Saul Landau died this week at age 77 in Alameda, California.
A University of Wisconsin graduate, Saul Landau was a truly great American journalist, commentator, and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 14 books, was a professor of history at California State, and for many years was a director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. Mr. Landau had battled bladder cancer for two years. His son Greg said he was working on a documentary about Cuba when he died.
Saul Landau is best remembered for his documentaries that took him to areas most journalists feared to go, such as the worst American ghettos or the most politically incorrect indigenous cultures of Mexico. One of his fans was a newshound named...Fidel Castro. At a brief meeting in Havana where Landau was working on a story, Fidel reportedly told him, "I like your work. After you leave here, what is your next project?" Landau replied, "I hope it's about you." Thus, one of Landau's most famous documentaries was 1968's "Fidel," which is still considered one of the fairest and most unbiased portraits of the legendary Cuban revolutionary. "At least," Fidel later said, "Landau does not call Batista and the Mafia nice saints."
Saul Landau and Fidel Castro {above} were friends. Fidel admired Saul because, as he once said during a discussion on Cuba's "Roundtable" television program, "Saul Landau you can believe if he says something bad about me. I mean that. He is a filmmaker and journalist with the courage and integrity to present two sides of two-sided subjects." Indeed, when it came to the subjects of Cuba and Fidel, Saul Landau didn't overlook positives just because he was politically, professionally, and socially supposed to do so.
In 1971 Fidel Castro's dear friend Salvador Allende {left} became the first democratically elected President of Chile. Fidel gifted Allende with an engraved AK-47 rifle. Landau and fellow filmmaker Haskell Wexler traveled to Chile to interview Allende and Chilean citizens euphoric about their democracy.
But on Sept. 11-1973 a U. S. - backed coup {above} attacked the presidential palace and killed Allende.
Allende had fought to his last breath with the engraved rifled that Fidel had given him.
For the next 17 brutal years, the ruthless but U.S.-friendly Augusto Pinochet was Chile's dictator.
This photo shows Allende's body being removed from his presidential palace on Sept. 11-1973.
So Chile has its own 9/11 -- the day Allende and democracy died in Chile in 1973.
Like America's 9/11, Chileans this week in September are massively marking their 9/11.
The great Saul Landau was among the journalists who best documented the bloody Chilean coup.
Perhaps Saul Landau's greatest work was his documentary entitled, "Will The Real Terrorist Please Stand Up." In that brave and historic film he interviewed the late Orlando Bosch {left, above} and Luis Posada Carriles {right, above}, the two most infamous Cuban-exile/anti-Castro zealots whom Landau and many others considered terrorists. In his documentary Landau featured Bosch and Posada describing themselves as "freedom fighters" even as they admitted perpetrating decades of multiple terrorism against Cuba. Landau documented facts many of his peers steered clear of, such as: "For half a century, small groups of Cuban exiles have waged a terrorist campaign against Cuba's revolutionary government with active or passive support of the U. S. government." In the documentary, which also featured Fidel Castro and actor Danny Glover, Landau criticized U.S.-sanctioned terrorism against Cuba. After Florida-based exiles conducted a bombing campaign against Cuban hotels to dissuade tourism, Landau explained how Cuba sent five agents to Florida to give the Miami FBI office details about the violent terrorist groups. Landau concluded: "Instead of stopping the perpetrators of terrorism, the FBI arrested five Cuban spies. They were tried in Miami and given draconian sentences despite a dramatic absence of evidence against them." Landau sharply contrasted the fate of the Cuban Five with the heralded protection afforded Bosch and Posada in Miami, giving him the title for his scintillating documentary: "Will The Real Terrorist Please Stand up."
This photo shows Saul Landau {left} with Gerardo Hernandez inside the U. S. maximum security federal prison in Victorville, California. Hernandez is one of the Cuban Five that Landau believed were "wrongly imprisoned" to satisfy the zealotry of anti-Castro exiles who, he believed, dictate America's Cuban policy. The death this week of the 77-year-old Saul Landau is a massive blow to journalism and to democracy because both entities need the talent, passion, courage, and integrity that Saul Landau personified.
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