Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Robert Maheu becomes the cutout for the CIA.

And so it's his job to recruit

just the right Mobster to kill Fidel Castro.

Maheu himself was nervous about the whole operation.

Maheu voiced concerns with his CIA contacts.

Like, are you really sure this is the direction

you want to go?

Because this thing's fraught with peril.

But the CIA at that time was so arrogant

that it didn't even think about the operation

falling apart.

[upbeat jazz music]

♪ ♪

Maheu sets up a meeting in Hollywood

with his connection to the Mafia.

♪ ♪

Johnny Roselli was an important man

in the Chicago Mob,

who looked after the business interests

in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas.

[indistinct chatter]

He was one of those kind of gangsters--

handsome guy, dressed to the nines.

And he was a charmer. [chuckles] Handsome Johnny.

He's the most handsome of all the guys.

So you know what I was thinking about--

he would be nice for me.

He was dating a lot of the dancers and the actresses.

He was involved with Lana Turner.

And then he ended up marrying June Lang.

Roselli walked with the Hollywood crowd.

He acted as a fixer in that realm.

Johnny had movie-star quality.

He knew how to do things.

♪ ♪

He called himself the Strategist

because he had clarity--

the ability to see, the awareness.

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

Maheu approached Roselli

as a person representing private industries

that wanted Castro out.

Roselli didn't believe that story for a minute.

♪ ♪

Maheu wasn't supposed to tell Roselli

that he was working with the CIA.

But in order to explain to Roselli convincingly

what was going on,

Maheu did say, this is something we're doing

on behalf of the government.

Roselli was naturally a little taken aback,

since he wasn't used to being hired by the U.S. government.

In fact, he was used to being afraid of the U.S. government.

On the other hand,

they had lost their entire livelihoods in Cuba.

So the Mafia had every reason to want to do it.

It was an opportunity

to get back the enormous presence they had

in the gambling establishments, the casinos.

Plus, it would ingratiate themselves with the CIA.

And that was a very compelling reason

to get involved in this plot.

[dramatic music]

Maheu was authorized to tell Roselli

that his clients were willing to pay $150,000

for Castro's removal.

$150,000 by today's dollars

is a million and a half dollars.

Johnny Roselli, from the outset,

said, no, I won't accept your money.

I just want to work with you to get rid of Castro.

♪ ♪

I'll do this for my country.

[patriotic music]

Undergirding a lot of gangster stories

is their own personal mythology,

which is absolutely a love of America.

The very first line of "The Godfather,"

said in the dark...

I believe in America.

"I believe in America." First line.

Roselli's boss, Sam Giancana, actually made fun of him.

He said, if you start walking around with a flag,

Roselli would follow you.

At the end of the meeting,

Roselli makes it clear to Maheu

that he can't do this all by himself.

He's got to get approval

from the boss of all bosses in Chicago,

and that's Sam Giancana.

It turns out that Sam Giancana is interested.

♪ ♪

So Maheu lets the CIA know that he's now made contact

with the mobsters and asks,

should I continue to go forward?

And he's told, we don't care if you deal with the Devil.

We want this job done.

They were going to hire the Mafia

to kill Castro,

which is either a brilliant or a ridiculous idea.

♪ ♪

The CIA is now in a very dangerous world

with all these crazy characters.

♪ ♪

It's truly a rogues' gallery.

And Castro is standing at the center of it.

For the CIA, what cannot happen

is that the plot gets found out.

If this comes out, what will this do to our image

in the eyes of the world?

Secrecy has to be maintained.

So they have to keep a lid on this top-secret plan.

♪ ♪

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

Miami Beach in 1960 was as hot as nightlife

can get in the United States.

♪ ♪

There was the Fontainebleau Hotel,

the height of mid-century architecture.

♪ ♪

And it became this center for all kinds of gathering

of the entertainment scene...

and also criminal activity.

It was the place in Miami where the mafiosi meet

with the CIA representatives

to discuss the assassination of Castro.

So Maheu arrives.

And he's got Roselli with him.

[swanky music]

♪ ♪

Also meeting with them but in the background

is a street agent by the name of Jim O'Connell,

representing the CIA.

