Original subtitles

The execution set for the evening of March 11, 1961,

was in many ways unremarkable.

More than 200 had taken place at Havana's La Cabaña prison

in the previous two years.

Waiting in his cell,

the prisoner could hear the approaching car

that would take him to his death.

William Morgan had cut a dashing figure

fighting in Fidel Castro's revolution.

Featured in publications around the world,

the mysterious Americano transformed himself

into a celebrity:

the American Comandante.

How does it happen that

you haven't offered a diary for sale?

I don't believe that you should cash in on your ideals.

Morgan is a classic example

of the American myth of reinvention--

that you can shed your history

and reinvent yourself and become somebody.

I found in him what I had looked for in life.

And I think he also found it in me.

We loved each other intensely.

I cannot erase his memory from my heart

and my respect for him.

"Dear Mom, I want you know that I have been prepared for this

"as long as I have been in prison.

For after all, it is not when a man dies, but how."

From the time he gets into the death car

to the time the death car delivers him to the dry moat,

he is praying.

He refuses to be blindfolded, and he refuses to be handcuffed.

After the priest starts to leave,

he says, "Father, wait," and he takes a rosary off

and gives the rosary to the priest.

And at that point in time, he steps back.

In 1942, the circus came to Toledo, Ohio.

Alexander Morgan captured the excitement in a short film

with his son as protagonist.

The spectacle must have triggered

what Loretta Morgan called her son's "vivid imagination."

A year later, 14-year-old Billy ran off to join the circus.

He was someone who, from when he was a very little kid,

always dreamed of becoming somebody.

He had these almost interior fictions

that he wanted to kind of will into reality.

His father found him in Chicago and brought him home to Toledo.

He was not like most kids.

He was rambunctious.

He was impetuous.

You couldn't tether him.

You couldn't tie him.

William Morgan grew up in a family

where there was discipline

and where there was expectations.

His father was an engineer, master's degree.

His mother was a bright lady.

Known as Miss Cathedral

for her good works at the local Catholic church,

Loretta Morgan was more forgiving of Billy,

waiting patiently for him to straighten out.

Every time he was in trouble,

she was there for him.

Even the times when the father, Alexander,

would want to impose harsh discipline,

she would intercede.

He was raised a Catholic boy.

He was born with these values,

but he was always at war to some degree with these values.

But they were always there.

By the time William entered high school,

he had been in trouble with the law

and thrown out of two schools.

He quit in his first year

and enrolled in the merchant marine.

He gets mixed up with thugs and hoodlums

on the Toledo docks in the waterfront.

Toledo had a very developed

underworld of people who were connected to the mafia,

of people who were gangsters.

And he touches that world.

In 1946, on his 18th birthday,

Morgan joined the army

and shipped off to occupied Japan.

SHETTERLY: He meets a Japanese woman, gets involved with her,

goes AWOL, gets caught, gets put in the brig,

and then does something that most of the soldiers didn't do,

which was overpower the guard and escape from the brig.

NARRATOR: Morgan was dishonorably discharged

and sentenced to five years of hard labor.

He served three years in a federal prison,

then returned home.

GRANN: His family had quintessential Midwestern patriotic values,

and the idea that he would be dishonorably discharged

produces a deep shame in his family,

and a deep shame that he feels as well.

NARRATOR: "I sincerely want him to a be a boy

that I can justify being proud of,"

Loretta Morgan said,

"not one to hang my head in shame

for having given him birth."

(birds calling)

As an ex-con and army deserter,

Morgan had few opportunities to remake his life in Toledo.

The only place he could really get a job was with the mob.

He was a driver, a runner,

a lookout for their gambling houses.

He was tough, he was a pretty good shot,

and they needed people like him.

They needed street soldiers.

So Billy Morgan could fill the bill.

NARRATOR: Once again, he left town and joined a circus.

He became a fire eater, married a snake charmer,

and with her had two children.

"In those days," Morgan later said,

"I was a nobody."

