Jerry Brown's Castro problem

Old Cuba hand Ann Louise Bardach remembers that Jerry Brown, while mayor of Oakland, "violated U.S. sanction law during a trip to Cuba by using a CIA turncoat as a travel agent." Her piece at the Daily Beast also gets into "never before reported details of Brown’s mojito-fueled conversations with Fidel on topics from Elian Gonzalez’s future to Hugo Chavez’s role in Venezuela." Excerpt:

it was well after midnight on July 24, 2000, when I heard a knock at the door of our room on the Hotel Nacional’s sixth floor. Visiting hours in Cuba run later than they do in the United States, but even by Havana standards, this was a tad late. My husband opened the door to reveal Jerry Brown, the mayor of Oakland, former governor of California, former presidential candidate, and one of the most original and unpredictable politicians in American history.

It’s true you never know who you’ll run into at the Nacional Hotel in Havana. A shabby Grand Hotel, whose suites are rumored to be secretly wired, the very walls of the Nacional seem to breathe intrigue.

Think Casablanca on the Caribbean.

"My Havana meeting with Brown," Bardach writes, "came at the beginning of his one-week Cuban adventure, a Caribbean getaway that perhaps did not take into consideration his future political ambitions."