Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[plane roaring]

[gunshots]

The Bay of Pigs disaster was a military

and diplomatic defeat for the new president.

There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers,

and defeat is an orphan.

After the Bay of Pigs, you have the Cuban exiles

still being held captive,

possibly facing a firing squad.

The Kennedys double down on their attempts

to get rid of Castro.

Everybody is under a lot of pressure

to get this job done.

They need to make changes now.

Kennedy was enamored of the James Bond novels.

He asked the CIA, "So who is your James Bond?"

[gunshot]

They produced Bill Harvey.

["James Bond" theme playing]

♪ ♪

There was nothing elegant about Harvey.

He looked like a fat cop.

[smooth jazz music]

♪ ♪

Jack Kennedy, when he meets him,

actually says, "You're America's James Bond?"

Bill Harvey started with the FBI.

A legendary Russian spy chaser,

counterintelligence.

Harvey was brash and bold.

He would tell people,

"If you knew as many secrets as I do,

you'd carry a gun too."

Drank too much, very abrasive,

and ended up kind of being bounced by the FBI

and ended up being picked up by the CIA

to run the Berlin base, which was a big deal.

Bill Harvey was as close to James Bond

as the CIA was going to get.

So after Harvey takes over, Maheu is now going

to be gone from the operation.

Sheffield Edwards says bluntly, "Bill Harvey is going

"to take over Roselli, so we'll have to arrange

to get them together."

A meeting is set up at a hotel in New York.

I think Harvey went in definitely skeptical

because, as a former FBI agent,

he was very skittish about getting involved with the mob.

But at the same time, Roselli is not sure

he can trust Harvey.

It's like two dogs smelling each other out.

But as the new guy in charge,

Harvey knows he needs Johnny's help.

Johnny thinks about it.

He was mortified by what happened at the Bay of Pigs.

A government memo reads, "Roselli feels sorry

for the poor bastards left on the beach."

He was particularly upset to find out

that his friend Manuel Artime

now was possibly facing a firing squad.

He's determined to get Castro.

Johnny was loyal to people and liked them.

And when he liked you, he did right by you.

So this time, it's more important than ever.

This time, it's personal for him.

Johnny will go to a place you could never have imagined

when he started on this mission.

He's going to take matters into his own hands.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[tense music]

♪ ♪

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs episode,

Kennedy must have been really keen

on getting rid of someone

who had so humiliated him,

and that breathed new life into these assassination plots

against Fidel Castro.

The idea of assassinating Castro remained active.

There was an intense desire to continue this project,

and Robert Kennedy was very much

the leading figure in pushing it.

Bobby was pretty much a altar boy,

and throughout his life,

that's what people knew him as.

He's a straight arrow. The guy is a good guy.

But Bobby would do things for his brother

he wouldn't do for anybody else.

And he thought Castro was a bad guy.

He had humiliated his brother.

And so it was family. It was personal.

And he thought it was probably OK

to do what was necessary to get rid of Castro.

I think it's pretty clear that he was always impatient.

He was always pressing to get things done

and always wanted answers now, now, now, now.

What does John Kennedy do?

He appointed his brother to run Operation Mongoose.

[percussive music]

[snake hissing] [mongoose chittering]

The mission was to get rid of Castro, one way or another,

through sabotage, try to prompt

a popular uprising against him,

try to discredit him.

The man in charge of upholding all of our laws

was now the covert operations master when it came to Cuba.

[speaking Spanish]

Part of this endeavor is the CIA base in Miami,

code name JMWAVE,

run by Bill Harvey.

The pressure is on.

The Kennedys want to see results.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

The CIA was supposed to operate

against foreign countries.

It was not supposed to have a presence

in the United States of America,

let alone operate the largest CIA station

in the world in Miami.

♪ ♪

The station was set up on a piece of land

owned by one of the local schools.

It was being rented to Zenith Technical Services.

That was the front name for the CIA.

And the university had no idea

that it was leasing these buildings and these lots

to the CIA.

Zenith was a shell company that the CIA set up

to purchase tens of millions of dollars of equipment

that the Miami station was using

to run its operations against Cuba.

Boats, weapons, fake identity papers.

I mean, it was basically

a whole separate intelligence agency.

They had training camps set up

in the Everglades, training hundreds of Cubans

in how to use weapons...

[gunfire]

Infiltrate, exfiltrate with boats

in the middle of the night,

how to use secret radio equipment.

