Former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez has led a fascinating life. He was involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and was one of the last men to speak to Che Guevara before his execution.

It was taken in Bolivia in 1967.

It's a very famous photograph, probably familiar to most people watching this.

This man standing right there is not familiar to most people watching this.

He should be.

He's about to be. His name is Felix Rodriguez.

He's a longtime CIA officer in the operations directorate.

And he joins us now to explain this picture and to tell us about his life.

Mr. Rodriguez, thank you very much.

Pleasure to be here.

So it's a remarkable picture.

And the longer I look at it, the more I think that.

Can you tell us where this was and what was happening?

Well, that was in La Higuera, Bolivia.

That's where he was captured.

And I came in the helicopter with the colonel in charge of the operation.

And after a while, I got to talk to him.

And I even thought about taking the picture.

But while I was talking to him, the pilot of the helicopter came with a camera

from the head of intelligence who wanted a picture with Che.

So I asked him, commander, do you mind?

He said no.

So we took him out of the schoolhouse and gave my camera to the pilot.

And he took that picture.

So you talked to Guevara.

Yes.

Of course.

What were the circumstances?

He had been captured by Bolivian soldiers.

Is that right?

Yes.

Actually, they thought that he had been killing Africa.

But then when they captured Debray and Bustu, who was a French intellectual,

and then a newspaper guy from Argentina, they confirmed that Che Guevara was there.

So as long as they understood that he was there,

they sent a special forces unit from Panama to train a special battalion

to operate against him because the Bolivians didn't have any experience.

And then they sent a couple of us from the CIA to provide them with intelligence.

And the reason they sent us is because we were not U.S. citizens.

At the time, Vietnam was taking place,

and there were people coming back in plastic bags from Vietnam.

And they didn't want any Americans coming back in plastic bags from Latin America.

At the time, we were not even residents.

We were not citizens.

So we didn't fall into the restriction of Ambassador Henderson.

That's why we were able to go there.

So you were working for the CIA full-time, obviously, carrying a weapon, obviously,

but not a U.S. citizen.

Yes.

What was Che like that day?

Why first?

A lot of people ask me what I thought about Che.

Che at the time was nobody.

Che became a figure after he was dead.

Cuba made him a figure after the war,

even though they were the ones who sent him to be killed.

Fidel could not stand him there because Fidel depended on the Soviet Union,

and Che Guevara was pro-Chinese.

So when he was in Africa in 1965-64,

all the weapons he received was from Red China.

Then he didn't want to go back to Cuba.

He went to hire in the Czech Republic.

They had to send people to convince him to go back to Cuba

and to give him an opportunity in another place.

But when he was sent to Bolivia, it was definitely mine for him to be killed

because the Soviets didn't want him to be any successful

because they knew that Che was pro-Chinese,

and if he took a revolution in there, it would be toward the Chinese.

And at the time, the Chinese and the Soviets hated each other very much.

So when he was sent to Bolivia, his transmitter was not even working.

In December of 1966, when they had a dinner with Mario Monge,

the head of the Communist Party of Bolivia,

who had been with Fidel two months before,

complete or complete progress,

he told the Bolivian guerrillas that were with Che,

if they stayed with Che, they were expelled from the Communist Party.

And then they had an officer in intelligence

that they had sent to La Paz, Serena Montero, to help him.

And as soon as he was seen with all 17 people,

they took him out of the picture

and told Che that they had to take him out because his visa had expired.

And actually, he was a Bolivian citizen by then.

So he was definitely sent there to be killed by Cuba

because he could not succeed because it would be a revolution

that would be pro-Chinese, and Cuba depended on the Soviet Union.

So he's, obviously, he's a prisoner in this picture.

Does he know when this was taken that he's about to die?

Not at that time. No.

So what happened in the moments after this picture?

Well, in the sequence, first of all,

when we arrived with the helicopter on the following day,

which is the 9th of October on Monday,

we came to the room with the officers,

and he would not talk to anybody.

The colonel was trying to interrogate him.

He looked at me. He didn't say any word.

To the point, the guy said, look, you invaded my country.

At least you can have the courtesy of answering me.

