"I Got My Job ThroughTHE NEW YORK TIMES

How one man's opinion, disseminated through a n

influential newspaper, helped put Castro in power .

By WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR .

TT IS VERY MUCH as in the earl ymonths of 1950 when, havin gchased the last remnants of th e

opposition off the mainland, Mao Tse -tung, wild with ideological lust, surveyedhis kingdom, and threw himself into thejob of communizing his people . Hechopped off many more heads tha nFidel Castro has had so far to do i nCuba, and there are no doubt difference sbetween Mao and Fidel, as there arebetween China and Cuba ; but then a snow, as the public slowly awoke to themeaning of what had happened, theapologists for the revolutionary force sbegan to retreat in increasing horrorfrom their sometime enthusiasm . Thosewho had told us again and again tha tthe Red Chinese were primarily agraria nreformers began to fade away, only t oreappear, many of them, before con -gressional committees, which asked the mthe same questions they are now begin -ning to ask the propagandists for Castro ,questions to which we desperately needthe answer . now as then : Who betrayedChina? Who betrayed Cuba? Who — i nthe process—betrayed the United States ?

There is no defensible defense an ymore of the regime of Mao Tse-tung .But here and there, where Cuba is con -cerned, there are pockets of loyalty t oCastro. There is a Fair Play for CubaCommittee, which may or may not b edominated by fellow travelers, but whic hcertainly has among its supporters som emen who are not fellow travelers, menwhose faith in Castro is livelier, alas ,than freedom is in Cuba . The leader o fpro-Castro opinion in the United State sis Herbert L . Matthews, a member of the

editorial staff of The New York Times .He did more than any other single ma nto bring Fidel Castro to power . It coul dbe said—with a little license—that Mat -thews was to Castro what Owen Latti-more was to Red China, and that TheNew York Times was Matthews' Insti-tute of Pacific Relations : stressing thi simportant difference, that no one ha spublicly developed against Matthew sanything like the evidence subsequentl yturned up against Lattimore tending t oshow, in the words of a Senate investigat-ing committee, that Lattimore was " aconscious, articulate instrument of th eSoviet conspiracy . "

Herbert Matthews met Castro in Feb-ruary of 1957 . To make contact wit hhim—as he tells the story—he had to ge tin touch with the Fidelista undergroun din Havana, drive 500 miles all one nigh tacross the length of the island, using hi swife as cover ; and ride a jeep throughtortuous dirt-road detours to avoid th epatrols and roadblocks that an angryFulgencio Batista had posted all abou tthe Sierra Maestra mountains in the east -ern tip of the island, to try to break th eback of the little resistance group thattwo months earlier had landed, 82 -strong, in Oriente Province in a diesel -cutter from Mexico, pledged to "liber-ate" Cuba, or perish .

Matthews climbed up muddy slopes ,swam across an icy river, ducked behindtrees, ate soda crackers, and slept on th eground: and then, in the early mornin ghours, Fidel Castro came . In whispers,he talked for three hours about his plan sfor Cuba .

To put it mildly, Matthews was over-whelmed . From that moment on he ap-pears to have lost all critical judgment .

This National Review cartoon wit hthe caption that serves as the titl eof this article portrays Castro a sthe beneficiary of Times promotion .

He became—always consistent with be-ing a writer for The New York Times ,which imposes certain inhibitions — th eNumber One unbearded enthusiast fo rFidel Castro .

Castro, he told the world in a serie sof three articles that made journalisticand indeed international history, is a big ,brave, strong, relentless, dedicated, toug hidealist . His unswerving aim is to brin gto Cuba "liberty, democracy, and socia ljustice ." There is seething disconten twith Dictator Batista, corrupt and de-generate, after virtually 25 years of ex-ercising power ; hated by most Cubansfor having installed himself as Presiden tin March of 1952 by military coup ; be -come, now, a terrorist and a torturer .Fidel Castro is the "flaming symbol" o fresistance . The fires of social justice tha tdrive Castro on, that cause him to bea rincredible hardships, playing impossibl eodds, with the single end in mind o fbringing freedom to his people, these ar efires that warm the hearthsides of free-dom and decency all over the land : andthey will prevail . . . .

