In this gripping fifth chapter of our miniseries Ground Zero: JM WAVE and the Cuban Question (Episode 3B), we take a deep dive into the gritty, real-life mechanics of the CIA’s clandestine naval war against Fidel Castro. Reconstructing an incredible account from Warren Hinckle and William Turner’s classic investigation Deadly Secrets, we examine the secret October 1963 raid of the CIA’s Caribbean flagship, the Rex. We begin on a shadowy dusk at the Port of Palm Beach, where CIA Caribbean naval chief Gordon Campbell steps out of a black Cadillac to deliver late sailing orders to Captain Alejandro Brooks. Docked under the blue-and-white flag of Nicaragua within walking distance of the Kennedy family’s winter estate—just two months after President Kennedy erupted in fury upon learning a covert raider was harbored near his vacation home—the 174-foot ex-Navy sub-chaser slipped out to sea under the ultimate cover: leased through Belcher Oil and Dallas defense contractor Collins Radio International for "electronic and oceanographic research," with dockage fees quietly covered by a post-office-box shell company and its 40 polygraph-vetted Cuban crewmen paid through a commercial fisheries front.

We trace the mission as the Rex arrived four minutes before midnight off the darkened lighthouse of Cape Corrientes at the western tip of Cuba’s Pinar del Río province. Armed with heavy 40mm naval cannons and two high-speed fiberglass launches equipped with 75mm recoilless rifles and machine guns, the ship deployed a strike team from the Commandos Mambisas led by Major Manuel Villafaña—the stern former Bay of Pigs air commander who insisted his men be paid minimal wages so they remained motivated by pure hatred rather than money. But the moment the commandos hit the shore, the infiltration dissolved into a fierce ambush and firefight, forcing Captain Brooks to make a tactical gamble: cutting the Rex’s running lights and hugging the Cuban coastline in the pitch dark to escape coastal radar detection while Cuban military helicopters hovered offshore, dropping illumination flares over the open sea.

What followed next was a heart-stopping international blunder that brought the Cold War to the brink of open warfare. Entering the illuminated drop zone directly beneath the flare light was the J. Louis, an innocent, 32,500-ton commercial bulk ore freighter hauling Jamaican bauxite to Texas. Mistaking the massive commercial carrier for the CIA raider ship, five Cuban MiG-21 fighter jets launched a relentless, hour-long assault, making 14 to 20 strafing runs with rockets and heavy machine-gun fire that set the superstructure ablaze and chewed holes through the hull. When the freighter’s German skipper, Captain Gerhard Krauss, broadcast a desperate international SOS, U.S. Navy pilots scrambled F-4 Phantom jets out of Key West, putting American and Cuban fighters minutes from direct aerial combat just six weeks after Moscow warned it would no longer tolerate armed incursions into Cuban waters.

Yet, in a bizarre climax that underscores the cynical reality of the secret war, the CIA intervened to recall the American Phantoms before they reached Cuban airspace, leaving the unarmed J. Louis to absorb Castro’s airstrikes while the Rex escaped. At the CIA’s JM WAVE headquarters in Miami—Zenith Technical Enterprises—controllers monitoring the Caribbean with their massive rhombic antenna responded to Captain Brooks’s urgent plea for instructions with a detached six-word directive: "Do what you have to do." Brooks eluded pursuing Cuban gunboats by fleeing into Mexican territorial waters off Cozumel, ultimately towing a disabled, unmarked CIA Catalina flying boat back to Key West. Days later in Washington, upon discovering that the Liberian-flagged freighter was actually owned by American billionaire Daniel K. Ludwig, the State Department brazenly turned the disaster on its head—seizing upon the strafing of the J. Louis to publicly denounce Cuba’s "aggressive course" and justify tightening the economic blockade against the island.