November 10, 2020 • 48 mins
The Bay of Pigs is one of the blackest of eyes on American foreign policy. Learn all about this dark spot of American history today.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
and Jerry's over there somewhere and the Stuff you Should Know,
and it's about this recording session is off to his
(00:23):
auspicious to start as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Chuck, am,
I right, yeah, nice little UH tie in there, Thank
you very much. It's it's what I'm paid to do.
I think so didn't know what they pay us for
to be witty and incisive? I think so. I think
(00:43):
so too, so, Chuck, I know, Um, to my astonishment
that you were not alive during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
You came along a good decade after that, from what
I understand, in full of years, I didn't want anything
to do with it now, and I can under stand why,
because it was about as big a stinker as far
(01:04):
as foreign policy and military intervention goes UM. Certainly, the
US has made bigger blunders. A lot more people died
um through some of our UH misadventures abroad, but this
one is perennially the one that's pointed to is like
this is really a case study and how terribly wrong
(01:26):
things can go and how decisions were made basically every
level and at every stage. That that made sure that
that the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was the United
States supporting uh an invasion of Cuba by Cuban dissidents UM,
that that it's about as bad as it can go.
That that was like the perfect example of that. Yeah,
(01:48):
it almost makes you think that if there was a
God who cared about American politics, that that God was saying,
don't invade Cuba, over and over again, don't invade Cuba.
And you know I can. I'm pressing all the buttons here.
Everything's going wrong, warning, warning, don't do it right? Or
(02:09):
God really loves Fidel. Well maybe so, because that was
the whole point, the whole reason that America supported this
UM covert action. Really it went a lot further than
support like drummed up a covert action UM led by
the CIA. The military was secretly involved, it was illegal internationally,
(02:33):
But the whole reason was to get rid of Castro
because UM on New Year's Day of what ninety nine,
Fidel Castro took control of Cuba from then existing president
Fulgencio Batista and Batista Chuck I wrote up on this guy.
(02:54):
He was a bad dude. He was a dictator. He
was actually he was the president of Cuba twice. The
first time he was corrupt, but the country is still
prospered under him, and he was he still looked out
for people. The second time, after an eight year period abroad,
when he came back, he was just bad news. But
as far as America was concerned, Uh, they were like, well,
(03:16):
he he lets American companies own most of like the
stuff in Cuba, so we're okay with them. When Fidel
came along, he said, nuts to that, we're getting the
American involvement out of Cuba and Cuba is going to
take care of Cuba from now on. And America said,
I'm not sure how we feel about that. Yeah. And
you know, we had our chance to be buddies with
Castro uh at the beginning, Like he came to the
(03:39):
United States and toured America and we we gave him
the the Heisman and he was huh, gave him the heisman,
the Heisman trophy. It's an expression, Oh, I've never heard
that before. You ever seen the hero got you? Yeah? Yeah, sure, sure, No,
(04:02):
I thought you were still like like in like describing
his grand tour and how great it was. I got you.
And then we gave him an honorary Heisman Trophy award.
That's that's where my mind weird, like that's what they
paid me for. Now. It's an expression. Yeah, it might
predate you if I feel like it was an expression
like in the nineties. No, I totally get what you meant.
(04:25):
It was the context that through me. Okay, well we
gave him the Heisman, and uh, he wanted buddy, And
that's when Kruschef came along and he was like, well, look,
Americans aren't gonna be my buddy. I'll be a friend
with you. And that's kind when all got started. We
had our shot. Yeah. Supposedly, though, the Bay of Pigs
invasion itself was one of the things that really drove
(04:46):
Castro into the arms of Kruscheff. So the whole idea
was to get rid of Castro because we were afraid
he was going to go toward Kruscheff and give the
Communists a foothold in the Western hemisphere, basically in our backyard.
Um and bye bye. Carrying out this bay of pigs invasion.
We made sure that that happened. It's one of the
great ironies of this whole thing. Yeah, because Castro wasn't
(05:09):
looking to be a puppet of the Soviets. That was
not on his docket. Um, and the Soviets really needed him.
I think at the time they they didn't have I mean,
I think they had less than five I C b ms.
I don't think they had anything that could even get
to the United States at that point. An I c
B M is the worst kind of BM. Uh. Actually,
(05:34):
I think the fiery HOTBEATM so the worst kind. Yeah,
you're right about that, although it's anyone had an ICBM
because you'd probably be in big trouble. Maybe. But but
Russia needed the Soviet Union needed Cuba way more than
Cuba needed them at the onset. Wow, that's really interesting.
I had no idea about that, because I know that
(05:55):
America was terrified of communism in the Soviet Union in particular,
but also you know, um, they didn't consider China to
be slouch is really as far as the spread of
communism goes. But the Soviet Union seemed really interested in
spreading Soviet style communism throughout the world, and at the
time colonialism was really kind of um the I guess
(06:18):
the European colonial powers were losing their grip on places
in Southeast Asia and Africa, and so there were all
these countries, um, including ones in Latin America that were
kind of I don't want to say up for grabs,
because I don't mean to undermine, you know, the the
agency of the people who lived and ran these countries,
but they were, you know, these were the these were
becoming the two superpowers in the world, so you you
(06:41):
could fall under their influence that at the very least economically,
if not politically. UM. And so the US was really
worried about the spread of communism. And one of the
things that Dwight Eisenhower IKE, who was president in the
late fifties, warned about was the domino effect where once
you know, you had one country turn communists, it would
spread to another neighboring country, and then another and another,
(07:03):
and all of a sudden, half of Africa's communists. So
we need to be worried about this kind of thing.
So America was really starting to enter like the fear
of that Cold War panic in about the late fifties
early sixties. Yeah. And here's the thing too, When I
say that Russia didn't have capabilities to strike from where
they were, I'm not sure if we knew that. I'm
(07:25):
sure there are historians that that know that answer, but
I'm not sure if America knew that. So as I
think that they just you couldn't take any chances. Basically
you had to get um Cuba off the map for
the Soviet Union and not like in like sink the island,
but you know what I mean. No, and at the
very least you could leave the island in tech leave
(07:46):
the island. There's a lot, like a lot of valuable industries,
and like the mob was running casinos down there right
before Castros get rid of Castro seemed to be the
whole thing. Castro and Sha Gavar, Right. So this occurred
to the eyes and our administration CIA, who hatched a
plan that had the ominously c I a E. Title
(08:08):
of a program of covert action against the Castro regime.
And they presented this thing, I believe in them in
like nineteen sixty one, the very beginning of nineteen sixty one, um,
and they went to Eisenhower and they said, look, this
guy really, we all know that he has to go.
But here's what we think is the best way to
(08:29):
do this. We need to get rid of Castro, but
we need to do it in such a way that
it appears that the Cuban people have are are dissatisfied
with his rule and they've turned against him. We need
to keep our hands off of it. And and for
one reason, because I mean that just kind of seems
like a lot more legitimate of revolution, doesn't it. Like
(08:51):
the Cubans rose up against Castro, so they really didn't
want Castro around, so nobody should swoop in to help Castro.
But then, secondly, the US is not allowed to dabble
in other countries affairs. It's illegal internationally to invade a
sovereign country unprovoked or without reason. And so this was
not a good It wouldn't have been a good look
(09:12):
for the US to be caught doing this. So they
figured the best way to do it would be to
train a bunch of Cuban dissidents and have them just
do it. Yeah, and not only that, they wanted to
create a new government, they wanted to um disperse propaganda
anti Castro propaganda. I mean, it was basically, we want
to topple a regime and install a new government of
(09:34):
our choosing. Uh, and this is completely illegal. And Eisenhower said, sure,
go ahead. Um, this sounds good to me because what
we can't risk is them buddying up too much with
Kruchef and have nuclear weapons. All of a sudden parked
right off our coast, just right. So they went to Miami.
(09:55):
Which where else would you go to recute recruit Cuban defectors.
Perfect place because they were defecting and there were a
lot of unhappy Cubans that didn't like Castro that uh,
that left, and and they were they were there just
sort of waiting to be called upon and very willing
to be called upon by the CIA, as it turns out. Yeah,
(10:16):
and apparently when they started like amassing this group of
of recruits, they first started training them in the Everglades
in Florida, and they learned things like cryptography and demolitions
and guerrilla warfare and all that stuff. But um, it
was I guess an open secret or maybe common knowledge
is a better way to put it among Cuban dissidents
(10:38):
in Florida that the CIA was was training a group
down there with the CIA, Bless their hearts, they tried
to at least um make it seem like they weren't
from the CIA, which is a very CIA type thing
to do. So the agents, the CIA agents, said that
they were from a very powerful company that was bent
on on removing Communism from the world, and um, yes, sure.
(11:04):
But then one of the Cuban dissidents with CEI agents
says what And the c I agent said what and
the cat was out of the back. Yeah, and these
were not um, you know, they had to train these
guys up. There were there were a bunch of students. Obviously,
if you think about dissidents leaving Cuba, you can have
a lot of student involvement. But there were also just professionals.
(11:24):
There were doctors and lawyers and farmers. Um. There were
people that were had no money. There were people that
had quite a bit of money for Cuba, and they
all didn't like Castro though, but none of them, almost
none of them had any kind of prior training and
they were I mean, why this hasn't been made into
a movie yet is just flabbergasting to me, because this
(11:46):
has all the elements of a great movie. Yeah, especially
if you do it from the view of the dissidents
who were trained into a paramilitary group. I think that
would happen to be your protagonists. Yeah, because it's been
touched on before, like it was in The Good Shepherd,
that that Matt Damon movie about the origin of the
cia UM they touched on. You know, it's been a
(12:08):
I believe it's been referenced at least. But yeah, you're right,
there's no blockbuster movie. You know, we're like the Rock
and like Cuban guys who are like you know, they
also form a bromance too. That that that um that
really kind of is a subplot to the whole thing.
