Félix Rodríguez (soldier)

File:Felix Ismael Rodriguez.jpg

Felix Rodriguez with the captured Che Guevara.

Félix Rodríguez is a former CIA intelligence operative.

Biography

Born in Cuba, Félix Ismael Rodriguez Mendigutia fled the country in 1959, shortly after the Cuban Revolution ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista. Most of Rodríguez’s family (many of whom were members of Batista's government), including his father and two of his brothers, were tried and executed within the first months of the new government in Cuba. He fled Cuba for the United States when he was 18 years old, and became a US citizen in 1969, soon enlisting in the Army. During his career with the CIA he also went by the name Máximo Gómez. He was awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor by the CIA and nine Crosses for Gallantry by the The Republic of (South) Vietnam.

Bay of Pigs and Bolivia

File:Porter Goss, Barry Seal, Felix Rodriguez, et al.jpg

Felix Rodriguez, Porter Goss, Barry Seal, and others, Mexico City 22 January 1963

He joined and became a leader in the CIA-backed Operation 40 and Brigade 2506, and went to Cuba, without knowledge or permission of the Cuban government, a few weeks before the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. His colleagues in Operation 40 included David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Ted Shackley, E. Howard Hunt, and Frank Sturgis, among others.

He was involved in many operations against leftist governments and movements throughout Latin America over the next 30 years. In 1967 the CIA recruited him to train and head a team to hunt down the leftist guerrilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia. When Guevara was captured, Rodriguez interrogated him and took his watch. Rodriguez claims, in his book, that he wanted to keep Guevara alive for further interrogation. However, notes from a "CIA Debriefing of Félix Rodríguez, June 3, 1975" state that Guevara was executed while in Rodriguez' custody.[1].

The Miami Herald reported on 20 June 2004 that Miami immigration Judge Neale Foster ruled that Rodríguez' testimony on behalf of a torture suspect would be "given no weight" because Rodríguez acknowledged having been involved in the human rights violation execution of leader Guevara.[2]

Vietnam

In the Vietnam War, Rodríguez flew over 300 helicopter missions, and was shot down five times. In 1971 Rodriguez trained Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). PRUs were CIA-sponsored units that worked for the Phoenix Program. (On PRUs in the Phoenix Program, see Douglas Brook's MA thesis, "The Phoenix Program: a Retrospective Assessment," Baylor University, 1989, pp. iv, 38-40, 50, 57, 60, 114-18, 127, 140-144, and 148-56.) The Walsh Report states (Chapter 29): "During the Vietnam War, [Donald] Gregg supervised CIA officer Felix Rodriguez and they kept in contact following the war."[3] (Gregg later became National Security Advisor for Vice President Bush, and Rodriguez was in frequent contact with him regarding arms for the Contras.)

Rodriguez was also involved in military operations in El Salvador, employing mobile helicopter strike units similar to those he developed in Vietnam. He flew over 100 combat missions in Central America, and captured the Martí National Liberation Front’s top commander, Nidia Díaz.

Iran-Contra and ties to George H.W. Bush

File:Bush Sr and Felix Rodriguez in White House c1986.jpg

Rodriguez visiting Bush Sr in the White House c.1988

Note from Bush Sr. to Rodriguez, Dec. 1988

There is extensive documentation of Rodriguez' ties to George Bush Sr. during the Iran-Contra Affair, from 1983-1988.[4] Indeed, in September 1986 General John K. Singlaub wrote Oliver North expressing concern about Felix Rodriguez's daily contact with the Bush office and warned of damage to President Reagan and the Republican Party. The Walsh Report (Chapter 25) states that M. Charles Hill took notes at a meeting between George Shultz and Elliott Abrams on 16 October 1986, as follows:

"Felix Rodrigues [sic] -- Bush did know him from CIA days. FR [Rodriguez] is ex-CIA. In El Salv[ador] he goes around to bars saying he is buddy of Bush. A y[ea]r ago Pdx [Poindexter] & Ollie [North] told VP staff stop protecting FR as a friend -- we want to get rid of him from his involvnt [sic] w[ith] private ops. Nothing was done so he still is there shooting his mouth off."[5]

(brackets are in the original)

(See photographs of Rodriguez visiting Bush in the White House around this time, and Bush's note to Rodriguez in December 1988, which states: "Yes, the Truth is powerful. You have told the truth faithfully -- and have won a lot of respect in the process. Good Luck. May 1989 be calmer than 1988. [...] With admiration and respect, George Bush").

