Mafia Spies (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

1
People in the 1950s
had very little idea
of what the CIA was
or what it did.
The original mission
was to know the world,
to gain knowledge
of what was happening abroad.
It was an all-male,
all-white environment.
The Georgetown set,
pipe-smoking WASPs
who believed
they controlled the world
and could mold it
to their will.
It's really hard
to overstate
the sense of panic
that Americans
were thrust into
when the CIA was being formed.
Given the Cold War mindset,
it was a huge panic
that Americans were feeling
about the Soviet Union.
There was a sense that
a nuclear attack from Moscow
could happen at any time.
Cuba's Fidel Castro emerged
triumphant after two years
of guerrilla warfare
against
When Castro took power,
that kind of
changed everything.
Because he was starting
to build up power,
the United States
felt threatened.
This literally could be it.
There is fear about
what Castro is going to do.
Tremendous paranoia
and near panic.
The CIA did not want
a Communist beachhead
90 miles from Key West.
This was a time
in our history
when the world came closest
to nuclear Armageddon.
This island nation
could be used
to launch missiles.
The message had come--
there's no living with Castro.
The CIA is going to hire
the mafia to kill Castro.
They made a deal
with the devil
to get this job done.
If this comes out,
what will this do to our image
in the eyes of the world?
What cannot happen
is that it gets found out.
It's an incendiary fuel
that's going to blow
One of the most difficult
things in telling this story
is that almost everybody lies.
When you have a world
of liars, fabricators,
half truths,
what is the truth?
A lot of the story
as I've pieced it together
relied on documents
that I could find.
The National Archives
has released
thousands of previously
classified documents.
They describe decades
of spying and surveillance,
assassination plots,
and tension among
U.S. intelligence agencies.
In 2017,
documents became available
that provided
a lot more detail
about what was going on
in the attempts
to kill Castro.
There's literally
thousands of documents--
Senate hearings,
FBI documents, even testimony.
Telling this story,
it's almost like
you're putting together
a jigsaw puzzle.
Declassified documents
is the gift of history
that keeps on giving.
The CIA has held on
to so many records.
We have
these incredible reports
that were far more detailed
than anybody knew.
This is in the CIA memo.
It's not in a CIA memo.
It's in the--
In the CIA memo,
Eisenhower states,
"I want him sawed off."
Oh shit.
The government is supposed
to pride itself on democracy,
checks and balances,
freedom of the press,
and yet so much of this story
is about concealing
and about trickery
and about the surface
being different
than the agenda
that's going on underneath it.
It took almost 50 years
for the CIA
to even acknowledge
that they indeed hired
two gangsters
to kill Fidel Castro.
It is the job of journalists
and historians
to illuminate
what we as citizens
need to know
about what the government
has done in our names.
There are mysteries
that still remain,
but I think
all the secrets are out.
When does the CIA
become a player
in what's happening in Cuba?
It does start to take shape
long before
Fidel Castro has arisen.
In the '50s,
people who lived
in New York and Chicago
in the winter time,
they didn't go to Las Vegas.
They went down to Havana.
Havana, Cuba,
really starts to take shape
as a gambling Mecca.
High style gets aboard for
a flying trip to Havana, Cuba.
It's only 90 miles
from Miami.
Caribbean island.
Good cigars.
The good life.
It was easy to get to,
and people from all over
the world came there.
My parents
would go party in Cuba.
It was like a cool place--
open gambling and drinking,
and where all these rules
were over here,
they didn't have
any of that over there.
Shows were so,
you know, lewd.
Anything was possible
in Havana.
It's a very sensual
and seductive place.
If you wanted
something naughty,
it was pleasure island.
What happens in Havana
stays in Havana.
All bets down.
From really about
'52 to '58,
the mob essentially controlled
the tourism market in Havana.
Long before
Vegas has them,
they have these
thriving casinos.
And the mob is in there
in full force
with a golden goose.
It became the place of which
they had always dreamed,
where they could promote
all kinds of vice,
break every American law
without worrying
because they weren't
in America.
The mob's infiltration
and control in Havana
couldn't have happened
without Meyer Lansky.
Meyer Lansky was
a very high-profile
mob syndicate leader
out of New York.
