141. Trump’s Latin America Playbook: How the CIA Toppled a Regime (Ep 2)

19:11Gordon:We move to a new secret location in the jungle. But I guess by the 15th of June, Gordon, the agency is hoping for either a coup to take place in the capital maybe paired with an uprising, or for Armas to actually invade and take the capitals. There's kind of two tracks moving in order to get this regime change done. And at 7am on the 15th of June, the CIA's chief of station in Guatemala City cold calls a military officer at his house. So, literally shows up, rings the doorbell, and asks him to start a coup, which feels a little bit on the nose. But hey, I mean, at this point, you've got the information environment under control.

19:56Gordon:You might as well just wander out there and see what you can make happen. But the guy says, not yet.

20:01David:And I think they still feel like they need a show of force. They need to feel like the rebels are for real in order to be able to take that step within the military. So there's still the sense that the pieces are getting put in place, but is it going to work? Six weeks was the plan. And by June the 18th, they are ready for the big invasion.

20:23Gordon:Maybe there, Gordon, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll see if the big invasion can pull off the regime change coup that the CIA has wanted, or if it's going to devolve into farce, maybe a little bit of both. We'll see you after the break. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. Spring calls for a wardrobe refresh, and Nordstrom has the best files of the season. From dresses and denim to standout tops and accessories, find the trends and essentials that feel right for you. Discover new arrivals from brands you love like WAIF, Princess Polly, Mango, Adidas, and Free People. Plus, free shipping and returns and free styling appointments make everything so easy.

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21:15Gordon:Welcome back. It's now June 18th, 1954. The six-week timeline to prepare the ground for the coup, Gordon, is up. And now we are ready for the assault to begin.

21:29David:The radio announces that Amas and his force have invaded. But the reality is that there aren't 5 ,000 troops, as the radio claims. There's, in fact, at most 480 troops who are coming over from Honduras and El Salvador in waves. But as we'll see, those waves aren't very big or very successful. But the idea is, I suppose, they're going to spread out. Small rippling waves of a few dozen people at a time. Which don't go very far. So they spread out over a long distance to make it look like there are more of them. But even here, with this tiny number, it doesn't go well. I mean, one group get arrested the day before they're supposed to go over, so on June 17th, by El Salvadoran policemen who spot them with a load of guns hidden in their car and so they get arrested you know one of the four military forces which is supposed to cross the border and eventually they're going to get out but without their weapons then there's another 122 of them who head towards an army garrison but all but 30 are going to get killed or captured armass and i love this idea he's in his he's in a leather jacket and a checked shirt in a battered station wagon Again, it's the slightly, you know, Graham Greene comic element to this whole thing.

22:47David:But he's leading 100 men from Honduras over the border. But the radio is saying there's battles, there's rebel uprisings. None of it's true. I mean, rebel planes are flying and sandbags are going up in the capital and the stores are shuttered because everyone is waiting for this rebel force. But the truth is, it's not really going anywhere. And this is what I find so interesting is it's an invasion. But there's not actually much fighting because Armaz doesn't actually have the men to take the capital or to fight the army. He doesn't want to also engage the army directly in battle because the whole point is you're trying to get the army to change sides.

23:24David:So you don't really want to start killing too many of them. And the government also is worried and doesn't have the ability to fight the rebels off and is a bit nervous about the army's loyalty. So he doesn't want them to get in a fight. So, are Benz is hoping that international diplomacy and the UN can save the day because neither side actually wants to fight? So, it's a kind of weird invasion, isn't it?

23:45Gordon:The scale of this whole story I find to be very frustratingly small. We're talking about a few hundred guys, essentially, who enter Guatemala in station wagons with their fearless leader having recently been a furniture salesman in his leather jacket, kind of urging them onward and then fake strafing runs of the Capitol with dilapidated B-26 bombers.

24:11David:It's mad, isn't it?

24:12Gordon:It's wild. But I guess by June 19th, so the next day, the US ambassador gets on a secure comms line that the CIA can use at the embassy and writes directly to Dulles. And I presume to John Foster Dulles, or is he writing to Alan Dulles? Alan Dulles, I guess, yeah. To Alan, I guess. Maybe, I don't know, yeah. bomb repeat bomb so he's wanting something to happen i guess yeah it does sound kind of

24:40David:desperate when you're writing to either the secretary of state or the cia director go bomb repeat bomb because you'll know your invasion is not going well and you know al haney who's the one of the commands of the operation says to frank wisner another cia guy are we going to stand by and see the last hope of free people in guatemala submerged to the depths of communist depression. But Wisner kind of freezes. I think they're not sure about how involved they want to get because they don't want the US itself to do any bombing. Because the whole point is this is supposed to be a rebel uprising. And the US is not supposed to be intervening in Latin America.

