“Fidel Castro is a genius!” gushed Jack Nicholson after a visit with the Cuban Fhrer in 1998. “We spoke about everything,” the actor rhapsodized. “Castro is a humanist. Cuba is simply a paradise!”
Jack Nicholson has been saying such things for years now. Many of his Hollywood cohorts follow suit. Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Kostner, Steven Spielberg, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Leo DiCaprio Chevy Chase, Robert Redford among many others have all waxed euphoric on Castro and his island prison.
Interestingly, there might be more to these celebrity plugs for a tyrant who jailed more of his subjects than Hitler or Stalin than the usual celebrity vacuity upstairs.
“My job was to bug their hotel rooms,” says high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez. “With both cameras and listening devices. Most people have no idea they are being watched while they are in Cuba. But their personal activities are filmed under orders from Castro himself.” And according to some sources, Havana, given the desperation of it’s brutalized and impoverished residents, has recently topped Bangkok as the world mecca for child sex.
“He (Delfin Fernandez) has not only met some of the most famous men in the world,” says the London Daily Mirror about the Cuban defector, “he’s also spied on them and been witness to some of their most innermost secrets.”
“When the celebrity visitors arrived at the hotels Nacional, Meliá Habana and Meliá Cohiba,” says Fernandez, “we already had their rooms completely bugged with sophisticated taping equipment. “But not just the rooms, we’d also follow the visitors around, sometimes we covered them 24 hours a day. They had no idea we were tailing them.”
Famous Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was a special target for this bugging but nothing of value came of it for Castro. “Everybody already knows I’m a maricon!” Almodovar laughed at Castro’s blackmailers. “So go right ahead! Knock yourselves out!”
“Fidel Castro is a special connoisseur of these tapings and videos.” Fernandez says. “Especially of the really famous." And not even his closest “friends” are safe from this bugging. The best example is his longtime Castro “friend” Nobel Prize novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In what appeared as a touching act of generosity and friendship, Castro gave his friend “Gabo” his very own (stolen) mansion in Havana. “We had remodeled it right before,” remembers the Intelligence honcho, Fernandez, “and we installed more cables for bugging devices than for the normal electrical appliances. We taped EVERYTHING! Fidel doesn’t trust ANYONE.”
Castro’s top intelligence people would gather for the screenings of these tapes almost like Hollywood types for an upcoming movie. “Hummmm, these scenes are more scandalous than anything in any of her movies!” Fernandez recalls a top intelligence officer chortling while watching the nighttime cavortings of a famous Spanish actress. “Now, it really seems to me, compaeros,” the Castro intimate chortled as he looked around the room, “that this seorita should be making more respectful comments about our regime, right?”
“But famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence.” says Fernandez. “When word came down that models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss were coming to Cuba the order was a routine one: 24-hour-a-day vigilance. Then we got a PRIORITY alert, ” recalls Fernandez, “because there was a rumor that they would be sharing a room with Leonardo DiCaprio. The rumor set off a flurry of activity and we set up the most sophisticated devices we had.”
“The American actor Jack Nicholson was another celebrity who was bugged and taped THROUGHLY during his stay in the hotel Meliá Cohiba,” states Fernandez, the man in charge of the bugging.
Turns out, however, that at least one visiting dignitary foiled Castro’s intelligence. On his visit to Cuba in 1998, Pope John Paul’s assistants discovered and removed several bugging devices from his Holiness’ hotel room. Perhaps Castro had a grudge against the Papacy?
Most don’t recall, but on January 3rd, 1962, Pope John XXIII ex-communicated Fidel Castro from the Catholic Church. It seemed a fitting act for the Pope who in April 1959 forbade Catholics from voting for political candidates who even supported Communism. In Cuba during 1961—62 hundreds of young men from the youth group Agrupacion Catolica were crumpling in front of Communist firing squads while refusing blindfolds to yell “Long Live Christ the King!” during their last seconds alive. It was the Spanish Civil War all over again. But this time, the Communists won.
