“APR 19, 1959: During Fidel Castro’s first post revolution trip to Washington, he meets with Vice President Richard Nixon for three and a half hours. \u2018I spent as much time as I could trying to emphasize that he had the great gift of leadership, but that it was the responsibility of a leader not always to follow public opinion but to help to direct it in proper channels, not to give the people what they think they want at a time of emotional stress but to make them want what they ought to have,\u2019 the Vice President reports in a four-page secret memo to Eisenhower, Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, and [CIA Director] Allen Dulles. \u2018It was apparent that while he paid lip service to such institutions as freedom of speech, press and religion that his primary concern was with developing programs for economic progress.\u2019 Nixon concludes that Castro is \u2018either incredibly naive about Communism or is under Communist discipline.\u2019 But he also expresses his own \u2018appraisal\u2019 of Castro as a man. \u2018The one fact we can be sure of, is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of him, he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in the development of Latin American affairs generally.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n