Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1: We are coming to you with a fresh hot coffee
Speaker 1: and some fresh hot takes on this Monday morning as
Speaker 1: we record this. Who knows when you'll hear it. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: it's either a Tuesday or Thursday. It's true, ben Um.
Speaker 1: The takes that we plan to bring today are of
Speaker 1: the hot, honest variety, So be careful. And you're nol No,
Speaker 1: I'm not, You're not not today. That was That was
Speaker 1: a false flag. That was a false identity of yours. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess so. I mean a false flag would be
Speaker 1: if I said I was China and then attacked the
Speaker 1: United States, but I was actually an agent of a
Speaker 1: different country trying to put the blame on China. A
Speaker 1: good example of a false flag would be if superproducer
Speaker 1: Casey Pegrom hacked his own bank account and then blamed
Speaker 1: it on a different person or country. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: use that as an excuse to go to war. But
Speaker 1: you're a peaceful dude, Casey. I don't see you waging
Speaker 1: one man war against an entire country. No, No false
Speaker 1: flags here, no sorrey, are you saying that you I
Speaker 1: would not be a believable China as an individual. People
Speaker 1: would not buy that I was in fact of the
Speaker 1: country of China. Well maybe if you did it online
Speaker 1: in like a chat uh and you and you wrote
Speaker 1: in you either you you spoke in Mandarin and you
Speaker 1: sounded like one point three ish billion people or you
Speaker 1: you know, you wrote out the idiograms. I feel like
Speaker 1: you could pull it off. Maybe not in person, but
Speaker 1: online definitely you got this. You got this. I really
Speaker 1: was hoping to be able to do it in person then,
Speaker 1: but I guess if onlines are I can manage them,
Speaker 1: That's what I'll do. Um So today, Yeah, it's true,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a false flag attack, specifically against Cuba.
Speaker 1: It's true. So we have defined false flag with a
Speaker 1: bit of a cavalier approach. But but our our two
Speaker 1: comparisons hit the mark. A false flag attack is a
Speaker 1: term that describes a country purporting to be attacked by
Speaker 1: a foreign entity of some sort, when in fact they
Speaker 1: are attacking themselves. Right. So, there are so many alleged
Speaker 1: false flags throughout modern history. The Gulf of Tonkin incident
Speaker 1: is one famous alleged false flag because according to the
Speaker 1: official narrative, Uncle Sam still says that was legit. The
Speaker 1: rest is fake news. Uh. We often we often relegate
Speaker 1: the concept of false flags, the concept of this deceitful action,
Speaker 1: to the realm of fringe theory, revisionist history, conspiracies, and whatnot. However,
Speaker 1: today we are examining a case of a genuine would
Speaker 1: be false flag proposed by good old folks here at
Speaker 1: the us of A. And just a little background that
Speaker 1: might be super obvious to most people, especially folks who
Speaker 1: listen to our other show stuff. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to know we cover things like this all the time.
Speaker 1: A false flag attack refers to, I guess, the idea
Speaker 1: of in an engagement in warfare, you're supposed to identify yourself, right,
Speaker 1: like using a flag or some sort of markings on
Speaker 1: your uniform. And uh, with a false flag attack, you
Speaker 1: are misidentifying yourself on purpose to create a diversion or uh,
Speaker 1: draw the attention to a country that you are trying
Speaker 1: to um kind of malign essentially, or create a false
Speaker 1: conflict between these countries, unbeknownst to the party that you
Speaker 1: are impersonating, right right, nail on the head there man.
Speaker 1: And today's episode takes us to the Cold War, takes
Speaker 1: us to the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, and to Cuba.
Speaker 1: So the United States was terrified by the threat of
Speaker 1: communism right and Cuba, the country and islands of Cuba,
Speaker 1: was at the time seeing as a proxy for the
Speaker 1: U S. S R. A communist nation right on the doorstep,
Speaker 1: the reds, they called them, and the people in charge
Speaker 1: of the U. S Military and the US political machine
Speaker 1: at the time were absolutely certain that there would be
Speaker 1: some lack of a better phrase, there would be some
Speaker 1: sort of domino effect, that its first Caribbean countries would
Speaker 1: fall to communism, and then that it would spread like
Speaker 1: some sort of ideological disease throughout South America, and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, there's an uprising in Mexico and
Speaker 1: maybe even Canada. This was alarmist, alarmist thinking, and it
Speaker 1: was taken seriously. So the U. S spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time, as we learned later through declassified documents, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out ways to over throw the government of
Speaker 1: Cuba or assassinate the leader of that government, a man
Speaker 1: that is probably familiar to many of us called Fidel Castro.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, this scheme that was cooked up,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just some kind of like hair brained idea.
