Re: Jon Lee Anderson -- as the worm turns

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As Jose has said, it does seem to be bash Cuba month.  Here's an article
from today's "Miami Herald".  Seems the problem for them is that Fidel is
still acting like a revolutionary (at his age!).  So he must be crazy.

**********
Castro's psyche faces probe
Cuban's behavior is referred to CIA
By Juan O. Tamayo Miami Herald, 3/7/2000

 IAMI - Fidel Castro's peculiar behavior in recent months has led the US
State Department to ask the CIA to update its psychological profile of the
73-year-old Cuban president for any hints of instability.

''We have asked the appropriate agencies to take a look at the impact of
aging on Mr. Castro,'' a State Department official said last week.

CIA analysts regularly write lengthy psychological profiles on foreign
leaders, using both secret and public information to help Washington
interpret their actions and predict future decisions. The reports are
updated when the behavior is perceived to change or pose a risk to US
interests.

Last month, Brian Latell, the CIA's former top Cuba analyst, told a Miami
audience that he was concerned that, instead of mellowing, Castro might
pursue riskier policies as he ages.

Other communist rulers have taken impulsive and adventurous actions in their
late years, ''seeking a sentimental rediscovery of their revolutionary
roots,'' said Latell, now a Georgetown University professor.

''It's been called `geriatric overexertion,''' Latell said, noting that
China's Mao Zedong was 73 when he launched the Cultural Revolution, Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev was 68 when he deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba
and his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was 72 when he ordered troops into
Afghanistan.

''There are some who say that at age 73 Castro is mellowing,'' Latell told a
University of Miami seminar on Cuba's post-Castro future. ''But I am
concerned that we use too much the `rational actor' model.''

US officials say Castro has been acting bizarre in the case of Jose
Imperatori, the Cuban diplomat and alleged spy who resisted expulsion orders
from the United States and Canada.

As evidence, they cite three rambling letters he wrote to Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chretien explaining Imperatori's refusal to leave Canada when
ordered. He repeatedly phoned Cuban diplomats in Washington to micromanage
the case, knowledgeable officials said.

Castro is also credited with personally writing several long articles in the
Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma defending Imperatori and Mariano
Faget, a Cuban-born official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
arrested in Miami on spying charges last month.

One article went so far as to intimate that Cuban exiles had poisoned US
District Judge William Hoeveler, who was replaced on the Elian Gonzalez case
after he suffered a stroke last month.

Castro seems physically fit these days, perhaps more so than most men his
age. Though he walks with a slight limp, he has been pronounced healthy by a
number of recent foreign visitors, including Illinois Governor George Ryan.

But US officials said the decision to ask the CIA to update his profile
dates back to a series of incidents beginning in November that seemed to
indicate Castro was showing the first signs of aging.

His speeches have become more rambling than usual, his digressions longer
and less germane to the main topic, his attacks on enemies more bitter and
personal than ever before, journalists in Cuba said.

Despite the impressive bladder control he has displayed through scores of
five- and six-hour speeches since 1959, Castro abruptly interrupted a news
conference on live television Oct. 30, apparently to relieve himself. ''Play
a little music or something until I come back,'' he told the surprised TV
producers as he left his seat in the middle of his speech.

Four days later, Castro used the respectful term ''companero'' for General
Jose Abrantes, apparently forgetting that he had sent the former interior
minister to jail on drug corruption charges. Abrantes died in prison in
1991.
On Nov. 29 he wrote a four-page, single-spaced letter to Representative Jim
McDermott, Democrat of Washington, offering an almost unintelligible
explanation for his decision not to attend an international trade conference
in Seattle. He later said the Seattle police crackdown on street riots
during the World Trade Organization summit was ''worse than that unleashed
by General Augusto Pinochet after his coup in Chile.'' More than 3,000
Chileans died in the violence following the coup.

By early December, Castro was turning Elian Gonzalez into a national icon,
ordering massive street protests that drained his poor country of millions
dollars in transportation costs and by forcing the closing of dozens of
factories and schools.

Wayne Smith, former head of the US diplomatic mission in Havana,
acknowledged Castro's behavior has become a topic of discreet conversation
in Havana.

''There are all these things that don't necessarily mean Castro is going
over the hill, but certainly people are wondering,'' Smith said.

This story ran on page A02 of the Boston Globe on 3/7/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.