Washington Post - March 11, 2008
In Havana, A Page From McCain's Past
Restaurateur Displays Story Of Interview With POW
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
HAVANA -- At first glance, the trophy wall in the Cactus on 33rd
restaurant seems to follow a standard local formula.
Framed photo of heroically posed rebel. Check.
Rusty rifle. Check.
Signed postcard from Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Check.
But there, among the routine, lies a surprise: a copy of a faded, 38-
year-old article from Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper. On
the page is a photo of Fernando Barral, a Cuban psychologist turned
restaurateur, sitting at a well-appointed coffee table in Hanoi. He
is interviewing a square-jawed, sandy-haired U.S. prisoner of war. A
prisoner of war named John McCain.
That a nearly four-decade-old photo of a U.S. POW would become a
restaurant prop in this seaside capital stands as testament to
Havana's time-warp vibe and its enduring anti-U.S. sentiments. More
than just a place where vintage American cars rumble and spit smoke,
Havana can feel like a city that refuses to let go of the Cold War,
where spies and conspiracy theories and intrigue are as much a part
of daily life as rum, cigars and the rhythms of son music.
The Granma clipping in Barral's restaurant, dated Jan. 24, 1970,
recalls one of the defining periods of McCain's life, his 5 1/2 years
as a prisoner of war after his Navy jet was shot down over North
Vietnam. The tale of that photo and how an obscure Cuban psychologist
came to interview McCain -- now a 71-year-old U.S. senator from
Arizona and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee -- rouses
the echoes, curiosities and suspicions of another era.
There is no doubt that the two men met in Hanoi in January 1970.
Their accounts of the basic outlines of the meeting are almost
identical.
McCain briefly mentions his encounter with Barral in his 1999
autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," calling him "a Cuban
propagandist, masquerading as a Spanish psychologist and moonlighting
as a journalist." McCain wrote that Barral concluded he was "a
psychopath," but Barral said in an interview that he never reached
that conclusion. A McCain campaign spokesman did not respond to
several interview requests on the subject.
The Spanish-born Barral is now 79 and retains a lispy Madrile¿o
accent even though he has lived nearly a half-century in Cuba. Barral
said McCain was "boastful" during their interview and "without
remorse" for any civilian deaths that occurred "when he bombed
Hanoi." McCain has a similar recollection, writing in his book that
he responded, "No, I do not" when Barral asked if he felt remorse.
Barral kept his original notes from the interview in a bound
Vietnamese notebook with yellow flowers on the cover.
He said he kept the article about the interview tucked away for
decades, most recently stashing it in the small living quarters
behind the six-table restaurant he runs inside a creaking mansion in
the Playa neighborhood, 15 minutes from downtown Havana.
After hearing of McCain's campaign about six months ago, Barral said,
he hung the clipping in his restaurant, an archetypal Cuban paladar
-- a small, privately owned restaurant sanctioned by the state --
with dining tables in the living room, arched wooden doors, wrought-
iron grates and tile floors. Hardly anyone noticed the clipping until
a few days ago, he said, when a reporter spotted it among the Che
memorabilia.
Barral, who shuffles slightly when he walks and entertains visitors
with a gruff sense of humor, said his route to the 1970 encounter
with McCain winds through pre-Civil War Spain, Argentina, Hungary and
Cuba.
His grandfather was a Spanish anarchist and his father was a
socialist killed in the Spanish Civil War. He immigrated to Argentina
with his mother when he was 11. There, he said, he befriended the
young Guevara, who was the same age.
Barral was later expelled from Argentina because of his communist
activism, he said. He fled to Hungary, where he studied medicine.
Shortly after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, he served as
interpreter for a Cuban delegation visiting Hungary.
Barral sent greetings to Guevara and soon accepted the revolutionary
icon's offer of a home and job in Cuba -- a copy of the invitation is
on Barral's restaurant wall. Barral -- who said he speaks Spanish,
French, Hungarian and Italian, and understands English -- said that
in those days "Cuba represented this fresh vision, where everything
was possible."