The CIA is getting a lot of pressure

from President Eisenhower to try to assassinate Castro.

So they have to do everything possible to make this happen.

The Fontainebleau was Sam Giancana's favorite place.

Sam Giancana was the Chicago Mob boss put in charge

of a multibillion-dollar illegal criminal enterprise

called the Chicago Outfit.

They had control of Chicago, Vegas,

also the West Coast, Los Angeles.

Sam Giancana was loud, brash...

obnoxious, probably a little crazy.

Maheu wrote later that Giancana

didn't come off as thuggish.

You could tell he wanted attention, and he got it.

When he walked down the hallway,

you could just sense his power.

It was just how he carried himself.

When he walked in, it was like Jesus Christ walking.

He was a very respected person.

Sam Giancana brings in Santos Trafficante Jr.

Santo Trafficante Jr., he's the boss of the Tampa Mafia.

Trafficante is someone that has very powerful presence

in Miami, South Florida,

and also still very close ties on the island of Cuba.

[upbeat jazz music]

♪ ♪

[laughter, indistinct chatter]

Sam Giancana is not introduced as Sam Giancana.

He's introduced as Sam Gold.

And Santos Trafficante Jr. is not introduced by his name

but as Joe, the Courier.

The idea being that he's the courier

who's going to deliver things to Cuba

so that this execution can occur.

Bob Maheu outlines this idea that the CIA,

the American government, wants the Mafia's assistance

in helping them destabilize Cuba,

meaning getting rid of Fidel Castro.

Maheu's first idea was, we're going to shoot Castro,

like in the movies.

If you're going to try to pin this on somebody,

you want to have the Hollywood version of the story.

So we want to have the guys burst in

with these machine guns.

[imitates gunfire]

But the gangsters essentially told him,

those movies aren't real.

You don't do it that way.

It was Giancana's suggestion--

well, maybe you can put poison pills in his meals.

They came to the conclusion that the best way to do it

would be to poison Castro.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

None of them went

to the National Commission of the Mafia,

which was a big sin at the time.

But it was smart they didn't.

The fewer people that know, the better.

♪ ♪

Just before the CIA gets involved with the Mafia,

other attempts to kill Fidel Castro

were considered by the CIA.

♪ ♪

"Honeypot" is a term used in the spy world that generally

is associated with covert female agent

to use her sexual charms to target

a person they want to get information from.

You met Castro, 1959?

Yes. February 27, 1959.

And I was 18.

Right after the Revolution, Fidel Castro

visits a German boat that comes into Havana

on the way to New York.

And he meets Marita Lorenz.

Castro was charmed by this young woman.

When she travels back to New York,

he contacts her and says, come back to Havana.

And they begin an affair.

Marita talks about this pivotal moment

on "The Geraldo Show."

And you became pregnant with his baby?

Yes, I did.

According to the story by Marita,

she was given a drink of some sort where she was drugged.

And when she came to, she was no longer pregnant.

She winds up going to Florida,

and that's where she's recruited.

And the CIA asked you, Marita, to do what?

Well, they said, would you do this country

a great deed and, uh...

kill him?

♪ ♪

So the CIA had a figure named Frank Sturgis,

who later got involved in the Watergate break-in.

He was a Cuban exile who worked

and groomed, as they say, Marita Lorenz

to go back and kill Castro.

Frank Sturgis starts off as a police officer for Castro,

ends up, you know, becoming a staunch anti-Castro activist

and intelligence asset for the CIA.

I did a film, "My Little Assassin"...

Marita Lorenz.

And I played Frank Sturgis.

- You work for the CIA. - Mm, let's say I'm a patriot.

You could help your country, you know?

This is my country.

Sturgis was a very interesting character.

Some say he was CIA.

He says he was, they say he wasn't,

but that's how that works.

In early 1960, Marita Lorenz contacts Castro,

and they decide to get together again.

Did you try and kill your lover Fidel Castro?

Well, let's just say I went back through the motions and--

How were you going to do it?

Poison him with botulinum toxin.

Frank Sturgis gives her the poison pills,

hiding them in a jar of cold cream.

And then she travels down to Havana.

