[NYTr] "We Could Have Saved Che from Execution - Gusano Felix Rodriguez

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Oct 9, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3041070.ece

We could have saved Che' from execution, says ex-CIA operative

By David Usborne in New York

A former CIA operative has spoken out about the last hours of the Cuban
revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara before his execution in the jungles
of Bolivia 40 years ago, recalling how he looked like a "beggar" and
was shot against the wishes of the US government.

Felix Rodriguez, a prominent Cuban exile in Miami with a long career
working for the Central Intelligence Agency that spanned the Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Vietnam War, said Che was in "rags" when
he was first brought to him after his capture by Bolivian soldiers near
the town of La Higuera on 8 October 1967. The former brother-in-arms of
Fidel Castro was in Bolivia trying to foment socialist revolution.

"I remembered him from the time that he used to visit Moscow and he
used to visit Mao Tse-tung in China, that arrogant man in uniform, and
now you see this man here who looks like a beggar," he told the BBC.
"His uniform was basically in rags. He didn't have a pair of boots, it
was just a pair of ... leather, covering his shoes. And, you know, I
just felt sorry for the man as an individual, as a human being."

It was also the job of Rodriguez at the time to ensure that Che was
kept alive and transported to Panama, where he would face interrogation
by his American colleagues. In the interview, he explains how he was
overruled during a phone call to the jungle encampment from Bolivia's
military high command.

"When I answered the phone they gave me the codeword 'five hundred six
hundred'," he recalled. "We had agreed a simple code; 'five hundred'
was Che Guevara, 'six hundred' was dead, 'seven hundred' was alive. I
asked him to repeat because the line had a lot of noise. And they
confirmed, it was 'five hundred six hundred'."

Rodriguez, who earned the nickname Lazarus after surviving the
disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, was handpicked by the CIA to head up
the team to track down Che, an experience he described in a book. Other
historians have documented his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair
and his acquaintance with the then vice-president George Bush Snr, who
knew him while he was the CIA director.

Rodriguez said this week that he argued with his Bolivian counterpart
in the jungle, whom he identified as a Colonel Senteno. "Felix, we are
grateful for what you have done," the Colonel replied. "But this is an
order from my president, from my commander-in-chief. I want your word
of honour that at two o'clock in the afternoon, you will bring me back
the dead body of Che. You can do anything you want because we know the
harm he has done to your country."

Rodriguez said that upon his initial capture, Che was almost
good-humoured, even agreeing to be photographed with him as he was led
out of his hideaway. He also remembers the moment when he told the
Argentine-born revolutionary that he would not be spared.

"I went into the room, I stood in front of him and said 'Commander
Guevara, I'm sorry, I tried my best. But this is an order from the
Bolivian high command'. He perfectly understood what I was saying; he
turned white like a piece of paper, I've never seen anybody look
depressed like he did. But he said, 'It's better this way, I should
have never been captured alive.' It was one o'clock in the afternoon,
Bolivian time, when we left that area. And between 1.10 and 1.20, I
heard the burst."

The vivid memories of Rodriguez are not coloured with a great deal of
regret over the way Guevara's life was ended, however. Nor does he
believe that the killing of the revolutionary made him a martyr and
resulted in his being mythologised in the decades since.

"That was done by the Cuban government," he said. "Most people don't
know the real Che Guevara – the Che Guevara who wrote that he was
thirsty for blood, the Che who assassinated thousands of people without
any regard for any real legal process."