Ex-CIA agent gives firsthand view of history

A roomful of college students got a 90-minute snapshot of the last 50-plus years of world history from the Bay of Pigs to the Vietnam War to the most recent events in Ukraine from a man who helped shape world events.

Felix Rodriguez, a longtime CIA agent and military colonel, talked with University of North Georgia Gainesville campus students about his involvement in the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba, gave his views on President John F. Kennedys assassination in 1963 and fretted about the recent call for a reduction of the U.S. armed forces.

Much of his presentation, which was sponsored by the colleges Politically Incorrect Club, was focused on the 1967 capture of communist guerrilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia. Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and a major figure in the Cuban revolution.

Rodriguez, a Cuban exile who advised Bolivian troops in the hunt for Guevara, had been questioning Guevara when Bolivias president wanted him executed even though the U.S. wanted him detained for further interrogation.

Guevara told Rodriguez in a conversation before his execution, Tell my wife to remarry and try to be happy, Rodriguez told the audience gathered in the Continuing Education Buildings main auditorium.

He told the audience he believed Kennedys push to liberate Cuba from the communist regime led by Fidel Castro cost him his life in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

Later on, President (Lyndon) Johnson ... said the promise of President Kennedy to free Cuba died with the president.

Rodriguez also served in the Vietnam War, where he flew hundreds of combat helicopter missions.

I was shot down five times and ... my back got in very poor condition, so, in 1972, I was evacuated to the United States, he said.

Later, he flew more missions in El Salvador in the 1980s to help its people defeat communist guerrillas.

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Ex-CIA agent gives firsthand view of history