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REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

The CIA Puppetmaster Part 2

REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

Wondery | Ballen Studios

True Crime, History

4.3668 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Part Two of this two-part series, CIA Director Allen Dules' plan to invade Cuba goes disastrously wrong. Though this political mastermind thinks he has everything under control, he quickly learns that he underestimated the young American President, John F. Kennedy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Love unsettling stories.

0:02.4

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to redacted, declassified mysteries, early and ad-free,

0:07.8

as well as another twisted tale from Bollin Studios and Wondery called Wartime Stories,

0:12.8

also hosted by me, Early and Ad-Free on Wondry Plus.

0:16.7

Start your free trial today.

0:26.6

Thank you. Start your free trial today. Just before sunrise, on the morning of April 15, 1961, Gustavo Ponce was on an airport runway in Nicaragua, code named Happy Valley.

0:37.9

The 38-year-old nervously gripped the controls of his B-26 invader plane.

0:42.7

Ponzoa was a trained commercial pilot, but he had never been in combat before, and the thought of it scared him.

0:48.5

Like many of his fellow recruits, he had been living in exile since the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro took control of Cuba,

0:55.6

and he was willing to do whatever it took to get his country back.

0:59.5

Ponzoa taxed his plane on the landing strip.

1:01.9

It was an old U.S. military plane that had been refurbished and painted to resemble those in Castro's Air Force.

1:08.0

The idea was for Ponzoa and the other pilots to cause confusion as the invasion got

1:12.6

underway, a way to potentially gain the upper hand against the superior Cuban forces. More than that,

1:18.7

though, the planes were painted to disguise their American origin. It was vital that there were no ties

1:24.4

back to the United States government. Ponzoa's feelings about the Americans were complicated.

1:29.9

They had bankrolled this Bay of Pig's operation,

1:32.3

but he didn't think the 1400 exiles who were about to invade Cuba

1:35.7

had nearly enough support to succeed.

1:38.7

Ponzoa had no way of knowing that the mastermind behind this day's attack,

1:42.9

CIA director Alan Dulles, fully expected

1:46.0

the Ragtag Exile Army to fail.

...

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