Speaker 1: It was very much a product of the Joint chiefs
Speaker 1: of Staff and its Secretary of Defense, Robert mcnamary's kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal looms large in international politics. So
Speaker 1: so we know that there were numerous failed attempts, some
Speaker 1: that never made it out of the out of the
Speaker 1: pitch room, right uh. And there was the Bay of
Speaker 1: Pigs invasion, which was a failure by all accounts. And
Speaker 1: the attempts to depose or assassinate Fidel Castro were collected
Speaker 1: under a CIA program that was called Operation Mongoose, or
Speaker 1: its street name was the Cuban Project. So if you
Speaker 1: were a member of the agency and you were talking
Speaker 1: in you know, semi mixed company, you might just refer
Speaker 1: to it as the Cuban Project, led by a General
Speaker 1: Edward Lansdale of the U. S. Air Force. Were not
Speaker 1: sure even now in where the idea for what would
Speaker 1: be called Operation Northwoods germinated. It may have originated with
Speaker 1: President Eisenhower towards the end of his administration, but past McNamara,
Speaker 1: we can't nail down a specific time and date. All
Speaker 1: we know is that Eisenhower did tell the head of
Speaker 1: the Joint Chiefs and other aids in his cabinet that
Speaker 1: he wanted to move against Castro before the for the
Speaker 1: inauguration of the new president. And all he was waiting for, basically,
Speaker 1: was for the Cuban government to give him some sort
Speaker 1: of excuse, use, any excuse, and then and then the
Speaker 1: time grows short. Right, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. Eisenhower flutes this idea.
Speaker 1: He says, you're at all you know this cast role
Speaker 1: fella doesn't provide an excuse to invade. Well, perhaps the
Speaker 1: US could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable.
Speaker 1: Generally acceptable means he was suggesting some sort of pretext
Speaker 1: for war, Right, a bombing, perhaps uh an attack, an
Speaker 1: act of sabotage carried out against the US, and we
Speaker 1: would tell everyone that it was it was the communist
Speaker 1: forces doing this. Right, We're not talking about necessarily a
Speaker 1: huge catastrophic loss of life. We're talking about maybe a
Speaker 1: coastguard boat, right that got inc or something that makes
Speaker 1: an ironclad case for us to tell the public, the
Speaker 1: U S public that these are acts of Cuban aggression,
Speaker 1: and we must act to save American lives. The problem
Speaker 1: with that is that Cuba wasn't going to do that,
Speaker 1: so we were going to attack our own stuff. That
Speaker 1: was the idea, right, No, totally, but they were not
Speaker 1: able to pull this off. At the time. Kennedy would
Speaker 1: not approve any of this kind of action, and the
Speaker 1: general that was in charge of all this stuff, General
Speaker 1: limnitzer Um, was really irritated at the fact that Kennedy
Speaker 1: would not play ball, and he was also irritated, equally
Speaker 1: irritated at the fact that Castro seemed to be kind
Speaker 1: of like cooling his heels a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't he wasn't going to be the one that
Speaker 1: was gonna like the match that that set the fire,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly exactly. So fast forward to February twenty six,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. We mentioned two generals so far. Let's
Speaker 1: remember the earlier one, General Lansdale. This is the guy
Speaker 1: who was cooking with gas in Operation Mongoose. In Operation
Speaker 1: Mongoose again, is this sort of mix tape of increasingly
Speaker 1: cartoonish ideas about how to overthrow or assassinate Fidel Castro.
Speaker 1: Robert Kennedy hates this stuff. It's like this is more
Speaker 1: and more ridiculous. We're talking about poisoned or exploding cigars.
Speaker 1: There was a plan at one point to try to
Speaker 1: make Castro lose his beard, which wouldn't kill him. It's
Speaker 1: just just like shame him, you know, as people would
Speaker 1: be like, Astro without a beard is like a bird
Speaker 1: without a song. You know, I can no longer follow you,
Speaker 1: which is which is weird and tells us how condescending
Speaker 1: these folks were. They they thought very little of the
Speaker 1: intelligence of the Cuban people. So Robert Kennedy goes to
Speaker 1: General Landsdale and says, look, just drop this mongoose thing.
Speaker 1: Drop all these efforts to antagonized or assassinate Fidel Castro. Instead,
Speaker 1: just concentrate on learning more about Cuba. Just concentrate learning
Speaker 1: stuff before you tried this regime change. And Lansdale hated this.