Oh yeah, that's that's how they ruin it, isn't it
(12:30):
with the romances. Just that they're by casting the Rock
and vind Everything he just said sounded awful and exactly
how it would probably happen. I think Vin Diesel actually
released a record recently which I say props to him. Man,
he's multifaceted. He's a double threat. Is the name of
his one man band, Diesel Fuel. Because if not, it
(12:53):
should be. It's not a bad one. You want to
take a break. Uh yeah, I think says it's a
good great time for a break. Thanks man, I thought
you'd say that. So we're gonna take a break everybody,
in case you hadn't heard, and we'll be right back George.
(13:28):
So uh, Dave russ helped us out with this one,
chuck um and he uh said, we need to be
sure to give a shout out to Jim Rasenberger, who's
a author of the book The Brilliant Disaster JFK. Castro
in America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs, which
(13:49):
is um. I've seen his work referred to multiple places,
so he wrote a pretty good book about it, and
I guess Dave Russ um learned a lot from him.
So thanks a lot, Mr Razenberger. But um, at where
we left off was there was a group of Cuban dissidents.
I think they reached uh the ranks of like four
(14:11):
um before they stopped recruiting that were being trained in
the Everglades. But they said, hey, we found this way
better camp in Guatemala. Let's move everybody there to the
to the rainforest because it's a little more like Cuba's
um climate. And uh and we kind of owned Guatemala
right well, Guatemala was at the very least very much
(14:33):
friendly to American interests by this time, because we had
already overthrown uh the I think the ellendeen A government,
if I'm not mistaken. Um, like, we had just done
that and installed like a pro American regime. So yeah,
this would have been a perfect place to have a
secret CIA training camp for Cubans to train to invade Cuba.
(14:55):
That's right, thanks to bananas reference to our past epio
seut on pr. That was such a good one. I
think that's my all time favorite, live at all time favor.
Huh m hmm. I don't know. I'd have to. I
have to look at the list and really give it thought.
It's that one's up there. I also love the the
(15:16):
Kellogg brothers. Those are probably my top two. That was
a good one too, for sure. Why we have to pick,
Let's just say, yeah, it's so weird and foreign. Remember
when we would go in the room with fifteen hundred
other people and uh, I'll hug each other. I just
broke out in like a cold sweat man at the
idea of that. It's like, it's funny when you watch
(15:37):
TV shows and they were filmed you know, prior to
the pandemic, You're like, you're standing too close together. Somebody
put on a mask. Yeah, you're making me nervous. You
have anxiety dreams too, about proximity. Uh no, I have
anxiety dreams about politics. See. I have a lot of
anxiety dreams lately. I mean not lately, for the past
nine months, every like once a week or so about somebody,
(16:00):
you know, being all up in my grill and I'm like,
what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Get
away from me? Stand back, sir, Which is ironic, because
I love being close to people physically, I know. I
think that's probably why you have anxiety, is because there's
a tension there, like if you were naturally like stay
over there. I gotta tell you that that part of
(16:21):
the pandemic has been kind of easy for me. Some
standoffice to begin with, you know, Oh goodness, so chuck Um.
One of the things that I thought was kind of
cool about this this group of people, Um, this group
of Cuban dissidents who were trained into a paramilitary group.
The CIA had the foresight to give them serial numbers
starting at number pretty funny, so that if anyone of
(16:43):
them were caught. They could say, well, my serial number,
and they'd be like, oh my god, there's people ahead
of them, how and how who knows how many after them?
When in fact, again it was in fact, I think
their patch said and that had a little air pointing
to it, and then right beside that it said, you see,
(17:04):
yeah it was. It was very elaborate patch. It was
very colorful too, and as a matter of fact, it
stood out a little too much. And then underneath it
said and there's more to come, get it right. What
was under that under that was it's totally not a
made up number. And then below that there was an
arrow that went all the way to the top. Start
(17:27):
over again. So they were actually called Brigade twenty five
oh six, and they named themselves after the serial number
of one of their fallen comrades who died in training
camp in Guatemala. He slipped on a slippery trail during
an exercise and fell into a ravine. And what was
his name? His name was Carlos Rafael Santana. Carlos Santana
(17:51):
slipped on a banana peel. Oh that Rafael really threw
me off, but yeah, appeal, no it didn't. But they said,
this is very said, so we're going to name our
brigade after him, and they did. So that's what they've
always been known by from that moment on this invasion
force of Cuban dissidents as they were known as Brigade
(18:12):
twenty five oh six. And one of the really amazing
things about Brigade six is, despite being, like you said,
you know, a group of doctors and lawyers and farmers
and fishermen and students and coming from all walks of
life and socio economic status, they actually were trained into
(18:32):
a pretty decent paramilitary group. They fought bravely, they fought
really well, they held their own as we'll see, and
they were doomed from the start, not really by any
any of their own fault, which must have been incredibly
frustrating for them. Yeah, I imagine. So, I mean, they um,
(18:53):
like I said, they weren't too hard to recruit, like,
they were eager to do this job, and they really
wanted to get Castro out of there. And you you
might think when a new president comes in that things
might change, they might kind of revisit this plan. I
think maybe this's not the best idea. I'm pretty excited
because I get to do my Kennedy. So I'm glad
(19:13):
I got out of there. I have no idea what
he sounded like. Uh, he sounded like this problem. But
Kennedy one in sixty um in no small part due
to the fact that he was He touted being very
tough on communism and on Cuba, and so I said,
(19:35):
let's get him in here. Yeah he was. He came
off as more hawkish about communism in Cuba than Nixon did,
which is funny against Nixon, and Nixon said that he
basically lost because Kennedy seemed like he would do more
about Cuba. And that's kind of, um, one of history's
(19:56):
great ironies because Nixon, because Kennedy used Nixon and UM
and Ike of being too soft on Cuba, of letting
this castro fella take power and letting him a mass
power and not doing anything about it. And Nixon had
to sit there and take it because he had been
sworn to secrecy about this plot to train Cuban dissidents
(20:16):
and in vague Cuba, and he couldn't he couldn't be like, actually,
that's not true. We've got this really great plan. Let
me tell you. Viewing audience all about it, so he
had to he had to defend this position of being
soft on Cuba even though he knew they weren't. Well,
Kennedy got to just run circles around him because Kennedy
(20:37):
was an unproven guy who seemed more hawkish on Cuba,
and some people point to that is how Kennedy was.
So when Kennedy when he came in, yeah, I had
no idea about about that. When he came in, he
really wanted to prove himself in that respect. And the
CIA said, are you sitting down, because we'd like to
drop this opportunity into your lap. And they let him
in on this plan to um in Vague, Cuba with
(21:00):
with Brigade six, and Kennedy said, are um great. Yeah,
They said here's our plan. Uh, Mr New President and
he said the area you can stop calling me that,
Mr President will suffice. And they said, we're gonna take
(21:22):
seven and fifty of these men and we are going
to do a D Day style invasion at dawn on
the beach head in the Bay of Pigs, named so
because well that's the name of it. It's Bahia de
Concinos in Spanish. It's on the southern side of Cuba,
and he said it sounds delicious, And they said, we're
(21:45):
gonna land on that beach head. We're not gonna we're
just gonna route down there and not take Havana or anything.
Because here's what's gonna happen, Mr. President. They're gonna get
news of this in Cuba and all these anti Castro
Cubans there are gonna know that this is their their moment,
and they've got some army dudes that are involved. They
(22:06):
got some military personnel that are anti Castro, and they're
gonna say, all right, now is our time. We're gonna
rise up to overthrow Castro. And then that's when our
seven and fifty men, who are by the way, totally
disguised as Cuban dissidents, like we're gonna paint planes like
American planes, like they're from Cuba and stuff like that,
(22:27):
like no one's ever gonna know. It's the perfect plane. Yeah,
we've printed we've printed up t shirts for him to say,
down with Castro, with Castro. And he said, that's when
they're gonna join the fight and join this general revolt
and might take a couple of weeks. Bing bang boom,
easy peasy, and Kennedy said, all right, so that there
(22:47):
was a key to success in there. That the whole
thing hinged on and from what I can tell, kind
of unwarranted lee. But that was the idea that when
these dissidents attacked Cuba and the word got out that
that Cuba was being attacked, that the Cuban people would
be like to heck with Castro, get him, and would
(23:09):
it would ignite this revolt? And from what I saw,
this was based on a hunch. It wasn't based on
intel or anything. It was based on a hunch or
even a hope you could possibly say, which that alone
is a sign that you may be working on a
really bad plan, because anything short of sparking a revolution
(23:30):
internally in Cuba means that this is going to fail.
Like Cuba small, but Castro had a really extensive army,
tens and tens and tens of thousands of professional soldiers,
plus another I think a hundred thousand UM militia members
like what we would probably call like the National Guard
or reservists here UM. So even if there were five
(23:54):
thousand people or however many, they made it seem like
they were probably going to be overwhelmed if if Cuba
didn't rise up, and they had no reason to believe
that Cuba would rise up, they were just hoping. So
that's that's that's that's strike one. Yeah, it's a big
time intelligence failure. Another key to this, and you're gonna
just put a pin in this one, listener, is air strikes.
