Mafia Spies (2024) s01e04 Episode Script

1
The Bay of Pigs disaster
was a military
and diplomatic defeat
for the new president.
There's an old saying that
victory has a hundred fathers,
and defeat is an orphan.
After the Bay of Pigs,
you have the Cuban exiles
still being held captive,
possibly facing
a firing squad.
The Kennedys double down
on their attempts
to get rid of Castro.
Everybody is under
a lot of pressure
to get this job done.
They need to make changes now.
Kennedy was enamored
of the James Bond novels.
He asked the CIA,
"So who is your James Bond?"
They produced Bill Harvey.
There was nothing elegant
about Harvey.
He looked like a fat cop.
Jack Kennedy,
when he meets him,
actually says,
"You're America's James Bond?"
Bill Harvey started
with the FBI.
A legendary
Russian spy chaser,
counterintelligence.
Harvey was brash and bold.
He would tell people,
"If you knew
as many secrets as I do,
you'd carry a gun too."
Drank too much,
very abrasive,
and ended up kind of being
bounced by the FBI
and ended up being
picked up by the CIA
to run the Berlin base,
which was a big deal.
Bill Harvey was
as close to James Bond
as the CIA was going to get.
So after Harvey takes over,
Maheu is now going
to be gone from the operation.
Sheffield Edwards says
bluntly, "Bill Harvey is going
"to take over Roselli,
so we'll have to arrange
to get them together."
A meeting is set up
at a hotel in New York.
I think Harvey went in
definitely skeptical
because,
as a former FBI agent,
he was very skittish about
getting involved with the mob.
But at the same time,
Roselli is not sure
he can trust Harvey.
It's like two dogs
smelling each other out.
But as the new guy in charge,
Harvey knows
he needs Johnny's help.
Johnny thinks about it.
He was mortified by what
happened at the Bay of Pigs.
A government memo reads,
"Roselli feels sorry
for the poor bastards
left on the beach."
He was particularly upset
to find out
that his friend Manuel Artime
now was possibly facing
a firing squad.
He's determined to get Castro.
Johnny was loyal to people
and liked them.
And when he liked you,
he did right by you.
So this time,
it's more important than ever.
This time,
it's personal for him.
Johnny will go to a place
you could never have imagined
when he started
on this mission.
He's going to take matters
into his own hands.
After the failure
of the Bay of Pigs episode,
Kennedy must have been
really keen
on getting rid of someone
who had so humiliated him,
and that breathed new life
into these assassination plots
against Fidel Castro.
The idea of assassinating
Castro remained active.
There was an intense desire
to continue this project,
and Robert Kennedy was
very much
the leading figure
in pushing it.
Bobby was pretty much
a altar boy,
and throughout his life,
that's what
people knew him as.
He's a straight arrow.
The guy is a good guy.
But Bobby would do things
for his brother
he wouldn't do
for anybody else.
And he thought
Castro was a bad guy.
He had humiliated his brother.
And so it was family.
It was personal.
And he thought
it was probably OK
to do what was necessary
to get rid of Castro.
I think it's pretty clear
that he was always impatient.
He was always pressing
to get things done
and always wanted answers
now, now, now, now.
What does John Kennedy do?
He appointed his brother
to run Operation Mongoose.
The mission was to get rid
of Castro, one way or another,
through sabotage,
try to prompt
a popular uprising
against him,
try to discredit him.
The man in charge
of upholding all of our laws
was now the covert operations
master when it came to Cuba.
Part of this endeavor
is the CIA base in Miami,
code name JMWAVE,
run by Bill Harvey.
The pressure is on.
The Kennedys want
to see results.
The CIA was
supposed to operate
against foreign countries.
It was not supposed to have
a presence
in the United States
of America,
let alone operate
the largest CIA station
in the world in Miami.
The station was set up
on a piece of land
owned by one
of the local schools.
It was being rented
to Zenith Technical Services.
That was the front name
for the CIA.
And the university had no idea
that it was leasing
these buildings and these lots
to the CIA.
Zenith was a shell company
that the CIA set up
to purchase tens of millions
of dollars of equipment
that the Miami station
was using
to run its operations
against Cuba.
Boats, weapons,
fake identity papers.
I mean, it was basically
a whole separate
intelligence agency.
They had training camps
set up
in the Everglades,
training hundreds of Cubans
in how to use weapons
Infiltrate, exfiltrate
with boats
in the middle of the night,
how to use
secret radio equipment.
