Mafia Spies (2024) s01e03 Episode Script

1
I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
do solemnly swear--
That you will--
When Jack Kennedy became
president of
the United States,
he inherited,
in essence,
from the
Eisenhower administration
this plan to invade Cuba
with the Cuban exiles.
But what JFK didn't know
is that the CIA
had also hired the Mafia
to try to assassinate Castro.
In the
CIA assassination plot,
using the Mafia is supposed
to facilitate the success
of the invasion.
With the Mafia's
involvement,
the CIA believes
that Fidel will be dead
by the time the invasion
takes place.
And so they are not
paying close attention
to what could go wrong.
It is with great pleasure
that I announce
the appointment
of Robert F. Kennedy
as attorney general.
And from the moment Jack
Kennedy appoints his brother,
Bobby Kennedy,
as attorney general,
he is out after the mob
with a vengeance.
There is organized crime
in the city of Chicago.
It's growing greater
and greater every year.
Giancana is saying, here,
I'm trying to help
the United States kill Castro
and the heat
is not only not off,
the heat is hotter than
it ever was before.
What the fuck?
At the request
of Bobby Kennedy,
Hoover, head of the FBI,
started surveilling the mob.
Our nation's crime problem
is growing
in both size and intensity.
During the past decade,
crime has nearly doubled
across the United States.
Hoover becomes
zealous about it.
Now I'm going to
break up the Mafia.
The CIA didn't realize that
Giancana was very impulsive.
He had his emotions on his
sleeve, kind of a wild card.
He was loud, brash,
obnoxious, unstable.
This is going to be
a big liability,
not only for the CIA,
but also the mob.
The CIA can never
let Hoover know
that they're working with the
mob to try to kill Castro.
The consequences
would be disastrous.
So while Johnny Roselli
is working with the CIA
and trying to figure out
ways to kill Castro,
Sam Giancana's attention
is elsewhere.
He's not only
preoccupied by the FBI
following him all around,
his personal life is a mess.
He increasingly is becoming
erratic, basically crazy.
It all started after
the death of his wife.
Giancana was
a happily married man
out in the suburbs of Chicago
with three daughters.
That was part
of the reason why
he was entrusted
with the Mafia.
They felt that he was
a stable, steady guy.
My father loved my mother.
He had the softest
heart for her.
He gave her whatever she needed
or whatever she wanted.
He had her on such
a sort of pedestal.
Comes out of Catholicism,
a lot of this stuff--
conflate the wife
with the Madonna.
It was driving them
in such deep ways,
especially in Catholic guys.
You know,
there really is this--
my wife is also
my mother, my Madonna.
He would come to church
with us every Sunday.
My father had tremendous
religious beliefs.
Now, how can you have
tremendous, wonderful beliefs
if you're doing what you're
doing on a daily basis?
When she died,
the loss just shattered him.
After that, what Giancana had
was just a hole in the bucket.
He could never be filled.
After my mother died,
he had a lot of women.
He took a liking to this one
especially, Phyllis McGuire.
Phyllis McGuire
was a member
of the singing McGuire Sisters
of the 1940s and 1950s,
an extremely big act.
I think their biggest hit
was called "Sugartime."
And here, you have this
clean, beautiful
California sorority girl,
the kind of wasp
American characteristics
that people are
supposed to prize.
And don't forget,
in the days that
we're talking about,
Italians were not viewed
as being white,
American.
For Giancana, she was a trophy.
Phyllis McGuire was gambling
one night in a place in Vegas.
And she was well-known,
so she didn't have
to buy her chips with cash.
So there was a marker.
Which is, in effect,
a line of credit.
These lines of credit turn
into collections at some point.
She'd lost a lot and run up
a debt at the casino.
Giancana was around and
just said, tear it up.
And Phyllis becomes
Giancana's mistress.
The cool guy met his match.
Phyllis McGuire said to me
that he was the love
of her life, flat out.
Did she love him
or did she love
the things she got from him?
I didn't like her.
He fell so hard for her.
