The Longest Romance (9 page)

During the early 1890's—according to a former chief of the Soviet general staff, General Adrian Danilevich—“Mr. Castro
pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including nuclear strikes. We had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”

 

 

 

National Geographic's
partnership with Castro's propaganda ministry started with a January 1977 article—really an infomercial for Castroism—called “Inside Cuba Today.” The article featured an interview with Fidel Castro and proclaimed that “over half of Cubans' lives had been improved by the Revolution.” The magazine's pro-Castro coverage continued in 1991 with “Cuba at a Crossroads” by Peter White, and then in 2000 with “Cuba's Reefs, A Last Caribbean Refuge” by none other than Peter Benchley, the author of
Jaws.

“Cuba Naturally,” a
National Geographic
feature presenting Cuba as a paradise of ecosystems, followed in 2003. Then in 2006 came “Castro the Conservationst? By Default or Design, Cuba Largely Pristine.” Here we learn that “Cuba's land-tenure system [identical to Stalin's for the Ukraine] and relatively strong enforcement of laws [!] are all associated with its conservation achievements.”

In March 2012
National Geographic
finally dropped any pretense of objectivity and ran an unabashed tourist infomercial entitled “Falling for Cuba.” The commercial was timed to kick off the joint
National
Geographic-Castro-regime tours called “Cuba; Discovering Its People and Cuba.” In this joint venture, the magazine and the regime helpfully provide full-time tour-guides. Among these is
The Washington Post's
Tom Miller, whose services to the regime began with his book
Trading With the Enemy; A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba,
published in 1996, just as the regime's tourism campaign was kicking into high gear. The
Cuban red carpet—a visa for the asking—has been extended to Miller ever since.

A Canadian company runs similar junkets called “Cuba Discovery Tours.” Some highlights from their brochure:

“Your tour is fully escorted by Cuban experts from the minute you touch down in Havana until you return home! You'll experience island history, social and ecological achievements first-hand from Cubans.”

Among the testimonials from enchanted customers:

“So many museums and not enough time to see them all! My favorite visit was to the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabana. We saw where Che Guevara set up his headquarters!” (Headquarters for what? No further details provided.)

“Above all, this tour was truly an education. If you go, your eyes and hearts will be opened, and you'll come home with different outlooks on many issues.”

“In addition to expressing great pride in the country's low crime rate, the Cubans that we met took great pride in their successful literacy campaign, and their high investment and emphasis on education and health-care. Cuba was declared the first Illiteracy-Free Country in the Americas after its revolutionary victory!”

“The elevated status of women and health-care for women and children were also areas that Cubans spoke of with pride.”

“Our guide, Reynaldo, an enthusiastic and ebullient man in his forties, was with us throughout the stay in Cuba!”

We know.

CHAPTER 6

T
he
New York Times's
Herbert Matthews, who repeatedly denounced Batista as “tyrant, torturer, murderer, thief,” etc., visited Cuba repeatedly during Batista's reign. (Try that during Castro's.) The interview and three-part fron page feature that resulted from his first trip in February 1957 “invented” Fidel Castro, according to fellow
Times
reporter Anthony DePalma. In 2006 DePalma authored a book about Herbert Matthews entitled, appropriately enough,
The Man Who Invented Fidel.

In his book, DePalma endeavors to offer a
mea culpa
of sorts on the Matthews-Castro saga but in a highly sympathetic manner, as befits their
New York Times
fellowship. DePalma starts with a nail-biting account of the perils Herbert Matthews faced while clandestinely setting up the interviews, then clandestinely making his perilous way to those ground-breaking interviews.

“He [Matthews] did not see anyone from the Batista Government because he feared that doing so might raise suspicion about his presence in Cuba,” DePalma states in his book. “Matthews had decided that that the best way of getting past the cordon of troops surrounding the Sierra [Maestra, mountains of eastern Cuba] was to bring along [his wife] Nancie and pretend to be a couple of middle-aged American tourists out with some young Cuban friends.”

“Matthews confided to her that many young Cubans were risking their lives to smuggle him into the mountains, so it was important to be discreet during the long trip.” Crowded into the car, they passed the hours on the rough road singing Cuban songs or talking about the revolutionary movement for which they were risking their lives. Matthews was enthralled by his secret passage through Cuba.

“A soldier stepped into the road in front of them! It was the first real test of their plan. He peered inside the car, checking out the young Cubans in the front and the American couple in the back. They all held their breath for a second, their hearts racing.... He took a quick look around the car and smiled, then waved them through.”

Finally they reached the Sierra Maestra, got out of the car and started hiking. “The only sounds were the night-voices of the forest—the screeches of animals and the heavy drip, drip, drip of raindrops ... finally out of the darkness came an unmistakable sound—the two flat notes of the secret code... the scout whispered that [Castro's] camp was nearby ... It was just after dawn and Matthews was muddy, hungry, cold ... but this was why he had come all the way from New York.... Castro strode into the clearing with the sun just breaking through the clouds and dawn seeping into the day.”
^I

The New York Times'
prize-winning investigative reporter Anthony DePalma wrote his book in 2006, almost exactly a half-century after
The New York Times'
prize-winning investigative reporter Herbert Matthews wrote his famous Castro articles. Which means—not to take anything away from DePalma's heart-pounding prose—that, for 48 years, sworn testimony on the public record which makes a hilarious hash of his account was available to anyone willing to devote about 60 seconds to investigating the issue.