Is Castro's movement touched b ycommunism? Matthews dismissed th erhetorical question with scorn . Castro'smovement "is democratic, therefor eanti-Communist ." And, flatly, "There i sno Communism to speak of in Fide lCastro's 26th of July Movement . "

The impact of these articles all ove rthe world was subsequently recognized

Herbert L . Matthews, Latin American expert of the Times, met Castro

By now most people are well aware that Castro is a ruthles sin 1957. His enthusiasm for the bearded one and what he was doing

dictator of a communist country . But Matthews still insists h ewas communicated to Times readers and to key people in Washington .

is not . Recently at Yale he spent days selling this idea .

even by The New York Times itself .normally bashful about celebrating pub-licly its achievements . When, almost twoyears later, Batista fell, the Times per-mitted itself to record jubilantly : "Whe na correspondent of The New York Time sreturned from Senor Castro's hideout[from that point on, by the way, Seno rCastro was elevated by the Times to `Dr . 'Castro] . . . the rebel leader attained anew level of importance on the Cuba nscene . Nor was the embarrassed govern-ment ever able to diminish Fidel Castro' srepute again . "

Foreign correspondents have bee nvery much mistaken before . Foreign cor-respondents who work for The NewYork Times are no exception, as anyon eknows who will attempt to reconcil eSoviet history and accounts of same file dover the years by, e .g ., Walter Durant yand Harrison Salisbury ; who will, in a

word, attempt the impossible . It is ba denough that Herbert Matthews was hyp-notized by Fidel Castro, but it was acalamity that Matthews succeeded i nhypnotizing so many other people, i ncrucial positions of power, on the sub-ject of Castro . "When I was Ambassadorto Cuba," Mr . Earl E. T. Smith com-plained to the Senate Subcommittee o nInternal Security last August, "1 . . .sometimes made the remark in my ow nEmbassy that Mr . Matthews was morefamiliar with State Department thinkingregarding Cuba than I was . "

As Ambassador assigned to Havan ain August of 1957, Mr . Smith had bee nthe representative of the United State sGovernment in Cuba during the 18 cru-cial months that brought Castro topower, and he used just that word : Mat -thews' articles on Castro, he told theSenators, had literally "hypnotized" the

(Continued on page 46)

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State Department . Even as early as th esummer of 1957, when Smith took ove rthe ambassadorship from Arthur Gard-ner, the influence of Matthews wa sestablished—only a few months after theCastro interview in his hideout . Am-bassador Gardner had met with stonyresistance every time he attempted topass on to his superiors the informationhe had about the nature of the Castr omovement, which he was convinced —correctly, it proved — was shot throughwith Marxism . Gardner made himsel fsuch a nuisance that he was replaced :and his successor was instructed by Mr .William Wieland of the State Depart-ment, in charge of- the Caribbean desk ,to cap his month's briefing on the Cub asituation by consulting Herbert L. Mat -

thews . Matthews told Smith that Batistawas in all probability through . Castro ,he said, was the man to back.

Smith went to Havana determined todo what he could, within the limits ofpropriety, to ease Batista out of the way.Batista pledged to hold elections in No-vember 1958 and turn the presidencyover to his successor in March 1959.The question in Smith's mind waswhether he would last that long . Withintwo months after arriving in Cuba, Mr .Smith sincerely hoped he would : for h ebecame convinced, he told the Senat ecommittee, that the principal danger tothe United States lay not in the survivalof Batista for a year or so, but in th erise to power of Fidel Castro who was al-most certainly a revolutionary Marxist .

Abundant evidence was available thathe had made "Marxist statements" in -Costa Rica, in Mexico, and in Bogota ;and that, dating back to his college days ,he had been a revolutionist and a terror-ist . Smith had even heard — and hadpassed the report along — that while i nBogota, Castro had had a hand in th eassassination of two nuns and a priest .