Sam Giancana's
Sinatra song was
"You're Nobody
till Somebody Loves You."
This is just
a source of fire
And emotion.
And this is not
the greatest thing
to have because
he's a powder keg,
and you could push his buttons
very easily about this.
Sam is a very
jealous man,
and this will lead to grave
unintended consequences.
When they were down
in Miami,
Johnny Roselli is working
with the Cuban exiles
on the Castro
assassination plot.
Johnny depended
upon Sam
to make sure that Trafficante
was always there
as the translator.
So it was very important
for Sam to remain in Florida,
but Sam's preoccupied
with something else.
During that time period,
Sam gets wind of the fact
that Phyllis McGuire,
in Las Vegas,
is somehow being
courted by a comedian
by the name of Dan Rowan.
It doesn't end well
for any person
who rouses the jealousy
of Sam Giancana.
There's a moment
with Sam Giancana.
He's going to fly back and
see what he can do about it.
CIA says, hold on.
Wait, Sam.
Don't worry about it.
They don't want him
to leave Florida.
Bob Maheu and the CIA
cut out,
hire somebody to illegally bug
Rowan's hotel room
to find out
if he's having an affair
with McGuire.
Sam stays in Florida.
But what happens in Las Vegas
is that a hotel detective
comes by Dan Rowan's room.
Rowan was not stupid.
When he found out
about it,
I think he realized,
well, maybe you should
take your
romantic interests elsewhere.
The hotel detective
contacts the sheriff,
and the sheriff
contacts the FBI.
It prompts the FBI
investigation more and more
into what's going on,
threatening to reveal
the CIA's Mafia plot.
Fidel Castro whips up
a furor in Cuba,
charging the United States
with arming
and training mercenary forces
for an imminent invasion.
Castro's invasion scare
also enlivens
the eve of a debate
in the United Nations
on Cuban charges of aggression
by the United States.
Before the United Nations
Security Council in New York,
Ambassador Wadsworth replied--
American officials
deny everything.
But of course, it's all true.
Jack Kennedy inherited
this Bay of Pigs operation.
He didn't really have the
greatest feeling about it.
He allowed the CIA to
talk him into doing it.
Allen Dulles told him,
we have hundreds of commandos
being trained in Guatemala
and Fort Knox and New Orleans,
and that whatever doubts
he might have,
there would be what
he called a disposal problem
if the operation
were canceled.
What he meant was,
if you call off the operation,
they're all going
to be back to Miami
and they're going
to tell people
we were just about
to overthrow Castro
but that wimp Kennedy
called off the project.
The American male,
fear of ridicule,
runs throughout so much
of our foreign policy.
He was assured
that it would work.
There was a lot of
arrogance and hubris
that this would be
a marvelous operation.
And in the first months
of his presidency,
he would be rid
of this headache.
Two individuals ran
this operation together.
The military detailed a Marine
Colonel named Jack Hawkins,
and Jacob Esterline
was a veteran CIA
covert operations official.
He was picked by
Richard Bissell.
When Kennedy was told
that the CIA planned
to land in broad daylight
and have the exile force
kind of clamor ashore
in front of 100,000 people
in the city of Trinidad,
he said,
how are we going to
disassociate ourselves
from this
if everybody sees it?
If the United States was
seen around the world
to be boldly invading
a smaller country,
the Soviets would claim
the right to invade Berlin.
Then you'd have
the circumstances
for World War III.
Kennedy said,
can you figure out a way
to make this "less noisy"?
Can you have a night landing
in an isolated place?
They had to find
a place that also
had an airstrip so that they
could land these planes.
They found the Bay of Pigs.
That didn't sound like a very
good place to liberate Cuba.
And there was
only one way out
and only one way in.
It was going to be
very difficult
to get out of that area.
But in a rush,
they picked that location.
The kind of screw-ups that
marked the initial phases
of the operation
would be multiplied
a hundred-fold when the
invasion came in April 1961.
Meanwhile,
Johnny Roselli was trying
to juggle all of these
different things at once.
He was trying to
keep an eye on what
was going on in Hollywood.