And remember, though, all this was supposed

to be happening in secret.

[dramatic tone]

I don't know any of the top officials personally,

but I think that they make no contribution,

in my estimation, to the fight against communism.

I think they're ridiculous.

Bobby Kennedy was just absolutely horsewhipping

the CIA to do more, go further, blow up power plants in Cuba,

poison the stocks, destroy the economy.

"Get your ass together.

"Get it going. Why can't you do something?

What's the problem?"

You know, constantly hector them.

Bill Harvey was under tremendous pressure.

Bobby demands of Harvey,

"Why can't you get things cooking like 007?"

It's explained to Bobby, you know,

it takes a long time to train these Cuban exiles to do

these paramilitary operations.

It's not easy to do.

Bobby, in a huff, said something like,

"Well, just send them to Hickory Hill,

and I'll get them trained."

Harvey bursts out,

"What will you teach them, sir?

Babysitting?"

So there were indeed tensions.

Harvey, you know, looking at Bobby Kennedy

saying, "You could do this, but you can't do this,"

would be very frustrated.

And sometimes it was like,

"We need to take the gloves off."

[tense music]

And so Bill Harvey kept meeting with John Roselli.

It was sort of a side operation

to what Harvey was doing out of the JMWAVE station.

[jazz music]

♪ ♪

Johnny Roselli feels important and more powerful

because the CIA is sending some of their top spooks

to talk to him.

He's being called to Washington.

This is straight spy stuff.

This is fantastic.

This is early James Bond.

He could imagine himself like that,

and he becomes more patriotic.

♪ ♪

It became pretty clear to Roselli

that neither Giancana nor Trafficante

were going to be welcomed back.

Roselli was the person that the CIA

most trusted on the mob side.

Sam Giancana might have been seen as a big liability

for the CIA at that time.

He's in the newspapers a lot,

and he's having trouble in the Chicago outfit.

Roselli tells Harvey,

"As far as Giancana is concerned,

"he will not hear anything from me

"because I hardly ever talk to him about it anyway,

and he probably would care less."

Sam Giancana had given up.

He would say, "What's the benefit of doing

"all this work with the CIA to try to kill Castro

if the FBI agents are still a pain in the ass?"

They're not getting their get-out-of-jail-free card

with the CIA.

That's not the way it's supposed to work

in the minds of the mobsters.

Roselli is on his own now.

It's become personal for Johnny.

One of the people that Johnny relies on

in the Cuban exile community is Tony Varona.

Tony Varona is one of these Cuban exile leaders

who had once been part of the Cuban government,

and he's running his own operation

trying to kill Castro.

O'Connell was quoted,

"Varona was running his own little army.

I saw two boats that allegedly belonged to him."

Varona tells Johnny he has a new source

named Maceo, who works down in a restaurant in Havana.

Maceo can get poison pills into Castro's food.

But Varona says in return, he wants guns.

[tense music]

$5,000 worth of explosives, detonators,

20 .30-caliber rifles, 20 .45 handguns,

two radios, and one boat radar.

Johnny tells Harvey about all of Varona's demands,

and Harvey, who's got the Kennedys pressuring him,

says, absolutely yes.

So the question is, can he trust

what Johnny is up to here?

Unfortunately, Varona's first group of assassins

wound up in failure.

- [shouting in Spanish] - They get stopped in Cuba.

The attempt doesn't even get off the ground.

And in the other assassination plot,

the person who is going to poison Castro

is waiting for him to come to his restaurant.

Castro goes there, and then Castro orders a milkshake.

So the person who's tasked with killing him,

the story he relays back to the CIA is,

"A poison capsule was frozen in a freezer.

"I had to pull it off, and it broke.

And I couldn't get it off."

Is that true?

CIA didn't know if he even tried.

Harvey later testified, "I was very, very dubious."

Harvey comes to the conclusion,

no more of this poison pill shit.

He wants real action.

Let's just throw everything we got at him.

Like, you know, Robert Duvall in "Apocalypse Now."

No pussyfooting.

He tells Johnny, "From now on,

"I want assassins going into Cuba.

I want to end Castro with a big bang."

[ominous music]

[gunfire]

♪ ♪

Johnny's down in the Florida Keys,

working with the Cuban exiles, training them,

showing them how to use high-powered rifles.

He's become essentially like a soldier down there.

Johnny gets so involved with the exiles,

they increasingly become friendly with one another.

Obviously, he committed every crime under the sun.

