You can learn as much about a man from his critics as you can from his admirers. Henry Kissinger, U.S. secretary of state under Nixon, described Fidel in his memoirs as perhaps the most genuine revolutionary leader in power at that time.
 

The Cuban revolutionary movement was struck by the equivalent of an atomic bomb when a long, impassioned letter from Fidel Castro reached Miami. Fidel, as everyone calls him, was writing from his embattled quarters in the Sierra Maestra at the eastern end of the island. There for well over a year he has withstood the most determined efforts of the best troops and army officers that the military dictator, General Batista, has sent against him...