He was running things
in Las Vegas.
But he was also spending
a lot of time down in Florida
with the Cuban exiles
planning to kill Castro.
Back in Chicago, Sam is
growing even more frustrated.
After he goes
back to Chicago,
he's being followed by
teams of FBI agents.
One of the FBI agents
following Giancana
was a guy named
William Roemer.
He was a Notre Dame graduate,
big burly guy,
trained as a lawyer,
very aggressive.
Bill was a very serious
forthright guy,
very sincere, a lion on
the side of right and good.
Chicago would have been
in a lot worse place
if it hadn't been for Bill
and the other guys who worked
with them in the Chicago office
on organized crime.
The FBI decided they needed
to know more about
what Giancana was doing
so they decide to put
a listening device
in the Armory Lounge.
It was on the
outskirts of town.
And that's where all
the mob guys went to eat.
They came out in their big
limousines and Mercedes,
and it was like
home-cooked Italian food.
Giancana always
sat with his back
to the wall and his
henchmen around him.
Giancana conducted a lot
of business at the Armory.
It was just a place where
the boys would hang out
and they would talk freely.
The FBI approached
the janitor and said,
you know, we'd like you
to come down to our office
and just make sure
that you're not the guy
that we're looking for.
The janitor goes downtown.
They say,
please empty your pockets.
And when he does, it includes
the keys to the Armory Lounge.
So while the janitor is
being questioned by the FBI,
other FBI agents are making
copies of those keys.
The FBI uses those duplicate
keys to open up
the Armory Lounge
and put in the device
that they referred to as "Mo,"
that was referenced
to "Mooney,"
which was the nickname
of Giancana.
They drop it
behind the wall.
No one had any idea
it was there.
By the way, utterly illegal--
warrantless wiretaps
and buggings.
They couldn't use it
legally in court,
but they still wanted
to know what was going on
with Sam and the mob.
The greatest tool for Hoover
was the listening device.
And you know why
that's such a great tool?
Because you'll hear the truth.
Hoover's great genius
was to understand this.
So Hoover finds out
that Giancana is saying,
hey, Castro is going
to be gone soon.
Then in New York--
Sam Giancana was presiding
over an elegant dinner
at La Scala which was
the Italian restaurant
in New York, discussed a plot
to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Sam emphasizes that,
in fact,
he's involved in the plot.
Phyllis's brother-in-law is
so alarmed he informs the FBI.
Hoover begins to understand
that Sam Giancana
is not merely running rackets
and prostitution and narcotics.
He's trying to kill
a foreign leader.
Hoover starts drilling in.
Not a sparrow will fall
in Sam Giancana's world
without Hoover
knowing about it.
Sam Giancana is a boss
in the Chicago mob.
Tony Accardo was one of the
most powerful dons in history.
Anybody who has
a nickname Joe Batters
has got to be
a dangerous person.
But if you would have
met Accardo
when he was
an older gentleman,
and not known who he was,
you would not immediately
have suspected him
of secretly being a mob boss.
He lived in the suburbs
and didn't call attention
to himself.
He was all about staying
out of the limelight.
And that's
something he learned
working for the first
celebrity gangster.
The lesson Accardo
drew from Capone
is celebrity gangsters
don't end well
That the first thing you
need to do in this business
is not get any heat on you.
Al Capone was in trouble
with the law a lot,
but he cultivated
this everyman image.
You'd see him at baseball
games talking to Babe Ruth.
He was opening up
soup kitchens.
He was talking to the press,
having press conferences.
He draws so much
attention to himself
that he winds up going to jail
on tax evasion charges.
His reign was
only seven years,
whereas a lot of the more
underground mobsters
maintain much longer
positions of power
because they kept
out of the limelight.
Tony Accardo is
a perfect example.
So in the '50s,
Accardo wanted to become
consigliere to the outfit.
Tony Accardo put in
Sam Giancana
as the operating boss,
which is essentially
the organized crime equivalent
of a CEO in a corporation.
He runs it on
a day to day basis.