25:13David:And they don't want to play into communist propaganda. This is all US regime change. At the moment, they're thinking, well, we're not going to bomb. We'll just see how it goes. And by the 20th, so the next day, the CIA is reporting that Arbenz is recovering his nerve. I mean, the stores are still shuttered, but the worry shifts to diplomacy because he's taking his case to the United Nations. John Foster Dulles is pretty worried because there's resolutions from the French saying, you know, this is a terrible, this uprising.

25:41Gordon:Oh, the UN, God forbid our regime change effort be deep sixed by a French, a French UN resolution.

25:52David:Good God. It's fair to say these were different times, but international opinion is seeing the US is probably behind this. And British left-wing politicians are like, it's united fruit, it's big fruit. So I think there is a bit of tension at the CIA because it's all looking in doubt, isn't it?

26:09Gordon:I mean, it's not looking like it's going to work. And I guess, I mean, it gets worse, doesn't it? Because Alan Dulles, CIA director, gets a phone briefing the afternoon of the 20th from Al Haney, who's down in Florida, and he's lost three planes. Armas had three F-47s to kind of, you know, maintain deniability. Two of those are out of action after being shot. One ran out of fuel and it crash landed in Mexico. And Haiti's saying, you know, we need more planes. And so, Dulles, and again, this is, it has weird echoes of what is going to happen at Bay of Pigs with the struggle over air cover and all of that.

26:47Gordon:Dulles will authorize one airstrike over the capital, presumably not for any military gain, but to kind of demonstrate the power of the rebel force. So, one of the rebel pilots was targeting the government radio station, which by the way, Gordon, the government radio station, it feels like it's been rather feckless throughout this entire series.

27:10David:They've not got Goldhanger level of output, I think. I don't know who our rivals are. I'm not I'm not going to insult any of our rivals, but yeah, they're not in the game. They've not got the mix of humor and news. They're the BBC podcast.

27:23Gordon:No, I knew you were going to go there.

27:25David:Is that what you wanted to say, Gordon? That is not accurate. No. But the point is, this rebel pilot is going to target the government radio. But he's warned that just down the road, there's the transmitter of an American evangelical station, which has a red tile roof. And he comes back and he's asked, did you bomb the right place? And he says, absolutely, you should have seen them red tiles flying. He's bombed the evangelical radio station rather than, I mean, no one dies, we should say. No one dies. So that was one of the targets? That was the bombing target?

27:58Gordon:Well, no, the target was the government, but that's what they got wrong. You blew up at an evangelical radio station in Guatemala. By mistake. By mistake. So it's not going well. So after three days of the four invasion forces, and I should say you really should have used scare quotes of forces in your outline here, Gordhead, because it's a couple hundred guys driving in station wagons. Two are turned back, including one by the Salvadoran police, and another one is halted and prevented from actually entering Guatemala.

28:30David:And then on June 21st comes news of another big defeat for the rebels, because they've attacked the port, Puerto Barrios, on the Atlantic coast by boat. But they are defeated by policemen and dock workers. I mean, they are literally, they arrive by boat and the policemen and the dock workers turn them back. So things do look pretty bad. Within three days, more than half of Hamas's forces, about 480, are gone, are off out of the fight. And these forces are still pretty close to the border. it. They barely moved inland. They're not attracting that many defectors from the army, as the plan was based on.

29:06David:The army is kind of wavering, staying in its barracks, not taking sides. And they're struggling. And occasionally, the local peasants fight him off. So you can see why by the time you get to the 22nd, the arguments in Washington are about what more can we do, because this is looking bad, isn't it?

29:23Gordon:It is. It is looking bad. And then in the afternoon of the 22nd, Dulles goes into the, Alan Dulles, CIA director, goes into the Oval Office to brief Eisenhower. Eisenhower asks him, what are the chances of success? Dulles says, zero, zero, Gordon. And then with more bombs and planes, you know, Eisenhower asks him, what could you do with more? Dulles increases the odds to 20%, which again, I'm just thinking of the Bay of Pigs series when all of these numbers were so inflated by the time we get to Cuba, you know, which is just six, seven years later.