Speaker 1: He felt very, very sidelined. He thought that the Kennedy
Speaker 1: brothers had gone soft on Castro. And this is where
Speaker 1: the other general that you just mentioned, Limnitzer, comes into play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he because, like we said before, he was very
Speaker 1: annoyed that he couldn't get the support of Kennedy, the president,
Speaker 1: or his brothers, you know, who were also powerful. Man. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there was this sense that his window for this invasion,
Speaker 1: that he saw us being so crucial, was you know,
Speaker 1: kind of slipping through his fingers, right, And uh, he
Speaker 1: felt like these efforts that too. So let's ben let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what were some of the
Speaker 1: things they were doing to provoke the public, you know,
Speaker 1: the Cuban citizen rate, to maybe revolt against Castro. We
Speaker 1: did have some efforts to make that happen, isn't that right?
Speaker 1: It goes way back, It goes way way, way, way
Speaker 1: way back. As part of the Spanish American War, the
Speaker 1: US invaded and occupied Cuba when it was ruled by
Speaker 1: Spain in eighteen nine eight and occupied the country until
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, and then there was a brief period
Speaker 1: of insolvents or independence, however you want to call it.
Speaker 1: In the US occupied it again from nineteen o six
Speaker 1: to nineteen o nine, and then briefly nineteen twelve, and
Speaker 1: then from nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty two. The United
Speaker 1: States has a very very long history of interfering with Cuba.
Speaker 1: For something, this was seen as a necessary step to
Speaker 1: prevent the encroachment of foreign powers, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: first the Spanish Empire, later the USSR, and for others
Speaker 1: this was seen as bellicost act of and outside country
Speaker 1: trying to interfere with another country or nations internal affairs.
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of ways to look at it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's true. The CIA has a long history
Speaker 1: of fomenting revolution or attempting to do so through proxy
Speaker 1: protests groups, So students spontaneously protesting, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: tail as old as time. Unfortunately, so there were some
Speaker 1: activities like that most likely well, and unfortunately again that
Speaker 1: stuff wasn't working, No, it was. It was very it
Speaker 1: was very toothless. It seemed like if it had ever
Speaker 1: worked at all, it certainly wasn't working anymore. And they're
Speaker 1: just to be no inclination on the part of the
Speaker 1: Cuban government to launch the attack that we very weirdly
Speaker 1: so desperately wanted, right absolutely, so, Limnitzer and the other
Speaker 1: joint chiefs can get together, no doubt in the smoky
Speaker 1: back room and say, yeah, they are the joint chiefs
Speaker 1: after all, Chief joints. They who knows, I imagined that
Speaker 1: they would see marijuana as hippie stuff. You think so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were probably more hard drinkers. Think it made them
Speaker 1: more creative. Look, look, hey man, some of these ideas
Speaker 1: in that Operation Mongoose sound like the product of a
Speaker 1: bunch of stoners in the back room. Stoners. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of aggrove for stoner's. Yeah, maybe more
Speaker 1: like emphetamine. Emphetamines were very popular in that time, right, Also,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe this was like a pill thing. I
Speaker 1: don't even what pills did they have back then? Do
Speaker 1: they have qualutes Benny's? Yeah? Poppers? Is that what? Queludes
Speaker 1: are my go to drug joke because I don't know
Speaker 1: really what they are. Well, have you seen Wolf of
Speaker 1: Wall Street? Yes, and that scene where he takes the
Speaker 1: quayludes and falls down the stairs repeatedly in like an
Speaker 1: amazing comical form and tries to get in the car. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes you like noodle person. That's what lud does.
Speaker 1: I just like saying ludes. Yeah. Remember that game drug
Speaker 1: Wars that you play on the graphic calculators back in
Speaker 1: the day. No, it was like, what do you remember
Speaker 1: this casey, I totally remember this. Yeah. So the T
Speaker 1: I E D three graphic calculators have these little apps
Speaker 1: you could load into them. I guess I don't remember
Speaker 1: how you even did it, but one of them was
Speaker 1: drug Wars and you play it with alpha numeric key
Speaker 1: entries to kind of like generate responses. And I remember
Speaker 1: one of the drugs you could buy was ludes, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this Ludes? That sounds decadent.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a brand name, it's sold as I
Speaker 1: think the drug is still around in different countries. But
Speaker 1: doing to drugs kids definitely not. You'll end up like
Speaker 1: the joint chiefs I knew, who knows. Maybe you know
Speaker 1: ideology is a drug and that's definitely whatever they were doing.
Speaker 1: That's the drug that they got the highest on the
Speaker 1: most often. So they say, we're going to trick the
Speaker 1: American public. We need to get the US behind us,
Speaker 1: and because this is an international operation, we would hopefully
Speaker 1: ideally also full the rest of the world, or at
Speaker 1: least get a nod and a wink from our friendly
Speaker 1: countries who are also fighting communism. So they said, if
Speaker 1: we can, if we can get everybody two turn against Cuba,
Speaker 1: then they'll allow us to make war on this nation.