He, of course,
still answered to Accardo.
Accardo thought Sam Giancana
would be just like him,
almost like suburban dads who
just happened to be running
a Mafia outfit, and that
he would not draw attention
to what they were doing
or to himself.
Giancana's got this nice
little bungalow house
out in the immediate
suburb of Chicago.
And there, Giancana was known
for shoveling the driveway
when it'd snow,
for mowing his own lawn
Almost like
"Father Knows Best,"
Mafia style.
Whatever he's doing, we're
not supposed to know about it.
It's a secret.
But when Giancana's wife
died, all that changed.
Phyllis McGuire
plays in Vegas.
He drops everything
in Chicago, goes out to Vegas.
She plays some high-end
supper club or something
in Southern California,
he just leaves everything
here, goes out there.
Also, it's becoming
well-known that Giancana
is palling around with
Frank Sinatra in Nevada.
Frank had an
attraction to Giancana
and vice versa, kind of
a showbiz attraction,
a power attraction.
By hanging out with
the best-known singers
Frank Sinatra
and Phyllis McGuire,
he drew a lot of attention.
I started to learn
about my father
when I was in high school.
My father would get up
early in the morning
and take out the articles
that were in the newspaper
so I would not read them
and I would not be hurt.
I had to sneak
reading the newspapers,
and I saw the headlines,
you know,
gangster this and mob that.
And I was quite surprised.
That's when all
the publicity started.
And of course Giancana's
on board this
Castro assassination plot,
but the CIA didn't realize
Giancana was somebody
who was way too visible.
It puts the plans
to kill Castro at risk.
If this secret became
public knowledge,
it would be a disaster
for the country.
No matter where Sam went,
the government was behind him,
like sick little dogs
running around,
trying to find out this thing
or find out that thing.
They played golf,
and the government was
always following behind them.
There was always cars
parked outside of the house.
One was a Bill Roemer,
on my father
almost 24 hours a day.
My father used to give
Bill Roemer a note--
going here, going here,
going here,
making it easier for Bill
to get to the place first.
The FBI pressure on Sam
continues to increase.
So he's kind of being driven
a little bit nuts by it.
It comes to a boil
in Chicago.
Sam is with Phyllis as
they come through the gate.
Who's waiting for them, but
the FBI Agent Bill Roemer--
Sam Giancana!
Which really angered Sam.
Roemer starts provoking Sam.
If he can get him
to be angry,
knowing that Phyllis McGuire
is going to watch this,
that's totally castrating him.
Roemer makes
a very public showing,
pointing him out as a hoodlum
and scourge of Chicago.
Sam starts telling Roemer,
you're going to regret
what you did here today.
I'm never going
to forget this.
And Roemer asked, are you
threatening a federal agent?
They just hated each other,
and they went at it.
But Giancana took the bait.
This constant tension
between Roemer and Giancana
slowly but surely
is undermining
Sam's authority in the Mafia.
But then he sees an
opportunity to gain more power
when he meets Judy Campbell.
Judy Campbell was a nice
Catholic girl from California
who, like so many beautiful
young women then and now,
still went to Hollywood
to see what could happen.
Judy was always
adorable and charming
and delightful,
everybody liked her.
There was an
infernal triangle
between Judy Campbell, Sam
Giancana, and John Kennedy,
soon to be the president
of the United States.
Where it all began
was with Sinatra.
First, Frank meets
Judy Campbell
at an Italian restaurant
in Beverly Hills, Puccini.
And they then become close.
Shortly after that,
Frank is in Las Vegas
shooting "Ocean's 11."
You're no hoodlum.
You got no connection
with the underworld.
Hoods are always mixed up
with other hoods.
John Kennedy
stops by Las Vegas.
He's campaigning
for president.
And one night while
they're shooting the movie,
Frank has a big party
for Jack Kennedy.
Senator John Kennedy from the
great state of Massachusetts.
Yeah, John.
That is the night that
Frank introduces the candidate
to Judy Campbell.
What Frank is essentially
doing at this point
is pimping out Judy Campbell.
