The Press, The Rosenbergs, And The Cold War Book

I was divided about this book - much like the author himself - finally rating it three stars because it is well-written and heartfelt. Yet it seems a barebones account with much detail deliberately slighted and inconvenient facts skirted. Maybe for security reasons for himself and others; perhaps because, as yet another anti-Castro exile, Masetti has an agenda to justify. It's a fascinating look inside Cuban intelligence, special operations, and leading revolutionary personalities by an adopted "son" of Cuba and the real-life son of Che's countryman, the late and radical Argentine journalist, Jorge Masetti Sr., whom Jr. barely knew.

The info it reveals is really nothing new. Links between Cuba and revolutionary Latin America movements and guerrillas were known all along. Nothing is given here that doesn't sound like parallel CIA skullduggery in the region, and not really as bad. Masetti's critique of the "guerrilla vanguard" has merit: a dedicated elite, a crusading order in search of holy grails, removed from real life and the real masses for whom they justify their struggle. His critique of Fidel Castro as a self-promoter is also nothing new. But Castro came to power by giving personal expression to millions trapped in the social and political dead end of old Cuba yearning for a new deal.

The heart of Masetti's too-short book is the personal recollection of the Ochoa and de la Guardia case, especially of his father-in-law Tony de la Guardia. Masetti seems on murky ground, but the whole issue is clouded and will stay so while Cuban archives remain classified. Ochoa and the de la Guardias may have been under orders to "break the Yankee-imperialist blockade by any means necessary," which may indeed have led to drug trafficking as one instrument. As he says, Ochoa and the de la Guardias couldn't have done so without signals from the very top: sounding like Ollie North and his Iran-Contra doings after the US Congress nixed his public funding. Much of the flak over Castro's drug connections had to do with deflecting criticism of Iran-Contra; even so, is Castro to be commended for sacrificing these agents to their scandals, no matter their status; or was Reagan right, to stand by loyally and pull strings of public opinion and private agency, to get "a decorated hero" out of his own special tribunal?

As an example of yet another revolutionary/leftist who "saw the light," repented, and found a comfortable expatriate nest, Masetti's book is not bad. While he's coming to terms with his past and his deeds, he has - as in his guerrilla days - left behind those millions still struggling against injustice and inhumanity.