The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats Hardcover - 1998

First line

Che Guevara's body, strapped to the landing skid of a Bolivian helicopter, was on its way to the town of Vallegrande from the tiny backwater settlement of La Higuera, where he had been executed.

From the rear cover

The Fall of Che Guevara tells the story of Guevara's ill-fated final campaign in the backwoods of Bolivia, where he hoped to ignite a revolution that would spread throughout South America. For the first time, this book shows in detail the strategy of the U.S. and Bolivian governments to foil his efforts. Based on numerous interviews, as well as secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council, this work casts new light on the role of a Green Beret detachment sent to train the Bolivians and on the role of the CIA and other U.S. agencies in bringing Guevara down. Author Henry Butterfield Ryan - a former U.S. Foreign Service officer - shows that Guevara was an agent of Fidel Castro's policy from the time the two met in 1955 until his death, not an independent revolutionary, as many observers have claimed. Guevara's attempted insurgency in Bolivia was in reality a Cuban attempt to achieve another badly needed revolutionary success. This work shows conclusively, however, that the U.S. government neither killed Guevara nor ordered him killed.