And remember, though,
all this was supposed
to be happening in secret.
I don't know any of the top
officials personally,
but I think that they make
no contribution,
in my estimation, to the fight
against communism.
I think they're ridiculous.
Bobby Kennedy was just
absolutely horsewhipping
the CIA to do more, go further,
blow up power plants in Cuba,
poison the stocks,
destroy the economy.
"Get your ass together.
"Get it going.
Why can't you do something?
What's the problem?"
You know,
constantly hector them.
Bill Harvey was under
tremendous pressure.
Bobby demands of Harvey,
"Why can't you get things
cooking like 007?"
It's explained to Bobby,
you know,
it takes a long time to train
these Cuban exiles to do
these paramilitary operations.
It's not easy to do.
Bobby, in a huff,
said something like,
"Well, just send them
to Hickory Hill,
and I'll get them trained."
Harvey bursts out,
"What will you teach them,
sir?
Babysitting?"
So there were
indeed tensions.
Harvey, you know,
looking at Bobby Kennedy
saying, "You could do this,
but you can't do this,"
would be very frustrated.
And sometimes it was like,
"We need to take
the gloves off."
And so Bill Harvey kept
meeting with John Roselli.
It was
sort of a side operation
to what Harvey was doing
out of the JMWAVE station.
Johnny Roselli feels
important and more powerful
because the CIA is sending
some of their top spooks
to talk to him.
He's being called
to Washington.
This is straight spy stuff.
This is fantastic.
This is early James Bond.
He could imagine himself
like that,
and he becomes more patriotic.
It became pretty clear
to Roselli
that neither Giancana
nor Trafficante
were going to be welcomed back.
Roselli was the person
that the CIA
most trusted on the mob side.
Sam Giancana might have been
seen as a big liability
for the CIA at that time.
He's in the newspapers a lot,
and he's having trouble
in the Chicago outfit.
Roselli tells Harvey,
"As far
as Giancana is concerned,
"he will not hear anything
from me
"because I hardly ever talk
to him about it anyway,
and he probably would
care less."
Sam Giancana had given up.
He would say,
"What's the benefit of doing
"all this work with the CIA
to try to kill Castro
if the FBI agents are
still a pain in the ass?"
They're not getting
their get-out-of-jail-free card
with the CIA.
That's not the way
it's supposed to work
in the minds of the mobsters.
Roselli is on his own now.
It's become personal
for Johnny.
One of the people
that Johnny relies on
in the Cuban exile community
is Tony Varona.
Tony Varona is one of these
Cuban exile leaders
who had once been
part of the Cuban government,
and he's running
his own operation
trying to kill Castro.
O'Connell was quoted,
"Varona was running
his own little army.
I saw two boats that
allegedly belonged to him."
Varona tells Johnny
he has a new source
named Maceo, who works down
in a restaurant in Havana.
Maceo can get poison pills
into Castro's food.
But Varona says in return,
he wants guns.
$5,000 worth of explosives,
detonators,
20 .30-caliber rifles,
20 .45 handguns,
two radios,
and one boat radar.
Johnny tells Harvey about
all of Varona's demands,
and Harvey, who's got
the Kennedys pressuring him,
says, absolutely yes.
So the question is,
can he trust
what Johnny is up to here?
Unfortunately, Varona's
first group of assassins
wound up in failure.
- They get stopped in Cuba.
The attempt doesn't even
get off the ground.
And in the other
assassination plot,
the person who is
going to poison Castro
is waiting for him
to come to his restaurant.
Castro goes there, and then
Castro orders a milkshake.
So the person who's tasked
with killing him,
the story he relays
back to the CIA is,
"A poison capsule was
frozen in a freezer.
"I had to pull it off,
and it broke.
And I couldn't get it off."
Is that true?
CIA didn't know
if he even tried.
Harvey later testified,
"I was very, very dubious."
Harvey comes
to the conclusion,
no more
of this poison pill shit.
He wants real action.
Let's just throw
everything we got at him.
Like, you know, Robert Duvall
in "Apocalypse Now."
No pussyfooting.
He tells Johnny,
"From now on,
"I want assassins
going into Cuba.
I want to end Castro
with a big bang."
Johnny's down
in the Florida Keys,
working with the Cuban exiles,
training them,
showing them how to use
high-powered rifles.
He's become essentially
like a soldier down there.
Johnny gets so involved
with the exiles,
they increasingly become
friendly with one another.
