Felix Rodriguez is a walking index of U.S. crimes: Che's execution, CIA-backed death squads in Vietnam, Ilopango, Posada, Contras, drug allegations, pardons.
Tucker Carlson sat him down and performed the old operation in public: convert state violence into "interesting" biography.
His record matters because it shows how American power actually works when Congress, law, and public opinion become obstacles.
In Tucker's own interview, Rodriguez says the CIA sent Cuban exiles into Bolivia because they were not U.S. citizens and did not fall under the restriction on Americans.
US law drew a line so the CIA built a tunnel under it.
Then Che, where a captured revolutionary frightened them enough to kill him, stage the wounds, manage the corpse, cut the hands for identification, and keep telling the story for half a century.
First came the rifle. Then came the staging. Then came the trophy, by his own memoir: Rolex, pipe tobacco.
Then came Tucker.
In Vietnam, Rodriguez worked with CIA-backed Provincial Reconnaissance Units he himself describes as "managed, paid, and controlled by the CIA."
The words were clean enough for Washington because the bodies were not in Washington. "Counterinsurgency" is murder in the language of bureaucracy.
Under the alias Max Gomez, Rodriguez entered the Contra pipeline, where American law arrived as an obstacle to logistics.
On Tucker, Rodriguez says he was "lucky" Vice President Bush had Donald Gregg, his old CIA boss from Vietnam, as national security adviser.
This is how the permanent state actually looks: not robes and rituals, just old bosses, new offices, and the war continuing after "democracy" says stop.
In plain terms: Rodriguez became part of the Ilopango resupply network that kept the U.S.-backed Contra terrorists supplied while Congress was trying to block the official route.
After a plane went down, the official Iran-Contra investigation found Bush aides had information about North's resupply network through Rodriguez while Washington denied U.S. involvement.
Then came the perfect ending: Clair George, the CIA official convicted of lying to Congress about Max Gomez, was pardoned by Bush on Christmas Eve 1992.
Then Luis Posada, the terrorist Tucker left out of the room.
Cubana Flight 455 was blown out of the sky in 1976, killing all 73 aboard. Posada was held in Venezuela in connection with the case, escaped, and ended up at Ilopango with Rodriguez's help.
The "anti-terror" state always made exceptions for anti-communist terror.
Former DEA agent Celerino Castillo alleged cocaine moved through Ilopango hangars tied to North and Rodriguez. Rodriguez denies it. A Senate investigation still confirms traffickers were paid to fly Contra cargo.
The named allegations go further: Ramon Milian Rodriguez alleged Rodriguez solicited Medellin cartel money for the Contras, and former DEA supervisor Hector Berrellez alleged he was present during the 1985 torture of DEA agent Kiki Camarena.
Tucker did not even press the easy errors.
Rodriguez blamed Carter for ending CIA penetrations of Al Qaeda and causing 9/11. Al Qaeda did not exist when Carter was president.
He also said Sendero Luminoso took the Japanese ambassador's residence in Peru. It was MRTA, a separate rival group.
This is the limit of Tucker's anti-establishment turn: Israel can be condemned, but the CIA's anti-communist executioners still get laundered.
At the end, Rodriguez says he regrets nothing, "not one bit." Tucker calls it one of the most interesting lives he has encountered.
A cemetery became a resume.
Thus we arrive at the useful cognitive dissonance of Tucker exposing Israel while protecting the machine that armed it, sanctified it, and made it necessary to American power.
https://x.com/MelVslp/status/2060448240797982840
The whole interview was such bad journalism if you can even call it that. He just sat there admiring him even when he contradicted himself 5 sentences from each other. Not once was his family connection to the Batista regime mentioned.