He was involved in developing
Las Vegas, casinos in Florida.
Lansky had cultivated
a relationship
with Fulgencio Batista,
the repressive dictator
of Cuba.
Batista says he is
a friend of the people
as his soldiers patrol
the streets to establish
what he calls
disciplined democracy.
In the 1950s,
the Batista regime
started really investing
in casinos, hotels,
and gambling establishments.
And he started making deals
with mafia bosses.
So Battista literally
paid Meyer Lansky a salary
to be the gambling czar
of Havana.
Lansky knew
that the first thing
that needed to be done
was to make
all the other heads of the mob
feel that they had
a piece of it.
Otherwise, they would
assert their selves in it
through violence and thuggery.
Everyone was going to get
their piece of the pie--
a casino, a club.
This is what was so wonderful
about that metaphor
in "Godfather II."
The scene on the rooftop,
the mafiosi
who were there with a cake
which is the island of Cuba,
and he literally
cuts up the pieces
and hands it
to all the mafiosi.
This is what Lansky
was doing in Havana.
We have now
what we have always needed,
real partnership
with the government.
A smaller piece.
The idea was there's plenty
for everyone.
New York interests
are involved in Havana,
Las Vegas interests.
And then you have
the Chicago Outfit.
And those guys in Chicago
ran things a little different
than the Five Families
in New York.
The Chicago Outfit
has essentially monopoly
over organized crime
in the Chicagoland area.
This was a multi-billion
dollar criminal enterprise.
The boss of
the Chicago Outfit at the time
was Sam Giancana.
Giancana is put in
as the operating boss
of the Outfit,
which is essentially
the organized crime equivalent
of a CEO in a corporation.
He runs it
on a day-to-day basis.
The Outfit really
had control over what was
West of the Mississippi,
including Las Vegas
and then of course Havana.
The Chicago mob
had interests
in some of the casinos,
some of the nightclubs,
some of the prostitution,
some of the live sex shows
that are going on in Havana.
My father Sam
had some stuff doing in Cuba.
Meyer Lansky and he turned out
the best of friends.
They were involved in
a couple of hotels down there.
Did you ever go
to Havana as a teenager?
No.
I want to go now.
To see the people and the food
and walking through the hotels
that my father and his gang
were involved with--
I just crave going down there.
One of the people
the Chicago Outfit
relied on down in Havana
was Santo Trafficante.
Trafficante spoke Spanish.
Most of the mobsters did not.
So Trafficante
was always there
as the translator dealing
with the Cuban connections.
Santo Trafficante Jr.
grew up in Tampa, Florida,
in a neighborhood
that was predominantly Cuban.
That's why he spoke Spanish,
understood the culture.
And eventually, he's involved
in the casino industry
and some of the more
illicit activities
that were going on in Havana.
This mode of business is
extraordinarily profitable
to the mafia and Batista.
The money did not
trickle down to anyone.
The Cuban people were not
happy with that arrangement.
An unequal society
had developed
where a certain
small percentage of people
had all the power
and all the money,
and the campesinos
didn't get much education.
There was a high level
of illiteracy.
They didn't own
the property they lived on.
It was a show
of military authority
that kept people
in their place,
and Batista
was a big part of that.
Batista was
an American-backed dictator.
We didn't care about
his repressive ways in Cuba
because he was in the pocket
of the United States,
both in terms of
U.S. foreign policy
and American
business interests.
Batista orders
the suspension
of all civil rights.
Nothing is to be broadcast
or printed
that is displeasing
to Batista.
Many Cubans felt really
cut out of democratic life,
which they thought
they deserved.
This led to the emergence
of dissident groups.
One of them was led
by Fidel Castro.
Fidel Castro was
a reluctant revolutionary.
I mean, he was a lawyer.
He was a civil rights lawyer.
He ran for political office
in the early 1950s
as a senator, and he was
probably going to be elected
until Batista
rolled into Havana
and took over the country
in a coup d'état.
It threw a wrench
into Fidel Castro's career,
and so it laid the groundwork
in many ways for Fidel Castro
as this figure
who was determined
to take down Batista.
He went to the hills
to join guerrilla groups.
Castro and the revolutionaries
starts to develop power
away from Havana,
but you're not going to
get this in a newspaper
or a television news report.