Obviously, he committed
every crime under the sun.
But still, within that,
Johnny Roselli had
a kind of honor code.
The basic
band-of-brothers code,
literally, it comes
right from Shakespeare.
"He today that sheds
his blood with me."
Whatever you shed with me,
it means that we're going
to be bonded in this way.
He himself was
a bit of an exile.
This is not somebody that was
a citizen of the country.
So this idea of exiles
understanding exiles
I think really resonated
with him.
Back in Washington,
mob-busting Bobby Kennedy is
attorney general
of the United States
and is demanding
that J. Edgar Hoover sic
his full force and power
on the mob.
Obviously, this creates
some angst in the mob.
Johnny learns
that Bobby Kennedy
is going after
Carlos Marcello,
a mobster
and illegal immigrant,
just like Johnny.
Carlos Marcello was
the mafia boss in New Orleans.
He was one of the main targets
of RFK's efforts
against organized crime.
And one of the things
that the FBI
and the federal government
was doing is,
they were deporting them.
So when they found out
that Carlos Marcello,
he was born in Tunisia,
they ended up deporting him.
You definitely saw
Johnny Roselli
starting to get nervous.
Johnny has these
constant tails by the FBI.
Johnny complains to Harvey
that all this
constant surveillance
is preventing him from being
an effective spy.
Roselli testified later
that he complained to Harvey.
"I said that every time I had
to meet anyone connected
"with these operations
that I would have to first
get rid of the tails
of the FBI."
He's kind of pulled between
two different U.S. agencies--
one that wants to put him
in jail
and then one that wants him
to be the hero.
Roselli: "Here I am,
helping the government,
"helping the country,
and that little son of a bitch
is breaking my balls."
For the mobsters,
they weren't being
treated right, they felt.
They felt like they were
maybe even targeted
in an unprecedented way,
even in the movies.
The mafia was upset
with the media
because the Italians were
portrayed as just mobsters.
All these shows portray
these officers
as the good guys.
This is "Your FBI."
So you're selling an image.
For example,
you had Jimmy Stewart playing
an FBI agent
in "The FBI Story."
If and when Whitey passes
the coin, arrest them.
It was just a very
black-and-white delineation
between good guy, bad guy,
white hat, black hat.
And Italians were greaseballs,
dagos, wops, gangsters.
That's how it was.
Shows like "The Untouchables"
pissed off a lot of people
because of how they were
portraying Italians.
This is the way
they pay me back?
After all I've done for them.
"The Untouchables" was an
extraordinarily popular series
on ABC.
It was developed by Desilu,
which was Desi Arnaz's company
along with Lucille Ball.
"The Untouchables,"
the true story
taken from the exciting
autobiography of Eliot Ness,
the man who probably did
most to help
destroy the Al Capone empire.
The Untouchables had
gravel-voiced Robert Stack
playing Eliot Ness,
the tireless pursuer
of the mob in Chicago.
Everything points
to Frank Nitti.
He was Capone's enforcer.
The mob detested the show.
What's that "mafia, mafia"?
There's no such thing
as a mafia.
Don't exist.
They talked
about all Italians
like they would eat red sauce
and shoot each other
and are criminals.
Sweat, huh?
And the mob hated it,
and legitimately,
noncriminal, good citizen
Italian Americans
also hated the show.
We have to look
at that period of time,
how deeply offensive
it would be.
Just look today
at the profound offense
people can take
from a portrayal
in film and television.
And a big campaign goes out,
initiated by the mob,
against the show.
They wanted it to stop.
So they wanted
to actually assassinate
the man who was putting out
the finished product.
We look back at this
and we think,
they were going to assassinate
Desi Arnaz?
Giancana is outraged about
this show "The Untouchables"
and says to Frank Sinatra,
"You tell your fucking
Hollywood friend Desi Arnaz
"that he better do something
about his fucking show,
or I'm going
to have him whacked."
Frank himself was
very protective
of the Italian American image,
and he decided
he was going to go down
and talk to his friend
Desi Arnaz
and see if he could
convince him to take
"The Untouchables" off the air.
Sinatra finds himself
in Palm Springs,
in a restaurant,
and there is Desi Arnaz.
And Frank goes
over to Desi Arnaz
and tells him,
"Listen, you Cuban prick.
You better do something
about this show."
Desi Arnaz laughed at this.
He goes, "Frank,
what am I supposed to do?
Make them Jews?"
Frank lost his temper,
and Desi says,
"What do you want to do,
Frank?
