Smerconish: When columnist and Castro met

I recognized the setting immediately. The high ceilings, giant windows streaming natural light, marble floors, verdant plantings, and decoratively incorporated bedrock. I knew at once it was the Palacio de la Revolucion. And from what I saw of President Obama's trip on television last week, the home to brothers Fidel and Raul Castro has changed little in the 14 years since I was there as a columnist, as part of a small delegation accompanying Sen. Arlen Specter.

The 2002 trip was a return visit for Specter, who met with Fidel Castro in 1999 while researching his memoir, Passion for Truth. The architect of what he called the single-bullet "conclusion" had wanted the perspective of the Cuban dictator, whom many believe played a role in the Kennedy assassination.

"You [the United States] have turned me into Satan, but the people are interested in talking to the devil," Fidel told me, as I recounted in the Daily News. For nearly seven hours, the self-described Lucifer was willing to engage on all subjects. And while the trip was filled with substantive dialogue, our time spent in Havana was not without its contradictions and surprises.

For starters, our hotel, the Golden Tulip, had a Christmas tree in the lobby, served Coke, and received CNN on TV. That didn't square with our expectation of communism, although the fact that three in our party were assigned rooms in the same hotel stack comported with my suspicion that the rooms were probably bugged. The hand of state control was more obvious when our Cuban hosts, who'd videotaped an entire evening of discussions, handed me a tape that was almost entirely blank.

We traveled to Havana with no confirmed meeting with Fidel. That call came early on the day of the dinner, and the invite was short on details. At a designated hour, a van arrived and took us to Castro's office and home. After being screened by a metal detector, we were greeted by Fidel and his small party. He wore military fatigues and sported his trademark beard but was more fastidious than I'd expected. He used an interpreter that I came to believe was more of a crutch than a linguist.

I'd just shaved my head for the first time and looked a bit pasty. I figured he took me for someone with a military background, despite Specter introducing me as a columnist. Then we gathered around a conference table for formal conversation. The talk was cordial but pointed. Specter used some of the interrogation skills he honed as a district attorney and would showcase three years later as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Fidel was a worthy adversary.

"How long do you have before your next election?" Specter asked early in the evening. "I mean against an opponent."

"You would have to tell me what type of election," Fidel coyly replied.

Specter said the kind he had run for district attorney, one where candidates campaign and people have freedom of choice. "That's the sort you should have run," Specter told Fidel.

"You mean like you had in Florida," Fidel quickly retorted, in reference to the 2000 presidential race.

Last week, Obama, standing at a lectern next to Fidel's younger brother, Raul, struck a similar chord to Specter: "America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are not just American values but are universal values."

Human rights remain another sticking point between the two nations. Fourteen years ago, Fidel was miffed that Specter had met with dissidents before he met with him. When Specter pushed Fidel on the subject, he replied:

"How do you define human rights? Is there any proof of torture in Cuba? We don't have much money, but we will give you all we have if you can prove anyone has been tortured here in the past 43 years. There are no missing people in Cuba."

Last week, Raul used the same talking points.

When asked by CNN's Jim Acosta about political prisoners, Raul replied:

"Well, give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately. Just mention the list. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names or when - after this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends."

When Specter invited me to question Castro, four months after 9/11, I asked him to condemn Osama bin Laden. He demurred, saying he wasn't sure who was responsible for the attack. Later, over cocktails, Philadelphia lawyer Tom Kline had better luck when he cajoled Fidel to don an FDNY hat in solidarity with New York City firefighters. (Kline is the law partner of Specter's son Shanin, who was also present. Both men paid their own way.) We had no reason to anticipate how focal Guantanamo Bay would become in the war on terror, but I recall Fidel saying that he'd never cashed the paltry rent checks the United States sends him.

Fidel revealed himself to be a keen observer of American politics. He pointed to the desktop computer in his office and waved a stack of news articles that he said represented just that day's coverage of Cuba in the American press. Still, he told me he'd never heard of Frank Rizzo's legendary claim, made in the '70s, that the Philadelphia Police Department could invade Cuba and win.

I don't know what Raul served Obama, but Fidel put out a spread for Specter that included surf and turf. He himself ate only a salad. He said that he swam on a daily basis and that he hadn't smoked cigars in years, but still gave me a box of Trinidads at the end of the night. (My wife told me the cigars would be a great addition to our kids' school auction. I told her that instead they'd be part of my estate.)

Last week, Obama assured the public that the embargo will end but noted that where it had been instituted by Congress, there was only so much he could achieve through executive action. Given that the Republicans opposed his Supreme Court nominee sight unseen, it's difficult to see the GOP willing to give the president a foreign-policy win before leaving office, overlooking the embargo's failure.

"What we did for 50 years did not serve our interests or the interests of the Cuban people," Obama said. "And as I said when we made the announcement about normalization of relations, if you keep on doing something over and over again for 50 years and it doesn't work, it might make sense to do something new."

I wrote something similar for the Daily News in 2002: "Despite more than 40 years of effort, the Cuban embargo has failed miserably in its objective - to oust Castro."

To the contrary, the embargo has only succeeded in giving Cuban leaders an excuse for the beleaguered economy. Maybe we're about to finally see how the Castro brothers fare without that crutch.

Michael Smerconish can be heard from 9 a.m. to noon on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124 and seen hosting "Smerconish" at 9 a.m. Saturdays on CNN.