But still, within that, Johnny Roselli had

a kind of honor code.

The basic band-of-brothers code,

literally, it comes right from Shakespeare.

"He today that sheds his blood with me."

Whatever you shed with me, it means that we're going

to be bonded in this way.

[glasses clinking]

[soft music]

He himself was a bit of an exile.

This is not somebody that was a citizen of the country.

So this idea of exiles understanding exiles

I think really resonated with him.

Back in Washington, mob-busting Bobby Kennedy is

attorney general of the United States

and is demanding that J. Edgar Hoover sic

his full force and power on the mob.

Obviously, this creates some angst in the mob.

Johnny learns that Bobby Kennedy

is going after Carlos Marcello,

a mobster and illegal immigrant,

just like Johnny.

Carlos Marcello was the mafia boss in New Orleans.

He was one of the main targets of RFK's efforts

against organized crime.

And one of the things that the FBI

and the federal government was doing is,

they were deporting them.

So when they found out that Carlos Marcello,

he was born in Tunisia,

they ended up deporting him.

[tense music]

You definitely saw Johnny Roselli

starting to get nervous.

♪ ♪

Johnny has these constant tails by the FBI.

Johnny complains to Harvey

that all this constant surveillance

is preventing him from being an effective spy.

Roselli testified later that he complained to Harvey.

"I said that every time I had to meet anyone connected

"with these operations that I would have to first

get rid of the tails of the FBI."

He's kind of pulled between two different U.S. agencies--

one that wants to put him in jail

and then one that wants him to be the hero.

Roselli: "Here I am, helping the government,

"helping the country, and that little son of a bitch

is breaking my balls."

For the mobsters, they weren't being

treated right, they felt.

They felt like they were maybe even targeted

in an unprecedented way, even in the movies.

[gunshot]

The mafia was upset with the media

because the Italians were portrayed as just mobsters.

All these shows portray these officers

as the good guys.

This is "Your FBI."

So you're selling an image.

For example, you had Jimmy Stewart playing

an FBI agent in "The FBI Story."

[indistinct shouting]

If and when Whitey passes the coin, arrest them.

It was just a very black-and-white delineation

between good guy, bad guy, white hat, black hat.

[gunfire]

And Italians were greaseballs, dagos, wops, gangsters.

That's how it was.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Shows like "The Untouchables" pissed off a lot of people

because of how they were portraying Italians.

This is the way they pay me back?

After all I've done for them.

"The Untouchables" was an extraordinarily popular series

on ABC.

It was developed by Desilu, which was Desi Arnaz's company

along with Lucille Ball.

"The Untouchables," the true story

taken from the exciting autobiography of Eliot Ness,

the man who probably did most to help

destroy the Al Capone empire.

♪ ♪

The Untouchables had gravel-voiced Robert Stack

playing Eliot Ness, the tireless pursuer

of the mob in Chicago.

Everything points to Frank Nitti.

He was Capone's enforcer.

The mob detested the show.

What's that "mafia, mafia"?

There's no such thing as a mafia.

Don't exist.

They talked about all Italians

like they would eat red sauce and shoot each other

and are criminals.

Sweat, huh?

And the mob hated it, and legitimately,

noncriminal, good citizen Italian Americans

also hated the show.

We have to look at that period of time,

how deeply offensive it would be.

Just look today at the profound offense

people can take from a portrayal

in film and television.

And a big campaign goes out, initiated by the mob,

against the show.

They wanted it to stop.

So they wanted to actually assassinate

the man who was putting out the finished product.

We look back at this and we think,

they were going to assassinate Desi Arnaz?

[dramatic music]

Giancana is outraged about this show "The Untouchables"

and says to Frank Sinatra,

"You tell your fucking Hollywood friend Desi Arnaz

"that he better do something about his fucking show,

or I'm going to have him whacked."

Frank himself was very protective

of the Italian American image,

and he decided he was going to go down

and talk to his friend Desi Arnaz

and see if he could convince him to take

"The Untouchables" off the air.

♪ ♪

Sinatra finds himself in Palm Springs,

in a restaurant, and there is Desi Arnaz.

And Frank goes over to Desi Arnaz

and tells him, "Listen, you Cuban prick.

You better do something about this show."

Desi Arnaz laughed at this.

He goes, "Frank, what am I supposed to do?

Make them Jews?"

Frank lost his temper, and Desi says,

"What do you want to do, Frank?

You want to fight?"

Desi Arnaz, in his own way, is kind of a tough guy.