(24:18):
They were like, listen, here, we got these dudes on
the beach. They're gonna be rooted down and they are
gonna be bombed to heck in back by Castro's air force,
which is small, but he's still got these planes. And
he said, so we got to take out that air
force or else their toast like they're sitting ducks out there.
We got to take out the air force. We've got
(24:39):
to take out the air force, which is and I mean,
it wasn't like out of the question. Like Castro had
a big, a big army of ground troops, but his
air force was fairly paltry, pretty small, and it was
entirely within the realm of possibility to strike um all
of his planes. And if they did do that, that
(25:00):
would give this amphibious landing force a real fighting chance
to make their way inland. UM and if this revolution sparked,
then then there you have it. So um that that
that was definitely doable. Um. The problem is Kennedy when
he came in, he was really ambitious about getting rid
(25:21):
of communism and making a name for himself, is tough
on communism and you know, delivering on what he had
campaigned on. But at the same time, he was also
really aware of international image political image of the United States,
and so he said, I'm really worried that this is
going to be like like Chuck said, he knew who
(25:44):
you were, Chuck, Um that that this is gonna be
too being bang boom, Like there's gonna be a lot
of blowing things up, and it's gonna be obvious that
the United States is involved in this, and we just
can't have that. So let's go smaller for one. And also,
this place where we're going to land, Um, it's a
(26:05):
little too close to Trinidad, which is a pretty pretty
populous town in Cuba. This seems a little hostile and aggressive.
Let's move it to the middle of nowhere, this place
called the Bay of Pigs um and and start there.
And that was a really big, big issue for the
plan because one of the reasons they chose that landing
site near the city of Trinidad in Cuba is because
(26:27):
it was near the mountains and so if the guerrillas
um amphibious landing failed and it was broken up, they
could flee to the mountains and then regroup and start
launching a guerrilla war from the mountains. Instead, this place
that the Bay of Pigs was nowhere near anywhere. It
was near swamp land, and I think there was sixty
miles of swamp between the Bay of Pigs and the mountains,
(26:49):
so there was no melting into the mountains to escape.
It was all or nothing when they moved that landing site.
And that was another big thing that Kennedy did, along
with saying make it smaller. It could seem more like
Cuban dissidents are the ones who are really behind us. Yeah.
And the third thing he did was said, I don't
like this dawn invasion thing. He's like, this has got
to happen under the cover of night. We got to
(27:11):
be out of there by dawn. We can't have any
inkling that we're involved in any way. And I know
that paint job on these planes is is pretty good,
but it looks a lot better at night, guys, So
let's go in there at night. And this was this
is like a month out, and the CIA was like, dude,
we had a plan here, and you're telling us to
(27:33):
make it smaller, put it in a different place, to
change our time of invasion. And this is a big deal, Like,
this is not how things work. You can't just change
everything a month out and expect it to go down
the way you wanted to. And this was this was
everybody's chance to back out entirely, Like this was the
moment where somebody could have and should have stood up
(27:57):
and said, you know what, this has got disaster and
all over it. Now, we can't, we can't do this.
We need to not just we just need to back
out and not go through with it at all. And
nobody did it. No, And this has all the hallmarks
of any like corporate project where you've been working on
something in this plan and developing like this, this whatever
it is you're developing, and then somebody comes along and
(28:20):
says change this, this and this and completely alters it.
But then you try to go ahead with the with
the idea anyway, and it doesn't fit, it doesn't work
enough fundamental things have changed that it just isn't like
the original any longer. And usually, just speaking from experience,
when that happens, you just scrap it and start all over.
Don't do the project. Yeah, New Coke's a great example.
(28:43):
Actually New Coke's terrible example. Let's go with um sliceice.
So Apple Slice started out as something called Aspen. It
was an apple flavored cola and people loved it, but
then they took it away. And when Slice came out
as a a new um citrus based soft drink, I
(29:03):
think Pepsi owned it. They threw Apple Slice in, but
it was really Aspen, but they just threw it in
and rebranded as Apple Slice. It didn't work because it
was something else and they had just tried to clamp
it on to the existing framework without adjusting it or
altering it. And Apple Slice went the way of the
dinosaur when Aspen had been so beloved. So the Bay
(29:25):
of Pigs invasion is on. Kennedy felt like he he
had to do something because the Soviets were buddying up
to Castro and he could not take the risk of
them installing nuclear weapons right there, ninety miles off the coast.
So they pressed forward um. A few days before the invasion,
(29:47):
the Oh six were moved from Guatemala's where they were
going to launch from, which was a CIA camp in
Nicaragua called Happy Valley. Very ironically, and just a few
days before the invasion, the New York Times published a
story about the operation basically out of the whole thing,
and Kennedy had to say something, So he said a
(30:09):
bunch of words that were lies. He said, fist, I
want to say they will not be under any circumstances
or conditions and intervention in Cuba by the United States
Armed Forces. This government will do everything it possibly can.
I think it can meet its responsibilities to make sure
that no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba. Days
(30:32):
before they were about to do that very thing. Yeah,
and and not just days before the actual invasion, but
one day before that planned aerial strike that was to
take out all of Castro's planes, which was again, as
far as the CIA analysts were concerned, essential to the
success of the plan. Well, that New York Times article
(30:53):
made Kennedy pretty kg um and worried. It took a
lot of the confidence that he might have had, as
small as it was to begin with, in the plan,
and so he said, just for no really good reason,
just kind of reacting from what I can tell, he said,
we were gonna have six Team bombers, let's just cut
into like eight instead, And so those six Team bombers
(31:14):
went out. And the whole key was, I think you
said before that they were going to paint these bombers
to make them look like stolen Cuban planes. And the
premise was that some Cuban Air Force pilots had were
revolting against Castro when they had carried out this strike.
So they actually did have Brigade twenty five or six
members fly these planes, but they were American planes painted
(31:35):
to look like Cuban planes. They carried out the strike,
they only got about I think half of Castro's planes, unfortunately.
And then as part of the ruse, they flew to Miami,
landed and said we're defecting to Cuba or from Cuba,
wink wink. And so the press was brought out for
a press conference, and apparently the press immediately was like
that sure looks like a pretty fresh coat of paint,
(31:58):
and somebody else said, yeah, aren't Cuban machine guns mounted
to the wings. These are mounted in the nose like
American planes, and Kennedy was like, everybody, get out of here,
Get out of here. No one's calling you anymore for
any press conferences. And so it was very clear that
the US was actually doing what the New York Times
article was was saying, and that it was basically happening now.
(32:20):
So Castro definitely had a pretty decent heads up of
what was coming. Yeah, I mean Castro, that was all
the proof he needed. And he was like, hey, U
n um, the US of A broke their charter because
they attacked us, and what say you? And the US
representative to the U, n Adlai Stevenson, said, I don't
know anything about this, because he didn't. He was in
(32:42):
the dark about this whole thing. And he was really
upset about this, obviously because the CIA was doing this
all very very privately. Uh. And then Kennedy made one
more big, big decision is they said, listen, you sent
half the planes that we wanted, so we only destroy
half their air force. That's how that works, sir, he said.
(33:03):
They said, so we need to send in another air
strike because they still have half their air force and
that they're still sitting ducks. It'll just take them twice
as long to make them dead. And he said, uh,
you know what, we we can't do it. We cannot
go in with a second whoa wow, that is not
at all what Kennedy sounded like, Chuck. He said, Uh,
(33:28):
I don't think we should go in with a second
air strike. This is getting slightly heated, and uh, we're
all very frightened and hawney, Yeah, that's what they pay
you for, Chuck. There's like a myth that the c
I A UM planned this whole thing, and the reason
it was so botched and terrible it was because some
(33:51):
CIA analysts had basically done the whole thing in some
secret bunker um without any kind of input, in like
this very isolated UM project. And that's not at all
how it worked. Um that you know, there was basically
a lot of people really throwing in a lot of
opinions and thoughts to to planning it. It was signed
off by eyes and how it signed off by Kennedy. Um.
(34:14):
The CIA was definitely not blameless. In the first place,
they were blamed. They were they were blamable for interfering
in another country's you know, affairs like that. But as
far as this operation goes, there were some blunders on
the CIA side, and one of the big ones, big
ones is that some youtwo spy planes that they flew
(34:34):
over Cuba to take pictures of the Bay of Pigs,
this new landing site. When the analysts were looking at
the photos, they said, all this like like dark colored
um stuff like in the shallows off of the coast,
about a hundred yards off the coast or a hundred
meters that's just a seaweed bed. So we don't need
to worry about that. Well, when they finally staged this invasion, Chuck,
(34:59):
they found that that was not the case at all,
that the seaweed was actually coral, and these transport ships
ran aground on coral because the CIA botch that so badly.
And I feel like we might have gotten a little
ahead of ourselves, because I've put the people in the
Bay of Pigs now, and we should back up a
little bit. We should take a break, and then we
(35:21):
should launch the invasion day of what do you think
it sounds good? Alright, So Chuck, it's the day of
(35:49):
the invasion. They launch Brigade oh six. And remember the
whole thing, the whole point of this is that the
US is not supposed to be clearly involved, so they
have to do this at night, Like Kennedy requested to
get the American ships out of there. Um. So you've
got American supply ships holding supplies for this amphibious force
of Cubans Brigade six, and they're starting to run aground
(36:12):
in the coral reef. And that was just the first
of many many problems that they ran into that day. Yeah.
