Since The New York Times seems preoccupied with the concept of “fake news,” the death of Communist dictator Fidel Castro provides an ideal opportunity to go back in time and examine how the Times helped bring this tyrant to power through lies and deceit. Castro hated America and Americans, especially President John F. Kennedy. He hosted Soviet nuclear missiles that targeted the U.S. for destruction and sparked the Cuban missile crisis.

Strangely, President Barack Obama has shown callous indifference to the anti-communism that used to dominate the national Democratic Party, and seems oblivious to the evidence that Castro was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, a Democratic Party icon. “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” said Obama’s statement about the death of the dictator.

More “fake news” from the liberal media has consisted of whitewashing or ignoring Castro’s sponsorship of terrorism inside the United States, through such groups as the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and the Puerto Rican FALN, as well as the substantial evidence about his role in the Kennedy assassination. Castro not only had foreknowledge of the plot to kill JFK but was actually behind it, most likely with Soviet backing.

The Cuban-backed FALN claimed responsibility for over 140 bombings in the U.S. FALN terrorist leader William Morales and Black Liberation Army cop-killer Joanne Chesimard are still being protected in Cuba by the Castro regime. Joe Connor, whose father was murdered by the FALN Puerto Rican terrorist group, notes that President Obama’s first Attorney General, Eric Holder, offered executive clemency to 16 FALN terrorists when he served in the Bill Clinton administration as deputy attorney general. President Clinton also pardoned two members of the Cuban-backed communist terrorist Weather Underground: Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans.

A U.S.-based group called the Venceremos Brigade was run by the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, and included several members of the Weather Underground. Young people on the trips were indoctrinated in the communist philosophy, given terrorist training in Cuba, and advised by Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents.

The Weather Underground was responsible for more than 30 bombings in the 1970s, many of them directed at police and police stations. Terrorist leaders Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who helped launch Obama’s political career in Chicago, still have not been prosecuted for their alleged roles in the 1970 bombing murder of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell. A bomb filled with heavy metal staples exploded at the police station and ripped through his body. He was in the hospital for two days, bleeding from his wounds, before he finally died.

In our column, “Why the Communists Killed Kennedy,” we examined the evidence of the Castro role in the murder of JFK. The Soviet KGB also had a role, through meetings with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico and his defection to Soviet Russia. They then tried to mask their involvement through a disinformation campaign called “Dragon Operation,” an effort to shift blame for Kennedy’s murder away from the communists.

The Cubans wanted Kennedy dead because he had opposed the Cuban revolution, tried to overthrow Castro, and tried to have Castro assassinated. In his last prepared speech before his death, Kennedy declared that he was determined to stop communism’s advance around the world by making the U.S. into the strongest military power on earth.

Former CIA officer Brian Latell’s book, Castro’s Secrets, discloses intelligence information that Castro knew that Oswald was going to kill President Kennedy. A former Marine turned Marxist, Oswald was a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

We’ve noted in the past that Humberto Fontova’s book, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, explains how Herbert Matthews, the Times correspondent in Cuba at that time, brought Castro to power. “This is not a Communist revolution in any sense of the word,” Matthews wrote in 1959. “In Cuba there are no Communists in positions of control.” Matthews added, “Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he’s decidedly anti-Communist.” But in a national broadcast on December 2, 1962, Castro declared, “I am a Marxist-Leninist and will be one until the day I die.”

President Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, had singled out The New York Times for criticism for helping bring Castro to power. Her views were documented in the book Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. She cited Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith’s book, The Fourth Floor, on how the U.S. State Department had paved the way for Castro’s takeover. The title is a reference to the officials responsible for Cuba policy who were on the fourth floor of the State Department. Smith argued that Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom, and his associate William Wieland, had to be aware of Fidel Castro’s communist affiliations. Wieland was the State Department’s chief of Caribbean affairs and a friend of Herbert Matthews.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) founder and chairman Reed Irvine noted, “It was Matthews who built up Fidel Castro and is often credited with having made his takeover of Cuba possible. Matthews was never identified as a Soviet agent, but there is no doubt that his work was of great value to the Soviets, whether he was a dupe or an agent.”

At a 1979 AIM conference, Ambassador Smith explained how The New York Times had rescued Castro from obscurity and how Matthews had likened him to Abraham Lincoln.

Demonstrating that he has not abandoned the Marxist ideology he adopted as a young KGB officer, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement saying that Castro was a “remarkable statesman” and that Cuba had “become an influential member of the international community and serves as an inspiring example for many countries and peoples.” Putin added, “Fidel Castro was a sincere and reliable friend of Russia. He made a tremendous personal contribution to the establishment and progress of Russian-Cuban relations, close strategic partnership in all areas.”

That relationship, according to the evidence in such books as Communism, the Cold War, and the FBI Connection, by former FBI agent Herman Bly, included the assassination of a U.S. president. But the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, coming so soon after the Cuban missile crisis, is why the communist connection to Russia and Cuba would be played down. Bly wrote, “…I believe the heads of the FBI, CIA, and President Johnson wanted the Oswald case brought to a conclusion as fast as possible as they did not want another crisis with the Soviet Union so soon after the Cuban missile crisis.”

It’s one of those inconvenient facts that our liberal media want desperately to ignore. Plus, they are still attracted to the notion that Castro, rather than being a cold-blooded killer, was a romantic “revolutionary” who brought health care and educational opportunities to his captive people.

We can understand why Putin doesn’t want to highlight the communist role in Kennedy’s murder. He’s trying to play nice with the U.S. Government to get financial advantages. But why would President Obama, so many progressives, and the liberal media want to pay homage to the killer of a much-beloved American president?

“Today,” Obama said on Saturday, “we offer condolences to Fidel Castro’s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”

A “friend and partner” with a regime that sanctioned the murder of an American president?

Mr. Obama, have you no shame?

Cliff Kincaid