Castro Drops a Bombshell — Journalist Drops the Ball

Mike Gonzalez / September 10, 2010

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently went to Cuba at the bidding of that island’s dictator. The results weren’t pretty. The tone of the first two articles by our man in Havana makes clear that he was intent on presenting Fidel Castro as a charming old rogue, a bit of a cute killer.

Then, suddenly, news happened. The octogenarian reprobate had five seconds of lucidity and uttered to his shocked interviewer: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

The death-bed confession came in response to Goldberg’s question on whether the Castro brothers (Fidel’s little brother, the 79-year-old Raul, is now playing president to Fidel’s dowager dictator) want to export revolution anymore.

But Goldberg seems to have been so mesmerized by “the great man” (his own description) that he failed to follow through. What were Castro’s answers to the stream of Goldberg’s follow-up questions? We don’t know; either the stream didn’t come or Goldberg didn’t want to clue us in on the answers. (more…)