In 1954, at age 26, he settled down in Miami,

where he found work as a clown and bouncer

at a famous nightclub.

It was there that William Morgan

first heard of a revolt on the island of Cuba.

(people shouting)

Two years earlier, General Fulgencio Batista

had seized power on the eve of a presidential election.

Miami became the center of opposition to Batista,

beginning to crystalize around a charismatic young lawyer.

(speaking Spanish)

SALLAH: Fidel Castro is leading a drive to raise money for a revolution.

Batista is the target.

They want him out.

They want a free Cuba.

All of the sudden, William Morgan gets captivated

by these young men who are risking their lives,

telling William these great stories

of going back and fighting in this revolution.

Then he gets an offer to help smuggle arms into Cuba.

Many of these guns were army surplus.

They were snatched up by the mob and they were sent down to Cuba.

SHETTERLY: He really wanted to be a soldier.

He was 30 years old

and probably wasn't going to get another chance,

and certainly not with the U.S. army.

And so I think he saw this as an opportunity to go fight,

to become part of something and attach himself to something

that seemed important and seemed exciting.

NARRATOR: Morgan's journey to join the Cuban revolution

began with a lie told to a group of young exiles in Miami.

SALLAH: He tells them that he had a friend from the army

that he had fought in the Korean War with.

Of course, Morgan was never in the Korean War.

This man had saved Morgan's life,

and during a trip to Cuba,

when this man was smuggling guns to Cuba, he was caught,

and he was killed by Batista's guards

and he was fed to the sharks.

And Morgan was going to avenge his friend Jack Turner's life.

NARRATOR: In late December, Morgan abandoned his wife and children

and headed to Havana.

Fidel Castro was now leading the revolution

from the Sierra Maestra mountains in eastern Cuba.

Morgan wanted to fight with Castro,

but his camp was too far

and the roads were crawling with Batista's soldiers.

His contact in Cuba suggested an alternative.

Halfway between the city of Havana

and Castro's Sierra Maestra,

in a mountain range called the Escambray,

a new guerrilla group was coming together.

William Morgan arrived at their camp in January 1958.

EVELIO MARTINEZ (translated): 3:00 in the afternoon, that's when he arrived.

This American who couldn't speak Spanish at all.

ROGER REDONDO (translated): He was fat.

Not at all the William that he later became.

He weighed more than 200 pounds.

No one thought he would last with us.

Everyone wanted him gone,

and they made his life difficult.

SALLAH: They were gonna kind of torture him

for the first several days of his entre there.

And he gets in there,

and he starts running up and down the hills.

He's got sores all over his body.

He's huffing and puffing.

He's frustrated, he's mad.

NARRATOR: Morgan was taken to see Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo,

a 23-year-old former student leader

who now commanded the Escambray Second Front.

Fidel Castro and his 26th of July movement

wasn't the only group that had risen up against Batista.

There were other groups.

And Menoyo's Second National Front of the Escambray

was one of the other really important groups.

NARRATOR: "Fighting requires more than firing a rifle,"

Morgan told Menoyo.

He offered to teach the inexperienced guerillas

what he had learned in the army.

REDONDO (translated): He built this scaffolding,

same training he received in the American army.

And he started teaching people martial arts

and how to throw knives.

He had an incredible ability with knives.

He would throw them

and hit a little line he'd drawn on a tree.

Later, I found out he learned it at the circus.

NARRATOR: In the mountains, Morgan soon found his place.

He was no longer a mobster, an ex-con, a circus act.

GRANN: He wants to get away from his past.

And he kind of,

through demonstration and through proof and loyalty,

gets accepted.

They don't know who he is,

and in the end, they're like, "It doesn't really matter.

"He's one of us.

"He's fighting for us, he's willing to bleed for us,

he's willing to die for us."

NARRATOR: Morgan's life as a guerilla fighter

began inauspiciously with a misunderstanding.

