 years.
62 years of third world poverty and then worse.
What I tell you, what I see right now, Major, is now really for the first time in so many years
I've been following this, the people are up to here.
Before, there were what we call escaseces.
There was lack of food.
Now there is no food.
For the first time in all these 62 years, you find out that people are going hungry.
People could eat before even though they could not select what they wanted, but not anymore.
And people are dying for lack of medicines.
That's another thing that is happening right now.
Forget about the vaccine, like this new administration claim they want a vaccine.
You mean any medicines or anything?
Yeah, they don't have anything.
And one thing is really aggravating the whole situation is the lack of electricity.
They are beginning to ration the electricity because they don't have enough oil from Venezuela anymore.
And people had it up to here.
And the significance of what happened in these few days in the past was there was one city who revolted without organization.
Which is?
Nobody had organized that.
Which was the first one to?
San Miguel de los Baños.
Right.
Okay.
That's the area where the United States used to have a military base during World War II in Cuba.
But then it spread.
Within hours it spread all over the island.
Yeah, but the important thing is that nobody organized that.
A lot of times, you know, the local Anticastro people will call for... No, no, no.
It was a spontaneous explosion of the city because they cannot hold it anymore.
And what happened is those people started taking pictures with their telephone and sending all over.
And then when people saw that, they exploded voluntarily everywhere.
Tell you that the situation in Cuba right now is up to here.
It's the first time that I see in my lifetime that we're getting close to the end.
And the new president of Cuba.
Do you know anything about him?
Well, he's not popular at all with anybody, Diaz-Canel.
He just does whatever Raul tells him to do.
He doesn't even have the charisma.
No.
Castro, Fidel at least, certainly had a certain kind of charisma.
No, this guy doesn't.
That was remarkable, even though he was an evil man.
Right.
And he certainly fooled a lot of people in Hollywood.
Herbert Matthews from the New York Times made him a hero in this country when they interviewed him.
Do you have any idea, no reason, but if you're absolutely accurate, how many people do you think Castro had killed?
Well, we have a memorial here.
We have thousands and thousands and thousands of crosses.
It's amazing.
And there are other people that have been killed and nobody knows.
And these are people that are killed either in the streets, or in wars, or they're killed with these phony trials.
Right.
And now the reaction of the regime to this outburst was immediately to cut off the internet, close off the island, and then go into the streets and beat the hell out of people.
Absolutely.
And we don't even know how many prisoners there are, right?
Every day there's more.
The prisoners are held incommunicado, in secret.
Yes.
Well, there are hundreds of prisons all over Cuba.
Amnesty International can document 600, but a lot of people say... Oh, they have a lot more than that.
Everybody tells me from there that it must be three, four thousand.
Because they don't put records.
You cannot believe anything that they say.
So, I mean, if things go like normal, we're really not going to find out what happened here for a year or two.
We'll find out how many people are dead.
Right.
How many people have been tortured.
Right.
A lot of them.
You speak to the political prisoner here in Florida, and it's amazing the hundreds of thousands of people that went through prisons and what they had to go through.
Let me ask you these things, because with all the experience you've had, there can't be anybody that has a better assessment of this than you do.
How close is this to being able to overthrow the communist regime?
It has never been so close.
Cuba has been atypical.
Everybody thought when the Soviet Union went down that Cuba was going down.
It didn't.
Because they have implemented security apparatus that goes beyond what the Soviets are doing.
They really control everything in there.
And they put so many people in prison.
They beat the hell out of so many people that people were afraid.
But now, because of the situation, they don't have to eat, they don't have medicine, they'd rather die than continue under the present circumstances.
They're at the point where they have nothing to lose.
Right.
And there's nobody now that can bail them out.
Russia has tremendous economic problems.
Venezuela has tremendous economic problems.
China doesn't really bail you out.
It ropes you in.
We have to find a way to... I know we have the technology.
We have to find a way to be able to have those people communicating through the internet again without control of the Cuban internet.
Unfortunately, we have a regime and an administration in Washington that... I was shocked at how meaningless Biden's statement was.
And also, I'm totally shocked at the fact that Cubans, who are coming over right now, are sent back when we let everybody else in the whole world come in, even if they have COVID, even if they're MS-13.
We don't even check people coming over the border.
The only people we're checking now are Cubans that are fleeing communism.
It almost seems like the Democrats have a soft spot for communism.
Yeah, especially at the border.
Because let me tell you, here in the state of Florida, The problem is that if they open up, there will be an escape vault like what happened in Mariel with Jimmy Carter.
I know Mariel well.
People are ready to explode in Cuba.
And if you allow them to come by the 100,000, that will be a vault of escape.
I was the Associate Attorney General that had to deal with the aftermath of that for Ronald Reagan.
That's how I got to know Florida, and it took a long time to work that out.
But do you think that'll happen again?
For real?
Yeah, I mean, would this...
Basically what Castro...
I hope not.
A lot of good people came in.
Yeah, but a lot of bad people came in.
