Podcast Episode #144 - How Cuba and the Cold War Made Miami with Vince Houghton and Eric Driggs

Podcast Episode #144 - How Cuba and the Cold War Made Miami with Vince Houghton and Eric Driggs

The headquarters of the Miami-based anti-Castro paramilitary group Alpha 66 was decorated with photos of fallen members and an oversize cutaway model of an M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle.

Beginning in 1959, shortly after Castro seized power in Havana, members of the new exile community in South Florida began forming action cells to go back and retake the island from the new revolutionary government. Hundreds of groups formed over the coming years, eventually coalescing into several umbrella organizations.

Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency set up shop in Miami. Beginning with just a handful of personnel, their presence in South Florida eventually grew to 15,000 employees and exiles, and at one point was the largest single employer in Miami. The CIA’s navy became the third largest in the Caribbean. Front companies sprouted up all over the city, while firing ranges and training sites dotted the Everglades and Florida Keys.

As the Cuban population grew over time, the exiles and their families gradually established their own community centered around Little Havana and began to shape and influence the city’s economy and culture and unified into a powerful force in national politics as well. And the most passionate and aggressive exiles continued anti-Castro operations even after losing support from the US government.

At the height of the Cold War, Miami took its place alongside Washington DC, Moscow, Berlin, and Vienna as one of the espionage-and-intrigue capitals of the world.

For episode 144 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Vince Houghton and Eric Driggs, authors of the new book Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami. We discussed the lasting impact of the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and more on the city and people of Miami, FL over the past 65 years.