01x04 - The Action

[bunniefuu]

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 c*ptive,

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 g*n 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 b*stards

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 a*s 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 k*ll Castro

if the FBI agents are

still a pain in the a*s?"

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 k*ll 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 g*ns.

$5,000 worth of expl*sives,

detonators,

20 .30-caliber r*fles,

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 k*lling 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 sh*t.

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 r*fles.

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 ill*gal 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 b*tch

is breaking my ba*ls."

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 sh**t 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 f*cking

Hollywood friend Desi Arnaz

"that he better do something

about his f*cking 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

b*stard J. Edgar Hoover."

However, the power

of secret information

was a g*n 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 f*ck 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 f*ck elected,

and the heat is

"not only not off,

the heat is hotter

"than it ever was before.

What the f*ck?"

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 k*ll 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 k*ll 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 k*ll that voice?"

And he says, "I can't have

this m*therf*cker 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 c*ptive Bay of Pigs

prisoners back from Castro.

Prisoners of w*r.

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

k*lled 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 m*rder*d.

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 k*ll 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 k*lled,

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 g*nf*re.

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 w*r.

This literally could be it.

That's what it felt like during

the Cuban m*ssile Crisis.

This is JFK's

worst nightmare.