29:59David:It's crazy, isn't it?

30:00Gordon:It's remarkable. They thought the odds in Cuba were almost like a near certainty, whereas here it's actually much more realistic, like, it's basically not going to happen to very unlikely.

30:09David:So much for PB success. I mean, like, that's the thing. It's like normative determinism didn't work there, although does it? Because Eisenhower tells one of his political advisors, who's quite rich, to get planes to them. And this guy, it's so interesting how this works. He calls Riggs Bank and draws out$150 ,000, which is a lot of money, you know, 1954, goes to see the Nicaraguan ambassador at the Pentagon. And then they give the cash to the US military who transfer ownership of three planes called Thunderbolts to Nicaragua. And they all do that. They do that in a day. They basically get the money and get the planes to Nicaragua.

30:48David:So by the next day, the planes arrive fully armed in Panama from Puerto Rico, and then they go onwards from there that evening. So that's all happening in a day. And so by the 23rd, they've already got these new planes ready to go into combat. And they start to actually do things like strafes from troop trains. But again, when I was reading this, I was like, wow, air power comes in. But you realise when they talk about bombing runs, they are dropping sticks of dynamite and hand grenades out of the planes. I mean, that's the kind of bombing run we're talking about. It's not modern laser-guided munitions and smart bombs.

31:24David:And one of these planes then drops a bomb on a freighter at a port they think is unloading weapons, turns out to be a British freighter.

31:33Gordon:It probably wasn't a mistake. It probably wasn't a mistake. I mean, if we're blowing up evangelical radio stations and British freighters - They have to pay the Brits$1 million in restitution for blowing up the plane. Which is a third of the entire COVID action budget, by the way.

31:48David:That was on paying the Brits for buying up one of their freighters.

31:51Gordon:Because remember, this whole thing was three billion bucks.

31:54David:Yeah, I think they might have blown the budget.

31:56Gordon:They blew the budget. They blew the budget.

31:57David:Yeah, out of the water. So, they're not actually having that much impact. But it's so interesting. Again, the combination of air power and propaganda is the thing. Because they have loudspeakers on top of the US embassy broadcast the sound of fighter planes. So you are giving the impression that there are loads of planes flying over Guatemala City when there aren't. And the planes are actually called the laxatives for the effect they have on Arbenz and other people in government. The idea is they are loosening them. Let's say they're loosening their bowels or however you want to put it because of this fear that air power is now going to be used against them.

32:36David:And this is part of that pressure strategy. And now it really does start to work because the tide turns as government forces seem to be less willing to fight. You know, and the voice of liberation, the radio station in the jungle is sending messages that troops are heading to the capital. They're gaining volunteers on the way. Not true. I mean, Amas in his leather jacket and check shirt is still basically keeping his head down near the border.

33:00Gordon:He's basically in Honduras still, right? I mean, he's over the border. Let's give him something. He's not marching around the streets of the Capitol engaged in kind of like close combat with Arbenz's troops, though. No, no, not at all. I mean, he's a long ways away. Yeah.

33:15David:And Arbenz is drinking heavily. He thinks he's under attack. He's not sleeping. You know, huge stress. He's a wreck. June 25th. They hadn't bombed the Capitol much, but they have a rebel pilot drop one bomb, just one bomb on a military parade ground, which leads to smoke above the Capitol and many people fleeing. that again starts to have an impact on the officer corps who are starting to think you know this could get bad for us so then by june 26th abenz is hunkered down in the palace he's fearful some of those around him are telling him things you know the tide is turning even though it's clearly not and then you get to sunday the 27th the crucial day one more crucial piece of propaganda on the sunday morning of june 27th the the rebel radio station claims two columns of rebel soldiers are converging on the capital.

34:05David:Now, in fact, Amas and his small group are miles away, but people start to flee. You know, the radio station is creating this illusion that the city is under attack. It actually broadcasts messages telling people who are on the highways to make way for rebel trucks, you know, because they're incoming. Make way for all of these rebels who are heading there. There are any.

34:25Gordon:I mean, it's wild, isn't it? I would imagine that at this point, I mean, Arbenz is getting, has to be getting some counsel from the military, because this is becoming an intolerable situation. He's cracking, he's drinking, he's not sleeping. And obviously, you know, one other, I think, thing that strikes me is Arbenz must have terrible intelligence about what's actually going on, even though he got pieces of the plan from the CIA officer that left papers behind in his hotel room, you know, as we discussed last time. It's not like he, unlike Castro, who has the exiles, the Bay of Pigs exiles basically penetrated from the get-go.