But even if Castro wasn't then pro -communist, Smith said, his closest asso-ciates were, and this was positively docu-mented with respect to his brother Rau l(now head of Cuba's armed forces) andErnesto "Che" Guevara (boss of theCuban economy). .

But the Ambassador's warnings wer eto no avail . During the succeeding 18months, Herbert Matthews continued to

"I GOT MY JOB THROUGH THE NEW YORK TIMES"(Continued from page 19)

write glowing accounts of th e RobinHood of the Sierra Maestra, predictin gthe downfall of Batista and the ascend-ancy of the 26th of July Movement .Others got into the act . The influentia lForeign Policy Association's Bulleti nfor Apr . 1 . 1957, carried an article b yMatthews on Cuba, followed by a lis tof "Reading Suggestions" prepared bythe editors . Among them : "The hes tsource of contemporary information o fa general nature is probably the files o fI he New York /inter,which publishedthree uncensored articles on Cuba b yHerbert Matthews on Feb . 24, 25 . 26 ,1957 ." The State Department wen talong . "Herbert Matthews . . . is theleading Latin American editorial write rfor The New York Times . Obviously, "said Ambassador Smith, "the Stat

e Department would like to have the sup -port of / he New York Times .

Obviously indeed ."Each month the situation deterio-

rates. ," Matthews exulted on June 16 ,1957 . a theme he elaborated in furthe rdispatches in the succeeding months .Looking hack at these reports one ca nonly say how right Mr . Matthews was .Batista was losing, and Castro was gain-ing . But Reporter Matthews neglecte dto give all the reasons why, just as h econsistently neglected to report on th elurid background of Fidel Castro an dsome of his associates . The increasinghelplessness of Batista was the resul tprimarily of the crystallization of U.S.support for Castro . During those month sa fascinating dialectic went on . Matthew swould write that American prestige wa ssinking in Cuba — on account of the ai dthe United States Government was giv-ing to Batista . Our Ambassador i nHavana meanwhile complained an dcomplained to the State Department o fthe demoralization of the Batista govern-ment —on account of our failure to pro -vide Batista with the aid to which, unde rthe terms of a series of mutual aid agree-ments, we were bound by law and prece-dent to give him so long as we continue dto recognize his government .

Matthews' forces proved much strong-er than our Ambassador's . An importan tsegment of the press, influential mem-bers of Congress . and the Castro appa-ratus in Washington and New York ,hammered away at the State Depart-ment, urging it to desert Batista . At firs tthe Department stalled . When Castr okidnapped 47 American servicemen i nJune 1958, the Government eagerl yseized on the opportunity to hold up th eshipment of 15 training planes that Ba-tista was lawfully importing . "In accord-ance with instructions from the Stat eDepartment," Smith testified, "1 in -formed Batista that delivery would b esuspended, because we feared som eharm might come to the kidnappe dAmericans ." Having in effect yielded to

blackmail, the U .S . Government then re -fused to deliver the airplanes even afte rCastro had been prevailed on to turn th esoldiers free . Batista's forces were be -coming seriously demoralized by th egrowing aloofness of the U .S . Govern-ment, even while Castro was getting, theex-Ambassador went on to say, illicitl yexported shipments of arms "almostevery night" from friends of Castro i nthe United States . By November it wa sclear that Batista's days were numbered .On the 17th of December, Ambassado rSmith received orders from the Stat eDepartment to advise Batista that h ecould no longer hold power, not eve npending the institution of the new Presi-dent a few months later — whom th eUnited States would not hack in anycase, since he had been fraudulentl yelected, and didn't have the support o fthe Cuban people . Two weeks later ,Batista fled .

The next morning, on the first day o fthe New Year 1959, Mr . Roy Rubottom ,Assistant Secretary of State for Inter -American Affairs, announced that ther ewas "no evidence" that "Castro is un-der Communist influence ." Clearly hehad paid no attention to his own Am-bassador to Cuba. As clearly, he rea dThe New York Times .