SALLAH: Menoyo gives orders not to fire

on the six soldiers that they see

coming up the side of a gulley.

And he doesn't understand the order,

so he fires on them.

(gunshots)

NARRATOR: Morgan's shot revealed the group's position.

(rapid gunfire)

Batista's army gave chase, forcing the Second Front

into a long trek across the rugged mountain range.

ARMANDO FLEITES (translated): Men bond in combat:

going hungry,

facing danger.

There was a certain affinity among all of us,

including William Morgan,

with a tremendous spirit-- a spirit of sacrifice.

NARRATOR: A few days into the march,

Morgan's time as a fighter almost came to an end

when 200 soldiers caught up with the guerillas.

GRANN: They suddenly realize that they're in deep trouble.

Morgan helps come up with some of the tactics.

He helps them form into a U-formation

to hide behind a ridge.

Then Morgan at one point kind of stands up,

and they kind of see this crazy white dude

with blue eyes and scraggly hair running forward,

and it really bolsters them.

And in that moment, they are able to prevail.

(translated): It was the first time

the peasants saw that we could beat the army,

and that gave us extraordinary prestige.

I consider it one of the decisive battles

of the Escambray war.

Had we lost, the Second Front would not have survived

GRANN: It was a critical moment for Morgan

being accepted within the group

and really slowly, gradually, emerging as a leader.

NARRATOR: July 1958.

"Dear Mom, this will be the first letter

"that I have written to you since I left in December.

"I know you neither approve nor understand why I am here,

"even though you are the one person in the world

who understands me."

Loretta Morgan first learned of her son's Cuban exploits

in a New York Times story about the Second Front

and the mysterious American fighting in their midst.

"The whole point of this letter

"is to let you know why I fight here.

"I am here with men and boys

"who fight for a freedom for their country

that we as Americans take for granted."

SALLAH: He witnesses a series of atrocities

that really moved him.

They get called to this small town.

By then, Batista's soldiers had already been there.

EVELIO MARTINEZ (translated): Batista's soldiers had come up the river to these houses.

They assassinated the women.

They cut the lips off the face of one of them.

And they burned more than 11 houses.

SALLAH: At the end of the day,

Morgan had seen something that really cut him to his core.

And he realized for the first time,

"This isn't about me.

This is about them."

NARRATOR: "I do not expect you to approve, but I believe you understand.

"And if it should happen that I die here,

"you will know it was not for foolish fancy,

or as dad would say, a pipe dream."

GRANN: I do think that is, without question,

a beginning of a profound change in Morgan.

I don't think it happens overnight.

It doesn't happen in a week.

But you could see a steady progression and change,

a deepening of his character.

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): I saw that all the peasants loved and respected him,

and that filled my mind and my heart.

In the mountains,

I saw a wonderful man standing in front of me.

NARRATOR: Olga Rodriguez fell in love with William Morgan

in the summer of 1958.

A student activist from the nearby city of Santa Clara,

she had fled to the Escambray

just ahead of Batista's secret police.

(people shouting)

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): They were going to kill me, as they had so many others.

We were students.

We had to defend our country.

We would go out on the streets to protest,

yelling, "We don't want dictators.

"We don't want Batista.

We want the constitution."

NARRATOR: Rodriguez was the first woman

to join the Second Front guerillas.

The second of six children,

she had grown up in a family poor enough to know hunger.

(translated): At our house, it was a plate of cornmeal for the entire day

because my parents made so little money.

From the time I was little, I helped my mother.

I used to clean a house for seven pesos a month

after school.

She is the one that brings him that message of social justice,

of making a difference

in the lives of poverty-stricken Cubans.

And he hears it in a way that he hadn't heard it yet.

NARRATOR: By the fall of 1958,

the fighting in the Escambray was favoring the rebels.

In one year, the Second Front had grown

from a handful of guerillas

to an army of more than 500 men and women

that controlled one-third of Cuba's largest province,

Las Villas.

