Joe Rogan - Cuban Connection to JFK Assassination

And they got imprisoned and they had a lot of resentment towards Kennedy. I mean I go into the book a little bit about the Kennedy assassination and the belief that a handful of those Cubans may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination along with the Italians with the mob because they were working hand in hand with the CIA. Yeah that was one of the leading conspiracies outside of the CIA killing him and even the CIA killing him was a part of the Bay of Pigs conspiracy and also the idea that he wanted to disband the CIA. There was a really interesting article recently that was dismissing almost every single conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination. They said accept the CIA one. There's legitimate possibilities that the CIA... Well you can bet your ass that if the CIA was involved and Cubans were involved. Now let me ask you something. In the book you speak about Fidel's mistress. Yeah. That he got disenchanted with her at this particular one. Marita. She had gone to New Orleans or to Dallas. Marita Lauren. This is very interesting. Notorious figures. She had a child with him and had an abortion and didn't have the child. She got pregnant with Fidel. In fact Castro admitted as much. She got pregnant with Castro. She had an abortion and then the CIA used her to try to assassinate Castro. She was supposed to slip him a pill and she put it in her face cream and the pill dissolved in her face cream and that was the pill she was going to try to slip to Castro. Her case agent was a guy named Frank Sturgis who wound up being one of the Watergate burglars. See the thing about Bay of Pigs and the Cubans, the Bay of Pigs invasion is the key to understanding the whole latter part of the 20th century politics in the United States, the Cold War, because the alliance between the CIA and the Cubans rears its head constantly throughout the latter part of the 20th century. The Watergate burglary. Five out of seven of the burglars were Cubans, Bay of Pigs veterans. They had been recruited by a guy named E. Howard Hunt, CIA agent who was one of the orchestrators of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Was also one of the people that on his deathbed said that he was involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Yes. So the CIA would come to these Cuban exiles, the militant exiles and they'd say, go do this operation. Go do this burglary at the Watergate and then we go get Fidel. Go do this assassination and then we go get Fidel and the Cubans were always ready and willing. Because it was all leading back to getting Fidel. It was all leading back to getting Fidel. Did you ever see the images of what they said was E. Howard Hunt? It was one of the people that was arrested. There was a series of, there was a bunch of guys that were arrested that were on trains. They were calling them hobos, but they were all very well dressed that were near where the grassy knoll was. The men on the grassy knoll, yeah. Oh, there's lots of rumors about that, that E. Howard Hunt was one of those men. There was even a reference that Jose Miguel Battle was one of those men, but that couldn't have been the case because he was in the army at the time, the US army. No, so it's like a subterranean narrative that runs through the latter part of the 20th century, the CIA and right wing elements in American politics, using the Cuban Americans to do all kinds of dirty covert deeds. And we're talking about terrorist activity, assassination of an ambassador from Chile right in Washington, DC blew up his car because he was sympathetic to Castro. A bomb planted on a Cuban jetliner flying from Panama City to Atlanta, 73 people killed, innocent people, including the fencing team from Cuba, young people. A dirty war, a dirty war was waged by the anti-Castro underground in combination, in partnership with the CIA. And this, we know about it now because a lot of it has been declassified and it's come out. We didn't know about it at the time it was taking place. Why did they blow up the plane? It's just an act of terrorism against Cuba to show them that it could be done, to instill fear and paranoia in the Cuban. The concept was to destabilize the Cuban government so they'd be vulnerable and then you could take them over. So any act against Cuba, I mean, asking why blowing up the plane is asking like why fly planes into the World Trade Center. Right. You know, it was just a destructive act. It's pretty amazing how resilient Castro was. I mean, unbelievable. The guys 90 miles away from Miami and just ran shit through the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s into the 2000s. They say there was something like 632 known plots over the course of four or five decades to kill Castro. That's incredible. 632. That's incredible. A movie 101 Ways to Kill Fidel. Yeah. And he went to, he got on a train in New York and they're like, are you fucking crazy? And they checked to see the other bulletproof vest on. He's like, no, he took the train to the UN. Wow. Like he's fucking nuts. Yeah. He was fucking nuts. So what makes this gangster story of the corporation so interesting and different is this political context, the framework that all this shit was taking place against the backdrop of this desire to kill Castro and take back, take back the homeland. And anyone who was involved in that was seen as a hero within the community. Joey can tell you about that. Union City, New Jersey and Miami were the hotbeds of the anti Castro movement. There were, there was an organization in Union City called Omega Seven. There was one in Miami called Alpha 66. These were terror organizations, secret organizations that existed to plant bombs. They would plant bombs at embassies in the United, you know, in New York City. They would put, they would put bombs at Lincoln Center when, when a, when an orchestra from Cuba was making an appearance. They were trying to shut down any relationship between the US and Cuba and governments that were sympathetic to Cuba. They would, they would do actions against them. And this went on for like 40 years, man. That's unbelievable. You couldn't mention Fidel in the 70s in Union City. Like a joke. Like it's not a joke. Don't even, don't even, don't even bring them up, dog. Cause you will get smacked. Now, was there any pro Fidel support amongst Cubans? There was and bad things would happen to them. In the United States. Yeah. In Cuba though. What about in Cuba? Pro Castro in Cuba? Yeah. Oh yeah, sure. I mean. Was it real or was it out of fear? No, that's real. It's real. I mean, I've been there numerous times. You know, the Cuban people made a choice. And the revolution, I believe, would have happened with or without Fidel Castro. The guy who was in power, Batista, had taken over the government in the coup d'etat. He wasn't elected. So he was kind of a fraudulent president. And there was, and ever since he got in, people knew he was a fraudulent president and there was attempts to try to ouster him. And that's why he was such a dictator. He knew they wanted to ouster him. So he used the military to repress any kind of movement against him. And it was ugly and the people rose up against it. That's what happened. It wasn't. So in my belief, the revolution in Cuba happened for a very legitimate reason. After it happened in power, it was revealed that Castro and Che Guevara were communists. Castro was very cagey about that during the revolution. They never talked about Marxism and being communist or any of that. And in fact, Fidel came to Union City, came to the United States to raise money for the revolution while it was going on. I've got to rest in Union City. My friend's mom, the Ascolis, she still remembers taking the bus in the morning in Union City and Fidel's talking to her the way I'm talking to you. How you doing, Susan? What's going on? Wow. He got in a ballroom argument in Union City and he got arrested. Over what? Probably politics. I'm sure it was a political discussion. So then the revolution happened and you know, Cuba becomes a repressive communist, Stalinist dictatorship. But a lot of Cubans, the way they saw it is, that was a choice they made to go with Fidel. He did have, I think, the popularity of the people, following of the people. Some people are quite proud of Castro standing up to the United States. Cubans are very proud people and they take a lot of pride in the fact that even though there's so much hardship there, that it's a choice they made to go in this direction. At least they have their self-pride, which is more that can be said in some ways about Puerto Rico and Jamaica and Dominican Republic, all these other countries in that region that are just as poor as Cuba. So he has his supporters. He always had his support. Obviously, he also had his detractors, even within Cuba. Most of those people are the ones who got on rafts and tried to leave the island at great risk to themselves to do anything to get out of there because they realized Fidel was so popular from within the country you were never going to be able to take him down. So they made the decision to go out in the ocean and try to brave the risks of either swimming or sailing across the Florida Straits.