In fact, Matthews's trip to the Sierra for the Castro interview was not only approved by Batista—who thought Castro was dead at the time so it would do no harm—but provided a police escort
by Batista to insure Matthews's safety every step of the way. To wit, from hearings of the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. Senate, August 1960:

Senator Dodd: “Did Herbert Matthews ever contact you while you were the Ambassador in Cuba?”

Ambassador Gardner: “I made it possible actually for Herbert Matthews to go down and have this interview [with Castro], because he asked me.”

That's Arthur Gardner, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba at the time of Matthews's early-1957 visit.

Senator Dodd: “Yes. I wanted to ask you, about that. He [Herbert Matthews] did ask for assistance in arranging an interview with Castro? ”

Mr. Gardner: “He did.”

Senator Dodd: “And this was arranged?”

Mr. Gardner: “Yes.”

Senator Dodd: “How did you arrange it?”

Mr. Gardner: “Only under the condition that when he came back he would tell me his reactions.”

Senator Dodd: “Yes. But how could you arrange a meeting with Castro?”

Mr. Gardner: “Well, I mean in those days Batista, said, ‘All right, if you think it won't do any harm, it is all right,' and he let him go down.”

Mr. Gardner: “Senator, to be perfectly clear about this, the only thing I could do was help him [Matthews], so that he would have a pass to go down the island, so that he could make this trip [to interview Castro].”

Senator Dodd: “I understand—whatever itwas that he thought you could do, he wanted you to do it to help him get there?”

Mr. Gardner: “That is right.”

Senator Dodd: “And in return for this he promised he would come back and tell you about this conversation with Castro?”

Mr. Gardner: “That is right. And to this day I never have seen him.”

Senator Dodd: “He never did return and never did tell you?”

Mr. Gardner: “No. It was a big shock to me, as a matter of fact.”

Senator Dodd: “Mr. Gardner, do you feel that Matthews's account of his visit to Castro, as he wrote it up, had considerable influence on the American people with respect to favoring Castro?”
²

“Almost two years before Ambassador Gardner's testimony, my father heard the same thing from some of his government contacts,” adds Manuel Marquez-Sterling, whose father Carlos was a Cuban senator at the time. “The last thing Batista wanted was Matthews, a famous
New York Times
reporter, killed and the killing pinned on his police or army—which is exactly the type of thing he suspected Castro's people would pull off,” continues Marquez-Sterling. “And then naturally, the anti-Batista U.S. media would headline it everywhere. So Batista wanted to make sure Matthews got to into the Sierra safely, conducted his interview and returned safely.”
³

“Turns out he was wrong about Castro's motives,” adds Marquez-Sterling. “At the time, Matthews was much more valuable to Castro as a courier and propagandist than as martyr. But the facts debunking the ‘perils' of Matthews's visit with Castro stand as a matter of historical record—though no one would ever know it from anywhere in the mainstream media, especially
The New York Times.”

In sum: Herbert Matthews was protected by a Batista police escort the entire route to his interviews with Fidel Castro. And this is all a matter of sworn testimony on the public record for over 50 years, and corroborated by one of Cuba's most respected political figures of the time—an anti-Batistiano to boot. For the record, Anthony DePalma himself refers to Carlos Marquez-Sterling as “a respected politician.”

By way of gratitude, shortly after the interviews, Herbert Matthews—instead of visiting with Ambassador Gardner to report on Fidel Castro as he'd promised—visited his State Deptartment cronies to urge that they fire (Republican) Arthur Gardner from his ambassadorial position, which they did.

“In Cuba itself... I received no help at all from the Castro regime,” DePalma writes in his book's acknowledgements, “despite my repeated requests and their repeated assurances that assistance would be forthcoming.”

“No journalist gets a visa to do research in Cuba without very careful vetting by the regime's intelligence services,” says Lieut. Col. Chris Simmons, for years the Defense Intelligence Agency's top Cuba spy-catcher. So DePalma actually has many Castro-regime apparatchiks to thank. But let's go ahead and indulge him; maybe he doesn't have all their names.

A Cuban girl's coming-of-age or “sweet-sixteen” party comes at fifteen. And during the 1950's a Cuban teenybopper's
quinceanera
(from “quince,” the Spanish word for fifteen) was easily the major event of her life, usually until her big fat Cuban wedding.

Miriam Mata lived in a Havana suburb in 1957 (but wasn't fat!); she had her coming-of-age party made all the more memorable when Castro's July 26 movement, for whom
The New York Times'
Herbert Matthews was faithfully serving as propagandist and courier, sent an RSVP in the form of a bomb threat.

“Dozens of young girls would be crowded into our house on that day,” recalls Miriam. “My family was obviously frightened and I was obviously devastated. But most who knew how Castro's people worked were not surprised in the least. In those days there weren't many such people—and Herbert Matthews sure didn't help matters.”

Fifteen-year-old Miriam Mata's birthday greetings in the form of a bomb threat were standard operating procedure for the organization that
The New
York Times
Herbert Matthews served as flack. Bombs were exploding all over Cuba at the time, especially in crowded public places. According to Herbert Matthews, the reign of terror in Cuba at the time came from the police—the people trying to stop the bombings!

In February 1957, just as Matthews's articles on Castro were headlining in The New
York Times,
Pablo Atilano, Placido Analisio and Urbino Jerez, all teenagers, were blown to pieces by a bomb placed by July 26 agents near a farm in the Sierra Maestra.
⁴
These innocent boys were murdered a few miles from where Matthews had just conducted his famous first interview with the chief of this July 26 movement, whom he hailed a humanitarian hero.