William Morgan, now a comandante and Menoyo's second-in-command,

had not lost a single battle.

(translated): He had charisma as a leader, and he was exceptionally brave.

He commanded a guerilla group he called "The Tigers,"

and the Tigritos adored William Morgan.

LILLIAN GUERRA: They have a tremendous degree of confidence in themselves.

They know how to engage in encounters with the military,

and they know how to win.

They do become extraordinarily successful against all odds

by the end of this.

(gunfire)

EVELIO MARTINEZ (translated): In every battle I was with him, and there were many,

I always had the image of a man of great discipline

who had to be obeyed.

NARRATOR: To the east, Fidel Castro's 26th of July guerillas

had secured their own territory.

Castro asked Che Guevara,

an Argentinian who was his second-in-command,

to extend the war west

and bring the Second Front under Castro's control.

They didn't really need the 26th of July's help

in the Escambray.

They were fighting their own war,

and they were doing a pretty good job of it.

But here comes Che.

It's October 1958, and Che wants to take over.

NARRATOR: As he entered the territory of the Second Front,

Che Guevara was captured

and brought to their headquarters at gunpoint.

It would take weeks

for Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and Che Guevara

to agree to an operational pact.

Guevara would take Santa Clara

and Morgan would take Cienfuegos.

But a rift now existed between Castro

and those loyal to Menoyo, including William Morgan.

The time is now 2:30 Wednesday morning,

the place is the city square of Cienfuegos.

(speaking Spanish)

Fidel Castro has been speaking for over an hour.

He will probably speak for another hour,

or perhaps even more.

(people cheering)

NARRATOR: On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro's victory caravan

began to make its way across Cuba.

Batista had fled two days earlier.

And by the time Castro arrived in Cienfuegos,

Morgan and his men had taken the city.

I heard you say a moment ago

that you're going to feed the entire city of Cienfuegos.

What's the story on that?

Well, we're feeding the entire city of Cienfuegos.

There isn't any food supplies.

They're starting to move because of the general strike

and because of the bad condition of the roads

after we blew up the bridges.

Bill, you've only been married for about a month now.

How did you happen to meet your wife?

Well, she came up to the mountains running

with the secret police behind her.

She was working in the revolutionary movement,

put a couple of bombs down into the city,

and the secret police wanted to take off her head.

So she came up here and worked as my secretary,

and then from there, why, we got married.

SALLAH: Olga was actually getting upset

because he wasn't spending any time with her.

But he couldn't.

He took a very real, serious mission

when he took on Cienfuegos to keep order.

And he took great pride in that.

NARRATOR: Morgan had not slept for days,

and after a year in the mountains,

he was looking forward, he said, "To a shave and a long sleep."

GRANN: It's a very American notion

that you can shed your history and reinvent yourself.

When he comes down from the mountains

and people are touching him, he's astonished.

He feels this enormous emotion.

They don't care about who he was.

They don't care who he was

back when he was running with the mob in Toledo.

You know, none of that matters anymore.

He gets a call from his hometown paper,

The Toledo Blade.

And that's probably,

for him, that's the call he'd been waiting for

because now he has a chance to show his parents, "I made it.

Look what I am right now."

(people cheering)

NARRATOR: Fidel Castro entered Havana on January 8, 1959,

to thunderous acclaim.

He had promised a return to democracy, free elections,

and respect for individual freedoms.

REPORTER: Dr. Castro, it is reported that

you feel that your role in the revolution is about over

and that you plan perhaps to return to civilian life.

Is this true, and if not,

how soon do you think it will be before you can do that?

If for my country this is necessary,

I renounce to any position.

I would gladly renounce to any position,

because sincerely,

I don't ambition power, money, nothing.

Only to serve my country.

(applause)

NARRATOR: Behind the scenes, Castro worked to consolidate his power

around his closest confidantes,

including his brother Raul and the Marxist Che Guevara.

Menoyo and his Second Front

were excluded from important government positions.