You want to fight?"
Desi Arnaz, in his own way,
is kind of a tough guy.
And then Frank made
Desi aware
that the powers that be got
very agitated by the show
and that they quietly put out
a hit on Desi.
Desi Arnaz backs off.
He agrees to no longer refer
to the gangsters
as Italian Americans.
He makes one of the good guys
in the show, a cop,
into an Italian American.
And he agrees
that he will represent
in a positive way
the Italian American
experience.
The mobsters back in Chicago,
Sam and the others,
decided to call the whole
thing off against Arnaz.
Kennedy suffered
at the very beginning
of Camelot
this tremendous black eye.
Everything that went
into the Bay of Pigs
ended up being dumb.
It didn't work.
He blamed the head of the CIA,
Allen Dulles,
and lost all respect
and all faith and confidence
in the CIA.
He was like, "What are you
knuckleheads doing?"
That was the end
of Allen Dulles's career
at the CIA.
Mr. Dulles, members of the
Central Intelligence Agency,
this ceremony gives us all
an opportunity
to pay tribute to an
outstanding public servant.
Allen Welsh Dulles.
Step forward, Al.
When the CIA headquarters was
opened in Langley, Virginia,
Dulles was brought out
for a opening ceremony,
kind of a ribbon cutting.
As principal
intelligence advisor
to the president
of the United States,
Mr. Dulles has fulfilled the
responsibilities of his office
with unswerving purpose
and high dedication.
Very gamely,
President Kennedy talked
about all the good things
that Dulles had done.
It would have been
very unseemly for him
to have mentioned the Bay
of Pigs, and he did not.
This is to certify that the
president of the United States
of America has awarded
the National Security Medal
to Allen W. Dulles
for outstanding contribution
to the national
intelligence effort.
Had he only retired
after the end of
the Eisenhower administration,
as his wife had
urged him to do,
he would have such a different
image in history.
Instead, I think he's really
remembered largely
as being the author
of the greatest disaster
in CIA history
up to that time.
"Thou hast loosed
an act upon the world,
"and as a stone
thrown into a pool,
so spread the consequences
thou canst not tell how far."
As Allen Dulles walked
out the door of the CIA,
at the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover
had reason to be concerned
about his own job security.
J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby
Kennedy hated one another.
Bobby Kennedy regarded Hoover
as a very, very dangerous man.
By one hearsay account,
the president said,
"We gotta get rid of that
bastard J. Edgar Hoover."
However, the power
of secret information
was a gun that Hoover
always kept loaded.
And there would come a time
when Hoover would use
the information he had
gathered about Sam Giancana
and Judith Campbell
and John Kennedy as a weapon.
And J. Edgar Hoover
told Bobby Kennedy,
"We're aware of your brother,
the president's, indiscretions
with this woman."
He's met her at a hotel.
She's been in the White House.
She is simultaneously having
an affair with Sam Giancana,
the head of the Chicago mob.
This is rather ironic,
since Bobby Kennedy
is going after the mob.
Hoover is going back
to Bobby Kennedy,
going, "You know what?
"You're messing with the mob,
and they're going
to blackmail the government."
This is a matter
of the gravest import
to national security.
Hoover's saying,
"Take care of it and end it."
But it is also letting
Bobby Kennedy know,
"I, J. Edgar Hoover, have
the goods on your brother,
and I'm going to do whatever
the fuck I feel like doing."
He uses the information to
make sure the Kennedys know,
"Don't screw with me, buddy,"
and that's his power.
So you have--
Bobby had a Kennedy habit
of not asking his brother
about his love life.
"So what you up to
last night, Jack?"
No, no, they don't have
those conversations.
So it was very hard for him
to brook the relationship
with Judith Campbell.
Jack Kennedy,
moment of sadness
though he may have
about Judy Campbell,
understands that his brother
is correct,
and he has to stop it
right there.
The president made his last
phone call to Judy Campbell
and broke up with her
and never saw her again.
And they kept J. Edgar Hoover
as the head of the FBI.
Hoover was a master
at the use
of secret information
to wield political influence.
The only way that Hoover would
leave the FBI was feet first.
The rackets have become
too widespread,
too well-organized,
and too rich.
It is my firm belief
that new laws are needed
to give the Federal Bureau
of Investigation
increased jurisdiction
to assist local authorities.
Giancana sees
that Bobby Kennedy is
hotter and hotter
and hotter on his trail.
