The Cuba debacle.

NCEW's aborted trip to Cuba in January stirred a hotbed of ethical questions, provoking a principled and fervent debate among editorial writers about our commitment to a free press and our responsibility to colleagues at The Miami Herald who long have been blacklisted by the regime in Havana.

Did NCEW allow itself to be manipulated by Fidel Castro for his own cynical purposes? Or was NCEW correct to press ahead with the trip even after Havana made it clear that, to no one's surprise, the Herald's editorial writer would not be issued a visa to travel to the island?

First, the facts:

When I approached the Cuban government late last summer to begin making arrangements for the trip, the press officer at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Luls Fern[acute{a}]ndez, immediately asked for the names and affiliations of the NCEW participants. At the time, all that was available was an informal "interest list" of 15 or so members, which I forwarded to Fern[acute{a}]ndez. For several weeks, I had difficulty getting the Cubans to respond.

Whenever we did make contact, the Cubans asked for an updated list of the participants, which continued to grow to about 40. The travel arrangements did not fall into place until early December, when the Cubans finally agreed to a January date for the trip, but continued to ignore my written requests for specific meetings. Once a date was set, NCEW mailed out a pink postcard alerting members of an imminent deadline for signing up for the trip. It was at that late hour that Susana Barciela, a Cuban-born editorialist at the Herald, called me to join the trip.

Barciela acknowledged from the start it was unlikely the Cuban government would grant her a visa, but she hoped that by making the request as part of our group, her odds would be improved. Because of long-standing strains between the Herald and Castro, Havana routinely denies visas to Herald reporters and editors.

Although there have been a very few exceptions, Herald staff members cannot get visas even for such events as the pope's visit to Cuba. As a result, the Herald sends reporters to the island posing as tourists and then publishes their stories without bylines. As expected, Havana emphatically rejected the Herald's visa request. Officials at the Cuban Interests Section implied that I had withheld the Herald's planned participation until the last moment, and suggested the Herald had orchestrated this elaborate deception. It was clear to me at that moment that the Cubans' paranoia over the Herald was boundless.

Havana's refusal to issue a visa to Barciela confronted the NCEW board with a very difficult decision: Proceed without the Herald's participation, thereby allowing the Cubans to dictate the composition of our group and exclude a newspaper because of its political views; or cancel the trip, thereby foreclosing the opportunity to visit Cuba for the foreseeable future by all NCEW members.

In my mind, at least, the factor that tipped the balance in favor of the trip was Herald editorial page editor Tom Fied1er's urging us to proceed.

The final chapter in this revealing saga occurred the first week of January, just three weeks before the scheduled departure date, when Havana abruptly announced that no member of the NCEW delegation would receive a visa. That decision, made by Castro himself, came a few days after the Herald published a news story about the flap and wrote an editorial chiding the Communist regime for excluding Barciela, followed by a similarly tough column by Barciela herself.

In a phone call to my house late in the evening, Cuban spokesman Fernandez cited three official reasons for the cancellation. The first was the Herald's attempt to join the trip. The second was a mildly critical statement by NCEW International Affairs Committee chair David Hage of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, quoted in the Herald, expressing disappointment over Havana's refusal to issue a visa to Barciela. The third was the Cuban government's concern that the U.S. State Department was making "parallel" arrangements for our group in Havana. (The Cuban government monitors -- bugs -- calls received by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Consequently, my requests to the U.S. Interests Section to assist me insetting up meetings with the Roman Catholic cardinal and with political dissidents were already well known to the Cuban authorities.)

After talking to State Department analysts and other experienced Cuba watchers, I believe Castro blocked the NCEW trip because his government felt it was losing the tight control it wanted over our agenda, especially as the Eli[acute{a}]n Gonzalez case reached crisis proportions.

The issue now facing NCEW is whether to revive another fact-finding trip to Cuba in the future. In my view, that would be a mistake as long as Castro's regime imposes the precondition that The Miami Herald will be excluded. That de facto precondition exists today, by virtue of our aborted plans in January, and is not likely to change any time soon. With the splendid benefit of hindsight, my personal opinion is that we should have cancelled the trip ourselves once Havana refused a visa to Barciela, regardless of the Herald's public urgings that we go forward with the trip.

Beyond the important principle of not acquiescing in a foreign government's bid to exclude an NCEW member because of editorial viewpoint is the critical issue of journalistic independence. As long as Havana insists on controlling the entire trip agenda, independent reporting will be very difficult. A trip that is limited to what the Castro regime chooses to show us would be of little value. NCEW should hold off on another visit to Cuba until it is assured, first, that NCEW and not the Cuban government will determine the membership of its delegation and, second, that the itinerary will allow ample opportunity for an independent assessment of life in a country controlled so completely by Fidel Castro.

NCEW member Bob Kittle is editorial page editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune. He helped plan the Cuba trip and the subsequent Panama/Mexico trip. His e-mail address is [e-mail]