The Wrap-Up With The Anti-Che, Freedom Fighter And Patriot Felix Rodriguez

Jay Nordlinger at National Review offers his third and final piece in his series on Cuban-American Felix Rodriguez, the CIA agent who helped capture Communist revolutionay Che Guevara in Boliva in 1967.

In 1976, Felix Rodriguez left the CIA for several reasons. (Readers of my magazine piece will recall this.) One of those reasons was security. His cover was blown; he was receiving death threats.
The Agency offered to give Rodriguez and his family new identities and move them to a different state. Rodriguez decided against. It would be too disruptive, too upsetting to the family, he determined.

So, the Agency took some steps to afford him some security. They outfitted his home in various ways. They bullet-proofed his car, at Langley. They gave him a mobile phone — “something very rare at the time,” says Rodriguez. When he called a seller of such phones, he was told that the waiting list was ten years. Then Langley made a call. And Rodriguez got the phone in two days.

There were some other arrangements as well, and the Rodriguezes forged ahead.

Rodriguez is not very interested in money, and he has lived frugally. “I am very organized with my finances. I have never had a penny of interest on my credit card. If I don’t have the money, I don’t buy whatever it is.” He bought his house in 1969, for $29,800. “We borrowed 8,000 for the down payment.”

This seems a classic American story, old-school.

You can read the rest of the piece and link to part one and two of the series via th below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358986/wrap-anti-che-jay-nordlinger

You can also read my Washington Times review of Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture The World's Most Famous Revoluntionary via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-washington-times-review-of-hunting_6.html   

Note: The above photo of Felix Rodriguez (on the left) with Che Guevara was provided by Felix Rodriguez.

The Anti-Che: Felix Rodriguez, Freedom Fighter And Patriot

Jay Nordlinger at National Review offers an interesting piece on an interesting man, Felix Rodriguez.

Miami, Fla. — Felix Rodriguez seems fated to be linked to Che Guevara. This is not entirely just. Rodriguez loves freedom, and has worked tirelessly for it; Guevara loved tyranny, and worked tirelessly for it. “Two sides of the same coin,” some people say. Maybe — but only in the way that light and dark are two sides of the same coin. Rodriguez had a role in stopping Guevara. He was there, in the Bolivian mountains, in 1967. He was the last person to talk with Guevara — a man who did so much to tyrannize the country where Rodriguez was born, Cuba.

The story of Guevara’s last day has been told many times, in many ways. Rodriguez told it in his 1989 memoir, Shadow Warrior. It is told in a book published earlier this year, Daybreak at La Higuera, by Rafael Cerrato, a Spaniard. La Higuera is the village where Guevara met his end. Cerrato’s main sources for the book are Rodriguez, who was working for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez, whose nom de guerre was Benigno. A Cuban, Benigno was Guevara’s lieutenant in Bolivia. He was also a member of Fidel Castro’s inner circle. He defected in 1996 — and now he and Rodriguez are friends.    

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/353799/anti-che

You can also read my Washington Times review of Hunting Che, in which Felix Rodriguez is a major character, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-washington-times-review-of-hunting_6.html  

Note: The above photo appears courtesy of Felix Rodriguez.