15 Facts About Herbert Matthews

Herbert Lionel Matthews was a reporter and editorialist for The New York Times who, at the age of 57, won widespread attention after revealing that the 30-year-old Fidel Castro was still alive and living in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

Grandson of Jewish immigrants, Matthews was born and raised on Riverside Drive in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Herbert Matthews volunteered for the Army near the end of World War I and graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University.

Herbert Matthews subsequently joined the New York Times and reported from Europe during the Spanish Civil War.

Herbert Matthews reported during the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1936; and then wrote Eyewitness in Abyssinia: With Marshal Bodoglio's forces to Addis Ababa in 1937.

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Herbert Matthews was sent to Spain by the New York Times in March 1937.

Herbert Matthews used to come in every evening, always dressed in his grey flannels, after arduous and dangerous trips to the front, to telephone his story to Paris, whence it was cabled to New York.

Herbert Matthews would drive each day from Valencia to the battle-front in bitterly cold conditions, with Hemingway, Tom Delmer and Robert Capa.

In February 1957, Herbert Matthews was invited to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution.

Herbert Matthews agreed, and Matthews seized this opportunity granted to him by Cuban machismo.

Herbert Matthews' interview revealed that Fidel Castro was alive, despite claims by Batista that he had been killed the previous year.

Herbert Matthews claimed that Castro's revolution itself was not inherently Communist, and that Castro simply wanted a full-blown social revolution.

Herbert Matthews continued to state that the revolution itself had never been associated with Communism and that Castro had not been a Communist when he took power.

However, Herbert Matthews' efforts were futile, as many, both in the United States and in Cuba, "blamed" him for the rise of the Communist leader.

Several believed that he had known Castro was a Communist, while the some in the State Department claimed that Herbert Matthews had led them to believe Castro had democratic intentions and thus postponed their ability to act on the growing Communism.