♪ ♪

There they are, in a hotel room.

♪ ♪

Marita is lying on the bed with Fidel

and says, wait a minute, I have to freshen up.

♪ ♪

The poison pill has melted into the cold cream.

♪ ♪

She doesn't know what to do.

♪ ♪

Castro senses

there's something wrong.

He asked me, did you come to kill me?

Yes.

♪ ♪

Castro reaches over at a bedside table,

and on the table, there's a gun.

♪ ♪

He handed it to me.

He said, go ahead.

♪ ♪

So I took the gun and...

♪ ♪

He said, you can't kill me. Nobody can.

♪ ♪

She ends up having sex with Fidel that night.

I mean, this was like beta testing poisons,

beta testing how to kill a foreign leader,

and you'd find out along the way which ways work

and which ways don't.

It wasn't a very auspicious start.

[upbeat jazz music]

And so the CIA turns to another recruit.

♪ ♪

Rudy Maxa in "The Washington Post"

wrote that Johnny Roselli was destined

to walk on the dark side of life never seemed in doubt.

Who was Johnny Roselli?

I would say that the answer to that question

depends upon who's asking it.

Johnny Roselli had a lot of secrets.

One of the big ones was that he wasn't born here.

Fourth of July in 1905,

Johnny Roselli was born in Esperia, Italy, mainland.

His real name is Filippo Sacco.

He loves his mother. He loves his family.

And like many families at that time who are poor,

they realize that a better life awaits them

if they can go to America.

He gets to Boston with his mother when he's six.

And there, he suffered from TB.

His father would end up passing from this illness.

Filippo Sacco is forced to provide

for his mother and his family.

He's the man now of the family.

He starts as a petty thief on the street,

starts low-level crimes.

[suspenseful music]

[screams]

Eventually he gets into so much trouble

that he realizes that he has to change his name.

As a good Catholic boy, he's inspired by a Vatican painter

with the name Cosmo Roselli.

[choral music]

♪ ♪

[upbeat jazz music]

And he becomes John Roselli.

♪ ♪

So he changes his name.

But then he gets popped twice in Boston--

once for grand larceny, once for a narcotics rap.

He gets out on bond, he skips bail,

and he hightails it, because he doesn't want to go to trial,

he doesn't want to go to prison.

Roselli suffered from TB.

And so he came out West and settled in L.A.

because of the drier climate.

When Roselli first got to Los Angeles,

it's during Prohibition.

Reformers had a ball after World War I,

as they gleefully ushered in Prohibition.

He was involved in bootlegging.

And he'd also boosted a couple trucks, hijacking.

And then Roselli starts working with my great-grandfather,

Jack Dragna.

♪ ♪

Jack Dragna takes over the Los Angeles family

in 1931.

And what he did is, essentially,

he brought the extortion of the Hollywood unions

that was already taking place back East to Los Angeles.

And now, under Jack Dragna,

Roselli gets involved, being the liaison

for the Los Angeles family with Chicago

for the extortion of Hollywood.

And he was exceptional at that.

♪ ♪

Being among that Hollywood crowd,

you know, dating actresses, he lived that lifestyle.

So he had a lot of clout and notoriety and influence.

But he was running the Hollywood extortion scam,

and that's why he goes to prison.

Now, he gets out in 1947.

And in 1948, Bryan Foy hires him on

as an assistant purchasing agent over at Eagle-Lion.

He genuinely wanted to learn the business.

In the census records, 1950, he put his profession--

you know, he's a scriptwriter.

And then, finally, he became an associate producer

and was involved with several different studios

in '51 and '52.

And they made B pictures.

[dramatic flourish]

These are people that are writing their own stories

even while they're living them.

Throughout all this time,

Johnny Roselli was affiliated with the Los Angeles Mafia.

And then in 1956, after Jack Dragna died,

Roselli transferred his membership

to the Chicago Outfit

and started working with Sam Giancana.

Roselli was a guy who had charm.

That's what separated him

from a lot of the other guys who got their start

in illegal booze during Prohibition.

He saw himself as one of Hollywood.