And then Frank made Desi aware

that the powers that be got very agitated by the show

and that they quietly put out a hit on Desi.

Desi Arnaz backs off.

He agrees to no longer refer to the gangsters

as Italian Americans.

He makes one of the good guys in the show, a cop,

into an Italian American.

And he agrees that he will represent

in a positive way

the Italian American experience.

The mobsters back in Chicago, Sam and the others,

decided to call the whole thing off against Arnaz.

[fireworks popping]

[victorious music]

♪ ♪

Kennedy suffered

at the very beginning of Camelot

this tremendous black eye.

[tense music]

Everything that went into the Bay of Pigs

ended up being dumb.

It didn't work.

He blamed the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles,

and lost all respect

and all faith and confidence in the CIA.

He was like, "What are you knuckleheads doing?"

That was the end of Allen Dulles's career

at the CIA.

[gunshot]

Mr. Dulles, members of the Central Intelligence Agency,

this ceremony gives us all an opportunity

to pay tribute to an outstanding public servant.

Allen Welsh Dulles. Step forward, Al.

When the CIA headquarters was opened in Langley, Virginia,

Dulles was brought out for a opening ceremony,

kind of a ribbon cutting.

As principal intelligence advisor

to the president of the United States,

Mr. Dulles has fulfilled the responsibilities of his office

with unswerving purpose and high dedication.

Very gamely, President Kennedy talked

about all the good things that Dulles had done.

It would have been very unseemly for him

to have mentioned the Bay of Pigs, and he did not.

This is to certify that the president of the United States

of America has awarded the National Security Medal

to Allen W. Dulles for outstanding contribution

to the national intelligence effort.

Had he only retired

after the end of the Eisenhower administration,

as his wife had urged him to do,

he would have such a different image in history.

Instead, I think he's really remembered largely

as being the author of the greatest disaster

in CIA history up to that time.

♪ ♪

"Thou hast loosed an act upon the world,

"and as a stone thrown into a pool,

so spread the consequences thou canst not tell how far."

As Allen Dulles walked out the door of the CIA,

at the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover had reason to be concerned

about his own job security.

J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy hated one another.

Bobby Kennedy regarded Hoover as a very, very dangerous man.

By one hearsay account, the president said,

"We gotta get rid of that bastard J. Edgar Hoover."

However, the power of secret information

was a gun that Hoover always kept loaded.

♪ ♪

And there would come a time when Hoover would use

the information he had gathered about Sam Giancana

and Judith Campbell and John Kennedy as a weapon.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

And J. Edgar Hoover told Bobby Kennedy,

"We're aware of your brother,

the president's, indiscretions with this woman."

He's met her at a hotel.

She's been in the White House.

She is simultaneously having an affair with Sam Giancana,

the head of the Chicago mob.

This is rather ironic, since Bobby Kennedy

is going after the mob.

Hoover is going back to Bobby Kennedy,

going, "You know what?

"You're messing with the mob, and they're going

to blackmail the government."

This is a matter of the gravest import

to national security.

Hoover's saying, "Take care of it and end it."

But it is also letting Bobby Kennedy know,

"I, J. Edgar Hoover, have the goods on your brother,

and I'm going to do whatever the fuck I feel like doing."

He uses the information to make sure the Kennedys know,

"Don't screw with me, buddy," and that's his power.

So you have-- Bobby had a Kennedy habit

of not asking his brother about his love life.

"So what you up to last night, Jack?"

No, no, they don't have those conversations.

So it was very hard for him to brook the relationship

with Judith Campbell.

Jack Kennedy,

moment of sadness though he may have

about Judy Campbell,

understands that his brother is correct,

and he has to stop it right there.

The president made his last phone call to Judy Campbell

and broke up with her

and never saw her again.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

And they kept J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI.

Hoover was a master

at the use of secret information

to wield political influence.

The only way that Hoover would leave the FBI was feet first.

The rackets have become too widespread,

too well-organized, and too rich.

It is my firm belief that new laws are needed

to give the Federal Bureau of Investigation

increased jurisdiction to assist local authorities.

Giancana sees that Bobby Kennedy is

hotter and hotter and hotter on his trail.

He is furious.

"I got these fuckers elected, and the heat is

"not only not off, the heat is hotter

"than it ever was before.

What the fuck?"

I remember his getting very upset.

[glass shatters]

"Those Kennedy people are terrible.

"Those son of a Bs betrayed me

"after my doing what I did for them.