In October 1984, Gerald Latchinian, was arrested for smuggling $10.3 million in cocaine. Latchinian maintained that this was a CIA fund-raising operation. According to authors Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, he was a "former business partner of Felix Rodriguez" (Cocaine Politics : Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition, University of California Press, 1998, p.60)[6]

Three months later, Rodriguez met with Donald Gregg, who by then was Bush's National Security advisor. The Walsh Report (Chapter 29) states: "Gregg introduced Rodriguez to Vice President Bush in January 1985, and Rodriguez met with the Vice President again in Washington, D.C., in May 1986. He also met Vice President Bush briefly in Miami on May 20, 1986."[7]

Rodriguez also met and spoke repeatedly with Bush's advisor Gregg and his deputy (Col. Samuel J. Watson III). As one indicator of this connection, a single chapter in the Walsh Report titled "Donald P. Gregg" (Chapter 29) contains 329 references to Rodriguez.[8]

On 5 October 1986, the C-123 carrying Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua, killing two American pilots, William H. Cooper and Wallace B. Sawyer, Jr., and one Latin crew member. "Rodriguez unsuccessfully attempted to call Gregg to inform him of the missing plane. He reached Watson, who in turn notified the White House Situation Room. The following day, Rodriguez called Watson again and told him that the airplane was one of North's."[9] Hasenfus told reporters that he worked for "Max Gomez" (an alias for Felix Rodriguez) and "Ramon Medina" (an alias for Luis Posada Carriles) of the CIA. On 10 October 1986, Clair George, head of CIA clandestine operations, testified before Congress that he did not know of any direct connection between Hasenfus and Administration officials. In Fall of 1992 George was convicted on two charges of false statements and perjury before Congress; he was pardoned Christmas Eve that year by then-President Bush.[10][11]

Earlier, it is not known what contact, if any, Rodriguez had with George H.W. Bush e.g., c.1959-1966, when Bush was CEO of Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company. It is also not known what connections Bush had with Rodriguez during Bush's stint as CIA Director (November 1975-January 1977). Rodriguez had reported to Donald Gregg and Ted Shackley during Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, both became close aides to Bush.

See Also

• Bay of Pigs invasion
• Operation 40
• Che Guevara
• Operation Phoenix (aka Project Phoenix)
• Watergate scandal
• Iran-Contra scandal
• Zapata Corporation

References

Autobiography

• Rodriguez, Felix I. and John Weisman. Shadow Warrior/the CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Book review of Rodriguez' autobiography: "Memoirs of the Man the White House Said Didn't Exist", book review of The Shadow Warrior, by Robert Parry, Washington Monthly, November 1989.

Cuba: Che Guevara, Bay of Pigs, Central America

• The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965, Don Bohning, (2005)
• Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, PD Scott, J Marshall, (1998)
• Cuban Information Archives.
• Bay of Pigs documents GWU National Security Archives and 40th anniversary conference papers, GWU National Security Archives.
• Fabian Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62 [1995]
• Statement of Information: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives. United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. 1974. "specially trained to capture documents of the Castro government"
• Tangled Webs Vol. I - Page 73, by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn
• Detail Information on the Bay of Pigs Invasion — Includes maps of the Invasion and Documents.
• History of Cuba — Bay of Pigs Invasion.
• "The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era", Eytan Gilboa, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 539-562
• Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, PD Scott, J Marshall (1998)
• PBS’s Frontline: Thirty Years of America’s Drug War: A Chronology

Vietnam: Operation Phoenix

• Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (1990)
• Seymour Hersh, Cover-Up, Random House, 1972
• Long Time Passing, by Myra MacPherson, Signet, 1984
• Documents from the Phoenix Program
• Senate Review of Phoenix Program
• CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, by Ralph McGehee, ex-CIA
• Counter-Revolutionary Violence - Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda, by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
• Phoenix Program Bibilography

Iran-Contra scandal

• Lawrence E. Walsh, "Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters," August 4, 1993, Washington, DC, ISBN 0671667211.
• "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," by Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, Foreign Policy, No. 72 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 3-30