The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg spent some time with the Cuban leader a few years back and asked him exactly that question. Unlike some JFK conspiracy theorists who portray Castro as a demonic puppet master who somehow manipulated Oswald, Goldberg conveys a sense of the man who bedeviled Washington with his defiance of U.S. domination but who also sensed JFK was open to the mutual respect that still eludes the two countries after fifty years.