[ After Rodriguez ordered Che be shot, his hands were chopped off
and shipped to Langley, but not before he stole the Rolex from Che’s
corpse that was meant for the son of one of his compatriots in
Bolivia] [[link removed]]

FLORIDA’S REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR AWARDS MEDAL OF FREEDOM TO CHE
GUEVARA’S ASSASSIN  
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Michael Steven Smith
October 6, 2021
CovertAction Magazine
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_ After Rodriguez ordered Che be shot, his hands were chopped off and
shipped to Langley, but not before he stole the Rolex from Che’s
corpse that was meant for the son of one of his compatriots in Bolivia
_

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pinning medal on CIA assassin Félix
Rodríguez on September 16, 2021., [Source: flgov.com]

 

On September 16, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis awarded the
Governor’s Medal of Freedom to Félix Rodríguez, the Cuban
anti-communist counter-revolutionary who lives in Florida.  

As a contract agent for the CIA Rodríguez helped locate and
assassinate Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. Assassination is a
political murder. The Governor’s medal allowed DeSantis to recognize
Rodríguez as a “person who has made an especially meritorious
contribution to the interests and citizens of the state, (and) its
culture.”

[Félix Rodríguez, at his house in Miami.]

Félix Rodríguez at his house in Miami with a photo of a captured Che
in Bolivia. [Source: english.elpais.com]
[[link removed]]

[Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles: Rodriguez,
Felix I., Weisman, John: 9780671667214: Amazon.com: Books]

[Source:amazon.com]
[[link removed]]

As Milton observed almost four centuries ago, “the childhood shows
the man, as morning shows the day.” Rodríguez shows us his
character in his autobiography titled with characteristic
bravado _Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles_.

He grew up as the only child of a well-to-do provincial Cuban family
of Spanish/Basque ancestry. One of his uncles was a minister in the
U.S.-supported government of dictator Fulgencio Batista, another was a
judge. He spent time at the farm of his uncle where he rode horses
and, at age seven, learned to shoot a rifle.

[Fulgencio Batista | Dictatorship, Coup, & Facts | Britannica]

Fulgencio Batista [Source:Britannica.com
[[link removed]]]

At age ten he went off to military school, living with another uncle
who was Batista‘s minister of public works in a big house in the
expensive Miramar neighborhood of Havana. In seventh grade he left to
attend a boarding school in Pennsylvania. His family opposed the July
26th movement even before Batista‘s dictatorship was toppled in
1959 by a popular revolution led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. They
moved to Miami after the revolution.

[A group of men in military uniforms

Description automatically generated with medium confidence]

Leaders of the Cuban Revolution march at the head of a victory parade
in Havana, 1959. Fidel Castro (far left) headed the rebel guerrilla
army that brought U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista to resounding
defeat. Che Guevara (center), was one of Castro’s three leading
lieutenants and the key figure in the Latin American revolutionary
movements of the mid-20th  century. [Source: military-history.org
[[link removed]]]

At age 17 Rodríguez joined the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean
sponsored by Dominican Republic strongman General Rafael Trujillo to
whom Rodríguez referred to as a “so-called tyrant.”

[Rafael Trujillo - Wikipedia]

Rafael Trujillo [Source: wikipedia.org
[[link removed]]] 

Thereafter, Félix trained in the Dominican Republic for an invasion
of Cuba, but did not participate in the group’s failed 1959
invasion.

By now living in Miami, Rodríguez joined the Cruzado Cubano
Constitutional, one of the many anti-communist groups in the city
whose goal was to “begin military operations against Castro.”
Rodríguez was made a platoon sergeant. He thought of himself as a
“revolutionary,” spoke often of “honor” and “freedom” and
dreamed of “liberating Cuba.”  

When he graduated high school he was given an expensive sports car by
his family and spent the summer chasing girls at the beach in Miami.
He decided against going to college and instead forged his father’s
name on an application to go to fight in Cuba.

In 1961, at the age of 21, Rodríguez volunteered to assassinate Fidel
Castro. A spot was picked out for the murder at a location Castro was
known to frequent. The young assassin tried three times to take a boat
from Miami to Havana but the boat failed to show up and finally the
mission was canceled. Rodríguez described himself as being
“tremendously disappointed because I was a Cuban soldier. I
considered myself at war with Fidel.”

