American Comandante

William Morgan -- who in his early life had been a merchant marine, an Army deserter, and ex-con, a circus fire-eater (married to a snake charmer), and a street soldier for the mob -- settled in Miami in 1954 at the age of 26. It was there that he first heard rumblings of a revolt on the island of Cuba. Morgan headed to Havana and soon took up arms with a guerilla group in the Escambray Mountains. While the men of the Second Front were initially suspicious of the strange American, Morgan quickly proved invaluable, earning the rank of comandante. What followed is a tale of the rapid rise and deadly fall of a man caught between two nations -- stripped of his American citizenship, but ultimately imprisoned and executed by the Cuban regime for which he fought.