Speaker 1: But well, no, we did a super top notch job.
Speaker 1: If everyone in the world outside of Cuba insist that
Speaker 1: we launched this war against Castro, there was a secret
Speaker 1: document from the Joint Chiefs of Staff which is declassified now,
Speaker 1: in which they say, blatantly explicitly, let me, let me,
Speaker 1: let me try villainous boys out here. Well, the opinion
Speaker 1: and the United Nations full should be favorably affected by
Speaker 1: developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash
Speaker 1: and irresponsible and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to
Speaker 1: the peace of the Western hemisphere. At the end of that,
Speaker 1: everybody's like, of course and ringing their hands and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. That's a very Lord of the Rings villain
Speaker 1: kind of sound. That yeah, yeah, Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: is loosely based on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at
Speaker 1: least the ring brace. That's what I heard. Um. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing that happens next, Operation Northwood um, which
Speaker 1: had been approved by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Speaker 1: of Staff, every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Um.
Speaker 1: It Actually this is what the plan contained several quite
Speaker 1: horrendous acts of of of faux terrorism, but yet actual
Speaker 1: terrorism on American soil. Uh. The idea of folks being
Speaker 1: shot in the streets, um refugee boats that were leaving
Speaker 1: Cuba to be sunk uh and also a launching a
Speaker 1: wave of violent acts terrorist acts in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And Miami and other places across the country. It would
Speaker 1: involve framing people for bombings, hijacking planes, planting evidence, and
Speaker 1: all of it would be blamed on Castro and Limnitzer
Speaker 1: and his crew would have everything they needed to gain
Speaker 1: public support and international support for backing them in this
Speaker 1: war effort. Another quote from the memo, he could develop
Speaker 1: a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in
Speaker 1: other Florida cities and even in Washington. They were planning this.
Speaker 1: This is absolutely right. And remember earlier we said that
Speaker 1: false flags, when they work, tend to be stuff like
Speaker 1: Gulf of Tonkin, right, not like uh, not like a
Speaker 1: huge loss of thousands of lives. This, however, still feels
Speaker 1: like a cavalcade of catastrophes. The list that you read
Speaker 1: off for us, what was that innocent people shot in
Speaker 1: the street, boats being sunk on the high seas right,
Speaker 1: violent terrorism in the capital of the US and in
Speaker 1: Miami and other places, framing people for bombings, hijacking planes,
Speaker 1: tracing it all back to Castro, and some kind of
Speaker 1: this goes to the very top sort of idea. This
Speaker 1: feels like they were looking for whatever would have been
Speaker 1: most effective, and it would be nice to think that
Speaker 1: it would have immediately stopped once that call to war
Speaker 1: actually happened, and they got the support of the West,
Speaker 1: and they got the support of the domestic public. But
Speaker 1: this is not what the Joint Chiefs or the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military are supposed to be doing. Northwood's suggested that US
Speaker 1: personnel would disguise themselves as Cuban agents and then they
Speaker 1: could burn ammunition sink ships at Guantanamo. And they even said, look,
Speaker 1: let's just blow up a U. S. Ship. We can
Speaker 1: take the loss, will blame it on Cuba. Blame it
Speaker 1: on Cuba. I mean, this thing was like, you know,
Speaker 1: so who the whole idea to a false flag attack
Speaker 1: or the idea of like crisis actors, that's a big term.
Speaker 1: It gets thrown around like the conspiracy community is terrible.