I mean, coral is not the kind of thing, you know,
a hundred yards out uh from the beach head that
you can deal with very easily. It's like it's not
like they were like, all right, well just walk on
this razor sharp coral and get everything in there. Everything's
getting wet. All this radio equipment is uh, and these
(36:34):
weapons are getting water logged and drowned out. A lot
of it was inoperable by the time they finally got
to the beach. Um. So it was just it was
the whole thing had gone sideways at this point. Um. Yeah,
like like before literally before dawn, the whole thing had
gone sideways. That's right. And by the time dawn breaks, Uh,
(36:55):
Castro knows what's going on. He knows that the Bay
of Pigs has as I had a beachhead landing, while
not quite a coral landing, and that they were still
unloading stuff and struggling to get their their stuff onto
the beach when the air force gets there, Castro's air Force,
and they opened fire on a supply ship named the
Houston and killed about twelve men and everyone else got
(37:20):
back in the water. Um. I love here that Dave says,
shark infested waters. It's always shark infested, right, never likes
sparsely populated with you like a few sharks here and there.
It's always infested there everywhere. So um, more of these
planes start coming in and the Rio es Candido, which
(37:41):
was the biggest supply ship they had, had tons of
explosive explosives, tons of airplane fuel. It was just a
big bomb waiting to go off. And that's exactly what happened.
Took a direct direct hit from a bomb and just exploded.
Like this is the big scene in the movie. I
guess where the rock is on the beach saying like
(38:01):
can you believe that? Bro right? I see him saying wolverines, yeah,
but with a Cuban accent. L Wolverines. So so he said,
he they say what it is, and remember there's Cubans
in Red Dawn. Oh that's true. What was Cuba, wasn't it? Yeah?
And they said what wolverine was in Spanish? But I
(38:23):
can't remember, but I guarantee a few of our listeners
will let us know. Chuck. Well, the CIA at this
point says, um, realize this what's going on, and says,
all right, the supply ships need to get out of
there and get into international waters. Stat and it's they
didn't pull the troops, but it's it's basically a retreat
at this point. Yeah. And so the Cubans realized this,
(38:47):
and like at least one of them, Peppe san Roman said,
like he got on the radio to a CIA handler.
He said, do not desert us. And see, I said,
oh we're not, we're not. We just forgot something back
in the United States. We gotta go get it. We'll
be right back. And they just kept backing off into
international waters, and they definitely deserted these Cuban dissidents who
(39:07):
had been um landed on the beach. Um that was
so like the Cubans are trapped there, and they um
fought like their whole thing was to just hold the
beach and then wait for this this UM, this revolution
to to spark by their presence, and they actually did.
(39:27):
They've held that beach for like two days, despite the
fact that Castro sent everything he had at these guys,
but they still managed to hold the beach for a while. UM.
And during this this time, while they were holding it, UM,
the military brass and the CIA went to Kennedy and
they said, look, these guys are getting slaughtered. We need
(39:49):
to provide some bombing cover. So we've got these bombers.
Remember how you cut the number of bombers in that
first air strike by half. Well, we've got some other ones.
Let's get him out air and UM, we'll just have
to also provide some some air cover from some fighter jets. UM.
So they did. Kennedy finally relented and said, okay, but
(40:10):
just as with everything that's possibly gone wrong with this
UM had so far, it's going to continue with this
bombing grade. Because the bombers took off from Nicaragua from
the base in Nicaragua and the air cover that was
supposed to meet up with them was not ready because
they apparently miscalculated. They didn't take into account the time
(40:32):
zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba. No one's exactly sure
what happened, but they showed up an hour early and
just cruised on by over to Cuba and started getting
shot down. Everything I saw said time zone. Okay, I
saw that too, But the thing is, it doesn't make
sense if the if if they were an hour behind,
then wouldn't they have been an hour late rather than
(40:54):
an hour early. That's what I saw. Well, I just
saw time zone error, so it could been aye, But
whereever it was, they showed up an hour basically an
hour early, and and they got shot down. But the
problem that I saw with that, in particular, Chuck, was
these were not Brigade or six pilots. They were Alabama
National Air National Guard pilots, straight up Americans who were
(41:19):
flying a bombing mission over Cuban now at this point
in this botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and they got
shot down, were killed and captured. Their bodies were captured
by Castro who basically paraded them around Cuba for the
international press saying this is an American look, the Americans
are bombing, and America denied. They denied, um ordering or
(41:43):
having these Americans bomb Cuba until the nineties. It was
a real disgrace for America's government for decades. Yeah, Castro
recovered the body of Captain Thomas Willard ray Um, and
the only reason it came out was because it was
declassified in the nineties, at which time the sea His body,
(42:03):
by the way, was returned to his family by Cuba
in nineteen seventy nine, and then when it was declassified
in the nineties, ray was awarded the CIA's highest honor
of the Intelligence Star, which is just almost even more
shameful to kind of just slap uh an award on
this guy that you denied, you know, even sending him
(42:25):
to his death for you know, however many decades. So
it was a real one of the more shameful moments
in in US political and military history. Yeah, because they
went for a decade saying, no, this guy just went rogue.
He he um, he went rogue, and his family was like,
they he did not do that, stop lying, and they
(42:46):
finally did after years. But yeah, it was it was
a big, big black eye on them on America for sure.
But even before that, the whole Bay of Pigs fiasco
was a black eye on America UM and the Kennedy
administration because by the time the UM the battle was
(43:07):
over at the Bay of Pigs UM, I think a
hundred and fourteen people had died among the brigade members
and Americans UM, but the rest, more than a thousand
were captured and kept alive, and eventually we're UM. I
think they were kept for a few years, but they
weren't executed. Everybody just expected Castro to execute them all publicly,
(43:29):
and he didn't. Uh. Instead, he decided to keep them
as basically political pawns, didn't he Yeah, they kept them
for twenty months uh, one thousand thirteen men, and eventually
they start negotiating for a trade through an American attorney,
James B. Donovan, And initially Castro said, I'll tell you
(43:51):
what I'll give them in back for five hundred tractors,
and I guess somebody on the Cuban side said it's
not enough, man, like they're really really rich. And he said,
all right, how about twenty eight million dollars And then
someone said that's still not enough. We can take him
for a lot more. They eventually settled on fifty three
(44:13):
million dollars uh. In food and medical aid, which was
raised by private and corporate donations, and they made that swap.
And uh, I think Shakavara Um, who was Castro's sort
of right hand man at the time, thank the United
States very publicly and said, you know it, because of
this trade, because of all this money and aid and food,
(44:34):
you have have equaled the playing ground here and now
we are America's equal. We are not in a grief
little country any longer. And uh, that was a big,
big deal. That was a lot of um. That was
an influx of cash and and uh and food and
medicine that Cuba really needed at the time. So it
was it's like injury on our insult on top of
(44:56):
injury after this basically, yeah, and not only that, the attack,
the fact that Castro offended off attack, and then the
fact that Castro negotiated another fifty three million dollars in
aid from the attack helped Castro really solidify his power there.
So like um, he might have been shaky at some
(45:18):
point before the Bay of Pigs, he was not. Afterwards.
He was a beloved leader who showed that he could
and would defend Cuba. It also drove him toward Kruscheff
if he had been on the fence about it before,
he went full throated, uh buddy with the Soviets afterward,
and then also on our side, just the huge again
(45:39):
Black Eye gave America internationally on the world stage. But
also the Kennedy administration just looked like fools and also
weasels um. It drove JFK and his brother, Bobby Kennedy
um to find another way to show that they were
tough on communism. And a lot of people point to
(46:00):
us going into Vietnam looking at Vietnam is the next
place to stand up to communism. That that came directly
from the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. That's
rights and learning. No, not at all. Uh So that's
it for the Bay of Pigs. There's a lot more
to it. It was one of the more chronicled episodes
(46:21):
in American history. So if you like this, well go
read more about it. And since I said read more
about it, I think Chuck is time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this you me and L. S. D. Hey, guys,
I'd like to thank you both for bringing such great
entertainment to my ears. I've been listening only for a
few months, but I'm able to listen to several episodes
(46:43):
a day while I work, so over the last couple
of weeks, guys have been sort of messing around with
micro dosing LSD and magic mushrooms, and it has been
years since my last full blown LSD trip. Well, last weekend,
I decided I wanted to take a full amount of
LSD see where it took me. Oftentimes, there's an overwhelming
feeling in the body just before the psychoactive part takes
(47:05):
place for me, which sort of allows you, or allows
me to gauge how you how the trip is going
to go. Well, this particular time, the feeling in my
body told me that I was going to have a
bad time and lose my ability to govern where my
thoughts meander. So I put on an episode of Stuff
You Should Know and listen to you both talk about
Schoolhouse Rock, which included the interview with Bob Nastanovich from Pavement,
(47:28):
which was wonderful. Listening to you both talk really helped
guide me through the initial peak of my LSD trip,
which set the tone for the rest of my day,
and it turned out great. You're both so level headed,
and kind and spirit, and I just want to say
thank you all caps for being who you are. You're
truly both role models for me and the more I
listen to you, the better human I become. So once again,
(47:50):
thanks and that is from Mike Artinian. That's really amazing, Mike,
thanks for that. I feel like Chuck. When we were
recording that, we kept saying one another during the ad break, like, wow,
people are gonna love tripping on this one. I think so.
And I even asked Mike, I said, you know, I
cannot read your name and he went, now, man, read it,
read it and weep. That's right. Well, thanks again, Mike.