35:09Gordon:Arbenz doesn't know what's going on here. He's got no picture for what's actually happening.

35:13David:The plotting is also starting here because he's got his chief of staff, a guy called Diaz, who's been talking to the American ambassador and the American ambassador is kind of getting into the game here politically. And Diaz says to the americans he says i might be able to ask our bends to go but i'm not going to support your guy our mass you know he's obviously maneuvering for himself and so he goes then to see our bends this is chief of staff diaz and says look it's time to go i'll continue to fight for you the army will continue to fight but you're you and your kind of communist friends it's just too much for us it's going to destroy everything we've built and our bends at that point he agrees i I mean, he resigns on that day, Sunday, June 27th, nationwide speech.

35:57David:He gives up because he's convinced that there's no hope for him. And it is that thing, I guess, which is the regime has cracked. And we've been hearing a lot about that in other kind of contexts and other countries, haven't we, with regime change. Once you get that crack, especially at the very top of the elite within the army and you have your chief of staff and the military coming to you and saying, I think you better go. it's game over, isn't it?

36:23Gordon:It is. And Arbenz doesn't seem to be the most elegant or honorable of departures either, because he literally walks out of the presidential palace, like literally walks out, goes out the front, a guard outside asks where he's going, says out front. The guard thinks he's going to go fight. On the front, yeah. Because obviously they're in the middle of this conflict. And he says he can't do that. He just means he's literally walking out the front of the palace. But he actually goes out the side door, walks across the street into the Mexican embassy, and he's gone. He ends up in Mexico. I guess he's strip searched at the airport on the way out.

37:04Gordon:Yeah, humiliated deliberately. Just to make sure he's not taking any liquids with him. And this is quite sad. I mean, he drowns in his bathtub at the age of 58 years later, which seems like a suspicious way to go, but maybe he'd been heavily drinking and just slip beneath the water.

37:20David:Yeah, but it's still not done because the US, of course, want their man in. And you've had this Diaz, the chief of staff, who's come in in Arbenz's place, but he says he's going to continue the fight against Armas, the Americans guy. And so the US ambassador is kind of angry at him. And the ambassador cables Washington to urgently recommend bombing Guatemala City. I mean, it's like constantly people are just like, bomb, bomb, bomb, because they're like, well, we still haven't got the regime we want. So next morning, two CIA officers go to see Diaz and deliver a message to him. And it's, I mean, this message is, it's just so simple.

37:58David:It's like, Colonel, Colonel Diaz, you are not convenient for American foreign policy. At least it's direct. It is direct. I mean, they're not mucking around, you know, and they take him to see the US ambassador. And he's basically told, nope, you're not our guy. We don't want you. So soon he is forced out by the ambassador. And it's so interesting because now the ambassador really kicks in because he just spends the next, I think, 11 days manoeuvring, getting one leader after another removed, telling them what's acceptable and what's not. I mean, he's told by Dulles, crack heads together. And so it takes 11 days after Arbenz resigns, five successive junters take power, each successively more amenable to Washington.

38:42David:But eventually, after two months manoeuvring, our mass, their man is in as president. It is kind of fascinating mix of regime change at the moment you get rid of Arbenz, but then still the political maneuvering afterwards to get your guy and the regime in, which takes months, but they

39:01Gordon:get it. There's a difference between regime change and then a regime being changed into one that you actually want. Isn't that right? And the latter is a lot harder to engineer. Armas gets a state dinner at the White House. He's welcomed by Vice President Nixon, who says, we in the US have watched the people of Guatemala record an episode in their history, deeply significant to all peoples led by the courageous soldier who is our guest this evening.

39:27David:Oh, that courageous soldier.

39:29Gordon:Sort of whitewashed the station wagon that he appeared in Guatemala City while driving. But Armas becomes quite dictatorial, I guess, although the ineptness carries through, doesn't it? Yeah. He outlaws political parties, brings back an old dictatorial police chief. I would say Washington doesn't really care. I think that'd be fair to say. They move on to other things. And then Armas will be killed by a member of his palace guard in 1957. Series of dictators will follow. Hundreds of thousands of peasants are killed by anti-guerilla death squads in the following years. Per capita becomes one of the most violent places in the entire region.