[upbeat jazz music]

♪ ♪

So this Fontainebleau meeting with Sam Giancana

and Santo Trafficante and Johnny Roselli and Bob Maheu,

I call this, like, the kicking off point,

'cause after this, the U.S. government

now is involved with the Mafia.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

I can't emphasize enough how important it was for the CIA

to keep this all very top secret.

They don't want to say words like "murder" or "killing"

or certainly not "assassination."

They actually refer to certain players as A,

as B, as C.

There's always this buffer,

this degree of plausible deniability.

♪ ♪

[cheering]

The assassination plot using the Mafia

was supposed to disrupt the control Fidel Castro had

over the society.

It was supposed to make Cuba ripe

for a victorious invasion force,

training Florida, New Orleans, Guatemala.

♪ ♪

[beeping]

At this point, to assassinate Castro,

the CIA, at the behest of the Mafia,

decided to put poison pills into his coffee

or into his bouillon.

The CIA's expert in poison was Sidney Gottlieb.

Sidney Gottlieb was probably

the most powerful unknown American

of the 20th century.

He had a license to kill issued by the U.S. government

and carried out clandestine experiments

that resulted in torture and death in many countries

around the world.

He was,

as the head of the chemical division of the CIA,

America's poisoner in chief.

♪ ♪

The CIA has a laboratory.

They started working on these pills.

And this was at the point where Roselli then

was tapping into the Cuban exile community

and trying to work an arrangement with them

to where they could go in with these pills and kill Castro.

♪ ♪

[upbeat jazz music]

Miami-- gateway to revolution.

Miami at this time was full of people

who had fled from Cuba

because they hated what Castro was doing there.

♪ ♪

People move there, especially the landowners

and the wealthy,

because they were stripped of their land.

Just 90 miles away, Miami feels the backwash

of the Revolution.

It becomes the location

for all the anti-Castro activity.

[indistinct chatter]

Being in Little Havana,

Johnny Roselli is ingratiating himself with these groups.

Santo Trafficante already knows some of these figures

because these are guys that were living

the high life in Havana.

They have nothing in Miami.

Now they have the opportunity to join in these efforts

to get back there.

The most important of the Cuban exile figures

that he meets is Manuel Artime.

Manuel Artime is a young leader of the Cuban exiles

and was probably the favorite Cuban exile of the CIA.

Manuel Artime, people call the Golden Boy of the CIA,

even though he didn't speak any English.

He looked like a movie star in a way.

And Johnny gets to know him.

The agency said in documents compiled in 1977,

Artime and his group were supported by CIA.

He was also used by the Mafia in the Castro operation.

This information should not be released.

What are you doing with this outfit, Angus?

Well, it seems to be some sort of a job

that has to be done in Cuba to rid Cuba of communism.

It's not just one exile group.

Dade County Sheriff counted over 100 different exile groups

that were active in South Florida

during this time period.

You had the Movement for the Restoration

of the Revolution of Democracy,

the Pro-Democracy Revolutionary Movement.

I mean, they all had similar-sounding names.

They all had their charismatic leaders.

They all were competing with each other.

It was a rollicking Wild West of an environment.

[gunshots]

♪ ♪

I grew up on a farm in Cuba.

And the Castro family lived to the east of us.

And right after Castro won in '59,

the older kids would tell us, you know,

Fidel's going to take it all away from you.

And eventually he did.

So my family moved to Miami.

And my brother Bobby had gotten involved

with an anti-Castro group.

He had to leave Cuba.

The communists were going to do him in.

So he left.

Bobby got into the Marines.

He wasn't a boy anymore. He came back more serious.

And he went to Cuba right away

with an organized group to take down Castro.

♪ ♪

I remember that night,

the CIA was at the house with Bobby.

And I was in the room.

And they said, okay, it's going to be tonight.

♪ ♪

On September 26, 1960,

Tony Zarba, Bobby Fuller, Allen Dale Thompson,

they loaded a boat...

and they left for Cuba.

♪ ♪

When they got there, they landed 30 miles away

from where they were supposed to land.

♪ ♪

I heard it on the radio.

It was the Cuban radio that gave out the news.

And they said that the group

that had invaded the north coast of Cuba

had been captured.

