The Anti-Che
By Jay Nordlinger AUGUST 7, 2013 12:00 AM at
NRO
Miami, Fla. —
Felix Rodriguez seems fated to be linked to Che Guevara. This is not entirely
just. Rodriguez loves freedom, and has worked tirelessly for it; Guevara loved
tyranny, and worked tirelessly for it. “Two sides of the same coin,” some
people say. Maybe — but only in the way that light and dark are two sides of
the same coin. Rodriguez had a role in stopping Guevara. He was there, in the
Bolivian mountains, in 1967. He was the last person to talk with Guevara — a
man who did so much to tyrannize the country where Rodriguez was born, Cuba.
The captured Che, Felix is to the left. "One, Two, many Vietnams"?
The revo continues.
The story of Guevara’s last day has been told many
times, in many ways. Rodriguez told it in his 1989 memoir, Shadow
Warrior. It is told in a book published earlier this year, Daybreak
at La Higuera, by Rafael Cerrato, a Spaniard. La Higuera is the village
where Guevara met his end. Cerrato’s main sources for the book are Rodriguez,
who was working for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Dariel Alarcón
Ramírez, whose nom de guerre was Benigno. A Cuban, Benigno was Guevara’s
lieutenant in Bolivia. He was also a member of Fidel Castro’s inner circle. He
defected in 1996 — and now he and Rodriguez are friends.
Just a week ago, Rodriguez made a donation to the
CIA Museum: ashes from Guevara’s last pipe. But he has a few more of those
ashes here, in his Miami home. His den is chock-a-block with mementos. On the
wall, for example, is a bond signed by José Martí, Cuba’s national hero. [If you can, go and see his equestrian statue at the head of
the Avenue of the Americas at 57th St. here in NYC, in a line of
these his is the most dramatic, Sherman’s, at Fifth Ave., is the most solemn] In
this den, we talk about events past, present, and future. Rodriguez is an
excellent talker (as well as doer). He is large, sharp, and commanding.
He was born in 1941. His hometown is Sancti
Spíritus, in central Cuba. His father was a storeowner; his mother helped out
in the store and tended the house. Rodriguez’s earliest memory is of being with
his mom while she talked about what Hitler was doing in Europe. The little boy
was scared that the Nazis would come to Cuba. Among his forebears are notable
figures from Cuba’s wars of independence. One of these figures is Alejandro
Rodríguez Velasco, who would become the first popularly elected mayor of
Havana. In 1895, Máximo Gómez sent a letter to this man’s wife — who had asked
whether her husband might come home from the field. Gómez wrote her a tender
letter about the value of fighting for freedom. This letter is one of Felix
Rodriguez’s treasures.
And who was Máximo Gómez? Cubans know: He was an
officer from the Dominican Republic, who went to Cuba to help that country win
its independence from Spain. For Cubans, he is a Lafayette. In the 1980s, Felix
Rodriguez went to El Salvador, as a private citizen, to help that country
defeat a Castro-backed Communist insurgency. The alias he adopted: Max Gomez.
Here in his den, he reads out the letter from the original Gómez — and chokes
up.
When he was about twelve, an uncle offered him the
chance to study in the United States. Felix was reluctant at first, because he
loved his life in Cuba. But another uncle, who had studied in Paris, said,
“Think hard about this. This is a rare opportunity, and if you pass it up,
you’ll regret it.” Felix heeded this advice. And he chose a school in
Pennsylvania, because he wanted to see snow. The school was called Perkiomen,
in Pennsburg, not far from Philadelphia. When he was a junior in high school,
his country experienced its cataclysmic event: the takeover by Castro and his
fellow revolutionaries. Felix’s parents were on vacation in Mexico. (It turned
out to be a long vacation.) Felix, just 17, determined to fight the Communists,
as soon as possible.
