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We haven’t heard much about Cuban President Fidel Castro’s condition since the announcement last week that he was provisionally transferring power to his brother Raul while Fidel underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding and recovered. Indeed, gathering the facts about what’s going on behind the scenes of a tightly controlled Communist regime is not easy, as CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum, who is based in Cuba full time, is well aware. Here, she describes the challenges in covering the biggest story out of the island since the Pope’s visit there in 1998 – a story that the Cuban government was much more enthusiastic about sharing with the world.

There are no rules or guidelines for covering the news in Cuba except a really big one: If the government wants coverage, you’ll get access. If they don’t you won’t.

Case in point: Fidel Castro’s sudden mysterious illness and his temporary handing over of power to his long-designated successor Raul Castro just a week ago. As some anticipated the worst, media interest almost mirrored in size the Pope’s visit to the Communist island in 1998.

Then, the government threw open the doors to 2,000 journalists—more than 1,000 of them from the U.S., along with an army of engineers and crews. The networks got carte blanche to bring in microwave systems, uplinks, computer networks, and even golf carts to zip around town. They stuck all their gear on a barge that sailed across the Florida Straits into the Port of Havana.

That’s not the case now. From the moment Castro’s operation for intestinal bleeding was announced on the evening of July 31, a thousand journalists from nearly every continent applied for press visas to enter the country. All were turned down.

So hundreds sneaked in. Without gear. Even a reporter’s notebook tucked in a pocket raised suspicion.

Some reporters from papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post are “undercover” in the Cuban capital. Dozens more hung out for days at the Cancun, Mexico airport hoping to slip in as tourists. Some, mostly Japanese, sneaked in past the Cuban censors only to face a dearth of information and the threat of deportation should they file stories. A team from a local Miami TV station made it as far as Havana’s Jose Marti International airport only to be stopped by immigration officers and put on the next flight out.

This left us, the press corps, on long-term assignments in Havana. We’re a small group. There are only four American outlets officially here. CNN, the Associated Press, and two newspapers, The Sun Sentinel of South Florida (which, to their chagrin, had no correspondent here at the moment the story broke) and the Chicago Tribune. The Dallas Morning News closed their Havana bureau last year for budget reasons.

The three major American networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, are here under a wink and a nod from island officials.

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