In 1967, he won an essay contest with a piece about "The
Revolutionary Attitude." He keeps the yellowed telegram announcing
his victory in his archives. First prize was a 40-day trip to North
Vietnam for what he called "scientific research" about the North
Vietnamese and their ability to resist U.S. forces.
"In that time, North Vietnam was the tops in our eyes in Cuba,"
Barral said. "It was the best example of a country confronting
imperialism."
The trip was delayed until 1969, he said. Once in Hanoi, he conducted
field research, eventually concluding that U.S. forces were
underestimating the North Vietnamese. That's when he had the idea of
interviewing a U.S. POW -- to "find out," he said, "how the enemy
thinks."
Cuban diplomats in North Vietnam told him to say he was a Spanish
psychologist, even though he hadn't lived in Spain since he was 11.
At that time he was not a Cuban citizen, though he is now, he said.
The interview lasted between 45 minutes and an hour, Barral recalled.
He said the men met at the offices of Hanoi's Committee for Foreign
Cultural Relations, while McCain said in his book that the interview
took place in a hotel.
McCain was escorted to the interview from the infamous "Hanoi
Hilton," a prison where American servicemen were tortured and lived
in miserable conditions. Barral said he does not know why his North
Vietnamese handlers chose the cultural center as the site for the
interview. But the location did not bother Barral because he wasn't
interested in the conditions of the prison, merely in finding out
what "the enemy" was thinking.
Barral said he conducted a cursory medical examination and found that
McCain had difficulty rotating his arms. McCain told him that he had
not been subjected to "physical or moral violence," Barral noted at
the time.
In his small, precise handwriting, Barral noted that cookies,
candies, teacups, oranges and cigarettes were on the table. McCain,
who had suffered multiple fractures after ejecting from his plane,
walked in leaning on a cane, Barral said.
Quickly dispensing with the pro forma name, rank and serial number,
the men talked about McCain's family, his aspirations and the
shootdown of his plane, according to Barral's notes. In his book,
McCain writes that Barral asked "rather innocuous questions about my
life, the schools I had attended and my family."
"He was only interested in talking about himself," Barral recalled.
"He had a big ego."
The son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals, McCain lamented in the
interview that "if I hadn't been shot down, I would have become an
admiral at a younger age than my father," Barral's notes state.
Barral said McCain boasted that he was the best pilot in the Navy and
that he wanted to be an astronaut.
"He felt superior to the Vietnamese up there in his plane, with all
his training," Barral recalled.
McCain did not ask questions about news from abroad, Barral said, but
did ask the psychologist to get a message to his then-wife, Carol
McCain, and provided her address in Orange Park, Fla.
"Tell her I'm well," Barral noted McCain saying. "Tell her I wish her
all the best and that she shouldn't worry about me."
Though McCain says he did not discuss military matters with Barral, a
U.S. commander in the prison later issued an order forbidding U.S.
POWs to be interviewed by visitors, McCain wrote in his book. The
decision was "a sound one, even though it deprived me of further
opportunities to demonstrate 'my psychic equilibrium' to disapproving
fraternal socialists, not to mention the extra cigarettes and
coffee," McCain wrote.
Barral's interview with the son and grandson of U.S. admirals was
considered a huge coup and "newsworthy," according to the 1970 Granma
article. The communist party newspaper ran a close-up of McCain's
face on its front page.
"I'm not sure if it was for propaganda purposes," Barral said
recently of the 1970 interview. "But I accept it if I was an
instrument for propaganda."
Barral's life since that flash of celebrity has unspooled like that
of many Cubans. He retired with a tiny pension in the mid-1980s and
said he barely had enough money to get by until opening his paladar
in the mid-1990s.
His family, like those of almost all Cubans, is fractured. One of his
sons, Ernesto Barral, became a successful doctor after fleeing the
island, making the unsubstantiated claim that he windsurfed to Florida.
Barral said he follows U.S. politics in clippings sent to him from
friends and relatives abroad, and has taken a shine to Sen. Barack
Obama (D-Ill.) because he "represents change."
"I don't know if McCain would be a good president," Barral said. "And
I don't care."
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