I grew up
on a farm just north
of where Fidel Castro
set up his revolution.
At first, it was sort of like
a Robin Hood story.
We had about 35 families,
and some of the older kids
would tell us, "You know what?
"We're going to own all this.
"Fidel is going to take it
all away from you,
and he's going to give it
to us, to the poor people."
I took that lightly,
and they took it lightly too.
They never thought
it would happen either.
Castro was from
a wealthy family
and was well-educated,
but everyone else
was the peasantry.
And this is partly
why those in power
couldn't take it seriously.
How could farmers
and campesinos
rise up and take down
the most powerful military
in the Caribbean?
How could that be possible?
The CIA and the mob
had put in all their chips
with Fulgencio Batista.
But the mob did not have
what the CIA had,
which was spies and people
out gathering information
about what was
really happening
politically in Cuba.
They were blind.
Before he took power,
Castro remained
an obscure figure to the CIA.
The American media
would seek out
Fidel Castro in the mountains.
All the people of
the Sierra Maestra are with us.
This is only the beginning.
"The New York Times" reports
that there's a sizable group
up there in the mountains.
But the CIA, being the CIA,
said to Eisenhower,
"This is not a problem.
We can handle this."
"Don't worry, we'll come up
with a solution."
That's what essentially
they tell the president.
"We've got it.
We've got a handle on it."
And actually, they don't
have an answer for it,
and they're not really sure
what the right answer is.
Really what it is
is about the blindness
of those in power.
It's about the hubris
and the belief
that your power is so supreme
that you don't see
your vulnerability
until it's too late.
Many of the early
CIA leaders came
from a background in which
if you made a mistake,
there was always daddy
to pick you up and fix it.
So they thought
that was true in the world,
that whatever happened,
they'd be able
to control the blowback.
And the mob
is stuck in denial.
They put everything behind
the man in power, Batista.
And so the mob
didn't care about what was
really happening politically.
In the late 1950s,
there was always money
to be made from corruption
in Cuba.
There are still whole loads
of Americans coming down
to enjoy the lush,
tropical sexiness of Havana,
including celebrities,
be it a Frank Sinatra
or a young JFK.
In the '50s, John F. Kennedy
comes to Havana.
I mean, he's like
a brand-new senator
known for having
an interest in women,
and he was sniffing around
at the local talent.
And he puts out the word,
probably through an underling
who goes to the mobsters
and says, you know,
"The Senator
would very much like it
if you could maybe possibly
connect him with a young lady."
Trafficante would say,
"We can do that."
They set John Kennedy up
in a room
that had a two-way mirror.
He had a three-way,
him and two other
Cuban prostitutes.
Trafficante was on
the other side of the mirror
with another gangster.
The other gangster says,
"Hey, we should be
"filming this
'cause this would make
tremendous blackmail material."
Well, they didn't
have a camera.
But the idea of sex,
that anything goes,
was part of the debasement
of Cuban society,
and it had moral implications
for the Cuban people.
Summer 1958,
Castro records his broadcasts
for the Rebel Radio.
His men now will come down
from the mountains
and fight on the plains.
Castro's revolutionaries
started out
in the eastern part
of the island.
Amazingly,
in a very short time,
they had come
very close to Havana.
Batista had an army,
but it really was
mainly used
for rounding up dissidents
and torturing people
in prisons.
They weren't prepared
to fight real battles.
Castro's revolutionaries were.
On New Year's Eve
and on into New Year's Day
of 1959,
the revolution was arriving.
Tanks and soldiers
were rolling into Havana.
When the
revolutionaries arrived
from the Sierra Maestra,
there was no opposition.
The opposition
picked up and left.
Actually,
Batista evacuated, ran away,
and Castro
happened to just drive
into town in a Jeep
with about 40 people,
and there it was to take.
New Years Day 1959,
the news spreads
through Havana--
Batista is finished.
With Batista in flight
to the Dominican Republic,
the celebrating soon
turns to mob action
and looting.
The situation before long
is completely out of hand.
Mobs loot and pillage.
Gangs roam the streets.
Anarchy reigns.
They have that scene
in "Godfather Part II."
People started to flood
into the casinos,
and they dragged
the slot machines
out into the street,
and they started brush fires
using gambling tables.