(48:12):
That's pretty great. Glad that you came back down. Uh
And if you want to be like Mike and send
us an email, you can send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart
(48:34):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
and Jerry's over there somewhere and the Stuff you Should Know,
and it's about this recording session is off to his
(00:23):
auspicious to start as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Chuck, am,
I right, yeah, nice little UH tie in there, Thank
you very much. It's it's what I'm paid to do.
I think so didn't know what they pay us for
to be witty and incisive? I think so. I think
(00:43):
so too, so, Chuck, I know, Um, to my astonishment
that you were not alive during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
You came along a good decade after that, from what
I understand, in full of years, I didn't want anything
to do with it now, and I can under stand why,
because it was about as big a stinker as far
(01:04):
as foreign policy and military intervention goes UM. Certainly, the
US has made bigger blunders. A lot more people died
um through some of our UH misadventures abroad, but this
one is perennially the one that's pointed to is like
this is really a case study and how terribly wrong
(01:26):
things can go and how decisions were made basically every
level and at every stage. That that made sure that
that the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was the United
States supporting uh an invasion of Cuba by Cuban dissidents UM,
that that it's about as bad as it can go.
That that was like the perfect example of that. Yeah,
(01:48):
it almost makes you think that if there was a
God who cared about American politics, that that God was saying,
don't invade Cuba, over and over again, don't invade Cuba.
And you know I can. I'm pressing all the buttons here.
Everything's going wrong, warning, warning, don't do it right? Or
(02:09):
God really loves Fidel. Well maybe so, because that was
the whole point, the whole reason that America supported this
UM covert action. Really it went a lot further than
support like drummed up a covert action UM led by
the CIA. The military was secretly involved, it was illegal internationally,
(02:33):
But the whole reason was to get rid of Castro
because UM on New Year's Day of what ninety nine,
Fidel Castro took control of Cuba from then existing president
Fulgencio Batista and Batista Chuck I wrote up on this guy.
(02:54):
He was a bad dude. He was a dictator. He
was actually he was the president of Cuba twice. The
first time he was corrupt, but the country is still
prospered under him, and he was he still looked out
for people. The second time, after an eight year period abroad,
when he came back, he was just bad news. But
as far as America was concerned, Uh, they were like, well,
(03:16):
he he lets American companies own most of like the
stuff in Cuba, so we're okay with them. When Fidel
came along, he said, nuts to that, we're getting the
American involvement out of Cuba and Cuba is going to
take care of Cuba from now on. And America said,
I'm not sure how we feel about that. Yeah. And
you know, we had our chance to be buddies with
Castro uh at the beginning, Like he came to the
(03:39):
United States and toured America and we we gave him
the the Heisman and he was huh, gave him the heisman,
the Heisman trophy. It's an expression, Oh, I've never heard
that before. You ever seen the hero got you? Yeah? Yeah, sure, sure, No,
(04:02):
I thought you were still like like in like describing
his grand tour and how great it was. I got you.
And then we gave him an honorary Heisman Trophy award.
That's that's where my mind weird, like that's what they
paid me for. Now. It's an expression. Yeah, it might
predate you if I feel like it was an expression
like in the nineties. No, I totally get what you meant.
(04:25):
It was the context that through me. Okay, well we
gave him the Heisman, and uh, he wanted buddy, And
that's when Kruschef came along and he was like, well, look,
Americans aren't gonna be my buddy. I'll be a friend
with you. And that's kind when all got started. We
had our shot. Yeah. Supposedly, though, the Bay of Pigs
invasion itself was one of the things that really drove
(04:46):
Castro into the arms of Kruscheff. So the whole idea
was to get rid of Castro because we were afraid
he was going to go toward Kruscheff and give the
Communists a foothold in the Western hemisphere, basically in our backyard.
Um and bye bye. Carrying out this bay of pigs invasion.
We made sure that that happened. It's one of the
great ironies of this whole thing. Yeah, because Castro wasn't
(05:09):
looking to be a puppet of the Soviets. That was
not on his docket. Um, and the Soviets really needed him.
I think at the time they they didn't have I mean,
I think they had less than five I C b ms.
I don't think they had anything that could even get
to the United States at that point. An I c
B M is the worst kind of BM. Uh. Actually,
(05:34):
I think the fiery HOTBEATM so the worst kind. Yeah,
you're right about that, although it's anyone had an ICBM
because you'd probably be in big trouble. Maybe. But but
Russia needed the Soviet Union needed Cuba way more than
Cuba needed them at the onset. Wow, that's really interesting.
I had no idea about that, because I know that
(05:55):
America was terrified of communism in the Soviet Union in particular,
but also you know, um, they didn't consider China to
be slouch is really as far as the spread of
communism goes. But the Soviet Union seemed really interested in
spreading Soviet style communism throughout the world, and at the
time colonialism was really kind of um the I guess
(06:18):
the European colonial powers were losing their grip on places
in Southeast Asia and Africa, and so there were all
these countries, um, including ones in Latin America that were
kind of I don't want to say up for grabs,
because I don't mean to undermine, you know, the the
agency of the people who lived and ran these countries,
but they were, you know, these were the these were
becoming the two superpowers in the world, so you you
(06:41):
could fall under their influence that at the very least economically,
if not politically. UM. And so the US was really
worried about the spread of communism. And one of the
things that Dwight Eisenhower IKE, who was president in the
late fifties, warned about was the domino effect where once
you know, you had one country turn communists, it would
spread to another neighboring country, and then another and another,
(07:03):
and all of a sudden, half of Africa's communists. So
we need to be worried about this kind of thing.
So America was really starting to enter like the fear
of that Cold War panic in about the late fifties
early sixties. Yeah. And here's the thing too, When I
say that Russia didn't have capabilities to strike from where
they were, I'm not sure if we knew that. I'm
(07:25):
sure there are historians that that know that answer, but
I'm not sure if America knew that. So as I
think that they just you couldn't take any chances. Basically
you had to get um Cuba off the map for
the Soviet Union and not like in like sink the island,
but you know what I mean. No, and at the
very least you could leave the island in tech leave
(07:46):
the island. There's a lot, like a lot of valuable industries,
and like the mob was running casinos down there right
before Castros get rid of Castro seemed to be the
whole thing. Castro and Sha Gavar, Right. So this occurred
to the eyes and our administration CIA, who hatched a
plan that had the ominously c I a E. Title
(08:08):
of a program of covert action against the Castro regime.
And they presented this thing, I believe in them in
like nineteen sixty one, the very beginning of nineteen sixty one, um,
and they went to Eisenhower and they said, look, this
guy really, we all know that he has to go.
But here's what we think is the best way to
(08:29):
do this. We need to get rid of Castro, but
we need to do it in such a way that
it appears that the Cuban people have are are dissatisfied
with his rule and they've turned against him. We need
to keep our hands off of it. And and for
one reason, because I mean that just kind of seems
like a lot more legitimate of revolution, doesn't it. Like
(08:51):
the Cubans rose up against Castro, so they really didn't
want Castro around, so nobody should swoop in to help Castro.
But then, secondly, the US is not allowed to dabble
in other countries affairs. It's illegal internationally to invade a
sovereign country unprovoked or without reason. And so this was
not a good It wouldn't have been a good look
(09:12):
for the US to be caught doing this. So they
figured the best way to do it would be to
train a bunch of Cuban dissidents and have them just
do it. Yeah, and not only that, they wanted to
create a new government, they wanted to um disperse propaganda
anti Castro propaganda. I mean, it was basically, we want
to topple a regime and install a new government of
(09:34):
our choosing. Uh, and this is completely illegal. And Eisenhower said, sure,
go ahead. Um, this sounds good to me because what
we can't risk is them buddying up too much with
Kruchef and have nuclear weapons. All of a sudden parked
right off our coast, just right. So they went to Miami.
(09:55):
Which where else would you go to recute recruit Cuban defectors.
Perfect place because they were defecting and there were a
lot of unhappy Cubans that didn't like Castro that uh,
that left, and and they were they were there just
sort of waiting to be called upon and very willing
to be called upon by the CIA, as it turns out. Yeah,
(10:16):
and apparently when they started like amassing this group of
of recruits, they first started training them in the Everglades
in Florida, and they learned things like cryptography and demolitions
and guerrilla warfare and all that stuff. But um, it
was I guess an open secret or maybe common knowledge
is a better way to put it among Cuban dissidents
(10:38):
in Florida that the CIA was was training a group
down there with the CIA, Bless their hearts, they tried
to at least um make it seem like they weren't
from the CIA, which is a very CIA type thing
to do. So the agents, the CIA agents, said that
they were from a very powerful company that was bent
on on removing Communism from the world, and um, yes, sure.
(11:04):
But then one of the Cuban dissidents with CEI agents
says what And the c I agent said what and
the cat was out of the back. Yeah, and these
were not um, you know, they had to train these
guys up. There were there were a bunch of students. Obviously,
if you think about dissidents leaving Cuba, you can have
a lot of student involvement. But there were also just professionals.
(11:24):
There were doctors and lawyers and farmers. Um. There were
people that were had no money. There were people that
had quite a bit of money for Cuba, and they
all didn't like Castro though, but none of them, almost
none of them had any kind of prior training and
they were I mean, why this hasn't been made into
a movie yet is just flabbergasting to me, because this
(11:46):
has all the elements of a great movie. Yeah, especially
if you do it from the view of the dissidents
who were trained into a paramilitary group. I think that
would happen to be your protagonists. Yeah, because it's been
touched on before, like it was in The Good Shepherd,
that that Matt Damon movie about the origin of the
cia UM they touched on. You know, it's been a
(12:08):
I believe it's been referenced at least. But yeah, you're right,
there's no blockbuster movie. You know, we're like the Rock
and like Cuban guys who are like you know, they
also form a bromance too. That that that um that
really kind of is a subplot to the whole thing.