It was possible through something called the
Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean, being formed in the Dominican Republic
— which itself was ruled by a dictator, Trujillo. Felix joined up against his
parents’ will. He arrived in Santo Domingo — or Ciudad Trujillo, as it was then
— on July 4, 1959. He hoped that this date, the Fourth of July, would be as
auspicious for Cubans as it had been for Americans. The Anti-Communist Legion
staged just one mission into Cuba, a disaster: Castro was waiting for them, and
all the troops were killed or captured. Rodriguez had been excluded from the
mission at the last second. A friend of his, Roberto Martín Pérez, was captured
and spent the next 28 years in Castro’s prisons. Rodriguez vowed to keep doing
what he could.
One of the themes of his life is that too few people
know what it is to have your country seized by totalitarians. In a 60
Minutes piece, aired in 1989, Mike Wallace asked Rodriguez why he was
helping the Salvadorans. “What is it, are you a war-lover? Is that it? Are you
constantly in search of adventure?” Rodriguez replied, in short, that people in
general are clueless. You can read about Communism, but until you have experienced
it for yourself, you have no idea. Also, there is the experience of exile: to
be ripped from your country and family and friends, and not be able to return.
Many people think of Castro and his brother as
Northern European–style socialists who occasionally get a little rough — or as
traditional caudillos who flavor their speech with Marxism-Leninism. In
reality, they are in the mold of Hoxha or Ceausescu, monsters. And the Castros’
grip on Cuba is monstrous. Like many Cubans and Cuban Americans, Rodriguez
often refers to Fidel Castro simply as “he” or “him.” Equally often, he refers
to him as “the son-of-a-bitch.”
At the beginning of 1961, he had an idea: He would
assassinate the son-of-a-bitch. It would avoid or shorten the coming war, he
reasoned. He and a friend volunteered their services — and the CIA accepted.
The Agency equipped Rodriguez with a German rifle, which had a telescopic
sight. The Agency also added a radio operator to the team. Three times, this
team headed to Cuba on a luxurious yacht, whose captain was American and whose
crew was made up of tough, hardened Ukrainians and Romanians, bearing East Bloc
weapons. Rodriguez later heard that the yacht belonged to Sargent Shriver,
President Kennedy’s brother-in-law. All three times, something went awry, and
the Agency changed its mind about the assassination mission. In late February
of ’61, Rodriguez was sent into Cuba as part of an infiltration team, whose
mission was to help the Cuban resistance in advance of the invasion: an
invasion that would be known as the Bay of Pigs.
Rodriguez’s mission was, of course, harrowing, with
many close calls. But it was not without its amusing elements. One day,
Rodriguez and a companion approached a beach. Not thinking, Rodriguez said to a
militiaman, “Is it okay to use this beach or is it private?” The militiaman
said, “Compañero, where you been? There aren’t any private beaches
anymore. They all belong to the people!” “Oh, right,” said Rodriguez.
“Thanks, compañero. Power to the Revolution!” But Rodriguez was
soon warned away from a particular stretch of beach: which was marked off for
Fidel Castro himself.
In his Miami den, Rodriguez gives a detailed account
of the Bay of Pigs, an operation that earned the name “fiasco.” The blunders of
the American planners are almost unbelievable. The Cubans had confidence until
the end, says Rodriguez: America was John Wayne. And John Wayne never loses.
Until he did. After the Bay of Pigs, Cuban hopes sank, and Castro cemented his
power. Fear gripped the island. People shrank from resistance, understandably.
Rodriguez managed to get to the Venezuelan embassy in Havana, where he was
sheltered for five months: He left Cuba in September 1961. He would not be
sheltered in the Venezuelan embassy today: The government in Caracas regards
the Castro dictatorship as a model. Venezuelan oil helps sustain the Castro
dictatorship. As Rodriguez sees it, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, is
loyal to the Castros, like a son to a father (two of them). Maduro’s
predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was the same way.
Rodriguez married a Cuban girl he met when he was 14
— “It was love at first sight.” He and Rosa had two children, Rosemarie and
Felix Jr. The family settled into American life — but not entirely. They were
between countries, in a sense, as so many others in South Florida were. Then,
in 1967, came Felix’s rendezvous with Guevara.