They had done their job, they were successful,

but certainly, they weren't being invited

to be part of what was coming next.

They were being left out.

NARRATOR: From Cienfuegos, Morgan watched tensions rise.

As soon as he arrived at his suite

in the Capri hotel in Havana, he was drawn into the fray.

In March, an American, the name of Frank Nelson,

came here and got in contact with me.

And he said,

"I have some people who want to give you a million dollars."

And I'll be very blunt about it,

I said, "Fine, but who do you want me to kill?"

Frank Nelson, in a way, is a ghost from his past

because he's connected to some of the mob figures

who knew "good ol' Billy Morgan."

That's how they called him.

Now, the mob, you have to understand,

was very upset with Castro because he was threatening

to close all their casinos and shut down their playpen.

SALLAH: Nelson delivers a message to Morgan, and that message is,

"Would you be willing to execute, kill,

assassinate Fidel Castro?"

NARRATOR: The idea originated with the Dominican Republic's president,

Rafael Trujillo.

Known as one of Latin America's most brutal dictators,

Trujillo had given refuge to Batista

after his flight from Havana.

Morgan immediately told the Second Front commanding officer,

Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo.

GRANN: Morgan saw the Second Front, himself, Menoyo,

as a counterbalance to Che,

and that they could play that important role.

And I don't think,

even though they were signs they were being marginalized,

they hadn't lost complete faith that that would be the case.

NARRATOR: Morgan and Menoyo went to see Fidel.

REDONDO (translated): Fidel was immediately interested.

One million dollars is a lot of money.

In 1959, $1 million was like $20 million today.

So, who's behind all of this?

NARRATOR: In late May, on Castro's orders, Morgan flew secretly to Miami.

SALLAH: The first meeting that we know that's documented in FBI records

is in the Dupont Plaza Hotel

at least two months after he meets with Fidel Castro.

In the meeting is the Dominican consul in Miami,

an old mafia chieftain from Cleveland,

and the former police chief in Havana.

And they start to talk.

And now this plan of just an assassination attempt

is now growing into a takeover of the country, a coup.

NARRATOR: The plan had three parts:

an uprising by Batista's supporters in Havana;

an insurrection in the town of Trinidad

led by Menoyo and Morgan;

and an invasion force dispatched by Trujillo

from the Dominican Republic.

When Morgan informed him of the plot,

Castro decided to set a trap

to crush the Batista loyalists in Cuba

and teach Trujillo a lesson.

SHETTERLY: Fidel Castro said to Morgan,

"Draw it out.

"Let's see everyone who could be involved

or might get involved in this."

SALLAH: Morgan and Olga and their entourage,

along with key people that Fidel plants with them,

are now moving into this opulent home,

million dollar home, in Havana.

He's gonna have microphones in the lamps.

He's going to have reel-to-reel tape recorders going

so that not one word uttered in any room

will not be tape recorded.

And then Morgan has to now bring in the Batistianos--

those that were supporting Batista.

And they have to play everyone

as if they're going along with this plan.

NARRATOR: Morgan flew once more to Miami on July 27

to firm up details and gather weapons.

Acting on a tip from an informant,

the FBI was waiting.

Bureau director J. Edgar Hoover

had been monitoring the conspiracy from the start,

convinced that Castro was a communist

and needed to be removed.

Pulled in for questioning,

Morgan told the FBI that he was in Miami on personal business,

but he confirmed that he'd been approached

by a foreign government

with an offer of one million dollars to overthrow Castro.

SHETTERLY: J. Edgar Hoover got the Miami field office watching this,

paying attention, seeing what will happen.

Clearly, Hoover thinks that there may well be

an important conspiracy happening here.

SALLAH: They firmly believe that Morgan is working against Castro.

They really believe that Morgan

had aligned forces with Rafael Trujillo,

who was an American ally at the time.

NARRATOR: But Morgan doubled-crossed Trujillo.

The day he returned to Havana,

Morgan arranged to meet the conspirators at his house.