It was a terrible feeling.

They executed Tony and Allen Dale

as they picked them up,

but there was a big show that they put on

for the execution of Bobby.

At the execution, my uncle Clyde was there.

He said there were hundreds of people at the stadium.

♪ ♪

Clyde told me that it was more like a parade.

Clyde said that they brought Bobby out

and that Bobby was shaking.

He could hardly hold his weight.

His knees were wobbling.

It looked like he had urinated in his pants.

And he looked very pale.

But Clyde said that's standard execution procedure

the Spaniards use all the time.

They pumped you full of water.

They drugged you, and they made you look

like you're afraid to die.

When they put him up there to be executed,

he took his blindfold off.

And he stood there, and they executed him.

♪ ♪

[gunshot, body thuds]

♪ ♪

When he landed on the ground, he was shaking a lot.

One of the soldiers walked up to him

and shot him in the back of the head.

And that stopped that.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

It really is a message

that anybody who tries this type of attempt

to kill Fidel Castro

will face these same type of consequences.

♪ ♪

One of the things that you'd see again and again

with these efforts to get Castro

is that he seemed to be always one step ahead.

And by that, it's not so much Castro was one step ahead,

as his own security forces.

They were on top of protecting their leader.

And they were very, very effective.

Castro swung closely in line with the communist bloc

and seized almost all United States property

in Cuba.

In August 1960,

Castro starts expropriating American businesses.

The U.S. then established a full-scale embargo.

And so a country which had been so embedded

in U.S. trade networks

and had such a huge presence of American companies

all of a sudden had lost its major trading partner.

The embargo was explicitly to create deprivation,

hunger, and upheaval against Castro.

Castro started to reach out

to the Soviet Union for support.

The Soviet Union says, tovarisch, comrade,

what can we do for you?

How can we help you?

They helped train what becomes the DGI,

the General Intelligence Directorate,

which establishes itself

as a very effective spy organization.

[upbeat jazz music]

Castro made sure that some of the people

who came over as anti-Castro Cubans

were really his agents.

♪ ♪

So it was a real hotbed here--

never knowing which ones were real

and which ones weren't.

♪ ♪

[music turns ominous]

♪ ♪

[patriotic music]

Your candidates for the most important office

in the free world seek your votes in this vital campaign.

In 1960,

Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy

runs against Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon.

[cheering]

Castro is a Marxist.

We never were on the side of freedom.

We never used our influence

when we could have used it most effectively.

And today Cuba is lost for freedom.

Kennedy was so obsessed with Castro.

Castro was such a personification

of every single thing that Kennedy hated.

I think he just thought he was a scumbag.

[jazz music]

JFK and Frank Sinatra first meet

at the Democratic Convention in 1956

and are instantly drawn to each other.

And what Jack Kennedy sees in Frank Sinatra

is the future--

the coming together of politics and entertainment.

♪ ♪

This was a very close election.

So, to help with the vote, John Kennedy hitched the wagon

to the star of Sinatra.

♪ Everyone is voting for Jack ♪

♪ 'Cause he's got what all the rest lack ♪

Sinatra did so much to help get JFK elected president.

He and Jimmy Van Heusen,

they did this "High Hopes" parody,

and that became the campaign theme song.

♪ 'Cause he's got high hopes ♪

♪ He's got high hopes ♪

All the polls show that this election

is going to be impossibly close.

So every vote counts, and the state of Illinois

now is seen as a very crucial state.

Joe Kennedy, who wants desperately

to have his son elected president of the United States,

knows Sam Giancana

but can't be seen with Sam Giancana.

So Joe Kennedy goes to Frank Sinatra and says,

look, I need you to go to Giancana and ask for his help.

I need him to work all his magic

around Chicago to get my son elected

by any means necessary.

Giancana was incredibly close to Frank Sinatra.

In the early '50s, Giancana and Sinatra

meet at a charity event.

And around a year later,

they exchanged star-sapphire friendship pinkie rings.

They had a ball together--

the way they would kid each other.

They both, I think, truly liked each other.

Frank was a big fan of the wiseguys.

And Frank used to say,

I hung around with wiseguys

because that's who owned the nightclubs.