But within the good people, they were able to hide the prisoners, the insane.
We had them in the Atlanta penitentiary.
I visited there a couple of times.
They used to kill each other.
A lot of them were not just criminals, they were criminally insane.
Right.
I agree.
That he sent over.
Right.
But I hope it doesn't happen because otherwise it would be like a scapegoat right now when people's pressure is so high on them that they feel okay.
But can it be done without like really strong support?
The kind of support that That a Reagan gave, and the Pope, and Margaret Thatcher to overcoming communism, or the kind of support that Trump gave to the Iranians.
Basically, Obama turned his back on them in 2014.
The whole thing died.
We will never get that from this administration, believe me.
Can it be done without that?
It could be done, especially if they are able to open the red for communication.
We have the technology to do it.
How bad or how good is the attitude of the ordinary poor person in Cuba?
Do they hate America because of the propaganda?
No, no, no.
I've been told... No, believe me, most of the Cubans love the United States.
Yes, I've been told that and I hear it in interviews.
And a lot of people have families in here.
A lot of those people leave because of the families that are here.
So that's not the case.
Most of those people in Cuba love the United States.
Now, how did they get the American flags that they're holding?
Oh yeah, they have a way, they do it themselves in there.
Did you bring them in?
No, no, but they have it in there, let me tell you.
They normally get it down there.
Yeah, I'm trying to.
They are very, they can get a lot of things down there.
And especially now, there is this consensus of freedom, like you say, Cuba used to say, Patria o muerte, you know, country of death.
Patria, country, and freedom, and libertad, vida, life.
So the man who wrote that, or the man who actually didn't write it, he did the photographic work.
He didn't write it.
He went to jail for a year.
Oh, yeah.
They put him in jail for doing a song.
They, if you put a caricature against the regime, they put you in prison.
I guess he's lucky they didn't kill him, right?
Oh, yeah.
We're going to take a short break, and we'll be back for a few concluding remarks.
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We're back with The Colonel.
It's been a remarkable story and I deliberately saved for the end just exactly what were Che's final moments.
He told us about He's giving you, he's giving you... Yes, after he gave me the pipe, which I embraced, I just went out.
He stood in attention, thinking I was going to be the one... Were you inside or outside at this point?
Inside, inside the schoolhouse all the time.
Then I came out, and right next to the door in there was a Lieutenant Perez and Sergeant Teran, who is the one that everybody knew was executing the prisoners.
So I got in front of the sergeant and said, look, this order from your high Bolivian command to eliminate the prisoner.
Don't shoot from here up.
Shoot from here down because he's supposed to die at the combat woods.
See me, Capitán?
See me, Capitán?
It was exactly one o'clock in the afternoon Bolivian time.
And I left.
I went to a upper little hill.
There was, I had a table.
I was photographing the diary before.
And at 1.15 Bolivian time, I heard a burst.
Now I understand that Sergeant Teran came in, and he was the one who shot Cher.
At the time, he shot Cher, went like this.
That's why you got a bullet through here, which is a normal reaction to cover yourself.
But he borrowed an M2 Carbine, which is fully automatic from a Lieutenant Peres next to him, and then he came into the room and shot Cher.
How many shots?
I would say it burst about three or four.
And then did you go examine?
No, I stayed back for a while.
And then later on, close to four o'clock in the afternoon, two of the officers, Captain Gary Prado, who captured him and Celso Torelli, came down.
We all came into the room.
When we saw his face was facing the ceiling, he was covered with mud.
And we all went around the body.
I recall Celso had a little stick and he closed his eyes and said, you SOB, you killed so many of my soldiers.
Then we sat around the body, and Gary Proud said to me, I said, we have finished the guerrillas in Latin America.
And he told me, Capitan, if we haven't finished them, we have delayed them for a long time.
So we could hear the helicopter coming.
I left.
I asked for a bucket of water.
I went down.
I cleaned his face from all the mud.
And then I tried to close his jaw with my handkerchief, which I do with the wing of the helicopter.
I tried to close his eye, but it wouldn't stay.
It would pop up again.
Then they had a stretcher.
We put him in the stretcher.
I was on one side and then the back of two soldiers.
And he brought it to the right side of the helicopter.
I remember tying it down in there when the major, Nino Guzman, told me, Capitan, move it forward to balance the helicopter.
So I put my hand here.
They pulled him out.
And when I got it out, it was completely covered with blood.
Apparently he had an oar that was shot in there, and it's a plastic treasure.
So I recall thinking, I never say a word, that there are people that have blood in their hands.
I had the hell of a lot of it.
So I didn't thought anymore, I just cleaned the blood inside my pants, finished tying him down, jumped into the helicopter, a little bit to the left to balance it.
And then a soldier came and said, Father Chiller, Father Chiller wants to see him, to the pilot.
So we stayed for about three or four minutes, and here comes this Catholic priest on top of a mule, Got very close.
He almost got decapitated by the helicopter.
Then he went down and he looked at him and he gave him the last benediction.
