Episode 359 Ground Zero: JMWAVE And The Cuban Question Miniseries Part 1

In this opening chapter of our new 15-part miniseries, Ground Zero: JM WAVE and the Cuban Question, we journey to South Florida in November 1963, just four days before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. On Monday, November 18, President Kennedy stood inside the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach to address Cuban exile newspaper publishers, withholding the explicit military commitment to retake Cuba that the exile community desperately sought. We pull back the curtain on the clandestine universe of JM WAVE—the CIA’s massive, air-gapped Miami station operating on the University of Miami’s South Campus under the cover name Zenith Technical Enterprises. Spanning 1,500 acres with hundreds of American staff officers, thousands of exile operatives, and what grew to be the third-largest naval fleet in the Caribbean, South Florida became the epicenter of a secret, multi-million-dollar war against Fidel Castro. We trace the architects and operatives who drove this covert apparatus, reuniting key veterans from the 1954 Guatemalan coup (Operation PBSuccess)—propaganda chief David Atley Phillips, fearsome paramilitary officer David Sanchez Morales ("El Indio"), and combat agent Rip Robertson. We examine the shadowy web of alliances linking wealthy benefactor William Pawley, mob-connected casino technician John Martino, and mobster Johnny Roselli. We follow legendary CIA officer Tony Sforsa, who posed as a high-rolling gambler in Havana casinos to recruit stay-behind networks—including Fidel Castro’s own sister, Juanita Castro—while the agency stood up and secretly funded the militant student group DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil) under code name AMSPELL. Finally, we examine the catastrophic fallout from the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, where Brigade 2506 was crushed on the beach, leaving 1,200 exiles in Cuban prisons and instilling a bitter, enduring sense of betrayal against President Kennedy. We detail how Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy put into motion  Operation Mongoose and the local station JMWAVE chief Ted Shackley ("The Blonde Ghost") operationalized the program. A program meant to  to unleash "boom and bang" sabotage across the island and ultimately to remove Castro and his communist government. We explore the infamous  U-Haul truck loaded with CIA weapons placed directly into mob hands by William Harvey and Ted Shackley. We expose how local police, customs, and Coast Guard officers were co-opted to support the efforts. We see examples of simple covert mechanisms such as using daily sealed code words to protect armed exile raiders. And finally we set the stage for an explosive clash of agendas between a White House secretly seeking backchannel diplomacy and an armed, radicalized exile community primed for action.