The old Argentinean guerrilla was in Bolivia to lead
a revolution, to impose on that country what he had already helped impose on
Cuba. The “old” guerrilla was 39; Rodriguez was 26. He was assigned by the CIA
to assist Bolivian forces in tracking Guevara down. What was his role in
ultimate success? We can say the following: Rodriguez’s skillfully gentle
interrogation of a young guerrilla prisoner helped the Bolivians home in on the
guerrilla leader. On October 9, Rodriguez met this leader face to face, in the
mud-brick schoolhouse in La Higuera. You can imagine some of the emotion.
Guevara had killed many people, personally, back in Cuba — mainly at La Cabaña,
his fortress headquarters. Before they died, the Cubans shouted, “Viva Cuba
libre!” (“Long live free Cuba!”) and “Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the
King!”). And now Rodriguez had him at his feet.
Guevara was a cocky killer, but he was not so cocky
at this moment. Still, he had an air of command. Said Rodriguez, “Che Guevara,
I want to talk to you.” Said Guevara, “No one interrogates me.” But talk they
did — about philosophy, life, and death. Rodriguez asked him about the people
he killed at La Cabaña. Guevara said they were all “foreigners.” He himself had
been a foreigner in Cuba, of course. And as Rodriguez pointed out to him, he
was a foreigner in Bolivia. Guevara answered, “These are matters of the
proletariat that are beyond your comprehension.” Rodriguez asked how he, an
Argentinean physician, could have become president of the Cuban national bank.
Guevara told him a funny story: One day, Castro said to his top cadres, “Who
here is a dedicated economist,” or economista? Guevara thought he had
said comunista — and raised his hand. That’s how he became
president of the national bank. Rodriguez thought he might be kidding — but
later, Benigno, the Cuban defector, confirmed the story. He had been present,
sitting right next to Guevara.
Rodriguez’s orders from Washington were to do
everything he could to keep Guevara alive. Then, the prisoner would be
transported to Panama, to be interrogated by the Americans. But the Bolivians
had the authority in this matter. It was their war, their country — and they wanted
him dead. Rodriguez gave the prisoner the news. “It’s better this way, Felix,”
said Guevara. “I should never have been captured alive.” Rodriguez said to him,
“Comandante, do you want me to say anything to your family if I ever
have the opportunity?” After an interval, Guevara said, “Yes. Tell Fidel that
he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America” (i.e., South America).
“And tell my wife to get remarried and try to be happy.” The two men embraced.
Then Rodriguez walked out of the schoolhouse. (He was never to meet Guevara’s
family.)
The Bolivian officer in charge, Joaquín Zenteno
Anaya, had offered Rodriguez the chance to finish Guevara off. Guevara had done
Rodriguez’s country so much harm, Zenteno said. It was only right that he have the
opportunity. But he declined. It was left to a Bolivian sergeant. Rodriguez has
always maintained that Guevara died with courage and dignity. He admired him
for it, and still does. But that’s as far as his admiration goes.
He remembers meeting a woman some 30 years ago,
whose son had been executed at La Cabaña. He was 15 years old. She went to the
fortress to beg for his life. Guevara received her. This was on a Monday. He
called an assistant and said, “When is this prisoner scheduled to be executed?”
On Friday, he was told. The prisoner’s mother thought Guevara was going to
grant a reprieve. Instead, he said, “Get him and execute him now, so his mother
doesn’t have to wait until Friday.” She fainted. Says Rodriguez, “He was a
very, very cruel man.”
What does he think when he sees Guevara’s face on
all those T-shirts? What does he think of the people who wear those T-shirts?
Mainly that they are ignorant, having no idea who Guevara was or what he did or
what he stood for. One day, Benigno and his wife saw a young Frenchman in a Che
shirt. His wife asked him, “Who is that fellow on your shirt?” The young man
answered, “A rock singer.”
Rodriguez became an American citizen in 1969. And he
volunteered for Vietnam. From 1970 to 1972, he was in special operations. He
told the Vietnamese with whom he worked, “I’ve already lost my country,”
meaning his original country, “but it’s not too late for you: You can fight for
your country.” One Christmas, after he was back home in Miami, he received a
card from a Vietnamese comrade named Hoa. “Do you think the United States will
ever abandon us?” asked Hoa. Rodriguez wrote back and said no. In his view, the
U.S. did in fact abandon the Vietnamese, in 1975. He is of the school that says
the U.S. won the war militarily but lost it politically, and shamefully. After
their triumph, the Vietnamese Communists killed about a million.