Speaker 1: Not I don't like it either, but it's used by
Speaker 1: a horrible cancer as media personalities like Alex Jones to justify,
Speaker 1: you know, their position on things like the Sandy Hook
Speaker 1: school shot where they say, oh, these weren't real shooters,
Speaker 1: they were quote unquote crisis actors, and you know this
Speaker 1: was all staged for the purposes of creating uproar against
Speaker 1: gun violence or whatever. Absolutely absurd in this case, absolutely
Speaker 1: provable and confirmed. Um, they even were playing inning to
Speaker 1: do things like conduct fake funerals for these supposed victims. Right.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if we've talked about this then,
Speaker 1: but a lot of this comes from a declassified document
Speaker 1: from the Joint Chiefs of Staff uh subject Memorandum for
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense Justification for US military intervention in Cuba,
Speaker 1: and it goes through and describes a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that we're talking about here. The author of this
Speaker 1: report being General limnitz Or himself, goes on to talk
Speaker 1: about the remember the main incident um, which I was
Speaker 1: not familiar with up until this point, That was the
Speaker 1: explosion and sinking of the U. S S Main that
Speaker 1: began the Spanish American War that we mentioned earlier, where
Speaker 1: the casualties were listed in US newspapers, and that caused
Speaker 1: this kind of wave of national anger and contempt and
Speaker 1: again fomented that support of the war effort, which is important, right,
Speaker 1: Like we never think it's it's easy to forget or
Speaker 1: to think that like the government can just wave a
Speaker 1: one and make war happen, but they do kind of
Speaker 1: pend on the support of the public of constituents, because
Speaker 1: it's all kind of a political game in the end, right, right. So,
Speaker 1: one of the first lessons learned by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government about the public and war, especially war in other countries,
Speaker 1: came about in the Vietnam War. This was the first
Speaker 1: time that many domestic residents were able to see the unvarnished,
Speaker 1: un propagandized results of invading a foreign country. They were
Speaker 1: able to see men, women and children dying, many of
Speaker 1: whom were civilians. They were able to see war crimes
Speaker 1: in real time. This is before the Vietnam War. This
Speaker 1: again is a plan that exists in secret in a
Speaker 1: smokey back room, and they still pitched other ideas too.
Speaker 1: They said, well what if we what if we refit
Speaker 1: an American jet to resemble a Cuban jet and then
Speaker 1: we use it to harass civil air, which means private
Speaker 1: industry air or even just some poor schmuck with some
Speaker 1: poor schmuck with a little play my am, I don't
Speaker 1: know that's that's hilarious to me. Uh, it's hilarious because
Speaker 1: everyone's okay. They also want to do a fake attack
Speaker 1: on US military jets. They wanted to have submarines involved,
Speaker 1: They wanted a pilot to fly under assumed identity, and
Speaker 1: they had steps to this plan which feel a little
Speaker 1: bit like a spaghetti at the wall kind of attempt
Speaker 1: at solving the problem. What if we did this, what
Speaker 1: if we did that. It's a very dr Susian approach
Speaker 1: to terrible, terrible actions. They say, we could. They also
Speaker 1: acknowledge this very interesting. They also acknowledge more or less tacitly.
Speaker 1: At least they acknowledge that, Remember, the main incident was
Speaker 1: indeed a false flag, and this was during a time
Speaker 1: when no one admitted that publicly, at least no one
Speaker 1: associated with the government. Also, they said, why don't we
Speaker 1: haven't get this an incident which will demonstrate that a
Speaker 1: Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a charter civil airline.
Speaker 1: So what's the charter civil airline that's like Delta Southwest,
Speaker 1: some commercial passenger plane. They were gonna do that. They
Speaker 1: were actually going to shoot down a plane. Well, they
Speaker 1: were gonna they were gonna fake it. They were not
Speaker 1: actually going to kill the people, got it, So okay,
Speaker 1: So that's when the crisis actor's thing comes. I know
Speaker 1: you hate that term, but this does apply because this
Speaker 1: is literally folks that are posing as victims, who would
Speaker 1: write like like even the talking about shooting people in
Speaker 1: the streets, were they really going to shoo people in
Speaker 1: the streets or was it going to be people like
Speaker 1: pretending to be shot in the streets and then they
Speaker 1: were gonna have fake funerals. That's the tough part because
Speaker 1: at this time too, we have to remember social media
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, So you could if you have people playing
Speaker 1: ball with you in the broadcast radio, television, and and
Speaker 1: the media of the time, the printed papers, then you
Speaker 1: could just you could just make up some names. You
Speaker 1: could be like, well it turns out that Casey real
Speaker 1: name Pegram from Many Town, Illinois, was tragically a victim.
Speaker 1: He leaves behind uh two children, schnauzer, and a collection
Speaker 1: of vintage records and also tiny spoons. There's also spoonist, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and thimbles. So there. What our point is here is
Speaker 1: that there's no way for the average newspaper reader or
Speaker 1: the average TV radio listener to go through and do
Speaker 1: due diligence. To me a couple of yeah, that's funny too,
Speaker 1: my twelve year old self applaudse you. Well, well, I'm
Speaker 1: emotionally nine, so I'm glad I'm impressing an older person.