And that's the gratitude?"

Sam figures that if Sinatra can make things happen

with a TV show, maybe he can also make things

happen with the Kennedys.

Giancana says to Frank Sinatra,

"Do something about it."

Sinatra said to Giancana, "Don't worry about it.

"If I can't talk to the old man,

I'm going to talk to the president."

But it takes quite a while.

So Giancana calls Johnny and asks him,

"What's the deal with Sinatra?

Is he going to help us or not?"

So eventually Johnny goes out to Sinatra's place

in Palm Springs.

[tense music]

From what Frank described, it was downtown Palm Springs,

and out where he built the compound,

it was pretty remote.

It is really the outskirts of town.

[soft jazz music]

♪ ♪

At Sinatra's place, Sinatra explains to Roselli

what happened with the Kennedys.

Apparently, Sinatra pulled out a piece of paper

to Bobby Kennedy, and on the piece of paper

was Sam Giancana's name.

Sinatra told Roselli that he said to Bobby,

"This is a friend of mine.

I want you to treat him nicely,"

hinting that the mob had helped the Kennedys get elected

and that the Kennedys should return the favor.

Bobby says, "No way."

At least this is the story that Roselli is being told.

Sinatra is so terrified at this moment,

not only because he is the bearer of bad news,

but, in fact, Sinatra doesn't even go to the Kennedys.

Sinatra pretends he went,

and he says to Johnny, "I'm sorry.

There's nothing I can do."

[tense music]

♪ ♪

The folklore ended up being that Sinatra had betrayed

the mafia by not being able to deliver

on things that they needed.

And they had really done an awful lot for him

and, through him, done an awful lot for Kennedy.

And so they were betrayed.

[indistinct chatter]

Giancana's got a lot of issues with Sinatra.

Sinatra has pissed him off.

One of the mobsters says, "Why don't we just whack him?"

And at this moment, Giancana is

strongly considering putting a hit on Frank Sinatra.

[light music]

♪ ♪

Johnny is getting more and more involved

in the effort to kill Castro.

He puts together death squads for Harvey.

One of them goes out in a boat,

and they eventually land in Cuba.

[big band music playing]

♪ ♪

There's a celebration going on in Havana

with a Soviet cosmonaut.

Castro's supposed to come out to give a speech.

And at just the right moment, the assassins plan

to fire a bazooka into the crowd and kill Castro.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[speaking Spanish]

♪ ♪

They aim the bazookas.

[trigger clicking]

But they don't work.

They've been dampened in the boat.

Somehow, Castro's G2 squads find out

about these would-be assassins.

They arrest these guys,

and they're never heard from again.

[light music]

♪ ♪

Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the plots

against him, it's remarkable

that Fidel Castro survived

so many assassination attempts.

Castro was asked once if he had any interest in sports,

and he said yes.

"My favorite sport is avoiding assassination."

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

Free press for everybody.

Free ideas, free religion belief,

and all those right--

those human rights that we could establish.

[tense music]

After these assassination attempts,

Castro had a reason to have a closer connection

with the Soviet Union, with Moscow.

They would help him defend himself and his own regime.

In these weeks, the flirtation with Moscow

has become a honeymoon.

The regime was not explicitly communist

when Fidel took power.

The decision to turn towards the Soviets

had to do with the breakdown in relations with the U.S.

Castro has now openly declared his country

a socialist state, the term Russia applies

to itself and its allies.

It was the only country that freely chose

to join the Soviet empire.

They never had a country that said,

"We want to be part of you," because everybody else had

been overrun by the Red Army.

[victorious music playing]

The Russians changed the entire equation in Cuba.

It's like a corporate takeover of a small mom-and-pop shop.

♪ ♪

Now you have Russian intelligence and Russia

advising Cuba,

so they're kind of stepping up their spy game.

He had an intelligence service that effectively

had completely penetrated

the anti-Castro operations of the CIA.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

Harvey is frustrated by all these failed attempts,

and he realizes there may be informers

or double agents in Florida.

William Harvey's really hearing a lot of rumors

that Santo Trafficante is a double agent.

[cheers and applause]

Back in '59, when Castro takes over,

Santo Trafficante decided to stay.

And eventually he's arrested.

[camera shutter clicking]

♪ ♪

At that time, Castro was also executing

a lot of political prisoners.

[gunfire]

So he starts working on getting himself released.

Santo Trafficante gets out after four months.

