".........the Communists were
unable to brainwash the Southern Negro prisoners they captured in Korea
who had been raised in such religious families as you describe.”
**********************************
The
writer of “The Cuban Dilemma” was for twenty-five years the resident
New York Times correspondent in Havana, and viewed the transition of
power from Batista to Castro first-hand.
Blaming “incredibly inadequate
American policy in foreign affairs” for the debacle, she castigated
Times colleague Herbert Matthews “whose editorials . . . persuaded the
US Government that the bearded revolutionary was a benevolent blend of
Abraham Lincoln and Robin Hood.”
Brainwashing Over-Educated American Liberals
“A
Senate Internal Security sub-committee, on September 10, 1960, blamed
US State Department officials and segments of the American press for
helping bring Castro to power. Senators James O. Eastland, Democrat of
Mississippi, and Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat, of Connecticut, members of
the sub-committee, after hearing testimony of former Ambassadors Earl
E.T. Smith and Arthur Gardner said: “Cuba was handed to Castro in the
same way China was handed to the communists.”
The
two Ambassadors singled out William Wieland, director of the State
Department’s Caribbean division, Roy R. Runbottom, Jr., former Assistant
Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, at the time Ambassador
to Argentina, and Herbert Matthews of the New York Times. The Senators
charged that the State Department group “misguided the American people.”
When
Wieland was in Havana during the Castro revolution, I asked him why the
State Department did not tell Batista to stop torturing and killing,
either oust his corrupt military men or get out and let the OAS or the
UN hold elections. Wieland insisted that the United States could not
“interfere.”
I
pointed out that the United States was interfering all over the world –
so why not in Cuba before the United States had something worse to
contend with there?
This
idea of “social revolution” has a great appeal for our so-called
“liberals,” who do not realize that social revolution is the cloak under
which the Communists hide.
About
that time an old Cuban friend came into the office much excited over a
book on Communist brainwashing. He had been a devout follower of Castro
and now was completely disillusioned.
“I
haven’t read the book,” I said, “but I can tell you the American who is
the easiest to brainwash. It is the educated person who has usually
gone through college and is trying to be a liberal. He is frightened by
any talk of conservatism and really doesn’t know what he believes. You
were one of them when Castro got hold of you.”
The Cuban grinned and said, “You are right, that is about what the book said. Now tell me, who is the hardest to brainwash?”
“A
person, not too well educated perhaps, but one who has been raised by a
God-fearing family, who has been taught honesty and respect of property
and all the virtues we are supposed to have in the United States.”
“How
right you are,” he said. “The book points out that the Communists were
unable to brainwash the Southern Negro prisoners they captured in Korea
who had been raised in such religious families as you describe.” Then
he added, “There must be something wrong with the American education.”
He was a graduate of one of the United States great universities.”
(The Cuban Dilemma, R. Hart Phillips, Ivan Obolensky Publishing, 1962, pp. 251-252)