In 1976, Rodriguez left the CIA, for several
reasons. One had to do with security. In May of that year, Zenteno, the
Bolivian, was gunned down in Paris. He had been serving as his country’s
ambassador to France. Claiming responsibility was a group that called itself
the International Che Guevara Brigade. Not long after, Rodriguez received a
call at home. In Spanish, a man asked for “Felix Ramos.” Then he said, “You’re
next.” That name, Felix Ramos, had been Rodriguez’s alias in Bolivia. (Unlike
“Max Gomez,” it had no political or historical significance.) The Agency
offered to give Rodriguez and his family new identities and move them to a
different state. But Rodriguez decided against: too disruptive. So, the Agency
added security enhancements to his house, bullet-proofed his car, and took some
other measures. They also gave him a very high award: the Intelligence Star,
for valor.
For some years, the Cuban dictatorship had a price
on Rodriguez’s head. From Benigno, Rodriguez learned that Raúl Castro had a
special interest in him. There were at least three plots against Rodriguez. Is
there still a price on his head? He thinks not: “The Cuban government has
enough problems without worrying about me. But it’s always possible that some
crazy guy will try to do something to congratulate himself.”
Rodriguez has a lot to say about the Carter years —
none of it good — but we will skip ahead to the Reagan years. In 1985,
Rodriguez went to El Salvador, as a private citizen, and as Max Gomez. He flew
hundreds of combat missions with Salvadoran forces, applying what he had
learned about counterinsurgency. [For those that
remember the Iran-Contra hearings, he is the gentleman who spoke of his “Helicopter
concept” for hunting insurgents from the air] He told the Salvadorans
exactly what he had told the Vietnamese: “It may be too late for Cuba, but it’s
not too late for you.” El Salvador remained out of Communist hands and took a
democratic path (however stony). Like all astute observers, Rodriguez sees a
general threat to Latin America today: The threat is from little Castros who
are elected democratically — once. Then they go about Castroization. Rodriguez
cites Evo Morales, among others: He will rule Bolivia for a very long time,
presumably.
While in El Salvador, Rodriguez received a request
from a White House staffer, a man soon to become famous: Oliver North. Would
Rodriguez help with the resupply of the Contras in Nicaragua? They were
fighting the Castro-backed, and Soviet-backed, junta in Managua. Rodriguez
agreed — but fairly rapidly became disillusioned with the whole “Enterprise”
(as North called it). Equipment for the Contras was shoddy and unsafe.
Operational security was shaky. What really stuck in Rodriguez’s craw was
war-profiteering. In 1987, he testified at the Iran-Contra hearings, without a
lawyer, and without holding back. That was the end of his involvement in
scandal, he thought.
But a month later, there was an eye-popping story in
the Miami Herald: A convicted money launderer for the Medellín
cartel had accused Rodriguez of soliciting drug money for the Contras. This was
a leak supplied by “unnamed congressional sources.” And who might they be? It
was no mystery. In the Senate, John Kerry was chairing a subcommittee known to
one and all as the “Kerry Committee.” He was keen to establish a link between
the Contras and drug-running. He was especially keen to link the vice
president, George Bush, to any such drug-running. Rodriguez had a tie to Bush,
because the vice president’s national-security adviser was Donald Gregg, who
had been Rodriguez’s superior in Vietnam. Rodriguez wanted to testify before
Kerry’s committee in an open hearing, so he could clear his name. But Kerry
insisted on a closed hearing.
Toward the end of that hearing, Rodriguez said to
Kerry, “Senator, this has been the hardest testimony I ever gave in my life.”
