Sanens katherine calloway interviewed admiral carroll to try and make sense of it all. Admiral says he interpreted that question from his cuban hosts as a thinly veiled warning. Carroll's comments ricocheed around washington d c policy circles, this was an embarrassing revelation. The day before the crisis explicitly warned them that the cubans had lost patience with armanos el riscate. And his warning was ignored. What began as a cuban atrocity was now transformed into a story about american diplomatic incompetence by february 20.
On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two small planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an organization in Florida that tried to spot refugees fleeing Cuba in boats. A strange chain of events preceded the shoot-down, and people in the intelligence business turned to a rising star in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Montes. Montes was known around Washington as the “Queen of Cuba” for her insights into the Castro regime. But what Montes’ colleagues eventually found out about her shook their sense of trust to the core. (In this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s forthcoming audiobook Talking to Strangers, we hear why spy mysteries do not unfold in real life like they do in the movies.)
To preorder a copy of Talking to Strangers and check out Malcolm Gladwell's book tour, visit www.gladwellbooks.com.
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