If the nightclubs were owned by cardinals and monsignors,

I would have been hanging around

with cardinals and monsignors.

Starting 1947 until about 1953,

five or six years,

it is the bleak period in Sinatra's career,

when suddenly he becomes infamous instead of famous.

His records stopped selling.

He is dropped by MGM, his movie studio,

dropped by Columbia Records.

He's dropped by his management.

Drop, drop, drop.

One of the few people that was still behind him

was Sam Giancana.

Sam was making sure that Sinatra still got booked

in places that Giancana controlled or influenced.

So Sinatra was always very loyal to Giancana.

Frank tells Joe that he can get this done.

And he goes to Giancana and asks this favor.

Giancana believes that he can actually tilt the tables a bit

and get Jack Kennedy all kinds of votes

in the Chicago area.

♪ ♪

[triumphant music]

Not till the middle of the next day

was the victory clinched

by one of the closest margins recorded--

a plurality of barely over 300,000.

This election

was one of the closest in American history.

Illinois is one of those states

that's won by a razor-thin margin by Jack Kennedy.

The vote in the first ward,

that ward was the breeding ground of the Mob in Chicago.

And that year it went to the Democratic party

with a vote of something like 85%.

The election may have been a close one.

But a supreme national effort will be needed

to move this country safely through the 1960s.

I ask...

The Mob certainly felt like it had helped him

become president.

And people like Sam Giancana

and many others thought, this is great.

This is the best thing for us.

You know, JFK is going to leave us alone.

To attest the shattering

of a long-standing political taboo.

This is vapor paper.

Writing messages to our agents.

Drop it in water.

Astonishing.

Get your 007 secret-agent pen

and disappearing vapor paper.

You'll get a bang out of it.

During this time period, James Bond is a sensation.

["James Bond Theme"]

And the James Bond novels really did influence JFK.

When President Kennedy was asked to choose

his ten favorite books of all time,

he listed "From Russia with Love"

by Ian Fleming.

[dramatic music]

"It's not just a question of blowing up a building

"or shooting a prime minister.

"Such bourgeois horseplay is not contemplated.

Our operation must be delicate, refined."

Bond...

that smooth, cool--

not about blowing things up, it's about being smart.

Kennedy resonated with him tremendously.

Just before he became president,

Kennedy had a dinner party

in which one of the guests was his hero, Ian Fleming.

Ian Fleming had been a British spy who,

during World War II, consulted with the Americans

in creating their own intelligence service,

which eventually becomes the CIA.

Kennedy asks, what is the best way

to neutralize Castro?

Fleming's answer was,

the way to take him down is ridicule, chiefly.

The worst thing that could happen to you

is to really be ridiculed, to be embarrassed.

The idea sounds very far-fetched.

He'd thought about printing out leaflets saying,

these American nuclear tests,

it will be attracted to beards and may lead to impotence.

And Kennedy, he said, so what will they do?

Well, the men will shave their beards, including Castro.

And then he'll have lost his macho image.

He'll just be any other guy.

I think Kennedy loved that perspective.

Kennedy wished that the CIA was more like James Bond.

You had these different iconic images.

And that then bled in from entertainment

into the real world.

Jackie Kennedy even gives Allen Dulles

a copy of "From Russia with Love"

and says, you know, you should maybe think

about using some of the ideas in this book at the CIA.

♪ ♪

Allen Dulles is very concerned whether or not he's going

to remain as the CIA Director.

Dulles was kind of cherry-picking ideas

from the Bond novels and then trying to get

his science and technology Q-types to build them.

♪ ♪

The CIA's Technical Services Division

was the equivalent of the James Bond laboratory

which made all the gadgetry.

They considered exploding cigars...

[explosion]

Poison cigars...

poison pens that you would actually prick Fidel with

that would have a hidden hypodermic needle in it.

They were going to put LSD on a microphone

when he went to give his regular weekly radio address

so that he'd get high during the address

and he'd start bumbling like a fool.

One idea that came up

was to, like, have these gigantic fireworks displays

that would somehow convince Cubans

that it was the second coming of Christ.

It sounds crazy, but that's the mood

that had taken over at the CIA.

