The Press-Tribune Roseville, California Tuesday, August 24, 1965 - Page 14
A Paper Curtain Of Our Own
We sneer at the Communists for their iron and bamboo curtains, forgetting we have a paper curtain of our own.
If you have a passport, look at the fine print inside. It tells you what countries you can't visit. If you've used it recently, there's a rubber-stamped notation that you can't go to Cuba, either.
The Supreme Court has recently upheld the State Department's refusal to validate a citizen's passport for travel to Cuba “to make me a better informed citizen.”
In a dissent—which we predict one day will become part of a majority opinion—Justice Douglas delivers himself of some sensible thoughts:
The right to travel, the court has held, is part of the citizen's liberty under the First Amendment. There are areas in which travel may be banned; a raging pestilence could infect not only the traveler but also those with whom lie comes in contact after returning; a theater of war may be too dangerous for travel.
“But the only so-called danger present here is the Communist regime in Cuba. The world, however, is filled with Communist thought … if we are to know them and understand them, we might mingle with them … The First Amendment presupposes a ‘mature people, not afraid of ideas …”
But Justice Douglas is presently in the minority, and the State Department can forbid travel to Cuba. Its most recent and perhaps most ridiculous refusal was in the case of Bobby Fischer, America's best chess player, who was prevented from attempting an international tournament in Havana, presumably because he might be brainwashed.
Fischer has arranged to take part in the tournament by telephone, while his colleagues from nations of all shades of political opinion sit in Havana and meditate upon American timidity. The State Department must at all costs preserve this paper curtain it has erected. We suggest it send out a crew of CIA frog-men to cut the telephone cable out of Miami to keep Fischer and the rest of us oh, so unsullied by any contact with residents of (you should pardon the expression) Cuba.
—Redding Record-Searchlight