40:09Gordon:U.S. has to start doing handouts to promote the economy. So, it's not happy. An example here of maybe some of the unintended consequences of regime change and the pottery barn roll, Gordon, which I think is always fun to talk about in these kind of situations. You broke it, you own it.

40:25David:Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I think, I mean, we shouldn't gloss over how bad it gets. I mean, you know, there's death squads, peasants are killed. It's actually one of the worst periods of violence that you see in Central and Latin America. and you get this thing which we saw in the Cold War where the US is not really caring about democracy. It's backing whoever's anti-communist, you know, even if it's a nasty bunch of dictators who don't care about human rights, who are killing lots of peasants and workers. What matters is it's anti-communist. So it's a pretty dark outcome for Guatemala that comes out of this coup.

41:03David:I think one of the other interesting things is, you know, we talked about United Fruit, big fruit it doesn't even do do that well out of it which is also i think goes back to you know how much was it all their their plan because land reform does get cancelled but back in washington there's a big antitrust suit uh and it gets eventually kind of broken up it never gets back into guatemala to quite the same extent it was before they start using nasty chemicals to improve yields that doesn't work and by 1972 they sell the last of their land in guatemala to Del Monte Corporation, the man from Del Monte.

41:38David:He says yes. So, you know, it doesn't even work out that well for United Fruit as well as Guatemala.

41:43Gordon:Well, and I guess the CIA team now, Gordon, it is interesting as they're debriefing with Eisenhower afterward, that the revisionism around this starts almost immediately. Because Eisenhower asks, okay, well, as he's being briefed, you know, how many men did Armas lose? and Eisenhower's told he lost one man, a courier before the invasion, which is totally false. It's a lie. At least 43 of Armas' people were killed, maybe more. But nobody contradicts the person who says that. And Eisenhower shakes Alan Dulles' hand and says, thanks, Alan, and thanks to all of you, you've averted a Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere.

42:29Gordon:So this is a massive PB success is what they sold it to be. It's a success.

42:35David:And I think the annals of the White House and the CIA at the time, it is seen as a success. I mean, there is a lot of criticism for it, because I think even though it is covert, as we've said all along, it's barely covert. And so you get a lot of criticism from allies in Europe, which may matter to some people. Churchill actually you know says you know there's a lot of people in London who are kind of a bit a bit worried about this because the UK is particularly in this time and quite a lot of interest in that in that region less so now and Churchill says I'd never heard of this bloody place Guatemala until my 79th year he says and he basically said let's not get that worried about it but I think where it does matter is the damage to the US reputation across Latin America because it It creates that resentment against the US.

43:21David:I mean, we talked about this in the Iran episode, didn't we? That Ajax, the coup in Iran in 53, creates a resentment against the US and the UK in that case that lasts for decades, I mean, through to today. And I do think that this operation shapes a generation of left-wingers in Latin America to see America as their enemy or as an adversary, because it's the one getting rid of democratically elected governments and putting in dictators who don't care about human rights. So it creates a perception of America, which is quite influential in Latin America for years.

43:55Gordon:I mean, this is interesting. Even a 25-year-old Argentine physician happened to have been in Guatemala for some of these events, trying to help the Arbenz regime before he had eventually moved on. And it's Che Guevara, who got to Guatemala in January of 1954. He had been there supposedly studying healthcare, but actually trying to organize resistance to support Arbenz. And it's kind of, to some degree, I think Guatemala is kind of a crucible for some of these CIA guys who see this as now a tried and true template. It's Iran, it's now Guatemala, we can do this elsewhere, we can do this in Cuba.

44:37Gordon:And it's kind of a mirror image for Latin American leftist slash communist guerrillas like Che, who see the US now as kind of an implacable adversary throughout much of the region and are trying to resist this kind of this hemispheric domination that we've been talking about.

44:56David:Yeah, because Che Guevara flees and ends up meeting Fidel Castro. And you're right, the threads from Guatemala lead very directly, don't they, to Cuba and to the Bay of Pigs, which we've done in previous episodes, because there's this myth of success. You know, it spreads within the CIA. People are being told, this is how you can do it. You can use disinformation, quite a small force. You can overthrow a government. And it creates the confidence, which is going to draw a direct line to other covert action, including Vietnam, I think, in the early 60s, but particularly Bay of Pigs, as we talked about.

45:28David:The idea you can use radio exiles and just a bit of air support, overthrow a regime, no problem. did it in Guatemala in 54.