As Castro arrived, they were all arrested.

Immediately, Castro, Morgan, and Menoyo

flew to the town of Trinidad

to act out the second part of the plan: the insurrection.

(explosions)

GRANN: They've got fake bombs going off, fake fusillades.

They got a radio where they're communicating with Trujillo

and sending out false reports.

This is the Cold War, right?

I mean, this is the beginning

of this kind of enormous spy games and tricks

and mirages and counter ploys and ploys.

NARRATOR: When the first transport plane

carrying men from the Dominican Republic landed in Trinidad,

Castro decided to put an end to the operation.

SALLAH: Castro surrounds the plane.

There are shootouts.

Some of the men are dead from both sides.

They end up getting a ton of weapons from Trujillo.

They had already identified more than a thousand people

that were going to be involved in this coup attempt,

and he started making arrests all over the island.

GUERRA: I don't think that there's any doubt

that Morgan and Gutiérrez Menoyo

helped the revolution survive in that moment

and also really unmasked

the degree to which there were forces opposed

that had tremendous power behind them.

NARRATOR: On August 15,

Fidel Castro revealed the details of the conspiracy

on Cuban television.

(speaking Spanish)

SALLAH: Morgan and Castro are at center stage.

The international media is there,

of course, the U.S. press.

And Morgan is now the central figure

in this international conspiracy.

We went down to Las Villas and started a fictitious war.

We started turning off telephones and lights

and shooting shots in the dark and all those kinds of things

so that everybody...

REPORTER: This is all just last week.

That's right, it's all been a fake.

It's all been a big show for Trujillo,

and he fell for it.

He started it, he paid for it,

he's furnished the guns for it, he's made the contacts for it,

his embassy has been in it up to its neck,

and he believed it.

SALLAH: He's truly enjoying the moment.

He helped save a regime that he believed in.

He's a hero.

He's doing autographs.

People are begging him for just a few moments for interviews.

SHETTERLY: Morgan's sense of his own importance

probably made things more dangerous for him.

I think he had a big ego,

and I think that becoming a celebrity

after the Trujillo conspiracy

was not necessarily healthy for him.

I think he thought

that he was probably as big a figure

as anyone else in Cuba at that point

and had real power.

And what he didn't realize is that he really didn't.

NARRATOR: Just days after Castro's press conference,

the U.S. State Department revoked Morgan's citizenship.

GRANN: It's really Hoover working behind the scenes

who helps get his citizenship stripped

in very unusual circumstances,

because he hadn't actually technically broken

any American laws.

SHETTERLY: J. Edgar Hoover thought that they had a serious attempt

to get Castro out.

When it turns out to be a double-cross,

clearly Hoover feels betrayed.

GRANN: Morgan saw himself and the revolution

in kind of American terms.

And then when he lost his citizenship,

it was a profound blow to that sense.

It also was a deeper problem

in terms of his own personal survival.

NARRATOR: In September 1959,

Los Angeles television reporter Clete Roberts

arrived at Morgan's house

for an interview with the American comandante.

ROBERTS: Mr. Morgan and I are sitting

in what you might call an armed camp.

I can hear voices just outside the window here

of the guards, the men who are guarding him.

There are more machine guns lying on the table here

just in back of Russ Day and the camera

than I've seen since I was in Hungary.

There must be a price on your head, Bill.

Half a million dollars at the moment,

if they can deliver me alive to Santo Domingo.

That's what Trujillo is offering for you?

That's the going price in Miami right now.

I imagine it'll go up over a period of time.

How does it feel to have a half million-dollar price

on your head?

Well, it isn't too bad.

They have to collect it, and that's going to be hard.

GRANN: Morgan always has a certain bravado,

and he maintains a lot of that bravado,

but I also see somebody already

who is being buffeted by forces that are extremely powerful

and are whirling him to some degree.

ROBERTS: We're beginning to hear... and you know what's coming.

You know what I'm going to talk about.