He is solidifying
his hold on power,
his hold on Jack Kennedy,
by providing him with
this glorious young woman.
A very dark strain
of the worst kind
of toxic masculinity runs
throughout this entire thing
and drives these people
in a lot of ways.
It's at the root
of so much of history.
It's right at the very
center of history.
And this is especially true
in the American government.
Hate to say it, but a lot of
people that accomplished a lot
are horny.
You know, they are driven.
They have a thing
driving them.
So Judy Campbell
and JFK become lovers.
When Jack Kennedy takes office
in January of '61,
Judy Campbell begins
making surreptitious visits
to the White House.
I knew she was having an
affair with Jack Kennedy because
a friend of mine
knew Judy very well.
And I remember being
in Washington, D.C.
And I said, well, where's Judy?
Over at the White House,
what, doing her laundry?
And he laughed.
So that is two legs
of the triangle,
but the third leg
doesn't happen
until Sinatra introduces
Judy Campbell
to Sam Giancana.
This is right about
the same time
that Giancana meets
Phyllis McGuire,
but it was a very
different relationship.
Because, with Judy Campbell,
he's not in love.
He sees a gold mine.
He sees not only
a beautiful young woman
whom he can utilize sexually,
but power-wise,
blackmailing-wise,
because he knows
that Judy Campbell
is sleeping with the president
of the United States.
So an affair begins between
Sam Giancana
and Judy Campbell.
And this unholy triangle
begins
at this extremely fraught
moment in world history
when the Communist world
is continuing
to threaten the Western world.
The communists built a wall
along the Soviet sector.
And in violation
of existing agreements,
split the city in two.
This is a matter
of national security.
The potential for blackmailing
a president
by the mob, incalculable.
It's Sam's jealousy
Over his other girlfriend
Phyllis McGuire
that led to
the bugging incident
with Rowan that eventually
leads the FBI onto his trail.
The FBI starts
asking questions
and it traces back to Maheu.
The FBI confronts Maheu.
Maheu says, I really don't
want to tell you
what this is all about.
But eventually, because
of the FBI pressure,
Maheu coughs up
the CIA's mission
to kill Castro and
also the involvement
of Giancana and Roselli.
Hoover had put all
of the pieces together.
The CIA Mafia plot
was a gift
on a golden platter
to J. Edgar Hoover.
All his life, he had
a bone to pick with the CIA.
Hoover was forever railing
that the CIA was
a pathetic bunch
of pipe-smoking
college professors,
maybe Communist sympathizers,
who couldn't find their ass
with two hands and a roadmap.
But the FBI wanted to know
who is Johnny Roselli.
Hoover gives marching orders
to find out more.
So while Johnny's
overseeing things
for the outfit
in Hollywood,
he realizes that he's becoming
a target of the FBI as well
and that he's being followed.
It's a lot more fun for the
FBI agents following Johnny.
Every time, it seemed that
he had a new beautiful blonde
sitting right next to him.
He would go to
Romanoff's, Cheney's.
He would stop at
the Friars Club.
But also, Johnny
and Judy Campbell
were good friends.
I think she probably
was somewhat enamored
by the charisma
of some of these guys.
And I think she got seduced
into being a courier.
Judy knew that the FBI
was trailing Sam and Johnny
and had bugged their phones.
So she'd pass messages
to help them communicate.
But little did she know,
the content of these messages,
at least part of the time,
dealt with the plot
to kill Castro.
So Judy becomes part of
the FBI's dragnet, too.
The FBI actually
sends two burglars
to Judy Campbell's apartment
to try and dig up evidence
on these guys.
Judy Campbell goes back
to her apartment
and these two guys
flashed their badges.
She starts screaming,
get out,
get out of my apartment.
Judy goes back
and tells Roselli.
Johnny says not to tell
the FBI anything,
but she recklessly at times
makes impulsive decisions.
In fact, she makes phone calls
to her lover, John Kennedy,
from Johnny Roselli's
apartment.
Eventually,
there are approximately
70 different phone calls
that were made
between Judy Campbell
and John F. Kennedy's office.