Speaker 1: So so this this thing, though, we're we're being a
Speaker 1: big live but this is this is evil. This is
Speaker 1: actually an evil thing to do. Why would they declassify
Speaker 1: this ever? Right, we've had this convertation on the other show,
Speaker 1: and so they don't want you to know about like
Speaker 1: what leads to things being declassified? Is it literally just
Speaker 1: a clock time thing where enough time has passed that
Speaker 1: this doesn't matter anymore. We want to give the public
Speaker 1: a little bit of juicy stuff. Or I don't know,
Speaker 1: is it just literally a storage thing, or we need
Speaker 1: to move some documents out of the secret vaults into
Speaker 1: this other vault that so we can, you know, make
Speaker 1: more room for more classified stuff. Right, mistakes were made, huh,
Speaker 1: So all details of this plan of Operation Northwood's were
Speaker 1: hidden for almost fifty years, more like forty years, but
Speaker 1: for decades and decades were hidden and that general that
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier limnits are He probably thought that this
Speaker 1: very dark brainstorming exercise was over and done with that
Speaker 1: all copies of the paperwork, all copies of this memo
Speaker 1: were destroyed, and he had an established practice of regularly
Speaker 1: destroying things if they would compromise him or his associates later. However,
Speaker 1: I do want to mention you can find this at
Speaker 1: the n s A Archives. It is online now, you
Speaker 1: can google it. Know you earlier read the name of
Speaker 1: the memo, We want you to find it. Read it
Speaker 1: for yourself. I will say that it's written and vary
Speaker 1: to the point simplistic language. They're not trying to cloak
Speaker 1: this in some sort of legal ease. Oddly enough, we
Speaker 1: know exactly how the operation. Northwood's documents came to light.
Speaker 1: At first, it turned out that not everything was destroyed.
Speaker 1: Obviously a lot of it was so much so that
Speaker 1: we don't know who knew what and when. But these
Speaker 1: came into the public eye in nineteen two. That's when
Speaker 1: they hit the mainstream because of a film by one
Speaker 1: Oliver Stone Casey can you guess which one it is?
Speaker 1: Jf nailed it. Nailed it, Yeah, because of the Oliver
Speaker 1: Stone film JFK, which examined the idea of a conspiracy
Speaker 1: behind the assassination of President JFK President Kennedy. This conspiratorial
Speaker 1: film ultimately led to the discovery of Northwoods because Congress
Speaker 1: passed the law due to overwhelming public outcry. Uh. They
Speaker 1: passed the law to increase public access to government records,
Speaker 1: at least as far as they're related to JFK. And
Speaker 1: this is something that came out in the wash. Very interesting.
Speaker 1: Speaking of assassination attempts, talk about dodging bullets. Fidel Castro
Speaker 1: was certainly a very popular target for assassination attempts. The
Speaker 1: bell of the bell of the bloody ball. Yeah. According
Speaker 1: to a gentleman who protected him during his regime, um,
Speaker 1: he survived over six hundred assassination attempts, everything from snipers
Speaker 1: to some of the crazy methods the CIA were plotting
Speaker 1: against him. Poisoned, wet suit poisoned well. Okay, So in
Speaker 1: nine the Senate Intelligence Committee said it had concrete evidence
Speaker 1: of this plan to offer Fidel Castro through proxy, of course,
Speaker 1: a wet suit lined with spores and bacteria that would
Speaker 1: give him a skin disease. This apparently involved, uh, the
Speaker 1: guy who would be there. Their point man for this
Speaker 1: was a US lawyer named James B. Donovan, and he
Speaker 1: was going to give Castro the wet suit when he
Speaker 1: went to negotiate the release of listeners from the failed
Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs invasion. Eventually they abandoned the plan because
Speaker 1: the lawyer gave Castro a different diving suit and they said,
Speaker 1: on his own initiative. But that's yeah, just like you
Speaker 1: said there, there's so many weird ways that the US
Speaker 1: government plan to antagonize or kill Fidelic cast If you
Speaker 1: want to check out a list of those, you can
Speaker 1: go to Mental Flaws straightaway for ten ways the CIA
Speaker 1: tried to kill Castro by Stacy Conrad. We mentioned exploding
Speaker 1: cigar earlier. That kind of uh makes me think of
Speaker 1: the episode we did about the Nazis attempts to are
Speaker 1: like plans plots to kill Um Winston church Shell and
Speaker 1: that was with an exploding chocolate bar and also an
Speaker 1: exploding cigar. Several cigar based murder attempts here, including a
Speaker 1: poisoning his cigar. Um. We even have one that involved
Speaker 1: exploding conk shell, ballpoint hypodermic syringe. You know. The closest one,
Speaker 1: the closest they ever got, by most sources, was a
Speaker 1: poisoned milk chack in nineteen sixty three. Castro may well
Speaker 1: have died, but the waiter at the Havannah Hilton, was
Speaker 1: trying to retrieve the pill that he was supposed to
Speaker 1: stick in the milkshake, but it's stuck to the freezer.
