Herbert Matthews

Herbert Lionel Matthews (1900 to 1977) was a reporter and editorialist for The New York Times, born and raised in Manhattan and a graduate of Columbia College. He reported from Europe during the Spanish Civil War and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, and wrote Eyewitness in Abyssinia. He is best known for his secret February 1957 interview with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra, which showed that Castro was alive after the Batista government claimed he had been killed, and which is often called one of the great journalistic scoops of the twentieth century. His sympathetic portrayal of Castro and the rebels proved highly controversial, and critics later accused him of helping the revolution gain legitimacy in the United States.