Last Men in Havana

Shortly after his arrival in Cuba, the Associated Press's Daniel Harker encountered Fidel Castro at a reception in the French embassy. "Why did they ever send you to Havana?" asked Castro. Marker's answer was blunt and honest. "I guess the A.P. thought I was expendable," he said. Four years after Castro's revolution sealed the island from nosy newsmen, only three Western correspondents -- all wire service men -- remain on duty in Havana.

Harker himself is a replacement, sent up from Colombia after Harold K. Milks, then the A.P.'s Havana bureau chief, was expelled with such velocity that he had to leave most of his belongings behind. After eight months in Havana, Yves Doude, who represents the French wire service Agence France-Presse, is convinced that things were easier in his previous assignment in Communist Rumania. The other resident Western newsman in Havana, Alan Oxley of Britain's Reuters, Ltd., has been arrested 19 times since Castro took power.

Si, Senor. Unless Havana's myriad censors slip up, these three men send out nothing that Castro does not approve of. Their dispatches are limited almost entirely to government communiques and the anti-American salvos fired in perfect unison by Castro's captive Havana press. Although Castro keeps up the fiction that there is no press censorship, the Western newsmen know otherwise. Cables are often held up for days or forever; the Western Union office, staffed by Cubans, will not even acknowledge that a message has been sent, much less received. "Some times," says Harker, "not even the request for confirmation gets through."

Telephone calls to the outer world are technically possible but unrewarding. So many of Castro's minions tap into the line that the connection at the far end often becomes inaudible. Pre-arranged codes do not help. "You know that hardware I was telling you about?" said Daniel Harker on such a call. "Well, it's shifting." He was cut off in midsentence, and his report on troop movements did not get through. Once, after trying vainly to get half a dozen numbers in the U.S., Harker's predecessor bellowed in exasperation: "You mean to say that all the phones in the United States are out of order?" Replied the Havana operator sweetly: "Si, senor."

No Audience. Getting the news is just as difficult as getting it out. The Western correspondents have no special privileges. They must stand in line with Habaneros to get their monthly quota of five eggs; most official doors are closed to them, or else they open on government underlings who profess to know nothing.

Airport officials, for example, say they do not know the departure time of planes. No one but Premier Castro will confirm anything -- and the Premier does not grant audiences to the correspondents. A.F.-P.'s Doude has set eyes on Castro only three times and has yet to talk to him.

The wire services justify keeping men in Cuba on two main grounds. In the first place, Havana makes a compelling dateline; in the second place, the government may fall some day or some year, and in that contingency it will be nice to have a man on the spot. There is also, of course, that inevitable day when their man in Havana runs afoul of the authorities for the last time and is sent home. Then, perhaps, he may have quite a story to spin.

But by letting the Western newsmen stay, Fidel Castro may be getting the best of the bargain. Incoming wire service copy makes a useful window to the West. There are A. P. tickers in the Foreign Relations Ministry, the Union of Young Communists, the United Party of the Socialist Revolution and in many other government offices. Prensa Latina, the Castroite wire service that peddles propaganda free to any taker, might go out of business without its A.P. wires; much of what comes in is trimmed to Castro's line and sent right out again.

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