The Long Way Home

After defying a State Department travel ban and junketing around Cuba for a month as Fidel Castro's guests, those 58 U.S. "students" ran up against quite a problem: getting home. No nation in the Western hemisphere seemed willing to let them fly in direct from Cuba, and after a trying month of delay they were forced to take a plane to Madrid. There, at last, a few of them seemed to have second thoughts about Castroland. Clinton M. Jencks, 19, a psychology student at San Francisco State College, had his Castro-style beard shaved off and frankly declared that he was disillusioned with Cuba and that he had "had it." Later, subjected to the scorn of his fellow travelers, he denied the statement. Most of the other students stuck to their well-publicized first impressions of the "simply wonderful things Castro has done."

When an Iberia Air Lines jet dropped them all at New York's Idlewild Airport last week, the intransigent Fidelistas were ready to stage a noisy lie-down protest rather than surrender their passports. Instead, the first five to step through immigration had their passports stamped "Not Valid--Tentatively Withdrawn." The rest got letters declaring their passports tentatively withdrawn--and ten of them got subpoenas to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

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