So the fact that Santo got out

and was able to come back to the U.S.,

there was always a lingering question.

Did he have something that he owed

back to the Castro regime?

It just didn't make sense to Harvey.

He smelt a rat with Trafficante.

So he tells Johnny, "You shouldn't say anything

about what's going on," and Johnny agrees.

But whether or not Roselli keeps that promise

of cutting Trafficante out,

it's not going to happen.

Johnny is in a no-win situation.

Trafficante is a fellow mafioso.

If he cuts Trafficante out and Trafficante finds out,

Johnny's going to be a dead man.

But also, Johnny still has that loyalty to Trafficante.

He just has trouble believing

that his friend could betray him.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

At that time, Sam Giancana still was thinking,

"Maybe we should whack Frank Sinatra."

[tense music]

One night, Giancana is in bed with Phyllis McGuire.

They are making love to the sound of Sinatra on record.

So many babies were produced to the sound of Sinatra.

There's quotes of Giancana saying,

"It's the most romantic voice in the world,"

and he truly was a sucker for it.

Giancana says, "It's such a beautiful voice.

How could I kill that voice?"

[laughs]

And he says, "I can't have this motherfucker tapped."

The hit is never called in.

Frank lives.

Sam will find another way to make Frank pay.

While the assassination plots continue to go forward,

there was a big question about how to get

the captive Bay of Pigs prisoners back from Castro.

Prisoners of war.

To Cuban exiles, these men are patriots, heroes.

To the defenders, they were victims,

dupes of the United States government.

Kennedy realized that if these 1,100 prisoners were

killed by a firing squad,

the publicity would be so awful for him.

It would be the end of his presidency.

So he had to do something.

[tense music]

Kennedy reached out to a master negotiator,

a lawyer named James Donovan,

who you may know by the movie "The Bridge of Spies,"

where Donovan was played by Tom Hanks.

♪ ♪

James Donovan, a New York lawyer,

had been tasked by Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy

to get the Bay of Pigs prisoners freed.

♪ ♪

These were tough negotiations,

and Castro had a tremendous chip to play.

It was pretty clear that these prisoners

could be tortured or murdered.

Our indignation about the actions of Castro

should not blind us to the fact

that there are 1,214 human beings

who may face very dire consequences

if they are not released.

During the negotiations,

Roselli is in a very different frame of mind.

Roselli is now willing to get personally involved,

get on these boats, and go to Cuba

and try to kill Castro.

This time, he didn't just direct it from a desk.

He got into it.

♪ ♪

As Harvey is watching what Johnny's doing,

Harvey's respect for Johnny grows.

He was suspicious at first, but now he realizes

Johnny really is a patriot.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Roselli then ends up in a boat

with some of these exiles.

He's in one boat.

Other Cuban exiles are in other boats.

Dark of night, going across a long stretch

from the Keys to Cuba.

The risks for Johnny are high.

He could be caught and killed, just like Bobby Fuller.

[gunshot] [body thuds]

♪ ♪

There was a bravery to Johnny Roselli.

"I've lived before. I have had nine lives."

You think that somehow you're going to be the one

to pull it out.

They come very close to the coast of Cuba.

Castro's forces are waiting for them.

The boat was strafed with automatic gunfire.

[gunfire]

The boat that Johnny's in starts taking on water.

He's gotta evacuate.

♪ ♪

[gunfire]

One of the other boats swings by.

And somehow he manages to escape.

♪ ♪

Roselli escaped with his life, of course,

but, again and again, with these efforts to get Castro,

he seemed to be always one step ahead.

Castro knew it was coming.

[upbeat music]

Johnny was now wondering, was it true

that Trafficante could be a double agent?

[muffled gunshot]

I think with all these raids and the sabotage stuff,

the people who were running Operation Mongoose,

including Harvey,

were sometimes talking through their hat,

saying, "We can do this, this is going to work,

we can do that," when really some of these

were mission impossible.

[tense music]

And what does it do?

It perhaps pushes Castro more towards the Soviet Union,

and we end up with this crisis that brings the world

close to nuclear conflict.

The Cuban crisis.

Bases are being built in Cuba for rockets and missiles,

making Cuba a threat to the whole Western Hemisphere.

We are asking tonight that an emergency meeting

of the Security Council be convoked

to take action against this latest

Soviet threat to world peace.

People really thought this could be a nuclear war.

This literally could be it.

That's what it felt like during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This is JFK's worst nightmare.

[explosion]

[explosion]