45:36Gordon:The mention of Bay of Pigs brings us to Cuba, which is part of where we started this series, which is looking at Cuba today as a potential country in the sights of Donald Trump, who's more or less actively talking about regime change in Cuba, who's economically and diplomatically squeezing Cuba right now with that as kind of a stated goal. I mean, do you think, and this is, I think, the big question is, we've been talking about Guatemala and PB success. Are we back to a world similar to the 1950s, where we're doing these kind of, almost this combination of gunboat diplomacy and covert action in order to regain, I guess you could say, hemispheric domination?

46:22Gordon:It feels that way. What do you think?

46:25David:I think the ambition is similar, isn't it? To have regime change and to have hemispheric domination, remove regimes you don't like. I guess the differences are, well, a few. One is regimes are now much more aware of these dangers and do much more to prepare themselves for it. I don't think you could get away with the amateurishness of the Guatemalan plot to do it. I also guess the US is being much more overt about it now. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't really do the covert action and let's pretend this radio station is somewhere else. He just broadcasts on truth social and social media what he wants to happen and says, you know, we want this regime gone.

47:03David:It's going to go. So the pressure is much more, you know, it is psychological pressure. It is economic pressure. It is diplomatic pressure. But it's very overt, you know, on somewhere like Cuba, isn't it? But the aim, I think, is similar to Guatemala, which is you try and fracture a regime and get some people to go, this is dangerous to be opposed to Washington. And a bit like Diaz did, the chief of staff to Arbenz, you get someone who's going to go to the leader and go, look, this policy is not working. I think you need to resign. And we need to put someone else in place, the Delce Rodriguez of Venezuela, who is going to be more amenable to Washington.

47:39David:So, you can see, in a sense, without the kind of comic aspects of this plot and having a rebel force and all those things, but there are parallels, aren't there? There are.

47:50Gordon:I guess it raises the question then of if we looked at Cuba, for example, today, is it in any way realistic that you could affect regime change with only minimal force? Can you do it with economic sanctions and a blockade, plus the diplomatic pressure, plus a relatively on the cheap covert action plan that blends some mix of payouts to members of the military or elites to switch sides? Some of this information warfare we've been talking about to some degree, although I think it's much harder to do today, given how many more sources of information there are. But is that even feasible in Cuba? I can see how the Trump administration would convince itself it could be.

48:41Gordon:But you could even see in these cases like Guatemala, and frankly, I think this might be some of the attitude today. If you're Eisenhower or you're Dulles and someone comes to you with a plan and says, look, we think this is going to cost a few million bucks. We think it, maybe it's a coin flip, but we don't have to invest that much. And if it works, it's a big success. It's a PB success. And if it doesn't work, we're no worse off than we were before. So, you can see how the logic of the kind of the risk and reward can make sense as seen from Washington because all of the nasty outcomes that we talked about, the death squads, the fragmentation of Guatemalan politics and all of those costs are borne by other people who don't vote for American presidents.

49:29Gordon:And I think you could make the same case in Cuba today where you'd say, look, we might be able to do this on the cheap and if it doesn't work, we're no worse off than we are right now. Yeah.

49:41David:I think it's a really interesting question because it definitely feels like the desire is absolutely there in Washington for regime change in Cuba you know Marco Rubio particularly but also President Trump but they don't want to do a Venezuela style you know remove the bleeder they don't want to do an invasion and so I think in a sense we're about to find out you know whether this works whether that kind of economic pressure particularly that's being placed on Cuba with the effective you know oil blockade and things like that is going to be enough to fracture a regime and to get it to give up?

50:12David:I think it's going to be, I don't know the answer, but I think we may be about to find out.

50:17Gordon:The Guatemala operation is not so terrible of a template, is it? I think there are real elements of it that still very much apply today. We will see. We should remind people though, Gordon, I guess as we come to a close here on this exploration of Guatemala in 1954. We want to remind listeners to send in any questions on social media or to email us at therestisclassified at goalhanger.com. We want your questions or comments or thoughts on this era of regime change. And, you know, as we look forward potentially to more to come in Cuba or in Iran, please send us your questions on what's going on in the world right now, because we'll be doing some Q &As soon to answer those.

51:03David:And don't forget to join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. There, of course, you get early access to all of our series. You can binge listen to them. There's also going to be news of some special events just for members. And of course, members get early access to tickets for live events of which there may be news soon. So do join up there. But otherwise, we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.

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