THE LOSERS: The Definitive Report, by an Eyewitness, of the Betrayal of Cuba and its Abandonment to Communism

The right-wing case against Castro and the American liberal establishment. Bethel, who heads the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, served in the American embassy in Cuba during Castro's rise to power and immediately after. Here he reports what he saw in Cuba, stressing how it differs from the media coverage. Bethel's book has three parts: Castro's rise to power (by terror and propaganda, not by peasant support); his subsequent transformation of Cuba to ""a nest of subversion"" and a source of Communist infiltration of Latin America; finally, his support of Americans who were duped. This latter group, called ""the losers"" includes ""leftist politician"" Senator Fulbright, ""way-out liberal functionaries in the State Department,"" most of the newsmen, and President Kennedy. The book's most interesting chapter, and probably its raison d'etre, is Bethel's version of the Cuban missile crisis. Here he contradicts Robert Kennedy's version (The Thirteen Days) charging that the Administration grossly overstated the danger (they were, in his view, small missiles) and that even with the political pyrotechnics the Administration lost the propaganda war. Ironically Bethel who repeatedly accuses ""the losers"" of buying the Communist line, himself takes it up, offering exactly the version that Khrushchev did, i.e., that the Russian bases were merely a ploy to obtain America's promise not to invade Cuba. A massive, opinionated book.