He is furious.
"I got these fuckers elected,
and the heat is
"not only not off,
the heat is hotter
"than it ever was before.
What the fuck?"
I remember
his getting very upset.
"Those Kennedy people
are terrible.
"Those son of a Bs betrayed me
"after my doing
what I did for them.
And that's the gratitude?"
Sam figures that if Sinatra
can make things happen
with a TV show, maybe he can
also make things
happen with the Kennedys.
Giancana says
to Frank Sinatra,
"Do something about it."
Sinatra said to Giancana,
"Don't worry about it.
"If I can't talk
to the old man,
I'm going to talk
to the president."
But it takes quite a while.
So Giancana calls Johnny
and asks him,
"What's the deal with Sinatra?
Is he going to help us
or not?"
So eventually Johnny goes out
to Sinatra's place
in Palm Springs.
From what Frank described,
it was downtown Palm Springs,
and out where he built
the compound,
it was pretty remote.
It is really
the outskirts of town.
At Sinatra's place,
Sinatra explains to Roselli
what happened
with the Kennedys.
Apparently, Sinatra pulled out
a piece of paper
to Bobby Kennedy,
and on the piece of paper
was Sam Giancana's name.
Sinatra told Roselli
that he said to Bobby,
"This is a friend of mine.
I want you
to treat him nicely,"
hinting that the mob had helped
the Kennedys get elected
and that the Kennedys should
return the favor.
Bobby says, "No way."
At least this is the story
that Roselli is being told.
Sinatra is so terrified
at this moment,
not only because he is
the bearer of bad news,
but, in fact, Sinatra doesn't
even go to the Kennedys.
Sinatra pretends he went,
and he says to Johnny,
"I'm sorry.
There's nothing I can do."
The folklore ended up being
that Sinatra had betrayed
the mafia by not being
able to deliver
on things that they needed.
And they had really done
an awful lot for him
and, through him,
done an awful lot for Kennedy.
And so they were betrayed.
Giancana's got a lot
of issues with Sinatra.
Sinatra has pissed him off.
One of the mobsters says,
"Why don't we just whack him?"
And at this moment,
Giancana is
strongly considering putting
a hit on Frank Sinatra.
Johnny is getting
more and more involved
in the effort to kill Castro.
He puts together
death squads for Harvey.
One of them goes out
in a boat,
and they eventually land
in Cuba.
There's a celebration
going on in Havana
with a Soviet cosmonaut.
Castro's supposed to come out
to give a speech.
And at just the right moment,
the assassins plan
to fire a bazooka into
the crowd and kill Castro.
They aim the bazookas.
But they don't work.
They've been dampened
in the boat.
Somehow,
Castro's G2 squads find out
about these
would-be assassins.
They arrest these guys,
and they're never
heard from again.
Regardless of what you think
about the wisdom of the plots
against him, it's remarkable
that Fidel Castro survived
so many assassination attempts.
Castro was asked once if
he had any interest in sports,
and he said yes.
"My favorite sport is
avoiding assassination."
Free press for everybody.
Free ideas,
free religion belief,
and all those right--
those human rights
that we could establish.
After these
assassination attempts,
Castro had a reason to have
a closer connection
with the Soviet Union,
with Moscow.
They would help him defend
himself and his own regime.
In these weeks,
the flirtation with Moscow
has become a honeymoon.
The regime was not
explicitly communist
when Fidel took power.
The decision to turn
towards the Soviets
had to do with the breakdown
in relations with the U.S.
Castro has now
openly declared his country
a socialist state,
the term Russia applies
to itself and its allies.
It was the only country
that freely chose
to join the Soviet empire.
They never had a country
that said,
"We want to be part of you,"
because everybody else had
been overrun by the Red Army.
The Russians changed
the entire equation in Cuba.
It's like a corporate takeover
of a small mom-and-pop shop.
Now you have Russian
intelligence and Russia
advising Cuba,
so they're kind of stepping up
their spy game.
He had an intelligence
service that effectively
had completely penetrated
the anti-Castro operations
of the CIA.
Harvey is frustrated
by all these failed attempts,
and he realizes
there may be informers
or double agents in Florida.
William Harvey's really
hearing a lot of rumors
that Santo Trafficante
is a double agent.
Back in '59,
when Castro takes over,
Santo Trafficante
decided to stay.
And eventually he's arrested.
At that time,
Castro was also executing
a lot of political prisoners.
So he starts working
on getting himself released.
