Clandestine America: People Who Don't Exist Doing Things That Never Happened

Bill Holiday taught history beyond a classroom. He spent his career traveling to the places where history happened and spoke with people who had first-hand knowledge of events, compiling materials for his students. 

But how to explain history when the officialdom disavows events and its agents? How do you explain history when history is comprised of events that never happened carried out by people who never existed? You talk to their kids.

This is the story of Clandestine America, where a German teenager is impregnated by Fidel Castro and subsequently tortured psychologically by the CIA in a successful effort to recruit her as an assassin. Who did they want her to assassinate? The great love of her life, Fidel Castro. It is the story of an assassin’s daughter,  the self-appointed guardian of her only parent who likely foiled an attempt on her mother’s life by discharging a pistol on the street in New York City. It is the story of a Connecticut woman whose father left home one day when she was a teenager and was never seen again. He never existed. His job? Doing things that never happened. 

But kids are always more understanding than adults think. Did they know Fidel Castro had just taken power in Cuba? That JFK would soon be elected president? That the civil rights movement was about to change the United States forever? And that newly enlisted Marines would soon be sent to Vietnam?

No, but they would soon learn about their country, their parents' seminal roles in its history, and how the US treats the children of people who never existed. In this episode, they attempt to tell their parents’ stories.