The mafiosi were thinking,
"How do I get out of here?"
They realized
their lives were in danger.
It was a full-fledged uprising.
The same way
that a heroin addict
goes cold turkey,
the mob had to go cold turkey
over the Havana casinos.
Many people were surprised
when it fell as fast as it did,
none more so than the mafia.
The people of Cuba
see that it's happening,
the revolution is here,
and there's
a spontaneous outbreak of joy.
Every town and hamlet
cheering welcome
greeted the revolution.
Well, this is
the spontaneous,
unrehearsed enthusiasm
greeting the Cuban premier,
bearded Fidel Castro,
visiting the big town.
Only a few months after
the success of the revolution,
Castro was invited
to come to the United States
by the American
Newspaper Guild.
He's on "Face the Nation."
He's talking to Ed Sullivan.
You are in the real
American tradition
of a George Washington,
of any man who started off
with a small body,
fought against a great nation,
and won.
He was not invited
on a state visit
by the Eisenhower
Administration,
which, of course,
had opposed his revolution.
Fidel Castro
had his admirers.
Many people in the U.S.
saw him as a young Kennedy.
He was extremely charismatic.
And I think there were people
who thought that change
was necessary
and that Castro seemed
to have the backing of
the Cuban people behind him.
So I think there were
a lot of people
who thought that
this could portend
a good future for Cuba.
The CIA actually
took the opportunity
of Castro's visit
to try and recruit him.
They wanted him to purge Cuba
of all the Communists.
Fidel made the point
to the CIA
that they were
overly concerned
about Communism
in Latin America
and what they really
should be concerned about
was inequality.
The U.S. government
was prepared to try
and offer him some aid,
but the Cubans did not come
to beg for money.
The revolution was proud.
It was young.
Fidel was not gonna continue
the same relationship
that previous sycophantic-type
leaders of Cuba had had.
It was clear
that the United States
was not going to be able
to control Fidel Castro,
which scared the shit
out of the CIA.
Back in Cuba,
Castro clamps down.
The mafia
was losing its assets.
Their casinos
had been expropriated.
They'd been kicked out
of their hotels.
They'd all been forced
to flee back to Florida.
That was something
that the mobsters
particularly resented,
and they were
gonna want revenge.
Lansky gets off
the island pretty quickly.
Santo Trafficante
gets left behind,
and he gets arrested
by military police.
Trafficante is put in the
Trescornia Detention Center.
Castro announced
to the public,
I'm not only aware
of the gangsters in Havana,
I'm inclined to want
to execute them.
Trafficante was
understandably nervous
when he was hearing these
firing squads going off.
So the story is that
Santo Trafficante's lawyer
Frank Ragano comes to see him.
And Ragano says,
"Well, I'm gonna try
"to set up
a meeting with Raul Castro
to get you out of here."
Supposedly,
a $1 million cash payment
was delivered to Raul Castro,
and Santo Trafficante
was released for that reason.
When Santo Trafficante
leaves Cuba
and comes back
to the United States,
he sets up operations
in Miami.
He's really still fixated
on this concept
of getting back into Cuba
and getting those casinos
running again.
Back in Chicago,
Sam Giancana
was so angry
about what happened
with their casinos
in Havana.
And I guess my father
was in a bad mood.
I mentioned that Fidel Castro
was very sexy
because he was just
what I thought I would like,
a little rough on the edges.
My father
just tore into me
and said, "Don't you ever
bring that man's name up
in this house again."
And his temper showed no end.
And I'd seen him get enraged.
If some man aggravated him,
his temper just blew up.
In the last year
of Eisenhower's presidency,
there was a huge explosion
of a French ship
called "La Coubre"
in Havana Harbor.
It was a horrendous tragedy.
75 people on the docks
were killed
and on board the ship.
More than 200 Cuban
dock workers were injured.
Smoke billows around
the helicopter on which
Castro himself
is surveying the scene.
Castro's reaction
to the explosion of the ship
was to blame it
on the United States.
Castro says
the ship has been blown up
by United States agents.
US-Cuban relations
were spiraling downward.
From then on out,
it was low-intensity warfare
against the Cuban Revolution.
