CBS' Don Hewitt -- Fidel Castro Enabler

Forty years after his media advance-work helping install a Stalinist regime in Cuba the legendary Don Hewitt of CBS still seemed proud of his work as a Castro media auxiliary. During that interim, over 20,000 Cubans were murdered by firing squad and beaten or starved to death in forced labor camps. Another 70-80 thousand were ripped apart by sharks or drowned in the Florida straits (attempting to flee a nation that previously took in more immigrants per-capita than the U.S.)

If Mr Hewitt had uttered a single word of remorse regarding this bloodbath, I'd find him easier to praise than to bury.

Shortly after Herbert Matthews of the New York Times made Fidel Castro an international pop star on the front page of the (at the time ) world's most important newspaper, CBS horned in on the act. The February 1957 NYT's headline article proclaimed that, "Fidel Castro has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore Cuba's Constitution....this amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist."

Hewitt was a thug.

And let us not forget how he enabled that other disaster and disgrace to the oval office, Bill Clinton.

Remember how 60 Minutes gave Clinton time to "set the record straight" after Gennifer Flowers exposed their affair?

Years later Hewitt was being interviewed by Imus and Imus asked about that infamous Clinton interview. Hewitt responded by saying, "well, let's just say we allowed Cinton to set the record crooked."

At that point both Hewitt and Imus yucked it up.

Yeah, Hewitt was a real tower of integrity in journalism.

Good riddance.

An editor of the New York Times years ago won a Pulitzer for covering for Stalin - enabling the murders of millions of Russians.

The MSM seems to love the "bad boys" - maybe they're all a bunch of creepy masochists who fantasize one of these thugs will beat them up... What else could it be? They're not really stupid - so what else is there?

Here's what America didn't see: "Juan Miguel Gonzalez was surrounded by Castro security agents the entire time he was in the studio with Rather." This is an eye-witness account from Pedro Porro, who served as Dan Rather's translator during the famous 60 Minutes interview. Dan Rather would ask the question in English into Porro's earpiece whereupon Porro would translate it into Spanish for Elian's heavily-guarded father.
"Juan Miguel was never completely alone," says Porro. "He never smiled. His eyes kept shifting back and forth. It was obvious to me that he was under heavy coercion. I probably should have walked out. But I'd been hired by CBS in good faith and I didn't know exactly how the interview would be edited - how it would come across on the screen.
"The questions Dan Rather was asking Elian's father during that 60 Minutes interview were being handed to him by attorney Gregory Craig (current White House counsel, btw)," continues Pedro Porro. "It was obvious that Craig and Rather where on very friendly terms. They were joshing and bantering back and forth, as Juan Miguel sat there petrified. Craig was stage managing the whole thing - almost like a movie director. The taping would stop and he'd walk over to Dan, hand him a little slip of paper, say something into his ear. Then Rather would read the next question into my earpiece straight from the paper."

"Midway through watching that 60 minutes broadcast, I felt like throwing up," said Porro. "My stomach was in a knot." His worst fears were confirmed.

I have zero trouble believing this.

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