During the campaign, both Mr . Ken-nedy and Mr . Nixon expended a con-siderable amount of rhetoric on the sub-ject of Cuba . For they knew the birth ,right up against the Florida peninsula ,of what is now officially classified by th eGovernment (under the terms of th eDirksen-Douglas Amendment to th eMutual Security Act) as "Communist "territory, is a development that has deep-ly disturbed the American people . The ywant to know who, or what, was th eFrankenstein who created the monster .

Mr. Kennedy blasted Mr. Nixon onthe grounds that Castro and Castrois mhad come about as a reaction agains tAmerica's tolerance of rightwing dic-tators — a familiar line, advanced b ythose who sincerely feel it is an Ameri-can obligation to purify Latin America npolitics . But Mr. Kennedy was not con-vincing to those who remembered tha tin May, shortly before his nomination ,he had said publicly that in two respectshe hacked completely the foreign policyof Mr. Eisenhower, "one of these bein gCuba . "

Mr. Nixon, on the other hand, pointedproudly to the disappearance of a hal fdozen military dictators during th eEisenhower years . He seemed to he sug-gesting that although the President con-tinued officially to beam at every leade rof every nation we formally recognize —as protocol dictated—actually, he sat ona pair of great bellows, on which h ebobbed up and down, when nobody waslooking, thus toppling, one by one, Latin

American badmen . Beyond that, Mr .Nixon did not go . He did not express adetailed curiosity about the loss of Cub ato Fidel Castro . Indeed, both candidatesgave the impression that, like the Stat eDepartment, obviously they wanted t ostay on the right side of The New YorkTimes . But the candidates whetted th epublic interest, and it is likely that theSenate Internal Security Subcommitte ewill pursue its investigation into th estrange hold of Herbert Matthews, an dthe Matthews doctrine, on the men wh omake our foreign policy .

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*What will they learn about Mr . Mat -

thews himself? That he is a scholarly ,subtle man who makes and continues t omake supercolossal mistakes in judg-ment, but whose loyalty to his misjudg-ments renders him a stubborn propa-gandist . . . and an easy mark fo rideologues on-the-make. So well-knownis he as doyen of utopian activists thatwhen in June of 1959 a Nicaraguan rebe llaunched a revolt, he wired the news o fit direct to Herbert Matthews at TheNew York Times—much as, a few year sago, a debutante on-the-make might hav ewired news of her engagement to Walter

. Winchell .Matthews was once, to use his ow n

phrase, an "enthusiastic admirer of Fas-cism." He turned away from fascis mwhile in Spain covering the civil war ,where he took up the cause of the Pop-ular Front with the same ferocious parti-sanship that earlier he had shown forMussolini's Italy, and later was to showfor Castro's Cuba. The Spanish passionis not yet expended. Mr . Matthews wrot ea book in 1957, recommitting himself tothe Good Guys-Bad Guys reading of awar fought by democrats and commu-nists against traditionalists and fascists .Always he writes with considerabl esweep, and he likes to prophesy . His twomost striking predictions of 1944 aresurely that the "Franco regime is totter-ing" and that the disbanding of Russia' sComintern the year before was "the fina lindication that the Russia of 1943 and1944 does not care to support revolu-tionary movements to bring about com-munist states in other countries . "

Certainly he has not proved over theyears an astute judge of how to deal withRussia: "All they [the Russians] wan tis security," he wrote in Collier's i n1945 . "By refusing to share the secre tof the atomic bomb we are fostering Rus -sian suspicions . . . . One can understan dhow they feel about our recognition o fFranco, our seizure of Pacific bases, ourexclusive policy in Japan, our Red-bait-ing press and our America-firsters . Wehave set up a vicious circle of mutua ldistrust and fear ." And certainly he i snot an enthusiast for the free enterpris esystem, preferring the militant social-ism of postwar Britain : " . . . while Brit-

ain slowly struggles toward economi corder, sanity and strength," he wrote i n1946, " the British experiment will be a nexample [for the U .S .] to follow . "