At the time,
with Cold War mania
and paranoia,
there is a lot of fear
about what Castro
is going to do.
Will he embrace
the Soviet Union?
Will he become Communist?
In the 1950s,
there was a sense
of tremendous paranoia
and near panic.
There was a sense
that a nuclear attack
could happen at any time.
Newspapers were even printing
little clocks
about how many minutes
it would take
a Russian missile
to destroy New York.
Our cities are prime targets
for atomic attack.
It's estimated
over 4 million
will die in New York City.
Eisenhower was under pressure.
You have this island nation
so close
to the United States
that could be used
to launch Soviet missiles.
You're going to just
let this happen?
This is our backyard.
The CIA officers
in that era believed
that they knew more
than anybody
about how intense
the threat was.
And therefore,
they were motivated
to do absolutely whatever
was necessary to defend
against this threat.
Allen Dulles
was in charge of the CIA,
looking out to protect
America's interests
in a very dangerous world.
Dulles was the scholarly,
pipe-smoking master spy.
Allen Dulles
was the dominant figure
in the early age of the CIA.
It was actually the golden age
for covert action.
Allen Dulles comes from
a politically-connected
family--
grandfather,
secretary of state.
Brother becomes
secretary of state.
These are connected people.
Allen Dulles was fascinated
with what we now call
intelligence ever since
he was a little boy.
He discovered the novel
"Kim" by Rudyard Kipling.
It became his favorite book.
"Kim" is written in 1901,
and it's often considered
the great novel
about what it is
to become a spy.
You have this young guy
who literally is gonna
make a name for himself.
One of the things
that he learns
is what he calls
the great game,
and the great game
is the power
of having information.
"Here was a new craft
that a man
"could tuck away in his head;
"and by the look
of the wide world
"unfolding itself before him,
it seemed
that the more a man knew,
the better for him."
Information.
Everything.
And that's what he discovered.
From the days of Socrates,
mankind has been
seeking knowledge.
Intelligence is nothing really
other than information
and knowledge.
Dulles was very aware of
what the Soviet intent was,
and he was determined
to stop it.
The CIA knew quite rightly
that the United States
was a colossus
that bestrode the world,
and they saw themselves
as the force that would slay
the beast of Soviet Communism.
Dulles was intensely interested
in cultivating
the public image of the CIA
as this
shadowy super force
that could
accomplish miracles.
It was Allen Dulles who
was the head of the CIA,
but right below him
was Richard Bissell.
Rick Bissell
was regarded as a genius,
a product of great wealth,
educated at Groton and Yale
and the London School
of Economics.
Bissell was a man who wasn't
the traditional spy.
He believed in
the high-tech aspects of it.
He thought in big terms.
He's reported as a guy
who couldn't sit still.
He was always pacing
in his office.
And when he had
to sit at meetings,
he would compulsively
bend and re-bend paper clips
or crush pieces of paper up
into tiny balls.
Eisenhower and Allen Dulles
had become strongly convinced
that Fidel Castro
was a mortal threat
to the United States.
They didn't want
a Communist beachhead
90 miles from Key West.
And to avert that,
they had to do something.
Eisenhower was a passionate
supporter of covert action.
There were all sorts
of ideas--
commando raids,
sabotage, and arson.
And Eisenhower said,
"These are not
"going far enough.
I want things
that might be more drastic."
In memorandum of conference
with the President
dated May 13, 1960,
Eisenhower states,
"I want him sawed off."
The meaning of that
would have been
very clear
to everyone who was present.
Eisenhower was a tough guy
behind that smile.
This became Allen Dulles's
responsibility to carry out.
He asked his Covert
Operations Director Bissell
to take on the project.
Bissell proposed
in a written memo
to Dulles "the elimination
of Fidel Castro."
Well, Dulles, perhaps a little
more politically savvy,
suggested "elimination"
had more
than a tinge of murder in it
and edited that to say,
"the removal
of Castro from power."
And that's when
the ball started rolling.
The whole strategy
by the CIA was two-tiered.
It was, one,
to try to assassinate Castro,
and then also
to plan for an invasion
by an army of Cuban exiles
that would establish
a new American-friendly
government in Havana.
Dick Bissell
tells the vice president
that the CIA is gonna need
500 trained Cuban exiles
to do the job.
