Exclusive Excerpt: 'Without Fidel' — Hollywood's Useful Idiots Go to Cuba

Today, Scribner sent along this timely excerpt from “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington,” a new book by award-winning journalist Ann Louise Bardach. For those of you who don’t know, today, on behalf of Vanity Fair, Sean Penn’s in Cuba hoping to secure an interview with Fidel Castro. As you’ll read below, this is not Penn’s first trip and he’s pretty chummy with the Castro brothers. And don’t miss the short excerpt at the very end — an amusing anecdote revealing how visiting stars like Leo and Jack Nicholson are put under constant surveillance in Uncle Fidel’s Cuba. As long as it’s not Dick Cheney, right?

Without Fidel

by Ann Louise Bardach

Chapter 12 – Raul’s Reign: The Grave Yard Shift

In October 2008, Raul Castro granted his first interview as president of Cuba – and one of the very few he has ever given. The lucky recipient was not one of the dozen accredited reporters based in Havana. Nor was it a journalist who has covered the Miami/Havana beat, nor one of the hundreds of requests from representatives from media organizations and academia who have filed requests with the Foreign Ministry. Rather, Raul Castro’s first interlocutor would be the actor/director, Sean Penn, who periodically weighs in on politics.

Penn had just winged in on a Venezuelan military jet from Isla Margarita, the picturesque island near Caracas, having had spent two days with a convivial Hugo Chavez. With him were the writer Christopher Hitchens and historian Douglas Brinkley, whom Penn had invited to accompany him, presumably to lend gravitas to his efforts. The three had hoped to reprise their luck with Raul Castro and, according to Penn, seemed to have been promised as much.

But the gods – in the form of Fidel, who orchestrated the event, chose only the movie star. Penn had met the Comandante in 2005 and the two quickly took a shine to each other. Moreover, Penn became fast friends with Chavez, of whom he was wont to say, “Chávez may not be a good man, but he may well be a great one.” Penn was now eager for an interview with [Raúl] the new president,” according to his account of the trip published in the left-leaning journal, The Nation.

Typically, journalists, myself included, who have secured interviews with Fidel, wait months, years or more. That was not the case for Sean Penn, however, who said he made a phone call, and the very next day, had his request granted. The Castros had not miscalculated: Penn proved to be as accommodating and charitable as Oliver Stone in his sunny documentaries of Fidel.

Raul Castro was a gracious and amiable host, but he made clear, through his translator, that the interview was not his idea. “‘Fidel called me moments ago,” he told Penn. “He wants me to call him after we have spoken. He wants to know everything we speak about. I never liked the idea of giving interviews. One says many things, but when they are published, they become shortened, condensed. The ideas lose their meaning.'”

As it turned out, Raúl thoroughly enjoyed himself and passed seven hours chatting with his guest. He joked that he could now rival his brother in garrulousness. “You are probably thinking, ‘Oh, the brother talks as much as Fidel!’ It’s not usually so.”

Raul also passed on one anecdote that his brother, no doubt, would have preferred remain unsaid. “‘You know, Fidel–once had a delegation here, in this room, from China. Several diplomats and a young translator. I think it was the translator’s first time with a head of state. They’d all had a very long flight and were jet-lagged. Fidel, of course, knew this, but still he talked for hours. Soon, one [sitting] near the end of the table, just there, his eyes begin to get heavy. Then another, then another. But Fidel, continued to talk. Soon all of them, including the highest-ranking of them, to whom Fidel had been directly addressing his words, fell sound asleep in their chairs. So Fidel, turns his eyes to the only one awake, the young translator, and kept him in conversation till dawn.”…..

Hollywood visits Fidel : from Part Three – Without Fidel

The Castro brothers had a motive for periodically broadcasting the trophies of their spycraft. They had a message for both citizens and visitors: Be careful what you say; we may have compromising data on you. One Cuban security official, Delfin Fernández, who defected in 1999, claims that the surveillance of foreign diplomats, businessmen, and even visiting movie stars with sophisticated listening devices and hidden video cameras, is routine. Fernández said he had personally spied on Jack Nicholson, Leonardo di Caprio, and supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss during their visits to Havana….