In the end,

these crazy ideas didn't turn out to be practical,

so they stuck with poison pills.

♪ ♪

Johnny Roselli

is in the Cuban exile community in Miami

trying to find a contact

to carry out the plot to kill Castro.

In Little Havana,

one of the people that Johnny relies on

is Tony Varona.

Tony Varona was a Cuban politician

who was pushed out of Cuba by Castro.

And he was one of the leaders of the Cuban exiles in Florida

trying to get rid of Castro and get back into Cuba.

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

♪ ♪

Santo Trafficante, Maheu, and Roselli

meet at Varona's house in Miami,

and they read him into the plot.

Varona knows someone who can get

the CIA's poison pills into Fidel's bloodstream.

♪ ♪

That was Juan Orta.

Juan Orta was very close to Castro.

He was director general for the Castro regime.

He was connected enough

that he could drop some kind of pill into Castro's drink.

♪ ♪

Maheu then brings the pills to Miami,

where Roselli and Giancana and Trafficante are meeting

with some of these exiles.

[jazz music]

♪ ♪

You have Johnny and Sam Giancana

and Santo Trafficante all there

to see Frank Sinatra performing.

♪ This is ♪

♪ My kind of town ♪

♪ Chicago is ♪

Giancana was aware that Sinatra

was kind of like a fanboy for him,

but he wanted to make sure

that he didn't have Sinatra around

when they were talking about the plans to kill Castro.

He tells the other mobsters,

don't say anything about this in front of Sinatra.

He's got a big mouth.

♪ ♪

Eventually, after the show,

Maheu arrives at the Fontainebleau.

And he's got another guy named Joe Shimon with him.

Maheu's associate, Joe Shimon,

was a crooked Washington cop who befriended Roselli, too.

♪ ♪

They all go up to a hotel room.

[elevator bell dings]

♪ ♪

And inside, who's waiting for them?

Tony Varona.

Traficante was there to translate.

Maheu opens up this attaché case.

There's $10,000

and these poison pills going to Juan Orta.

♪ ♪

[telephone rings]

While all this was going down,

Sinatra calls up to the hotel room.

[ringing]

Sam realizes that it's Sinatra,

and he tells everyone to ignore it.

[ringing continues]

Joe Shimon said,

"Frank must have called our suite 20 times trying

"to get together with Sam.

He wouldn't leave Sam alone."

[ringing continues]

Frank Sinatra was fascinated by Giancana,

but Giancana has business on his mind.

After a time, the pills were delivered to Cuba.

Now, with these pills in his possession,

Juan Orta is going to find the best opportunity

to do the deed.

[knock at door]

♪ ♪

[jazz music]

♪ ♪

So, one night, Johnny Roselli's eating dinner

in Hollywood.

It's been quite a while since Johnny's heard anything

about the attempt to poison Castro.

[indistinct chatter]

♪ ♪

Johnny gets a message to call Tony Varona.

♪ ♪

[door closes]

On the phone, Roselli finds out this guy Juan Orta

seems to get cold feet.

[dramatic music]

Orta is not able to implement this plan.

He wants to bail out.

♪ ♪

He was nervous about getting caught.

So that idea fell apart.

♪ ♪

Now the whole process had to start all over again.

Part of the CIA's plan, the assassination of Castro,

so far had failed.

Part two...

the invasion of Cuba--

soon to be known as the Bay of Pigs--

was still full speed ahead.

After Kennedy took office,

he quickly reappointed Allen Dulles

as head of the CIA.

Kennedy immediately is presented

with the well-developed plan for the invasion.

Allen Dulles tells him,

we have hundreds of Cuban exiles

being trained in Guatemala and Fort Knox and New Orleans.

[gunshots]

Kennedy, he came in a young man, smart fellow.

He knew foreign policy, but to go up

against the national security apparatus,

I think, is rather intimidating for anybody.

So Kennedy is sandbagged into going along

with the Bay of Pigs invasion.

♪ ♪

Through the Mafia's involvement,

the CIA believes that Fidel will be dead

by the time the invasion takes place.

And so they are not paying close attention

to what could go wrong.

♪ ♪