The Fall of Che Guevara A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats [Hardcover]

The Fall of Che Guevaratells the story of Guevara's last 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 and on secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Archive, this work casts new light on the roles of a Green Beret detachment sent to train the Bolivians and of the CIA and other U.S. agencies in bringing Guevara down.
Ryan's shows that Guevara was an agent of Cuban foreign policy from the time he met Fidel Castro in 1955 until his death--not a mere independent revolutionary, as many scholars have claimed. Guevara's attempted insurgency in Bolivia was in reality a Cuban attempt to achieve another badly-needed revolutionary success.

This dramatic account of the last days of Che Guevara will appeal to scholars and students of United States foreign policy and Latin American history, and to all those interested in this revolutionary's remarkable life.

Ryan offers a thoughtful critique of both the operational and intelligence-gathering aspects of the U.S. intervention against the Cuban intervention in Bolivia....Ryan enlivens his narrative with vivid portraits of the two American officials who played key parts in the hunt for Guevara....It is a welcome addition to the literature on both Che Guevara and U.S. intervention in Latin America. --The Washington Monthly

The Fall of Che Guevarahas the merit of being both original and brief. It consists largely of a trawl through the American archives, in the wake of the Freedom of Information Act, to discover what the various U.S. government agencies really knew, and thought, and did about Guevara. --London Reviewof Books

Ryan's is l­