Oh yeah, that's that's how they ruin it, isn't it
(12:30):
with the romances. Just that they're by casting the Rock
and vind Everything he just said sounded awful and exactly
how it would probably happen. I think Vin Diesel actually
released a record recently which I say props to him. Man,
he's multifaceted. He's a double threat. Is the name of
his one man band, Diesel Fuel. Because if not, it
(12:53):
should be. It's not a bad one. You want to
take a break. Uh yeah, I think says it's a
good great time for a break. Thanks man, I thought
you'd say that. So we're gonna take a break everybody,
in case you hadn't heard, and we'll be right back George.
(13:28):
So uh, Dave russ helped us out with this one,
chuck um and he uh said, we need to be
sure to give a shout out to Jim Rasenberger, who's
a author of the book The Brilliant Disaster JFK. Castro
in America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs, which
(13:49):
is um. I've seen his work referred to multiple places,
so he wrote a pretty good book about it, and
I guess Dave Russ um learned a lot from him.
So thanks a lot, Mr Razenberger. But um, at where
we left off was there was a group of Cuban dissidents.
I think they reached uh the ranks of like four
(14:11):
um before they stopped recruiting that were being trained in
the Everglades. But they said, hey, we found this way
better camp in Guatemala. Let's move everybody there to the
to the rainforest because it's a little more like Cuba's
um climate. And uh and we kind of owned Guatemala
right well, Guatemala was at the very least very much
(14:33):
friendly to American interests by this time, because we had
already overthrown uh the I think the ellendeen A government,
if I'm not mistaken. Um, like, we had just done
that and installed like a pro American regime. So yeah,
this would have been a perfect place to have a
secret CIA training camp for Cubans to train to invade Cuba.
(14:55):
That's right, thanks to bananas reference to our past epio
seut on pr. That was such a good one. I
think that's my all time favorite, live at all time favor.
Huh m hmm. I don't know. I'd have to. I
have to look at the list and really give it thought.
It's that one's up there. I also love the the
(15:16):
Kellogg brothers. Those are probably my top two. That was
a good one too, for sure. Why we have to pick,
Let's just say, yeah, it's so weird and foreign. Remember
when we would go in the room with fifteen hundred
other people and uh, I'll hug each other. I just
broke out in like a cold sweat man at the
idea of that. It's like, it's funny when you watch
(15:37):
TV shows and they were filmed you know, prior to
the pandemic, You're like, you're standing too close together. Somebody
put on a mask. Yeah, you're making me nervous. You
have anxiety dreams too, about proximity. Uh no, I have
anxiety dreams about politics. See. I have a lot of
anxiety dreams lately. I mean not lately, for the past
nine months, every like once a week or so about somebody,
(16:00):
you know, being all up in my grill and I'm like,
what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Get
away from me? Stand back, sir, Which is ironic, because
I love being close to people physically, I know. I
think that's probably why you have anxiety, is because there's
a tension there, like if you were naturally like stay
over there. I gotta tell you that that part of
(16:21):
the pandemic has been kind of easy for me. Some
standoffice to begin with, you know, Oh goodness, so chuck Um.
One of the things that I thought was kind of
cool about this this group of people, Um, this group
of Cuban dissidents who were trained into a paramilitary group.
The CIA had the foresight to give them serial numbers
starting at number pretty funny, so that if anyone of
(16:43):
them were caught. They could say, well, my serial number,
and they'd be like, oh my god, there's people ahead
of them, how and how who knows how many after them?
When in fact, again it was in fact, I think
their patch said and that had a little air pointing
to it, and then right beside that it said, you see,
(17:04):
yeah it was. It was very elaborate patch. It was
very colorful too, and as a matter of fact, it
stood out a little too much. And then underneath it
said and there's more to come, get it right. What
was under that under that was it's totally not a
made up number. And then below that there was an
arrow that went all the way to the top. Start
(17:27):
over again. So they were actually called Brigade twenty five
oh six, and they named themselves after the serial number
of one of their fallen comrades who died in training
camp in Guatemala. He slipped on a slippery trail during
an exercise and fell into a ravine. And what was
his name? His name was Carlos Rafael Santana. Carlos Santana
(17:51):
slipped on a banana peel. Oh that Rafael really threw
me off, but yeah, appeal, no it didn't. But they said,
this is very said, so we're going to name our
brigade after him, and they did. So that's what they've
always been known by from that moment on this invasion
force of Cuban dissidents as they were known as Brigade
(18:12):
twenty five oh six. And one of the really amazing
things about Brigade six is, despite being, like you said,
you know, a group of doctors and lawyers and farmers
and fishermen and students and coming from all walks of
life and socio economic status, they actually were trained into
(18:32):
a pretty decent paramilitary group. They fought bravely, they fought
really well, they held their own as we'll see, and
they were doomed from the start, not really by any
any of their own fault, which must have been incredibly
frustrating for them. Yeah, I imagine. So, I mean, they um,
(18:53):
like I said, they weren't too hard to recruit, like,
they were eager to do this job, and they really
wanted to get Castro out of there. And you you
might think when a new president comes in that things
might change, they might kind of revisit this plan. I
think maybe this's not the best idea. I'm pretty excited
because I get to do my Kennedy. So I'm glad
(19:13):
I got out of there. I have no idea what
he sounded like. Uh, he sounded like this problem. But
Kennedy one in sixty um in no small part due
to the fact that he was He touted being very
tough on communism and on Cuba, and so I said,
(19:35):
let's get him in here. Yeah he was. He came
off as more hawkish about communism in Cuba than Nixon did,
which is funny against Nixon, and Nixon said that he
basically lost because Kennedy seemed like he would do more
about Cuba. And that's kind of, um, one of history's
(19:56):
great ironies because Nixon, because Kennedy used Nixon and UM
and Ike of being too soft on Cuba, of letting
this castro fella take power and letting him a mass
power and not doing anything about it. And Nixon had
to sit there and take it because he had been
sworn to secrecy about this plot to train Cuban dissidents
(20:16):
and in vague Cuba, and he couldn't he couldn't be like, actually,
that's not true. We've got this really great plan. Let
me tell you. Viewing audience all about it, so he
had to he had to defend this position of being
soft on Cuba even though he knew they weren't. Well,
Kennedy got to just run circles around him because Kennedy
(20:37):
was an unproven guy who seemed more hawkish on Cuba,
and some people point to that is how Kennedy was.
So when Kennedy when he came in, yeah, I had
no idea about about that. When he came in, he
really wanted to prove himself in that respect. And the
CIA said, are you sitting down, because we'd like to
drop this opportunity into your lap. And they let him
in on this plan to um in Vague, Cuba with
(21:00):
with Brigade six, and Kennedy said, are um great. Yeah,
They said here's our plan. Uh, Mr New President and
he said the area you can stop calling me that,
Mr President will suffice. And they said, we're gonna take
(21:22):
seven and fifty of these men and we are going
to do a D Day style invasion at dawn on
the beach head in the Bay of Pigs, named so
because well that's the name of it. It's Bahia de
Concinos in Spanish. It's on the southern side of Cuba,
and he said it sounds delicious, And they said, we're
(21:45):
gonna land on that beach head. We're not gonna we're
just gonna route down there and not take Havana or anything.
Because here's what's gonna happen, Mr. President. They're gonna get
news of this in Cuba and all these anti Castro
Cubans there are gonna know that this is their their moment,
and they've got some army dudes that are involved. They
(22:06):
got some military personnel that are anti Castro, and they're
gonna say, all right, now is our time. We're gonna
rise up to overthrow Castro. And then that's when our
seven and fifty men, who are by the way, totally
disguised as Cuban dissidents, like we're gonna paint planes like
American planes, like they're from Cuba and stuff like that,
(22:27):
like no one's ever gonna know. It's the perfect plane. Yeah,
we've printed we've printed up t shirts for him to say,
down with Castro, with Castro. And he said, that's when
they're gonna join the fight and join this general revolt
and might take a couple of weeks. Bing bang boom,
easy peasy, and Kennedy said, all right, so that there
(22:47):
was a key to success in there. That the whole
thing hinged on and from what I can tell, kind
of unwarranted lee. But that was the idea that when
these dissidents attacked Cuba and the word got out that
that Cuba was being attacked, that the Cuban people would
be like to heck with Castro, get him, and would
(23:09):
it would ignite this revolt? And from what I saw,
this was based on a hunch. It wasn't based on
intel or anything. It was based on a hunch or
even a hope you could possibly say, which that alone
is a sign that you may be working on a
really bad plan, because anything short of sparking a revolution
(23:30):
internally in Cuba means that this is going to fail.
Like Cuba small, but Castro had a really extensive army,
tens and tens and tens of thousands of professional soldiers,
plus another I think a hundred thousand UM militia members
like what we would probably call like the National Guard
or reservists here UM. So even if there were five
(23:54):
thousand people or however many, they made it seem like
they were probably going to be overwhelmed if if Cuba
didn't rise up, and they had no reason to believe
that Cuba would rise up, they were just hoping. So
that's that's that's that's strike one. Yeah, it's a big
time intelligence failure. Another key to this, and you're gonna
just put a pin in this one, listener, is air strikes.
