Said Reuters in its lead paragraphs:
The CIA has concluded that Cuban President Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease and could have difficulty coping with the duties of office as his condition worsens, an official said on Wednesday.
The assessment, completed in recent months, suggests the nonfatal but debilitating disease has progressed far enough to warrant questions among U.S. policymakers about the communist country's future in the next several years.
Yet a Miami Herald article said that "There has been no independent confirmation of Castro's illness, or any indication of how the CIA came to its conclusion. The State Department and the CIA declined to comment for this story."
And an AP article published in the Seattle Times said this (headline: “Round of reports speculates on Castro's health”):
The reports about Fidel Castro's health have swirled around for years, growing more frequent as the 79-year-old Cuban leader grows older and interest in his inevitable succession sharpens.
Sometimes he is said to have cancer. Other times, he is said to have suffered a series of small strokes.
This week a U.S. official said that an intelligence assessment based on a wide variety of material suggests Castro has Parkinson's disease — something rumored and laughed off by the president as long as seven years ago.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the information's sensitivity, emphasized the assessment is based on analysis and is not a definitive conclusion.
Rumor or news? Depends on where you read it, I guess.
willemmarx @ November 20, 2005 - 4:50pm
And how convenient that neither State nor CIA were willing to comment on the fact. It seems to be an attempt to weaken the Cuban leaders standing among his people, through a well-placed leak to a Reuter's reporter. I don't support the man, but if this is the case it is surely just another attempt by US agencies to discredit the leader, which have been common for decades now, without any clear success.
I enjoy the fact that Reuters and AP, two of the world's largest newswire services, are in absolute opposition to each other's reporting of the story. If you read both in full, you can see that while Reuters begins with the CIA findings, and only later in the article discusses the longevity of such rumours' existence, the AP decides to effectively discredit the analysis first, before reporting exactly what that analysis is and where it comes from. Could it be that Reuters got the "scoop" and thus AP responded with more overt cynicism of the findings in its reporting?
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