He didn't say a word.

So when we finished that, I came out.

I asked for all his documentation to photograph it from my government,

and the colonel ordered his bag be given to me.

And he had some Chinese code books.

He had some picture of his family,

some medicaments for his asthma inside.

And he had a diary.

It's a German book. It was written in Spanish.

That's his diary.

So I photographed all of that.

Then while I was there, there came the news,

the quick telephone call at the guerrillas.

I was the highest-ranking officer,

so there was definitely the orders to execute him.

We had a very simple code.

500, 600, kill him.

700, keep him alive.

So it came 500, 600.

When Colonel Centeno came out, I told him.

I said, look, this order from your high Bolivian command

to eliminate the prisoner.

The order from my government is try to keep him alive

at all costs, so we have helicopters

taking him to Panama for interrogation.

So he looked at me and said,

Felix, my name was Felix Ramos.

He said, we, you have been very hateful to us,

helpful to us, but this is order from my president.

He looked at his watch, and he said,

the helicopter is going to come several times,

bringing food and ammunition,

taking our wounded and our dead,

but after 2 o'clock, it's going to come up

and pick up Che Guevara's dead body.

You cannot use this CIA him any way you want

because we know how much harm

he has done to your country.

So I said, Colonel, try to make them change their mind,

but if they don't change their mind,

I will give you my word of honor.

I will bring you dead body of Che.

So we embraced, and he left.

And sure enough, the helicopter came several times.

That's when the major came and asked for a picture

with the prisoner.

Then I started waiting and see what happened,

and then there was a schoolteacher who came to me

and said, why are you going to kill him?

I said, why do you say that?

I said, look, we saw that you took a picture

with him outside, and look,

the radio is already giving the news.

So at that point, I knew there was nothing else to be done.

So I got into the room,

I stood in front of him and said,

Commander, I'm sorry, I tried my best.

He turned white like a piece of paper

and he said, it's better this way.

I should have never been captured alive.

So you told Che Guevara he was about to be killed.

Yes.

The way I say, I'm sorry, I tried my best,

and he understood what I was saying.

Then he took his pipe out and said,

I'd like to give this pipe to a soldadito who treated me well.

At that time,

Major Sergeant Teran,

who he knew was the one executing the

live prisoner, burst into the room.

Yo quiero la pipa, mi capitán, I want the pipe.

And Che said, no, I won't give it to you.

A ti no te la doy.

So I ordered him three times to leave the room.

When he did, I looked at Che and said,

would you give it to me?

He said, sí, a ti se te la doy.

I will give it to you.

So I put my pipe here and said,

is there anything you want for your family?

Then I would say, in a sarcastic way,

he said, well, if you can't tell Fidel,

he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America.

Then he changed his expression

and said, if you can't tell my wife to remarry

and try to be happy.

That was his last word.

He approached me. We shook hands. We embraced.

It was a very

strange and unique moment

in my life because we never ordered

prisoners to be executed.

At the time, I even thought about

cutting the telephone line and telling the pilot

that my government was able to convince them

to bring Che alive, and I remember

what happened when Batista released Fidel Castro

and what happened to my country.

So I told myself, look, this is not your

war. You're here to advise, not to command.

This is the Bolivian decision.

So let history run itself.

So I let it go the way it was, and that was

the end of it.

What happened to Che at that point?

Well, after we embraced, which was, like I said,

a very strange moment for me because

he was my enemy at the same time.

I feel sorry for him, and he conducted

himself with dignity at the end.

I left the room, and there was Sergeant Teran.

I told him not to shoot from here

down because he was

supposed to die from combat wounds.

See me, Capitán. See me, Capitán. And he left.

So it was 1 o'clock in the

afternoon Bolivian time when I left there.

About 1.15, I heard the burst.

And that's the time that we were killed

and executed.

They just shot him in the room.

He was shot by M2 carabine

that was borrowed by this

sergeant from Lieutenant Perez who had

an automatic carabine.

I understand because I wasn't present.

He came in and said, Che Guevara, I'd like to talk to you.

And he told him, he said,

look, I know you're coming to kill me. He said, no, no,

we're not going to kill you. You're worse to us,

more our life than death.

