Part: 1234         Session: 123         Page 565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182838485868788 of 512

I am very much in favor - I don't want to be misunderstood on this - of people on the editorial board getting around and doing a lot of personal fact-finding and traveling, and I'm constantly getting my people to go out around the country or to Europe or to various places to inform themselves. But that is a different thing from actually writing news reports on matters that they will also editorialize on. I think there is a question here, and I think that, in hindsight, the Times probably should not have allowed Matthews or anyone else go combine these two functions. But that was done, incidentally, before I became editor of the editorial page.

His editorial view of Cuba starts out - and the Times editorial view - from opposition to Battista, as we're always opposed to all dictators. When Castro came in we certainly welcomed that revolution and I'll certainly stand by that. As Castro became more and more clearly apparently subject to Communist infiltration and perhaps Communist domination, culminating obviously in the missile crisis, the Times became less and less enamored of Castro as the Cuban chief-of-state, just exactly as many millions of other Americans did.

Now, it is true, I think, to say that we were more reluctant to recognize - though at least we questioned - the rapid assumption of Communist control in Cuba. We questioned it perhaps more slowly, certainly more slowly than many, many people did. I am not at all sure that we questioned it more slowly than the facts as they were available justified, and I really don't have any apologies whatsoever for the editorial position that the Times was taking on Cuba, the reluctance to recognize the Communist influence in Cuba, which we certainly have recognized. The only valid basis for criticism would be that perhaps we were