(24:18):
They were like, listen, here, we got these dudes on
the beach. They're gonna be rooted down and they are
gonna be bombed to heck in back by Castro's air force,
which is small, but he's still got these planes. And
he said, so we got to take out that air
force or else their toast like they're sitting ducks out there.
We got to take out the air force. We've got
(24:39):
to take out the air force, which is and I mean,
it wasn't like out of the question. Like Castro had
a big, a big army of ground troops, but his
air force was fairly paltry, pretty small, and it was
entirely within the realm of possibility to strike um all
of his planes. And if they did do that, that
(25:00):
would give this amphibious landing force a real fighting chance
to make their way inland. UM and if this revolution sparked,
then then there you have it. So um that that
that was definitely doable. Um. The problem is Kennedy when
he came in, he was really ambitious about getting rid
(25:21):
of communism and making a name for himself, is tough
on communism and you know, delivering on what he had
campaigned on. But at the same time, he was also
really aware of international image political image of the United States,
and so he said, I'm really worried that this is
going to be like like Chuck said, he knew who
(25:44):
you were, Chuck, Um that that this is gonna be
too being bang boom, Like there's gonna be a lot
of blowing things up, and it's gonna be obvious that
the United States is involved in this, and we just
can't have that. So let's go smaller for one. And also,
this place where we're going to land, Um, it's a
(26:05):
little too close to Trinidad, which is a pretty pretty
populous town in Cuba. This seems a little hostile and aggressive.
Let's move it to the middle of nowhere, this place
called the Bay of Pigs um and and start there.
And that was a really big, big issue for the
plan because one of the reasons they chose that landing
site near the city of Trinidad in Cuba is because
(26:27):
it was near the mountains and so if the guerrillas
um amphibious landing failed and it was broken up, they
could flee to the mountains and then regroup and start
launching a guerrilla war from the mountains. Instead, this place
that the Bay of Pigs was nowhere near anywhere. It
was near swamp land, and I think there was sixty
miles of swamp between the Bay of Pigs and the mountains,
(26:49):
so there was no melting into the mountains to escape.
It was all or nothing when they moved that landing site.
And that was another big thing that Kennedy did, along
with saying make it smaller. It could seem more like
Cuban dissidents are the ones who are really behind us. Yeah.
And the third thing he did was said, I don't
like this dawn invasion thing. He's like, this has got
to happen under the cover of night. We got to
(27:11):
be out of there by dawn. We can't have any
inkling that we're involved in any way. And I know
that paint job on these planes is is pretty good,
but it looks a lot better at night, guys, So
let's go in there at night. And this was this
is like a month out, and the CIA was like, dude,
we had a plan here, and you're telling us to
(27:33):
make it smaller, put it in a different place, to
change our time of invasion. And this is a big deal, Like,
this is not how things work. You can't just change
everything a month out and expect it to go down
the way you wanted to. And this was this was
everybody's chance to back out entirely, Like this was the
moment where somebody could have and should have stood up
(27:57):
and said, you know what, this has got disaster and
all over it. Now, we can't, we can't do this.
We need to not just we just need to back
out and not go through with it at all. And
nobody did it. No, And this has all the hallmarks
of any like corporate project where you've been working on
something in this plan and developing like this, this whatever
it is you're developing, and then somebody comes along and
(28:20):
says change this, this and this and completely alters it.
But then you try to go ahead with the with
the idea anyway, and it doesn't fit, it doesn't work
enough fundamental things have changed that it just isn't like
the original any longer. And usually, just speaking from experience,
when that happens, you just scrap it and start all over.
Don't do the project. Yeah, New Coke's a great example.
(28:43):
Actually New Coke's terrible example. Let's go with um sliceice.
So Apple Slice started out as something called Aspen. It
was an apple flavored cola and people loved it, but
then they took it away. And when Slice came out
as a a new um citrus based soft drink, I
(29:03):
think Pepsi owned it. They threw Apple Slice in, but
it was really Aspen, but they just threw it in
and rebranded as Apple Slice. It didn't work because it
was something else and they had just tried to clamp
it on to the existing framework without adjusting it or
altering it. And Apple Slice went the way of the
dinosaur when Aspen had been so beloved. So the Bay
(29:25):
of Pigs invasion is on. Kennedy felt like he he
had to do something because the Soviets were buddying up
to Castro and he could not take the risk of
them installing nuclear weapons right there, ninety miles off the coast.
So they pressed forward um. A few days before the invasion,
(29:47):
the Oh six were moved from Guatemala's where they were
going to launch from, which was a CIA camp in
Nicaragua called Happy Valley. Very ironically, and just a few
days before the invasion, the New York Times published a
story about the operation basically out of the whole thing,
and Kennedy had to say something, So he said a
(30:09):
bunch of words that were lies. He said, fist, I
want to say they will not be under any circumstances
or conditions and intervention in Cuba by the United States
Armed Forces. This government will do everything it possibly can.
I think it can meet its responsibilities to make sure
that no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba. Days
(30:32):
before they were about to do that very thing. Yeah,
and and not just days before the actual invasion, but
one day before that planned aerial strike that was to
take out all of Castro's planes, which was again, as
far as the CIA analysts were concerned, essential to the
success of the plan. Well, that New York Times article
(30:53):
made Kennedy pretty kg um and worried. It took a
lot of the confidence that he might have had, as
small as it was to begin with, in the plan,
and so he said, just for no really good reason,
just kind of reacting from what I can tell, he said,
we were gonna have six Team bombers, let's just cut
into like eight instead, And so those six Team bombers
(31:14):
went out. And the whole key was, I think you
said before that they were going to paint these bombers
to make them look like stolen Cuban planes. And the
premise was that some Cuban Air Force pilots had were
revolting against Castro when they had carried out this strike.
So they actually did have Brigade twenty five or six
members fly these planes, but they were American planes painted
(31:35):
to look like Cuban planes. They carried out the strike,
they only got about I think half of Castro's planes, unfortunately.
And then as part of the ruse, they flew to Miami,
landed and said we're defecting to Cuba or from Cuba,
wink wink. And so the press was brought out for
a press conference, and apparently the press immediately was like
that sure looks like a pretty fresh coat of paint,
(31:58):
and somebody else said, yeah, aren't Cuban machine guns mounted
to the wings. These are mounted in the nose like
American planes, and Kennedy was like, everybody, get out of here,
Get out of here. No one's calling you anymore for
any press conferences. And so it was very clear that
the US was actually doing what the New York Times
article was was saying, and that it was basically happening now.
(32:20):
So Castro definitely had a pretty decent heads up of
what was coming. Yeah, I mean Castro, that was all
the proof he needed. And he was like, hey, U
n um, the US of A broke their charter because
they attacked us, and what say you? And the US
representative to the U, n Adlai Stevenson, said, I don't
know anything about this, because he didn't. He was in
(32:42):
the dark about this whole thing. And he was really
upset about this, obviously because the CIA was doing this
all very very privately. Uh. And then Kennedy made one
more big, big decision is they said, listen, you sent
half the planes that we wanted, so we only destroy
half their air force. That's how that works, sir, he said.
(33:03):
They said, so we need to send in another air
strike because they still have half their air force and
that they're still sitting ducks. It'll just take them twice
as long to make them dead. And he said, uh,
you know what, we we can't do it. We cannot
go in with a second whoa wow, that is not
at all what Kennedy sounded like, Chuck. He said, Uh,
(33:28):
I don't think we should go in with a second
air strike. This is getting slightly heated, and uh, we're
all very frightened and hawney, Yeah, that's what they pay
you for, Chuck. There's like a myth that the c
I A UM planned this whole thing, and the reason
it was so botched and terrible it was because some
(33:51):
CIA analysts had basically done the whole thing in some
secret bunker um without any kind of input, in like
this very isolated UM project. And that's not at all
how it worked. Um that you know, there was basically
a lot of people really throwing in a lot of
opinions and thoughts to to planning it. It was signed
off by eyes and how it signed off by Kennedy. Um.
(34:14):
The CIA was definitely not blameless. In the first place,
they were blamed. They were they were blamable for interfering
in another country's you know, affairs like that. But as
far as this operation goes, there were some blunders on
the CIA side, and one of the big ones, big
ones is that some youtwo spy planes that they flew
(34:34):
over Cuba to take pictures of the Bay of Pigs,
this new landing site. When the analysts were looking at
the photos, they said, all this like like dark colored
um stuff like in the shallows off of the coast,
about a hundred yards off the coast or a hundred
meters that's just a seaweed bed. So we don't need
to worry about that. Well, when they finally staged this invasion, Chuck,
(34:59):
they found that that was not the case at all,
that the seaweed was actually coral, and these transport ships
ran aground on coral because the CIA botch that so badly.
And I feel like we might have gotten a little
ahead of ourselves, because I've put the people in the
Bay of Pigs now, and we should back up a
little bit. We should take a break, and then we
(35:21):
should launch the invasion day of what do you think
it sounds good? Alright, So Chuck, it's the day of
(35:49):
the invasion. They launch Brigade oh six. And remember the
whole thing, the whole point of this is that the
US is not supposed to be clearly involved, so they
have to do this at night, Like Kennedy requested to
get the American ships out of there. Um. So you've
got American supply ships holding supplies for this amphibious force
of Cubans Brigade six, and they're starting to run aground
(36:12):
in the coral reef. And that was just the first
of many many problems that they ran into that day. Yeah.