[Why did the CIA want to assassinate Fidel Castro? - Quora]

Fidel with newspaper documenting plots against him by the likes of
Félix Rodríguez. [Source:quora.com
[[link removed]]]

He was asked in 1987 by the independent counsel investigating the
Iran/Contra scandal if he himself had tried to kill Castro with an
exploding cigar. “No sir, I did not,” he answered. “But I did
volunteer to kill the son-of-a-bitch in 1961 with a telescopic
rifle.”

Rodríguez participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion of the same year.
He infiltrated Cuba with a pre-invasion group. When the operation
failed, he managed to avoid capture and fled to Venezuela and then
back to Miami.

[Bay of Pigs Invasion - Wikipedia]

Scene from Bay of Pigs invasion. [Source: wikipedia.org
[[link removed]]]

In 1966 Che Guevara attempted to defend the Cuban revolution by
extending it to other countries in Latin America, first Bolivia. Why
Bolivia? It was Latin America’s poorest country, most illiterate,
most rural, and most Indian. It was also the most unstable country in
Latin America having gone through 189 changes in government since it
became an independent republic in 1825.

[A picture containing person, outdoor, tree, old

Description automatically generated]

Che Guevara in Bolivia, 1967. [Source:wikipedia.org
[[link removed]]]

Félix Rodríguez with former CIA Director George H.W. Bush in the
White House. [Source:afrocubaweb.com
[[link removed]]]

Che arrived in Bolivia in early November 1966. His plan was to set up
a camp for his guerrillas and once they were trained move his troops
north to engage the weak Bolivian army. But his troops were discovered
early and were on the run until a force of Bolivian soldiers, trained
and armed by the United States, which provided everything from
breakfast to bullets, encircled him.

It was Rodríguez, dressed as a Bolivian soldier, who identified the
movements of the guerrillas. Che was wounded and captured. Rodríguez
attempted to interrogate Che with no success.

[René Barrientos - Wikipedia]

René Barrientos [Source:wikipedia.org
[[link removed]]]

The CIA had a prearranged agreement with Bolivian dictator René
Barrientos that, if Che were captured, he would be executed. It was
Rodríguez, after speaking by phone with Barrientos, who gave the
order. A Bolivian sergeant carried it out.

Che’s body was tied to the strut of a helicopter and flown to the
nearby village of Valle Grande.

There he was laid out on a cement table of a hospital to accommodate
photographers who were allowed to take pictures of Rodríguez’s
trophy.  

[Che Guevara and the CIA in the Mountains of Bolivia | National
Security Archive]

Che Guevara after his execution on October 9, 1967, surrounded by
Bolivian soldiers. [Source:nsarchive.gwu.edu
[[link removed]]]

After Che was shot his hands were chopped off and flown to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he was positively identified.
The CIA had had his fingerprints since 1954.

The operation to capture and kill Che Guevara was run right out of
President Lyndon Johnson’s White House. When Che was killed the
director of the operation, Walt Whitman Rostow, who had an office in
the White House, wrote on White House stationery to Johnson that
“the troops that we trained and supplied finally got him.”

[Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth and Development]

Lyndon B. Johnson and Walt W. Rostow in the Oval Office.
[Source:thoughtco.com
[[link removed]]]

Awarding an assassin the medal of freedom demonstrates the level of
decadence to which the political culture of Florida has been dragged
by the clout of South Florida’s counter- revolutionary Cubans.

In the years to come our hero of 100 unknown battles was to fight
against those seeking freedom from oppression from Vietnam to
Nicaragua.  

Incidentally, Rodríguez took Che’s Rolex watch off the corpse and
proudly shows it to admirers. Che had intended his watch to be given
to the son of one of his compatriots in Bolivia.

_Micheal Stephen Smith and his co-author Michael Ratner wrote the book
“Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder” (OR
Books).  He is the cohost of Law and Disorder Radio on the net
at lawanddisorder.org [[link removed]]._

_Michael can be reached at [email protected]._

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