And then he told him, I know you, I want you to know

you're going to kill a man. So he opened fire.

Che went like this, so there's a bullet that hit here,

which is a normal reaction to try

to cover yourself.

So he was shot and killed. I came back

a few hours later with

two of the captains from the operation.

Captain Gary Prado

and Celso Torrelli, and we got into the room.

His head was facing

the ceiling. It was covered with mud.

So there was

a dead body of two Cubans behind him

that had been killing the operation.

One was Captain Pantoja and another

captain from the Cuban army who died in combat.

So we embraced him

there and Gary Prado said,

Captain, we are finishing the guerrillas in Latin America.

And I told him, Captain,

we haven't finished it. At least we have

delayed them for a long time.

So we could hear the helicopter coming and they

immediately left. So I asked for a bucket

of water. I cleaned his face. I took all

the mud out of his face. I tried to close

his jaw with my handkerchief, which I

lost in the helicopter with the wind.

And then I tried to close his eyes

and it was impossible. They had been open

too long. So I tried to close it and it popped up

again several times. So I gave up on it.

So we took the body and we tied

it to the right side of the helicopter.

And while we were finishing to do that,

I remember... Tied it to the struts of the helicopter?

To the right pontoon

of the helicopter, the right side.

And I remember the

pilots that night, Jaime Nunez, who was

Captain, moved forward to balance the helicopter.

So I put my hand under him

and pulled it out. When I pulled it out, it was completely

covered with blood. Apparently

it was shot in the aorta.

And since these plastic things

didn't allow any water to go through,

it was a big pool of blood in there.

I looked at it. I didn't say

anything, but I thought to myself, there are people who have

blood in their hands. I have a hell of a lot of it here.

So I cleaned the blood and

in the right side of my pants, I came in

and then a soldier came and said,

My Lord, my Lord, Father Schillers went to see

him. So we stood with the

helicopter running for maybe a couple of minutes

and there was a priest who came on a

mule. He came around.

He got down on the mule and

he gave him the last benediction, which I

took a picture of it with a

camera that I had left. I thought

to myself, this guy was an atheist.

He didn't believe in God. Nevertheless,

he received the ritual

from the Catholic Church. And from

there we took off and then we landed in

Valle Grande. There were thousands of people

waiting at the runway. There were

like 15 different planes from the press

and from the military waiting

for him to arrive.

So I put my cap and run into the people

so my picture was never taken.

And then he was taken into

a schoolhouse. He was

given to a hospital, Nuestro Senor de Malta.

Then in the evening, there was

a meeting and the

general was telling a colonel,

If Fidel denies

this is Che Guevara, we need tangible proof of it.

He cut his head and put it in formaldehyde.

So I said, General, you cannot do that.

He said, Why not? I said, Supposedly Fidel

denies this is Che Guevara. You are a head of

a state. You cannot show the head of

a human being a proof. He said, Well, what do you

suggest? I said, Well,

if you want some tangible

proof of it, cut one finger. And we have

the fingerprint from the Argentinian Federal

Police and it can be checked.

So he ordered both hands to be cut.

So I left with all the documentation

for Santa Cruz and my other friend

staying there. And then about three or four o'clock

in the morning when the press was gone,

they took his body, they cut both

hands and put it in formaldehyde

and two other bodies and they took it to the very

end of the runway and they buried him

in there with two bodies. There was a bulldozer

there who was

making longer the runway

and he was buried right there. Now,

later on, years later, when Fidel

said he found the body

on the side of the runway with seven other

bodies, I can assure you that was not

Che Guevara because he wasn't buried there.

Amazing.

And so what did you do? That was 1967.

Let's back up really quickly.

You were born in Cuba.

Right. When did you come to the United States?

I came in 1954

for school. I came to Perquim and Prep

in Pennsylvania.

I spent six years in there, seventh and eighth

grade and my high school.

I actually went off

my last year to go to the first

thing that was against Castro was the anti-communist

legion of the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic.

So I participated in that

operation when I was 17, 18 years

old, and I came back. And then

after graduation, I was accepted at the

University of Miami for civil engineering.

