We seldom get an eyewitness account of a TIME cover subject's reaction to our story about him at the time he first reads it. Therefore, the following account of Anastasio Somoza's reaction to his cover story may prove to be as interesting to you as it was to us.

Nicaragua's dictator was attending a small dinner party with a group of intimate friends at Managua's Nejapa Country Club when his Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs entered with a copy of the November 15th issue of TIME with Somoza's portrait on the cover. It had just arrived on the evening plane with that week's shipment for Nicaragua.

La Estrella

Somoza looked at his cover portrait and then turned the magazine over to a colleague, insisting that the cover story be read aloud so everyone could hear it. The colleague, translating from English into Spanish, had read about half of the story--amid considerable hilarity and joshing --when Somoza took over. Saying that the translation was not good enough, he proceeded to read the rest of the story himself, punctuating its adverse comment with his own remarks. He was happy to appear on TIME's cover and delighted that the issue would be on Nicaraguan newsstands on the 16th anniversary of his assuming command of the Guardia Nacional.

Later, R. C. Macoy, TIME's stringer in Guatemala, talked to Somoza about the story and the Dictator said: "Wasn't that something! I never "thought lightning would strike a little tree, but it did. Of course, it wasn't all true, but I don't mind that. Shows people I don't control TIME."

Macoy asked "Tacho" Somoza, who does control Nicaragua, just what part of the story wasn't true. "Oh, that stuff about me getting some money to pay somebody. That all came from the opposition, but I don't mind. Hell, when they (TIME Correspondent Jerry Hannifin) told me about doing a story, I said, 'Why bother about me? I'm a friend of the United States.' But they said they needed the story, so I said go ahead. Hell, that's a lotta propaganda -- didn't cost me a penny."

Throughout the five colorful Central American republics the Somoza story received maximum attention. All of the newspapers published either full translations of it, or excerpts from it, or commented upon it. La Estrella de Nicaragua (see cut) ran TIME'S cover on Page One, together with Bob Chapin's map (Somoza on the Spot) and a photograph of the Dictator and some cohorts reading the issue.

In preparation for the story Correspondent Hannifin covered the ground thoroughly before undergoing the first of several interviews with Tacho, whom he found "a very tough and sentimental character, able and articulate under questioning, with what is undoubtedly the most calculating, retentive, audacious, and coldest mind in the Caribbean area." Before each interview Tacho would say: "Ask me anything, anything you want; I am opening my heart. Of course, I'm only a farm boy, not a politician."

Being a farm boy himself (from Idaho), Hannifin got along fine. Knowing that the Dictator was accustomed to censoring personally all outgoing cables about himself (in order to delete embarrassing copy and to see what others were saying about him), Hannifin typed out his copy and filed it from San Salvador, where censorship applies only to stories about El Salvador. There were no deletions and Hannifin, who by that time was "about the color of the background of Chaliapin's portrait of Somoza," went to the hospital with a severe attack of jaundice, answering the editors' remaining queries from his hospital bed up to the time the Somoza story went to press.

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.