In mid-1978 National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski sent his principal deputy, David Aaron, to meet in New York with one of Castro’s closest aides, José Luis Padrón, who wanted to know if the United States would be willing to admit several thousand political prisoners should the Cuban government decide to release them. At the time of his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had suggested that a prisoner release would be “one indication that Cuba is seriously interested in starting a dialogue,” but until now Fidel Castro had simply toyed with a response: “They like to tell us that we must release Cuban counterrevolutionary prisoners,” he told a Havana audience in late 1977; fine, but first, he continued, Washington had to free “an equal number of U.S. blacks who had to go to jail because of the regime of exploitation, the hunger, the poverty, the discrimination and the unemployment...

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