I have a few pictures left with Seminoff's German camera.
You gave him the last benediction?
Yes.
And I took some pictures while he was doing that and thought to myself, this guy, which is an atheist, he didn't believe in God.
And nevertheless, he received the life reshaping.
Yeah, he was antagonistic to God.
Right.
Not believing in God.
And then we took off and we landed at Valle Grande.
When I arrived, there was nobody there.
Now they have like 15 small planes, all the press all over the world, four military planes, all the generals were there.
And when we landed, I put my cap down, I left.
And then they took the body to the hospital, Metro Senor de Malta, in an old ambulance.
Then in the evening, there was a meeting in one of the areas where the high command was in Valle Grande.
When I arrived, this general was telling a colonel, if Fidel Castro denies this is Che Guevara, we need tangible proof of it.
Cut his head and put him for Malachi.
So I said, General, you cannot do that.
I said, why not?
He said, supposedly Fidel denied this is Che Guevara.
You are the head of a state.
You cannot show the head of a human being as proof.
I said, well, what do you suggest?
I said, if you feel so strongly about tangible proof of it, we have Che Guevara fingerprint from the Argentina Federal Police and they can be checked with one finger.
So we ordered both hands to be cut.
So both hands were cut.
They were put in formaldehyde.
And later on, the Minister of Interior, Argueda, who became disaffected with his own government, took the hand to Cuba.
And Fidel kept the hand in one of the monuments of Cuba and showed only a very high denaturation of his hand.
So the hands are in Cuba.
Do you believe that the elimination of of Shea did slow down the ability of Cuba to turn like the whole thing with the Sandinistas might have turned out different had he been around?
No, if he had been around he would have gone to another country and do the same thing a lot of other people were doing.
But he seemed to be one of these charismatic people that could make a difference in leadership.
It seems to me that nobody really replaced him.
Especially he wanted to be his own leader.
He knows that in Cuba he's never going to be number one.
So he's going to be to some place where he can be like Fidel Castro was.
And that never happened.
So now we have, finally, not a Castro in charge.
Even though Raul is behind the scenes?
As long as Raul Castro is alive, Castro is in charge.
And do the people feel that?
Oh yeah, they know.
Because I was wondering, maybe this happened because there's no Castro to frighten them the way he did in the past.
That is a factor also, but the most important thing is that they are up to here.
They have no food, they have no medicine, they have no electricity, and they cannot handle anymore.
This is the final question, but not the end of the story.
Are they going to succeed?
Are the Cuban patriots going to succeed in overthrowing communism?
I believe it will.
Exactly, we don't know when.
It could be days.
It could be weeks.
I don't think it's going to be years.
Can it happen with Biden in the White House?
It could.
It could.
I hope so.
The sooner, the better.
And you base that on your observation?
Looking at the desperation of the Cuban people and the way this thing was started.
This is unique.
And this was clearly a demonstration against the communist government.
Oh, absolutely.
This wasn't about sanctions.
It wasn't about COVID.
No, no, no.
They want freedom.
And that's what they were claiming all along.
They want freedom.
They're up to here the way they have been living all of this year.
Finally, they had it up to here and they're ready to go because they want freedom.
They are tired of this regime for so many years.
Well, we're all praying that it's true.
And I hope I hope that my government, for the sake of history and for the sake of the honor of the United States, plays a role in overthrowing communism.
Absolutely.
I wanted to bring something before we leave, Major.
How concerned I am with this administration.
I have been here many years, have been all my life since I came back from 1954.
We always saw the United States will never be able to go into communism.
I remember Khrushchev said in the United Nations, we will take it from within.
Remember that when he said that in the United Nations.
I am afraid it's beginning.
That's what I worry about because I know what communism is.
And there's a lot of naive people in this country that confuse what they call... Democratic socialism?
No, what they call progressives.
Oh, progressives, yes.
They're not progressives.
We know that.
Progressives, what they are talking about is, in the best of the cases, socialism and communism.
And we went through that one time.
We don't want to have it a second time.
That's why I tell you that really this time, the 2022 election will be the most important election in the life of every American who wants to be free.
If we don't control the House, if we don't control the Senate, we are going to lose the United States as we know it today.
I am 80 years old.
I have no place else to go.
So I'll try my very best that that doesn't happen.
And we will continue to have a free United States of America as we know it today.
Well, I share your observation that we're on an express train to socialism and communism.
If someone doesn't stop that express train.
Right.
And it has to be done politically.
Absolutely.
Well, it's been a great honor.
Pleasure, Mayor.
If I can call you Felix, it's been a great honor.
Absolutely.
You're a great man.
Thank you, sir.
And you've contributed so much to liberty and freedom.
I hope you get to see it in your region.
I hope I will.
Hope to God you do.
Thank you, sir.
I'll pray for that.
We have to go there together.
Oh, oh my gosh.
That would be, for me, that would be just an unbelievable culmination of something I've prayed for for 30, 40 years.
Thank you, sir.
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