So hundreds of Cuban exiles
are being trained
in an invasion plan.
While all these Cuban exiles
are being trained in Florida
and Latin America,
CIA officials
had gotten the approval of
President Dwight Eisenhower
to go ahead with
this assassination attempt
against Castro.
President Eisenhower
was adamant
that there would be
no fingerprints
on the Castro plot.
For the CIA,
the big question was,
how do we do this so that
the President could
plausibly deny
that he approved the attempts
to kill a foreign leader?
"Plausible deniability"
means even if people
don't believe you
when you say
you're not involved
in this operation,
there's no clear evidence.
They wanted somebody else
to do it
as opposed to the government.
They want a middleman,
if you will.
So the plan to get rid
of Castro
goes down the hierarchy
of the CIA,
from Dulles to Bissell
to Head of Security
Shef Edwards
In the CIA memo
dated August 1960,
Bissell asked
Sheffield Edwards
"if Edwards
could establish contact
"with the U.S.
gambling syndicate
that was active in Cuba."
Bissell is gonna hire
the mafia to kill Castro.
The idea of the mafia
created a great cover
for the CIA.
The mafia had a grievance
against the Cuban Revolution.
If they were identified as
the assassins of Fidel Castro,
everybody would go, "Oh, yeah,
sure, that makes sense."
But government
shouldn't be assassinating
foreign heads of state
to start with.
But if you've already crossed
that line in the Rubicon
and now you've decided
to become partners
with the mafia,
it's a whole
different operation.
The CIA can't be seen
directly dealing
with the mafia.
So what they have to do
is use a cutout,
somebody that they know
knows mafiosos.
Shef Edwards told Bissell
that he had a friend,
a private investigator through
whom syndicate elements
in Cuba could be reached.
That was the path
to Robert Maheu.
Now, Bob Maheu had been
an FBI agent in the 1940s.
And then during the '50s,
he had gone
into private practice as
a private investigator in DC.
He had several clients,
and one of them was the CIA.
So he could be trusted.
The mission,
should you decide
to accept it, is to put them
out of business permanently.
Robert Maheu claimed
that he was the inspiration
for "Mission Impossible"--
very popular,
very suave 1960s spy show.
And one of
his big clients becomes
Howard Hughes, the wealthiest
man in the United States.
Obviously, working
for Howard Hughes,
he was somebody
that had a lot of access.
Remember, if you get
around powerful people,
you're going to get
information.
Sheffield Edwards
from the CIA reached out
to Bob Maheu and said,
"Hey, this is something
we want to do."
Maheu was reluctant
to get involved in this
because, hey, we're talking
about assassinating
the head of a government.
But the argument was made,
"Hey, this is a war.
"You're doing this
for your country.
This is a patriotic thing
for you to do."
Patriotism justifies people
doing all kinds of things--
in this case,
to have a murder arranged.
Maheu is conflicted.
Here he is
a good Catholic boy,
went to Holy Cross.
Can I kill Fidel Castro
in all good conscience?
And he ultimately decides
that if he had been able
to kill Hitler
in World War II,
he could have saved lives.
So he says yes.
People had no idea
that this sort of stuff
was going on.
The activities of the CIA
must be secret.
People really thought
that the FBI,
the CIA were slaying
the dragons of evil.
They were presenting
a public image of rectitude
and always being on
the right side of the law.
So the United States being
involved in assassinating
a head of state
at the height of the Cold War,
this thing's fraught
with peril.
Maheu himself was nervous
about the whole operation.
Maheu voiced concerns
with the CIA contacts,
like, "Are you really sure
this is the direction
you want to go?"
If this comes out,
what will this do to our image
in the eyes of the world?
But the CIA at that time
was so arrogant
that it didn't even
think about
the operation falling apart.
So Maheu sets up
a meeting with his connection
to the mafia, Johnny Roselli.
Who is Johnny Roselli?
I would say that the answer
to that question
depends upon who's asking it.
In terms of all
of the characters
throughout this story,
Johnny Roselli,
the gangster,
is at the root of everything.
Roselli would team up
with the CIA
to create one of the strangest
and most illegal chapters
in the history
of the United States.
in the history
of the United States.