But before I went there, I

learned there was something going on in Latin America.

Against Castro, I joined what

later became the Bay of Pigs invasion.

I was 19 years old at the time.

What was your role in the Bay of Pigs invasion?

I was part of what they call

the special forces or infiltration

team. So I was a group

of about 36 people. We got into

Cuba a month and a half before

the invasion to work with the resistance.

I came in clandestinely by boat.

I started working inside the island,

helping with them

with all kinds of equipment

and trying to do an uprising in another

area. Then actually, the Bay of Pigs

surprised us because they never told us anything.

If they had been

able to tell us that the invasion was

coming, we had enough explosives to

be able maybe to blow some bridges

toward the Bay of Pigs and delay the advancement

of Castro's troops. But they never told

us anything. We learned through the Cuban radio.

So at that time, I was lucky.

I was able to make it through the

Venezuelan embassy where I spent

five and a half months. In Havana?

In Havana. And then finally

got safe conduct. Went back to Venezuela

at the end of September.

How did you get from the Bay of Pigs

to Havana? That's a long way, isn't it?

No, I wasn't in the Bay of Pigs. I landed near Havana

a month and a half before the Bay of Pigs

and worked with the resistance.

We had a mechanism of the

internal resistance to pick us up near

the highway and then take off to

safe houses in Havana. Then we started working

with them in there during that time.

So I wasn't at the Bay of Pigs at the time.

And I was lucky because I

didn't have any idea of any embassy in there,

but the lady who was driving me around

was close connected to the Spanish

embassy. And the Spaniard,

Alejandro Vergara,

who was in charge of, they called propaganda,

actually it was intelligence, came to pick

her up because they were surrounding our

building. Fidel, very successfully,

he surrounded every

single block in Havana.

And if you were a male or

military agent, you were not assigned to

a military unit, even though you might have been

even a communist. They would take you and put

you in custody. There was a baseball field

with 250,000

Cubans in there.

The capacity for 5,000 people

was 5,500. So they were

able to disarticulate the internal

resistance that way. Even they picked

up some of my friends that came in and then they

released them because they had no idea who they were.

But I was lucky to make it to the

Venezuelan embassy and then back into

Miami.

I actually got to Miami on the very

first of October of

1961. And then by

the end of October, I was back inside Cuba.

Went back seven times

because I was the only one who left the contact

open after the failure of the Bay of

Pigs to bring people and equipment in

for intelligence purposes.

What kind of

equipment were you bringing in?

We were bringing explosives. We were bringing in

machine guns,

hand grenades, and all those things

that they were still bringing in

to be able to support a future

resistance. But then it didn't

work out. Then I decided, actually in

1962, I decided to marry

my present wife of 62 years.

I told her, I said,

look Rosa, I'm going to

quit. I'm going to go into civilian life.

But I want you to know, if there is something serious

about Cuba, I will go.

So she made the mistake of agreeing

to that. Because we got married on the 25th

of August. I started working

at a company for $1 an hour

called Ace Letter Service

Propaganda. Then I was improving

Tobin Packaging Company, $1.35

an hour.

So while I was working there, and remember, I got married

25th of August. In

the month of October, I got a call from a CIA

guy and said, look, I need to talk to you after

you work at that company. So I went

to see him at the parking lot of

Howard and Johnson across from the

University of Miami. I sit in his car and I

say, Felix, the Marines are going to

land in Cuba and we need you. I

look at him and say, Tom, if the Marines are going

to land in Cuba, what the hell do you need me for?

Good point. He said, well,

you know how to operate a radio beacon. We'll let you

do parachute behind a Soviet missile base

in Santa Clara to set

up a radio beacon so that our Air Force

can hit with precision the air base. At the

time, we didn't have the GPS system that we

have today. So at that time, I

agreed, so they took me to a safe house

and my basic training was romping from

different altitudes on

the three points of contact so I didn't break a leg.

I couldn't even call

my wife. My wife went back to

the apartment and

of course, that night, when Kennedy went

on national television and declared the October

crisis. So he realized

it was something related to that.

So the day we were going to parachute

into Cuba, the day the cruise ship backed down

on the operation. And then,