Speaker 1: And then when he was trying to grab it and
Speaker 1: rip it loose, the capsule itself tore apart. So he
Speaker 1: got well, I mean, you know, don't ruin a good
Speaker 1: milk chack. So this is literally all just about eradicating communism,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's more than that. It's easy
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, there were targeting communism, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of economic incentives at play. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about regional hedgemons. You know, when you
Speaker 1: want to you want to control other nations on your
Speaker 1: border close too close for comfort, right, and you know
Speaker 1: it's crazy too. My my daughter and her mom and stepdad,
Speaker 1: they briefly there was this window that opened up for
Speaker 1: tourists to be able to visit Cuba, and they did
Speaker 1: that and had a lovely time. My daughter was super
Speaker 1: amazing adventure for her. And then like very shortly after
Speaker 1: they got back, the Trump administration closed that window and
Speaker 1: it's all about kind of putting pressure on them for
Speaker 1: trade and tariffs and there's like it's you know, that
Speaker 1: embargo that's been going on for so long. It's part
Speaker 1: of the reason that in Cuba they don't have any
Speaker 1: modern cars. It's all like older cars that they've been
Speaker 1: able to work on because they've been kind of in
Speaker 1: this trade bubble for so long. Right, And my buddy
Speaker 1: Scott and I have an excellent episode on where show
Speaker 1: Car Stuff about the amazing ingenuity of Cuban nationals when
Speaker 1: it comes to those vehicles. You can see cars from
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties that are maintained in this this
Speaker 1: amazing fashion. By the way, hard stuff is coming back
Speaker 1: and you can you can hear more about everything that floats, fly,
Speaker 1: swims or drives very very soon. So check it out.
Speaker 1: If you get a chance to tell my buddy Scott, uh,
Speaker 1: you heard about it here, you can say Ben sent
Speaker 1: me and Ben told me that you would give me
Speaker 1: a free T shirt if I write to you. It's true.
Speaker 1: It's true. It's not a false flag. So that is
Speaker 1: the story. The good news is the Operation Northwoods never occurred,
Speaker 1: as as far as we know, there was no false
Speaker 1: flag that actually took US lives or Cuban lives and
Speaker 1: use those deaths as a pretext to go to a
Speaker 1: hot war with CUA. However, we might never have found
Speaker 1: out about this lamp it weren't for the public outcry
Speaker 1: and public interests following Oliver Stone's film JF Cape. And
Speaker 1: this is this is important for us to remember because
Speaker 1: it's often said that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe that's a cliche. But here's a pro
Speaker 1: tip about cliches. They're usually called cliches because they're true.
Speaker 1: So now we have to not as members of individual
Speaker 1: countries or nations or communities, but as his species. We
Speaker 1: must exercise critical thinking when we hear about these sorts
Speaker 1: of attacks, these sorts of things that could be Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell esque tipping points. One of the most recent that's
Speaker 1: occurred as we record this is the the rising tension
Speaker 1: in the Strait of hor Moves, which is largely controlled
Speaker 1: by the Republic of Iran and recently again this Uh,
Speaker 1: there have been alleged attacks on tankers. The US says
Speaker 1: that Iran did it, Uran says they didn't do it.
Speaker 1: And Ron has also made other claims about its own
Speaker 1: tankers being taken. And there are some people policy wonks, journalists, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Who are keeping an eye on this situation and already
Speaker 1: claiming that a false flag is a foot. This has
Speaker 1: not been proven yet. And the weird thing about false
Speaker 1: flags is if Operation Northwoods is in the Indicator, we
Speaker 1: learned about them about forty years after they happen. But
Speaker 1: it makes for some fun podcast fodder. It's okay because
Speaker 1: no one actually died exactly. So uh. We hope that
Speaker 1: you will write to us and tell us whether you
Speaker 1: have visited Cuba. A couple of our close friends have.
Speaker 1: Our research pal, Ryan Barrish has visited Cuba recently. He's
Speaker 1: there for quite a while. I think he has dual citizenship,
Speaker 1: so he's able to go right because he has German
Speaker 1: citizens yep, yep uh and I do too. I do
Speaker 1: want to before we in today's episode, I want to
Speaker 1: get your opinion, Casey on the Oliver Stone film JFK
Speaker 1: did you watch it, Did you like it? What you take? One? Ten?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's great. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have pointed out there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, conjecture and stuff that's probably
Speaker 1: been disproven since that film came out, which just as
Speaker 1: a piece of filmmaking itself and as something that kind
Speaker 1: of goes to the wider skepticism, suspicion, whatever you wanna
Speaker 1: call it, lingering doubts in the American psyche about that
Speaker 1: whole event. I think it's great. Casey on the case,
Speaker 1: what do you think, Noel? Do you remember that one?