I mean, coral is not the kind of thing, you know,
a hundred yards out uh from the beach head that
you can deal with very easily. It's like it's not
like they were like, all right, well just walk on
this razor sharp coral and get everything in there. Everything's
getting wet. All this radio equipment is uh, and these
(36:34):
weapons are getting water logged and drowned out. A lot
of it was inoperable by the time they finally got
to the beach. Um. So it was just it was
the whole thing had gone sideways at this point. Um. Yeah,
like like before literally before dawn, the whole thing had
gone sideways. That's right. And by the time dawn breaks, Uh,
(36:55):
Castro knows what's going on. He knows that the Bay
of Pigs has as I had a beachhead landing, while
not quite a coral landing, and that they were still
unloading stuff and struggling to get their their stuff onto
the beach when the air force gets there, Castro's air Force,
and they opened fire on a supply ship named the
Houston and killed about twelve men and everyone else got
(37:20):
back in the water. Um. I love here that Dave says,
shark infested waters. It's always shark infested, right, never likes
sparsely populated with you like a few sharks here and there.
It's always infested there everywhere. So um, more of these
planes start coming in and the Rio es Candido, which
(37:41):
was the biggest supply ship they had, had tons of
explosive explosives, tons of airplane fuel. It was just a
big bomb waiting to go off. And that's exactly what happened.
Took a direct direct hit from a bomb and just exploded.
Like this is the big scene in the movie. I
guess where the rock is on the beach saying like
(38:01):
can you believe that? Bro right? I see him saying wolverines, yeah,
but with a Cuban accent. L Wolverines. So so he said,
he they say what it is, and remember there's Cubans
in Red Dawn. Oh that's true. What was Cuba, wasn't it? Yeah?
And they said what wolverine was in Spanish? But I
(38:23):
can't remember, but I guarantee a few of our listeners
will let us know. Chuck. Well, the CIA at this
point says, um, realize this what's going on, and says,
all right, the supply ships need to get out of
there and get into international waters. Stat and it's they
didn't pull the troops, but it's it's basically a retreat
at this point. Yeah. And so the Cubans realized this,
(38:47):
and like at least one of them, Peppe san Roman said,
like he got on the radio to a CIA handler.
He said, do not desert us. And see, I said,
oh we're not, we're not. We just forgot something back
in the United States. We gotta go get it. We'll
be right back. And they just kept backing off into
international waters, and they definitely deserted these Cuban dissidents who
(39:07):
had been um landed on the beach. Um that was
so like the Cubans are trapped there, and they um
fought like their whole thing was to just hold the
beach and then wait for this this UM, this revolution
to to spark by their presence, and they actually did.
(39:27):
They've held that beach for like two days, despite the
fact that Castro sent everything he had at these guys,
but they still managed to hold the beach for a while. UM.
And during this this time, while they were holding it, UM,
the military brass and the CIA went to Kennedy and
they said, look, these guys are getting slaughtered. We need
(39:49):
to provide some bombing cover. So we've got these bombers.
Remember how you cut the number of bombers in that
first air strike by half. Well, we've got some other ones.
Let's get him out air and UM, we'll just have
to also provide some some air cover from some fighter jets. UM.
So they did. Kennedy finally relented and said, okay, but
(40:10):
just as with everything that's possibly gone wrong with this
UM had so far, it's going to continue with this
bombing grade. Because the bombers took off from Nicaragua from
the base in Nicaragua and the air cover that was
supposed to meet up with them was not ready because
they apparently miscalculated. They didn't take into account the time
(40:32):
zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba. No one's exactly sure
what happened, but they showed up an hour early and
just cruised on by over to Cuba and started getting
shot down. Everything I saw said time zone. Okay, I
saw that too, But the thing is, it doesn't make
sense if the if if they were an hour behind,
then wouldn't they have been an hour late rather than
(40:54):
an hour early. That's what I saw. Well, I just
saw time zone error, so it could been aye, But
whereever it was, they showed up an hour basically an
hour early, and and they got shot down. But the
problem that I saw with that, in particular, Chuck, was
these were not Brigade or six pilots. They were Alabama
National Air National Guard pilots, straight up Americans who were
(41:19):
flying a bombing mission over Cuban now at this point
in this botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and they got
shot down, were killed and captured. Their bodies were captured
by Castro who basically paraded them around Cuba for the
international press saying this is an American look, the Americans
are bombing, and America denied. They denied, um ordering or
(41:43):
having these Americans bomb Cuba until the nineties. It was
a real disgrace for America's government for decades. Yeah, Castro
recovered the body of Captain Thomas Willard ray Um, and
the only reason it came out was because it was
declassified in the nineties, at which time the sea His body,
(42:03):
by the way, was returned to his family by Cuba
in nineteen seventy nine, and then when it was declassified
in the nineties, ray was awarded the CIA's highest honor
of the Intelligence Star, which is just almost even more
shameful to kind of just slap uh an award on
this guy that you denied, you know, even sending him
(42:25):
to his death for you know, however many decades. So
it was a real one of the more shameful moments
in in US political and military history. Yeah, because they
went for a decade saying, no, this guy just went rogue.
He he um, he went rogue, and his family was like,
they he did not do that, stop lying, and they
(42:46):
finally did after years. But yeah, it was it was
a big, big black eye on them on America for sure.
But even before that, the whole Bay of Pigs fiasco
was a black eye on America UM and the Kennedy
administration because by the time the UM the battle was
(43:07):
over at the Bay of Pigs UM, I think a
hundred and fourteen people had died among the brigade members
and Americans UM, but the rest, more than a thousand
were captured and kept alive, and eventually we're UM. I
think they were kept for a few years, but they
weren't executed. Everybody just expected Castro to execute them all publicly,
(43:29):
and he didn't. Uh. Instead, he decided to keep them
as basically political pawns, didn't he Yeah, they kept them
for twenty months uh, one thousand thirteen men, and eventually
they start negotiating for a trade through an American attorney,
James B. Donovan, And initially Castro said, I'll tell you
(43:51):
what I'll give them in back for five hundred tractors,
and I guess somebody on the Cuban side said it's
not enough, man, like they're really really rich. And he said,
all right, how about twenty eight million dollars And then
someone said that's still not enough. We can take him
for a lot more. They eventually settled on fifty three
(44:13):
million dollars uh. In food and medical aid, which was
raised by private and corporate donations, and they made that swap.
And uh, I think Shakavara Um, who was Castro's sort
of right hand man at the time, thank the United
States very publicly and said, you know it, because of
this trade, because of all this money and aid and food,
(44:34):
you have have equaled the playing ground here and now
we are America's equal. We are not in a grief
little country any longer. And uh, that was a big,
big deal. That was a lot of um. That was
an influx of cash and and uh and food and
medicine that Cuba really needed at the time. So it
was it's like injury on our insult on top of
(44:56):
injury after this basically, yeah, and not only that, the attack,
the fact that Castro offended off attack, and then the
fact that Castro negotiated another fifty three million dollars in
aid from the attack helped Castro really solidify his power there.
So like um, he might have been shaky at some
(45:18):
point before the Bay of Pigs, he was not. Afterwards.
He was a beloved leader who showed that he could
and would defend Cuba. It also drove him toward Kruscheff
if he had been on the fence about it before,
he went full throated, uh buddy with the Soviets afterward,
and then also on our side, just the huge again
(45:39):
Black Eye gave America internationally on the world stage. But
also the Kennedy administration just looked like fools and also
weasels um. It drove JFK and his brother, Bobby Kennedy
um to find another way to show that they were
tough on communism. And a lot of people point to
(46:00):
us going into Vietnam looking at Vietnam is the next
place to stand up to communism. That that came directly
from the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. That's
rights and learning. No, not at all. Uh So that's
it for the Bay of Pigs. There's a lot more
to it. It was one of the more chronicled episodes
(46:21):
in American history. So if you like this, well go
read more about it. And since I said read more
about it, I think Chuck is time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this you me and L. S. D. Hey, guys,
I'd like to thank you both for bringing such great
entertainment to my ears. I've been listening only for a
few months, but I'm able to listen to several episodes
(46:43):
a day while I work, so over the last couple
of weeks, guys have been sort of messing around with
micro dosing LSD and magic mushrooms, and it has been
years since my last full blown LSD trip. Well, last weekend,
I decided I wanted to take a full amount of
LSD see where it took me. Oftentimes, there's an overwhelming
feeling in the body just before the psychoactive part takes
(47:05):
place for me, which sort of allows you, or allows
me to gauge how you how the trip is going
to go. Well, this particular time, the feeling in my
body told me that I was going to have a
bad time and lose my ability to govern where my
thoughts meander. So I put on an episode of Stuff
You Should Know and listen to you both talk about
Schoolhouse Rock, which included the interview with Bob Nastanovich from Pavement,
(47:28):
which was wonderful. Listening to you both talk really helped
guide me through the initial peak of my LSD trip,
which set the tone for the rest of my day,
and it turned out great. You're both so level headed,
and kind and spirit, and I just want to say
thank you all caps for being who you are. You're
truly both role models for me and the more I
listen to you, the better human I become. So once again,
(47:50):
thanks and that is from Mike Artinian. That's really amazing, Mike,
thanks for that. I feel like Chuck. When we were
recording that, we kept saying one another during the ad break, like, wow,
people are gonna love tripping on this one. I think so.
And I even asked Mike, I said, you know, I
cannot read your name and he went, now, man, read it,
read it and weep. That's right. Well, thanks again, Mike.
(48:12):
That's pretty great. Glad that you came back down. Uh
And if you want to be like Mike and send
us an email, you can send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart
(48:34):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.