The Hemisphere: Raid 'Em and Weep

As if the Russians weren't having enough trouble playing nursemaid to Fidel Castro, last week one of their freighters was laced with 20-mm. cannon shells as two boatloads of anti-Castro exiles staged a hit-and-run raid on the north coast Cu ban port of Isabela de Sagua. Havana radio reported that wounded Russian sailors were taken to a hospital, and Moscow's Izvestia railed that "the strings of the whole open plot against the heroic people of Cuba lead either to the CIA or the Pentagon." In Miami, two exile organizations—Alpha 66. an action-minded band of Cuban professional men, and the Second Front of the Escambray, one of Castro's disillusioned old revolutionary groups—took all the credit. The State Department professed to be embarrassed by it all: "Such raids do not weaken the grip of the Communist regime in Cuba—indeed, they may strengthen it."