Santo Trafficante gets out
after four months.
So the fact that Santo got out
and was able to come back
to the U.S.,
there was always
a lingering question.
Did he have something
that he owed
back to the Castro regime?
It just didn't make sense
to Harvey.
He smelt a rat
with Trafficante.
So he tells Johnny,
"You shouldn't say anything
about what's going on,"
and Johnny agrees.
But whether or not
Roselli keeps that promise
of cutting Trafficante out,
it's not going to happen.
Johnny is in
a no-win situation.
Trafficante is
a fellow mafioso.
If he cuts Trafficante out
and Trafficante finds out,
Johnny's going to be
a dead man.
But also, Johnny still has
that loyalty to Trafficante.
He just has trouble believing
that his friend could
betray him.
At that time, Sam Giancana
still was thinking,
"Maybe we should whack
Frank Sinatra."
One night, Giancana is
in bed with Phyllis McGuire.
They are making love to the
sound of Sinatra on record.
So many babies were produced
to the sound of Sinatra.
There's quotes
of Giancana saying,
"It's the most romantic voice
in the world,"
and he truly was
a sucker for it.
Giancana says,
"It's such a beautiful voice.
How could I kill that voice?"
And he says, "I can't have
this motherfucker tapped."
The hit is never called in.
Frank lives.
Sam will find another way
to make Frank pay.
While the assassination
plots continue to go forward,
there was a big question
about how to get
the captive Bay of Pigs
prisoners back from Castro.
Prisoners of war.
To Cuban exiles, these men are
patriots, heroes.
To the defenders,
they were victims,
dupes of the United States
government.
Kennedy realized that if
these 1,100 prisoners were
killed by a firing squad,
the publicity would be
so awful for him.
It would be the end
of his presidency.
So he had to do something.
Kennedy reached out
to a master negotiator,
a lawyer named James Donovan,
who you may know by the movie
"The Bridge of Spies,"
where Donovan was played
by Tom Hanks.
James Donovan,
a New York lawyer,
had been tasked by Robert
Kennedy and John Kennedy
to get the Bay of Pigs
prisoners freed.
These were
tough negotiations,
and Castro had
a tremendous chip to play.
It was pretty clear
that these prisoners
could be tortured or murdered.
Our indignation about
the actions of Castro
should not blind us
to the fact
that there are 1,214
human beings
who may face
very dire consequences
if they are not released.
During the negotiations,
Roselli is in a very different
frame of mind.
Roselli is now willing
to get personally involved,
get on these boats,
and go to Cuba
and try to kill Castro.
This time, he didn't just
direct it from a desk.
He got into it.
As Harvey is watching
what Johnny's doing,
Harvey's respect
for Johnny grows.
He was suspicious at first,
but now he realizes
Johnny really is a patriot.
Roselli then
ends up in a boat
with some of these exiles.
He's in one boat.
Other Cuban exiles
are in other boats.
Dark of night,
going across a long stretch
from the Keys to Cuba.
The risks for Johnny are high.
He could be caught and killed,
just like Bobby Fuller.
There was a bravery
to Johnny Roselli.
"I've lived before.
I have had nine lives."
You think that somehow
you're going to be the one
to pull it out.
They come very close
to the coast of Cuba.
Castro's forces are
waiting for them.
The boat was strafed
with automatic gunfire.
The boat that Johnny's in
starts taking on water.
He's gotta evacuate.
One of the other boats
swings by.
And somehow
he manages to escape.
Roselli escaped
with his life, of course,
but, again and again, with
these efforts to get Castro,
he seemed to be
always one step ahead.
Castro knew it was coming.
Johnny was now wondering,
was it true
that Trafficante could be
a double agent?
I think with all these raids
and the sabotage stuff,
the people who were running
Operation Mongoose,
including Harvey,
were sometimes talking
through their hat,
saying, "We can do this,
this is going to work,
we can do that,"
when really some of these
were mission impossible.
And what does it do?
It perhaps pushes Castro
more towards the Soviet Union,
and we end up with this crisis
that brings the world
close to nuclear conflict.
The Cuban crisis.
Bases are being built in Cuba
for rockets and missiles,
making Cuba a threat to
the whole Western Hemisphere.
We are asking tonight
that an emergency meeting
of the Security Council
be convoked
to take action
against this latest
Soviet threat to world peace.
People really thought
this could be a nuclear war.
This literally could be it.
That's what it felt like during
the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is JFK's
worst nightmare.