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Global Recon

GRP 167-Black Ops: The Story Of A Cuban Refugees Journey Into The Upper Ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency

Global Recon

John Hendricks

Government

4.8592 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2023

⏱️ 107 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

GRP 167-Black Ops: The Story Of A Cuban Refugees Journey Into The Upper Ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Joining me for this week's podcast is Ric Prado. Ric witnessed a firefight at seven in Cuba during Fidel Castro's revolution. After his family fled, they relocated to Miami. Prado would go on to serve as an elite Pararescuemen in the Airforce and spent 24 years at the CIA, retiring at the rank of Senior Intel Service-2, the Major General equivalent at the Agency.

He was the Deputy Chief of Station of the original Bin Laden Task Force and later served as the head of Korean Operations for the CIA. We discussed Castro and Che Guevara, his time in Nicaragua, countering terrorism in the Philippines, and tracking Bin Laden. Tune in.

Main Takeaways

  • Witnessing a firefight between government forces and Castros rebels as a young kid in Cuba
  • Fleeing Cuba under the Castro regime
  • Joining the Airforce as a Pararescuemen
  • Working as a paramilitary officer in Nicaragua with the Contra's
  • Working on the Bin Laden task force in the mid-'90s


This episode is sponsored by Ten Thousand a men’s training brand. 

visit www.tenthousand.cc and enter code Global Recon for 15 % off


Follow Ric Prado: www.ricprado.com


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Music provided by Caspian:

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

That's the last picture of Chea Life and when I put my hand around him before the picture

0:07.0

was taken, I called him Commandante, look at the Luther Bird.

0:10.0

To see a man who was so powerful at one point in Cuba and to see the way he was at that point in town.

0:17.0

He looked like a beggar. He was in rags. He was filthy.

0:21.6

And it was a completely different image of what people perceived at him in the world.

0:27.6

In 1967, there was an interest to provide the Bolivian government with the capability

0:35.6

against the guerrillas that arrived in the area.

0:38.3

My mission was specifically to provide intelligence about Che Guevara and advise then on how to proceed to be able to either capture or kill him.

0:48.3

Che Guevara was in Bolivia to be able to take the country, and if he was ever to be successful that way,

0:56.0

he would be able to export the revolution to fight different neighboring countries that they have boundary with.

1:01.0

The instruction that we specifically got from the CIA was if Che Guevara was to be able to keep him alive at all costs.

1:12.6

We received information from the field that Che Guevara had been captured.

1:18.6

Reaction came fast following Castro's death, mainly in the Little Havana section of Miami,

1:23.6

where hundreds of Cuban settled when Castro came to power. For them, Castro's death is cause for celebration.

1:31.3

Good morning. The crowds have thinned out significantly, but the expectation is as the sun rises,

1:38.3

the crowd will return. Look, the death of Fidel Castro had been a rumor that had become a

1:43.3

running joke for many years.

1:45.6

But when people realized last night that, no, this is real, he's dead, they came to the one place

1:50.1

that is known as Little Havana. That's Cafe Versaise. So this is where folks will come get a shot of

1:54.9

their Cuban espresso and talk about the news, but the news couldn't wait until the morning.

1:58.7

So around midnight, shortly before, 30 minutes after news broke out of Cuba,

2:03.4

that Fidel Castro was dead, people flooded the street.

...

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