We're beginning to hear that

there's Communist influence around here.

The Cuban people are not Communist.

They would never go along with a Communist government

under any circumstances.

Their history shows that.

Over a period of time,

they've always been pro-democratic very strongly.

They're individualists.

NARRATOR: 30 miles from Havana at an abandoned fishery,

Morgan put in place his own vision of the revolution:

a business venture with the Cuban government

to raise frogs for export, their legs sold as a delicacy.

RAFAEL HUGUET: So William became a civil, if you may, comandante

growing frogs.

But he was so proud of the frogs he was growing.

And it was funny because at one time,

he had an argument with one of Castro's guys,

and he says, "What are you saying?

My frogs have more cojones than your soldiers!"

SALLAH: Morgan wasn't as disappointed as people like to think he was.

He had a little daughter by then, Loretta,

and his wife Olga was relatively happy.

So at that point in time, Morgan is at least trying

to find a way to live in Cuba in peace.

SHETTERLY: I think Morgan is still holding on to a shred of hope

that this revolution is going to follow the values and ideals

that he had hoped for.

That it was going to respect the individual freedoms

that were so important to him.

But he began to see a bunch of things that he didn't like.

He saw Comandante Huber Matos be arrested

for saying that Communists were taking over the government

and put in jail.

He saw newspapers closed and nationalized.

GUERRA: The Soviet vice-premier swoops into Havana,

and, surprise, he's there for almost three weeks,

and he signs a $100 million trade agreement

with Fidel Castro.

That changed everything for a lot of people,

because now they start thinking,

"We can't trust this government.

Something is happening here."

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): We were lied to, betrayed.

I didn't know anything about communism or socialism,

and it was staring me in the face.

Che Guevara running the national bank,

nationalizations, jails filling up with prisoners.

I didn't fight for that,

and I would point it out to William.

Of course, he saw it, too.

(thunder rumbling)

NARRATOR: By the spring of 1960, war had returned to Cuba.

In the Escambray mountains, an insurgency had taken hold.

Led by former anti-Batista revolutionaries

angry about the socialist direction of Cuba's government,

the rebellion was joined by coffee-growing guajiros.

GUERRA: Peasants are absolutely opposed

to what they understand as communism.

And what they see it as doing to them

is taking what little they have.

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): We did not establish the Escambray front,

but among those who had risen up in arms were good people.

We were the rear guard.

We had to help in any way we could.

SHETTERLY: Morgan had been so vocal about the fact that

this was not going to be a communist regime

that when things started to change

in late 1959 and early 1960, was he going to stand up

for what he said that he had been fighting for?

Or was he going to turn his back on those ideals

and go along with the flow

of what Castro is trying to do at that point.

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): William never delivered arms.

He couldn't.

He would have been recognized.

I did.

I'm a woman and I could do it.

NARRATOR: In March, convinced Castro was headed toward communism,

President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA

to begin training 1,400 Cuban exiles for an invasion.

The landing site in central Cuba was thought to be

near the mountains of the Escambray,

where the CIA planned for the exiles

to join up with local rebels.

SALLAH: It's a well-known fact that the CIA delivered arms

to the Escambray mountains several times,

and some of those drops were directly for Morgan's people.

So there is reason to believe that William Morgan

had connections to the CIA during that period.

NARRATOR: Morgan's activities soon escalated

from simply moving weapons

to establishing a guerilla group of his own.

SALLAH: June is the turning point.

That's when he learns about the existence of Soviet trainers

coming over to work with the Cuban army.

Now he realizes Castro

not only forged diplomatic relations with the Soviets,

he is now bringing Soviet military advisors over to Cuba.

SHETTERLY: Morgan was a person with big dreams and a vivid imagination,

and I think that he could convince himself

that he was capable of almost anything.

He keeps telling people that there are 3,000 to 5,000 men--

he often says 5,000,

sometimes when he's being a little more realistic,

he says 3,000 or 4,000--

who will follow him, whatever he tells them to do.

