How the CIA Got Che Che Got CIA the How

HOW THE CIA GOT CHE 97 woods cocaine cooker is usually the only thing stirring, the small infantry patrol ran into an enemy ambush. In the tactical manuals that twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Ruben Amezaga had studied at military academy, enemy fire from any sort of position was rep- resented by neatly dotted arcs. But no such thing ap- peared now. A crack, no louder than a hard ping-pong serve, snapped from high up among the boulders on How the CIA Got Che the steep river gorge, and the patrol guide in front of Lieutenant Amezaga, a local civilian named Epifano Vargas, half-turned in surprise, his arm outfiung. Then came a splatter of short explosions; both the guide and BY ANDREW ST. GEORGE Lieutenant Amezaga were killed before they could ex- change a word. With them died most of the detach- ment's lead section. Six soldiers and the guide were killed, four wounded, fourteen captured by the myste- rious attackers. Even the romantic adventurer's close friends seldom knew where he was or what he was Eight soldiers got away. With terror-marbled eyes, doing after he left Cuba. America's Central they ran cross-jungle several miles until they dared Intelligence Agency didn't always have an open form up again under a senior sergeant. Then they line to Che Guevara. But as an apparatus fre- loped on until they hit a narrow dirt road, where a quently given to chasing shadows, the CIA petroleum truck picked them up and took them to knew precisely where he was and how to help Camiri, headquarters base of the Bolivian Fourth In- run him down at the very end. fantry Division. The division had a radio. The word brought by the Nancahuazu's hard-breathing survivors went to La Paz, Bolivia's cloud-top capital, via a surplus U.S. Sig- nal Corps communications trailer parked in Fort Mi- raffores, supreme headquarters of Bolivia's armed forces, where, as if by remote kinetics, people started running, too. ON MARCH 23, 1967, AT THE MISERABLE An officer carrying the decoded message galloped up military morning hour of 0700, the three officers and to Major General Juan Jose Torres, the tough, smooth, twenty-nine men of a Bolivian army patrol picking its pint-sized Bolivian chief of staff. General Torres way along the Nancahuazu River stumbled into some- dashed into the presence of the commander-in-chief, thing all had been trained for but none had really ex- General of the Forces Alfredo Ovando—a measured pected. Here, in the unlikely, ravine-scarred jungle of presence not ever lightly dashed into. By then the news Bolivia's remote southeastern badlands, where a back- was spreading in every direction. 96 98 THE SPIES HOW THE CIA GOT CHE 99 A copy of the signal sheet landed on the desk of Colo- warrior, personally leading his long-threatened show- nel Federico Arafia, the military intelligence chief, who down with "Yanqui imperialism." The ambush set in rose as he began reading it and trotted rapidly, still motion a conflict which brought about—but did not reading, across the Miraftores quadrangle toward the end with--Guevara's own violent death on October 9, back-of-the-base cluster of buildings that housed the 1967. U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group, known as The conflict was to live on after Che in a worldwide MAAG. At about the same time, General Ovando got controversy about the true circumstances of the leg- on the direct telephone line to Bolivia's president, endary guerrilla general's downfall. Just exactly what Rene Barrientos. was the U.S. role in it? There have been accusations Within minutes, a call went out from the Presiden- that Che was captured and executed by the ubiquitous tial Palace for U.S. Ambassador Douglas Henderson, a Central Intelligence Agency; other versions blamed his tweedy, erect, gray-haired career foreign-service death on the Soviet Union and the old-line Communist officer, who happened to be driving home in his barge- Party leaders, others still on Cuban strong-man Fidel like limousine cluttered with special communications Castro—or on Che's own wrongheaded tactics. devices. At his desk President Barrientos—a heavy- To appreciate the difficulty of unraveling such tan- shouldered, florid man who had been an Air Force gled current events as Che's last adventure, one does general before he became president and a hot fighter not need a degree in modem history. The outcome pilot before that—and the ambassador in his car spoke must be pieced together from the contestants them- briefly. Even as they talked, the limousine wheeled selves—the men in the field. The day-to-day story pre- around and headed towards the U.S. Embassy