I mean, this was catnip
for J. Edgar Hoover
to find out that
Sam Giancana's girlfriend
is also the girlfriend
of the president
of the United States.
Between the
Kennedys and Hoover,
there's very little love lost.
Hoover had reason
to be concerned
about his job security.
Hoover is looking for
leverage with the president.
He has it.
And there would come a time
when Hoover would use
the information
he had gathered as a weapon.
As January turned to February,
and February turned to March,
the Mafia had not found a way
to kill Fidel Castro.
And yet in the actual run-up
to the Bay of Pigs invasion,
things started to steamroller
and get out of control.
Richard Bissell, who oversaw
the Bay of Pigs
invasion project,
had accommodated all
of President Kennedy's doubts.
But what became
the big sticking point
was whether the U.S. military
would provide air cover.
Kennedy didn't want it to look
like it was a joint endeavor
with the U.S. military.
Bissell assured them
this wouldn't happen.
So Kennedy approved
of the Bay of Pigs operation,
but there would
be no U.S. fighter jets
helping the Cubans
that the CIA had trained.
Jacob Esterline
and Jack Hawkins
who were involved
in the planning
became so convinced
that the operation
was going to fail
because the president
wasn't authorizing air cover.
They went to Richard Bissell
to announce,
we're resigning
from the operation.
Bissell said,
look, if you resign now,
we're not going to
call this thing off
and it's far more
likely to fail
without you than with you.
Bissell was able
to persuade them.
They had to keep on.
Bissell says,
you tell me what you need.
I'll go to the president.
So, tell them what they need.
Bissell doesn't go
to the president,
but he goes to high officials
around the president.
He misrepresents
how much he's able to get back
to them to mollify them.
Bissell was lying up
the chain of command,
and Bissell was lying down
the chain of command,
and Bissell was
lying to himself.
The CIA, probably
Allen Dulles,
calculated once these people
were pinned down on the beach
by a 30,000-person army--
and they will be pinned down--
this little president
of ours, this newbie,
is going to go to their aid
and we know he will.
The assault has begun on the
dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
Cuban Army pilots
opened the first phase
of organized revolt
with bombing raids
on three military bases.
To prepare
for this invasion,
preliminary airstrikes by
Cuban exile pilots took place,
intended to take out
all of Fidel's planes.
They failed to take out
the Cuban Air Force.
There's this huge fight
that takes place.
Landings were affected
by rebels at several places
on the Cuban Coast.
And the rebellion against
the redskins dictator was on.
Castro's army repelled--
Sam and Johnny had hoped
that an assassination attempt
on Fidel Castro
would come through
before the Bay of Pigs
invasion.
But Johnny gets
a message to call
James O'Connell at the CIA.
He gets bad news.
The operation is off.
Things are a mess.
All these Cuban exiles
that have been trained
in Florida and other places,
they're losing their lives.
Castro had majority
popular support.
The CIA failed
to understand this.
This was
a very poor reading
of the state of mind
of the Cuban people.
Without air cover,
the Cuban exiles
are left to their own devices
there on the Bay of Pigs.
Richard Bissell
believed Kennedy
would give him what he wanted
when the emergency happened.
But every one of
Kennedy's answers is a no.
Can I take in
U.S. Air Force planes?
No.
Can I launch planes off
of our aircraft carriers?
No.
It's a no, no, no.
Jack Kennedy would say, no.
Right in the midst of
the horror of everybody
getting killed on the beach,
and he's just going to say,
I told you before,
I'm not putting
the United States
at war with Cuba.
I'm not doing it.
Bissell said, I never knew
he was this tough.
It was a poor reading
of the state of mind
of the U.S. President.
One book about
the Bay of Pigs
is called "A Perfect Failure."
It's like every
decision tree moment,
the wrong decision was made.
It was a complete disaster.
It showed how impotent
the CIA and
the U.S. government was
when it came to
dealing with a issue
90 miles off its shore.
More than
1,100 Cuban exiles
were eventually captured
by Castro's forces.