Kerry asked why. “Because,” said Rodriguez, “it is extremely difficult to have
to answer questions from someone you do not respect, and I do not respect you
and what you are doing here.” The senator was not pleased. “Boy, did he blow
his top,” Rodriguez says. But after almost a year — and considerable Republican
pressure — Kerry apologized to Rodriguez and acknowledged that the money
launderer’s accusation was false. Fine, says Rodriguez. But if you Google his
name, you will find plenty of references to the Medellín drug cartel. The
endurance, the permanence, of the 1987 lie rankles Rodriguez. [for good or bad the interwebs are forever]
While Kerry had Rodriguez before him, he took the
opportunity to question him about Che Guevara and Bolivia. For one thing, had he
really done all he could to save the guerrilla’s life? Kerry was sarcastic in
this questioning. It seems to Rodriguez that Kerry, at that time, had sympathy
for Guevara, and the Sandinistas, and Castro. In 2004, when the senator was the
presidential nominee of the Democratic party, Rodriguez spoke against him at a
rally on Capitol Hill organized by Vietnam Veterans for Truth. Today, of
course, Kerry is secretary of state — which pains and disgusts Rodriguez. “I
despise that guy. He is a phony. He was a phony during the Vietnam War. He’s a
self-promoter.” His voice trails off: “I don’t like the guy at
all . . .”
Cubans such as Felix Rodriguez expected the Castro
dictatorship to last a year, two years, maybe three. He was 17 when Castro took
over; Castro, with his brother, still rules the island, and Rodriguez is 72.
Communism in Cuba has lasted longer than Communism in Eastern Europe, by ten
years and counting. Obviously, this is more painful and disgusting to Rodriguez
than John Kerry’s current status as U.S. secretary of state. Cuba was no
Jeffersonian democracy when Castro took over. But it was nothing like the
totalitarian hell he and his partners made it. And it has had no chance to
evolve in a democratic direction, as the Dominican Republic and lots of other
places did. When will it end? When will the Communists fall? Cubans are weary
of answering this question, after almost 55 years. Rodriguez, though, points to
the Castros’ friends in Venezuela: If the oil ever stopped coming, the brothers
would be in trouble. Needless to say, Rodriguez is unsure whether he will see
Cuba again.
Twenty-five years ago, he wrote in his memoir,
“Sometimes I feel a little bit like Ulysses. . . . Like
him, I am from an island nation. Like him, I went to war. And like him, I am
having a hard time getting home.” How about today? Does he still feel that way?
Is he still trying to get home? Where’s home? “It’s complicated,” Rodriguez
says. Yes, it is. It is complicated for virtually all Cuban Americans of his
generation. Rodriguez is a patriotic Cuban. He is also a patriotic American.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a bald contradiction, but the
circumstances of the Cuban exile are peculiar, not normal. Rodriguez says that
the Cuba he knew has been destroyed, over these 50-plus years. He doesn’t know
anyone over there anymore. The Communists long ago expropriated his family home
in Sancti Spíritus. If the regime fell, he wouldn’t claim it. But he might like
to negotiate to buy it, “for sentimental reasons.”
The 60 Minutes piece done on him in
1989 is an exercise in soft-Left condescension. It portrays anti-Communism as
some kind of mental disorder, or at least a sign of immaturity. Of Rodriguez,
Mike Wallace says, “He has never lost his love of war nor his anti-Communist ideals.”
Rodriguez doesn’t love war: But he is willing to fight in order to keep or gain
freedom and peace. At the end of the segment, Wallace wonders, “What does the
future hold for this 48-year-old foot soldier in a fading Cold War?” Arthur
Liman, who was chief counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee, says, “I think that
Felix Rodriguez will probably end up — and I hate to say this — in an unmarked
grave in some faraway place, fighting the remnants of Communism.” Wallace
responds, “A little bit like Che Guevara.”
William F. Buckley Jr. once came up with a
formulation: Say that Smith pushes an old lady out of the way of an onrushing
bus. Then Jones pushes an old lady into the way of an onrushing bus. It would
be absurd to say that these are two men who push old ladies around. Felix
Rodriguez will always be linked to Che Guevara, and they both fought. But they
are not alike. Rodriguez’s face will probably not grace a T-shirt. He is what
they call a “right-wing Cuban exile.” Guevara is a “romantic revolutionary” and
“idealist.” His face sits on a billion T-shirts. Pilgrims flock to La Higuera,
to worship at his shrine there. But of the two men, Rodriguez and Guevara, only
one deserves honor.
