Reply #45: Yep. Here's a summary of his murder by Richard Gott, who has written [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

excellent articles on Latin America. He was in Bolivia when the man was captured and killed:

Bolivia on the Day of the Death of Che Guevara
Rough Draft of History:
'All Right, Let's Get the Hell Out of Here'
RICHARD GOTT / Le Monde diplomatique (France) 11aug2005

~snip~
Base of the special forces'

I took the road from Vallegrande to Santa Cruz, to visit the camp at La Esperanza, the military base of the US special forces, where some 20 servicemen were lodged in an abandoned sugar mill. Their sophisticated radio equipment enabled them to talk with Vallegrande and the guerrilla zone, and with Panama, HQ of US Southern Command in the Canal Zone. I was greeted by Major Robert "Pappy" Shelton, who told me that 600 "Rangers" — Bolivian special forces trained by US instructors — had just graduated from their course and left for the anti-guerrilla base at Vallegrande.

On the evening of 8 October 1967 I was walking through the main square of Santa Cruz with my friend Brian Moser, a filmmaker from Granada Television, when a man beckoned to us from his cafe table. He was one of the US officers we had met at La Esperanza. "I have news for you," he said.

"About Che?" we asked, for his possible — capture had been on our minds for weeks.

"Che has been captured," he told us. "He is severely wounded and he may not last the night. The other guerrillas are fighting desperately to get him back, and the company commander is appealing by radio for a helicopter so that they can fly him out."

The commander had been so agitated that his words came out in a jumble. "We've got him, we've got him!"

Our contact suggested that we should hire a helicopter to take us at once to the guerrilla zone. He did not know whether Che was still alive, but he thought there was little chance of his surviving long. We did not have the money to hire a helicopter, even had one been available. It was already 8.30pm, and it was not possible in Bolivia to fly after dark. So we hired a jeep and set off at four in the morning, Monday 9 October, to drive to Vallegrande.

We arrived there five and a half hours later. The military would not allow us to travel further, to La Higuera, and we drove straight to the primitive airfield. At least half the town seemed to be there, schoolchildren in white dresses and amateur photographers. The inhabitants of Vallegrande were used to the comings and goings of the military. The most excited were the children, jumping up and down and pointing to the horizon.

A few minutes later a speck appeared in the sky and soon materialised into a helicopter, bearing on its landing rails the bodies of two dead soldiers. They were unstrapped, unceremoniously loaded into a lorry and carted into the town.

But as the crowd melted away, we stayed behind and photographed the crates of napalm provided by the Brazilian army that lay around the periphery of the airfield. With a telephoto lens we took photographs of a man in olive-green uniform with no military insignia, identified to us as an agent of the CIA. Such temerity by foreign journalists, for we were the first to arrive in Vallegrande by 24 hours, was ill-received, and the CIA agent, in the company of some Bolivian officers, tried to have us thrown out of the town. Our credentials showed us to be bona fide journalists, and after much argument we were allowed to stay.

The one and only helicopter then set off again to the fighting zone, 30km to the southwest, bearing with it the figure of Zenteno. He returned in triumph shortly after one o'clock, barely able to suppress a huge grin.

Che was dead, he announced. He had seen the body and there was no room for doubt. .............
(snip/...)

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Che-Guevara-Gott11aug05.htm



Here he is after he had been shot in the leg and captured, with Cuban "exile" and CIA gentleman, Felix Rodriguez, who lifted the watch he was wearing which his father gave him for graduation. Felix Rodriguez lives in Florida, and it is written that he loves to show the watch to people.





On edit:

Here's Felix Rodriguez in later years, and a photo of him sitting with _{George H. W. Bush} at the Vice President's quarters during the 1980's. There is also a photographed image of a Christmas card from one of those years with message sent to him by the elder _Bush.





He's also the clown lying on the stage, by Porter Goss, wearing glasses on the left side of the photo,

taken while these CIA guys were in Mexico City.