One of the reasons that the
invasion failed so miserably
is Castro had
that exile community
completely penetrated.
Castro knew not only that
the invasion was coming
but when it was coming, where
the people were training.
Meanwhile, in Havana,
expecting crowds await
the first appearance of Castro
since the invasion began.
He takes to the air
for a 4 and 1/2 hour
vituperative attack
on the United States.
The Bay of Pigs
added to his charisma
as the savior
of the Cuban nation.
It solidified support behind
Castro like no other event.
With the Castro government
completely victorious
over the invading rebels,
there is despair and confusion
among the relatives
of the insurgents.
Johnny was
particularly upset
to find out that his friend
Manuel Artime
was part of the invasion,
and he was also taken prisoner
at the Bay of Pigs.
With Castro claiming
the capture of 500 invaders
and threatening them all
with the firing squad,
these weeping women see no
chance for their loved ones.
It looked clear that
he would be lined up
at a firing squad and killed.
Johnny's determined
more than ever
to try to go after Castro.
The Bay of Pigs disaster
was a military and diplomatic
defeat for the new president.
It was such
a gigantic debacle
that it's hard to envision
how a few fighter jets
would have made a difference.
A small group of exiles
just wasn't going
to ever be able
to defeat the Cuban military.
The CIA had far exceeded
its own capabilities
and had misled the president
of the United States.
But the CIA had
the perfect excuse.
This incredibly
difficult choice,
and if it's an important issue,
it's going to be in every case,
the president's choice.
The CIA said, you didn't
give us what we needed.
If we had just had
those fighter jets,
we would have won.
He stabbed this army
in the back.
He didn't have the cojones
to do what was necessary
to make this work.
There were Cubans that
thought that Jack Kennedy
was a traitor.
They felt that the Bay of Pigs
was an actual betrayal.
It was treason.
There were Cubans
who talked in Miami
about the fact that
he should be dead.
After that,
everybody hated Kennedy.
They had emotions that they
were going to go back to Cuba
and that was
ripped out of them.
They were all Democrats and
they all became Republicans.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the president
of the United States.
Kennedy dramatically
took responsibility
for the failure--
There's an old saying that
victory has a hundred fathers
and defeat is an orphan.
Basically saying I am the
lone individual responsible
for whatever happened.
He refused to actually
say what happened,
but took responsibility for it.
In view of the fact that
we're taking a propaganda
lambasting around the world,
why is it not useful, sir,
for us to explore with you
the real facts behind this
or our motivations?
Well, I think an answer
to your question that
we have to make a judgment
as to, uh,
how much we can usefully say
that would aid the interest
of the United States.
One of the problems
of a free society,
problem not met
by a dictatorship,
is this problem of information.
So often,
the American tragedy
isn't about what happens,
but what you do to prevent
the thing from happening.
You make this huge mistake.
This is what Vietnam was.
This is what Watergate was.
This is what the Iraq war was.
This is what
the Bay of Pigs was.
Kennedy not only
was angry at himself,
but he was angry at the CIA.
There were reports
that he called them
"Those CIA bastards."
The president, in the wake
of the Bay of Pigs,
wanted to shatter the CIA
into a thousand pieces
and scatter it to the winds.
Jack Kennedy said, I will
not be played with by the CIA.
And henceforth,
what came later reflected that.
He fired the people
responsible at the CIA.
Allen Dulles was given
a mandate to retire.
Bissell was fired.
And that's when Jack Kennedy
started to basically
put Bobby in charge
of the CIA.
The Kennedy brothers
were furious.
They were used to winning,
not losing.
They were very
competitive individuals.
This little podunk country had
dealt us embarrassing blow,
not just to the CIA,
but to the new young
Kennedy administration
in front of the entire world.
They really were, in some ways,
out for revenge on Castro.
In May of 1961,
the White House
commissioned a report,
and it makes
a very direct statement.
There is no living
with Castro.
There's no living
with this guy.
Do you get it?
That's the message.
That's our policy.
That's where our
administration stands.
There's no living with Castro.