and its sented here of Guevara's side of the showdown took rooftop radio. shape through months of travel in South America and In La Paz, intelligence chief Colonel Araila was still more months of poring over handwritten diaries, docu- deep in conference with the American military advisers ments, charts and logs. when a phone began ringing in Washington on the The U.S. role proved even more difficult to recon- desk of William Bowdler, President Johnson's senior struct. Putting it together involved long talks with peo- adviser for Latin American affair' s. Bowdier, a tall, in- ple who were hard to find and others hard to talk to. telligent, very quiet man, listened silently, then walked Some of them—intelligence people and Special Forces a few steps down the Executive Office Building corri- men—had moved on since 1967, and wanted the dor to the office of Walt Whitman Rostow, the White whole bad scene forgotten—the jungle hunt and the House troubleshooter for presidential-sized troubles killing. A few felt themselves still bound by official se- abroad. The balloon, as more than one harassed secre- crecy. tary was to observe in Washington during the remain- Yet in talkg with the men who had held the stakes in der of that day, was definitely up. what turned out to be Che Guevara's last gamble, the An isolated jungle skirmish has seldom been known story came to life for this writer with color and sharp to trigger such topside tensions. But the sudden shoot- 1% outline. I had known some of the Cuban guerrilla lead- out that killed Lieutenant Amezaga and practically de- ers from my years as a magazine correspondent in Ha- stroyed his troop was the curtain raiser in the drama vana during the Castro revolution, and I had known that brought back on stage the long-vanished Ernesto Che best of them all. I had marched with him through Che Guevara. The guerrilla expert had become the many moonless nights of the bitter jungle campaign in 100 THE SPIES HOW THE CIA GOT CHE 101 1957-.58. But ten years later, it was an enigmatic, elu- tier administration was alarmed. Largely in response to sive, changed Che whose contradictory behavior per- Che's theories, President John Kennedy and young At- sisted at the heart of the puzzle. torney General Robert Kennedy revived "special warfare" as a key U.S. military strategy. Every United In postwar Cuba the Honorable Ernesto Guevara de la States ambassador going abroad was required to take a Serna, M.D., Ph.D., had led a busy life as a govern- course in guerrilla and antizuerrilla warfare designed ment official of high rank, as a bank president, diplo- largely around Che's textbook. It is a little-]mown but mat, world traveler, author, public speaker and the solid fact that this asthmatic, soft-faced medico who twice-married father of five children. But it was as never went to military school or owned a brass button Che, the legendary guerrilla general, that he became an had a greater influence on inter-American military pol- 49/ international celebrity and hero of young people every- icies than any single man since the death of Josef Sta- where; it is Che's bearded, burning-eyed poster image lin. which flies over hundreds of insurgent college cam- Che enjoyed the role of big bad wolf. He organized puses. paramilitary commands and guerrilla schools. By the While Che's doctrine of "confrontation" and "direct end of 1962 his alumni and America's Green Berets action" was taking hold with the young, the reckless, were at each other's throats in a dozen countries. rs romantic rebel leader himself had become a man of mystery. He had risen to fame as Castro's right-hand Thousands of anonymous combatants on both sides man in the triumphant Cuban guerrilla insurrection of were killed in far-flung, merciless guerrilla battles. 1958, only to vanish from sight in the spring of 1965, Among them died quite a few yanquis never men- having renounced all his privileges in a handwritten tioned in official dispatches. Che himself in a coldly fe- letter to Fidel Castro. For two years Che's where- rocious speech before the U.N. General Assembly in abouts became the world's best-kept, most-guessed-at December, 1964, hinted at American casualties the secret. American public never knew about. Nowhere did the Guevara mystery set off more edu- Washington, ignoring the contemptuous verbal as- cated guesswork than in Washington. There Che had sault Che sounded before the world forum ("jackals been a fascinating subject of study ever since his emer- . hyenas . ."), maintained a calm and ostenta- gence in 1961 as one of Cuba's ruling revolutionary tiously pacific stance.

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