Fidel Castro's 35-Minute Audio Interview in 1959

      In 1959, shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Clark Galloway conducted the above 35-minute audio interview with Fidel Castro for U.S. News & World Report. Galloway's grand-daughter recently discovered the audio tape. It makes for an incredibly insightful peek into Fidel's thinking at that crucial time, revealing his anti-Communists views, his desire for friendly trade with the U. S., his acceptance of the U. S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, his extreme hatred of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, etc. You can hear excerpts from that interview but the complete transcript in English and Spanish is even more titillating. 

The audio excerpts and the complete transcript can be accessed at:

http://blankonblank.org/we-content/uploads/2013/07/clark-galloway-interviewing-Fidel-Castro.
{Or just google: "Fidel Castro talks about Cuban Revolution in Lost Interview}

       Clark Galloway's grand-daughter Laura found the audio tape in a box marked "Galloway/Castro." The exquisitely fascinating 35-minute interview captured Fidel Castro expressing his feelings and plans just days after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Galloway had a distinguished career as a Colonel in the U. S. Army and then he became a Latin American expert as a star journalist for the Associated Press and U. S. News & World Report. The tape was the first time Laura had ever heard her grand-dad's voice. He died at age 63 on January 1, 1961. He solicited from Fidel such comments as: "If this revolution falls, what we will have here in Cuba is a hell. Hell itself!" But the young rebel's comments expressing his expectations of a friendly relationship with the United States, I believe, highlighted the long interview, which preceded a cascade of assassination attempts, terrorist attacks, and the April-1961 military assault at the Bay of Pigs -- all of which soon sharply and permanently altered Fidel's U. S. thoughts.

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