The payoff came when on July 15 ,1959, Herbert Matthews wrote a front -page dispatch from Havana insisting tha tCastro was neither a communist, no r"under Communist influence," nor evena dupe of communism . Moreover, headded, there are "no Communists in po-sitions of control ." Indeed, Castro con-tinues to be "decidedly anti-Communist . "

That dispatch was so brazen a con-tradiction of events that the Times re-

"My biggest trouble is—once I get to eatingthem, I can't stop . "

THE AMERICAN LEGION MAGAZIN E

luctantly pulled him away from Cuba ,as one might pull a man away from mari-juana. Since then, he has not had on eby-lined story on Cuba .

That is almost two years ago . Duringthat period he has continued to affir mhis belief in the purity of the 26th o fJuly Movement : but mostly in the arcan ejournals of the specialists (e .g ., the His -panic American Report), and in lecture sbefore important audiences . The fault ,he says, is ours, for antagonizing Castro ,and "forcing him" to take his presen thard line . One might as well argue thatthe Jews, by protesting the confiscatio nof their property and the insults heapedupon them, forced Hitler into genocide .And in any case, Mr . Matthews' analysi snever accounts for the compulsivenes swith which Cuba turned to communism ,beginning almost immediately after Cas-tro took power .

Now and then Mr. Matthews invite sattention to the fact that every one else ,save himself, is out of step . " In my thirtyyears on The New York Times," he toldthe American Society of Newspapermen

last April, "I have never seen a big storyso misunderstood, so badly handled, andso misrepresented as the Cuban Revolu-tion." Those words are, as a matter o ffact, exactly true : and the fault was TheNew York Times' .

The Senate subcommittee may wan tto know more about Matthews, and ma ywant especially to know whether th eSenate is to expect to have the honor o fratifying his appointment as Consultan tExtraordinary to the State Department .Certainly it will want to examine th emajor premises of Matthews' position o nCuba . For it is a position that extend sbeyond the question of Castro, and on ethat is shared by many Americans, som eof whom are influential with the newPresident . That position holds, in effect ,that the United States should interfere ,adroitly to be sure, in the internal affairsof nondemocratic Latin American na-tions . Matthews urged exactly that in th esummer of 1958, by proposing that th eUnited States arbitrate the differencesbetween Batista and Castro . To havedone such a thing would have been aclear reversal of United States policy —though we might rather have done tha tthan what we did, namely, pull the ru gout from under Batista, and turn theentire country over to Castro .

Another article in the Matthews po-sition is that democracy and only democ-racy distinguishes the good society .Granted, he is perfectly satisfied withthe kind of "democracy" that is prac-tised in Mexico, where everyone votes ,and one party always wins ; but it bearsdiscussion whether "democracy" is th efirst objective of American foreign polic yin Latin America, or whether it is sub-sidiary to other concerns, including ou rown national interest, and, for the LatinAmericans, internal stability, economicviability and nonpolitical freedoms .(Probably the highest per capita inci-dence of violent deaths in any countrythis side of the Soviet Union has beenin chaotic Colombia, a "democracy ." )

A third question is whether the Unite dStates can continue, in all good con-science, to encourage Americans to in -vest in Latin America . Our investment sare over $7 billion — making America ncapital the largest single job creator i nLatin America . But the Matthews posi-tion on foreign investment consists, a sfar as one can make out, in encouragin gAmerican investment in general, an dthose governments that will seize, na-tionalize or tax to death that investmen tin particular . He has not, at least in an yof his conspicuous writings, deplore dCuba's blithe confiscation of $800 mil-lion of American property . Symbolically ,the new U.S. Administration must an-swer the question whether the more of-fensive Fidel Castro is to this country ,the madder we are going to get at Gen-eral Trujillo .

THE END