Speaker 1: I have not seen. JFK. That's Kevin Costner. I believe
Speaker 1: Kevin Costner. I had did see Nixon. Um, I remember
Speaker 1: liking it just fine. Um Now, I really liked Platoon.
Speaker 1: Platoon was always a favorite war movie of mine. But
Speaker 1: now in my older years, I realized that Full Metal
Speaker 1: Jacket is the superior film. You know, Apocalypse now, man, No,
Speaker 1: I think the Full Metal Jacket, I is, is my favorite.
Speaker 1: Apocoly Apocalypse Now would be second, Platoon would be third,
Speaker 1: you know. I I In terms of non movies, I
Speaker 1: think because I did a stage play of Apocalypse now.
Speaker 1: Wait what Rushmore kind of yeah, true story, that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was definitely a thing that happened.
Speaker 1: I think that's maybe that's why I I love Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 1: I even love the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 1: That's um Hearts of Darkness great. I'm such a fanboy
Speaker 1: for that. Full Metal Jacket is great, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: just for for my money. I love the uh, the
Speaker 1: brutal chaos in the madness of it too. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very Shakespearean almost tragedy. You know, you're
Speaker 1: right bad maybe if I held them side by So
Speaker 1: I just have a real fondness in my heart for
Speaker 1: up for Full Metal Jacket. I have Scene Apoclypse now
Speaker 1: and sometime I think if I watched it today, I
Speaker 1: might flip. Will you get a chance to see a
Speaker 1: new version of it soon? Because he's doing yet another
Speaker 1: director's cut. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm kind of tired of seeing different
Speaker 1: versions of that movie, But I guess there's there's one more.
Speaker 1: It might be a diminishing return at some point. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: A lot of people have pointed out that the extended cut,
Speaker 1: the Reducs cut, it's kind of boring. There's about forty
Speaker 1: minutes in there where they're just at that weird plantation
Speaker 1: yeah the French Yeah, which is kind of kind of
Speaker 1: just drags for a long time. There's a weird sex
Speaker 1: scene in there that just it just occurs as it
Speaker 1: feels as if that that scene and I know this
Speaker 1: is not your other shoe movie, crush, but that scene,
Speaker 1: that entire segment of the Redus film, it seems like
Speaker 1: backstage they just in production had access to this place
Speaker 1: and they said, all right, let's just let's do some stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, let's do it dead or scene they should
Speaker 1: talk about how they feel in very vague terms, and
Speaker 1: then let's do uh, you know, let's do a sex
Speaker 1: scene because we still have the room, we still have
Speaker 1: the location. And they were like, all right, well, we
Speaker 1: gotta get back to this story. Speaking of getting back
Speaker 1: to the story, our story is over. That's true, and
Speaker 1: so is our episode. But if you want to do
Speaker 1: any of the things we were talking about, right us,
Speaker 1: let us know, um, your favorite false flag attack, something
Speaker 1: you think maybe was a false flag attack. Um, anything,
Speaker 1: your favorite part of apocalypse Now. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about the Redux too long? Did it lag a little bit?
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that weird sex scene? Let
Speaker 1: us know right to us at Ridiculous at I heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com or hit us up on our Facebook group,
Speaker 1: which is the Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us
Speaker 1: individually on Instagram. See me get kicked into and out
Speaker 1: of various places and countries. Uh spoiler alert. I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of big trips coming up in summer, so
Speaker 1: stay tuned to that. I am at ben Bowling. You
Speaker 1: can find me at how Now. Noel Brown's mainly just
Speaker 1: me getting kicked in the shins by small children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why they hate your shins so much.
Speaker 1: It's a thing now And as always, thank you to
Speaker 1: our super producer Casey Pegrum. Thank you to our research
Speaker 1: associates Gabe Lozier and Ryan Barrish. Big thanks to Alex
Speaker 1: Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to Jonathan the Quister
Speaker 1: Strickland for you know, occupying that space of pure evil
Speaker 1: that allows the universe to exist in some weird form
Speaker 1: of harmony. That's so nice that you that you're giving
Speaker 1: a shut out because you guys get kind of antagonistic.
Speaker 1: And of course thanks to Eve's Jeff Cote, who will
Speaker 1: be appearing on the show sometime soon we hope, as
Speaker 1: well as Christopher hassy Otis, thank you for listening and Noel,
Speaker 1: thank you for taking this strange journey with me. May
Speaker 1: we never be the victims of a false flag attack.
Speaker 1: They should just be real flats. Agreed, See you next time,
Speaker 1: books m H. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.