FLEITES (translated): He wanted me to be the political chief.

He was the military chief.

And I said,

"I won't take up arms with you in the Escambray

"because even though I don't agree with Fidel Castro,

"it's not the right time.

And besides, your group has been infiltrated."

NARRATOR: Castro deployed tens of thousands of men

against less than one thousand in the resistance

and planted two informants in Morgan's security detail.

GRANN: He knows that some of his friends

are starting to be rounded up, so he knows the risks.

He was deeply worried about his family,

and you can see where he is trying

to assure possible places

for them to go into exile,

and you can see communiqués and letters

that reveal that he has that concern,

so he knows how dangerous it is.

(translated): We knew we were in trouble, deep trouble.

I was pregnant with Olguita, and there we were,

towards the end, waiting for whatever came.

What can happen to you?

You can go to prison or be executed,

because they executed anyone then.

GRANN: He had lived much of his life in disrepute

and with shame and with dishonor.

He wasn't prepared to walk away

or abandon what he had become in Cuba

and the revolution that he had fought for that had remade him.

NARRATOR: On October 21, 1960, two weeks after the Cuban government

learned that a group of exiles was preparing to invade Cuba

at the Bay of Pigs,

Morgan was called to a meeting in Havana.

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): We had plans for dinner at 7:30.

When I saw it was 4:00, then 6:00,

and William wasn't home,

I said to myself, "Something smells bad here."

NARRATOR: Morgan had been betrayed by Castro's spies.

He was arrested and taken to La Cabaña prison.

Olga was placed under house arrest.

Two months later, on December 31,

she was taken to see her husband.

SALLAH: He told her to escape,

and she assures him that she's going to be getting out,

that she has a plan,

she's been working on it for a long time,

and she's going to see it through.

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): His peace was knowing that our daughters and I were safe.

I was wearing the blue dress that he loved so much.

I gave him a hug and a kiss.

HENRY RAYMONT: The trial was a sham, because in important cases,

Fidel had already told the jury what sentence to mete out.

I would go to La Cabaña and witness the trials.

Three out of five jurors were asleep.

That gives you a very good sense of how the trial went.

He had already been condemned,

and he wanted to talk to someone.

It was a dungeon.

He was alone in the cell.

He did not seem even nervous-- totally relaxed.

And he gave me a letter to his mother.

NARRATOR: "Dear Mom, I know this will come

"as a thing very hard for you to understand,

"but I have made my peace with God

"and can accept whatever happens

with my mind clear and my spirit strong."

Loretta was always there for him,

so it's no surprise when she sees the end for her son

that she would try to do whatever she could

to save her son's life.

That meant going to members of Congress,

trying to get through to the Cuban government,

writing the White House,

even to go to the highest hierarchy of the Catholic church

to try to do whatever they could to intercede and save her son.

NARRATOR: "My actions and my life I leave for others to judge,

"and to you and Dad, I leave my love and respect.

I hope you forgive me, as you always have."

(gunshots)

OLGA MARTINEZ (translated): 9:30 in the evening, March 11.

He said goodbye to me.

I didn't know he was dead.

I saw him in my room.

He kissed me on the cheek.

I felt the warmth.

That was his goodbye.

GUERRA: When Morgan was shot, he had been conspiring

against what he thought of as a revolution betrayed.

But I think he didn't regret a moment of the time

that he had spent in Cuba or all that he had done,

and I think there were many, many Cubans

who still remain grateful to him.

GRANN: Castro had no interest in telling Morgan's story.

He wanted him to be forgotten,

he wanted him erased from history.

And the CIA and the FBI

classified all the files about Morgan.

And so telling his story seemed deeply important

in that you're recovering a part of history that had been lost.

SALLAH: In his lifetime, he had failed numerous times.

That failure drove him to Cuba, to the revolution,

to his own heroism, and his own death.

But there was a redemption in that

because in the end,

William Morgan became the person that he wanted to be.