BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 Fidel Castro's peculiar behavior in recent months has led the U.S. State
 Department to ask the CIA to update its psychological profile of the 73-year-old
 Cuban president for any hints of instability.

 ``We have asked the appropriate agencies to take a look at the impact of aging
 on Mr. Castro, a State Department official said Friday.

 CIA analysts regularly write lengthy psychological profiles on foreign leaders,
 using both secret and public information to help Washington interpret their actions
 and predict future decisions. The reports are updated when the behavior is
 perceived to change or pose a risk to U.S. interests.

 Word of the requested update on Castro came after Brian Latell, the CIA's former
 top Cuba analyst, told a Miami audience last month that he was concerned that,
 instead of mellowing, Castro might pursue riskier policies as he ages.

 Other communist rulers have taken impulsive and adventurous actions in their late
 years -- ``seeking a sentimental rediscovery of their revolutionary roots, said
 Latell, now a Georgetown University professor.

 ``It's been called `geriatric overexertion,'  Latell said, noting that China's Mao
 Zedong was 73 when he launched the Cultural Revolution, Soviet leader Nikita
 Khrushchev was 68 when he deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba and his
 successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was 72 when he ordered troops into Afghanistan.

 ``There are some who say that at age 73 Castro is mellowing, Latell told a
 University of Miami seminar on Cuba's post-Castro future. ``But I am concerned
 that we use too much the `rational actor' model.

 BIZARRE ACTIONS

 U.S. officials say Castro has been acting especially bizarre in the case of Jose
 Imperatori, the Cuban diplomat and alleged spy who resisted expulsion orders
 from the United States and Canada.

 As evidence, they cite three rambling letters he wrote to Canadian Prime Minister
 Jean Chretien explaining Imperatori's unprecedented refusal to leave Canada when
 ordered. He repeatedly phoned Cuban diplomats in Washington to micromanage
 the case, knowledgeable officials said.

 Castro is also credited with personally writing several exceptionally long articles
 in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma defending Imperatori and
 Mariano Faget, a Cuban-born official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
 arrested in Miami on spying charges last month.

 One article went so far as to intimate that Cuban exiles had poisoned U.S.
 District Judge William Hoeveler, who was replaced on the Elian Gonzalez case
 after he suffered a stroke last month.

 PHYSICALLY FIT

 Castro seems physically fit these days, perhaps more so than most men his age.
 Though he walks with a slight limp, he has been pronounced healthy by a number
 of recent foreign visitors, including Illinois Gov. George Ryan.

 But U.S. officials said the decision to ask the CIA to update his profile dates back
 to a series of incidents beginning in November that seemed to indicate Castro
 was showing the first signs of aging.

 His speeches have become more rambling than usual, his digressions longer and
 less germane to the main topic, his attacks on enemies more bitter and personal
 than ever before, journalists in Cuba said.

 Despite the impressive bladder control he has displayed through scores of five-
 and six-hour speeches since 1959, Castro abruptly interrupted a news conference
 on live television Oct. 30, apparently to relieve himself. ``Play a little music or
 something until I come back, he told the surprised TV producers as he left his
 seat in the middle of his speech.

 Four days later, Castro used the respectful term compañero for Gen. Jose
 Abrantes, apparently forgetting that he had sent the former interior minister to jail
 on drug corruption charges. Abrantes died in prison in 1991.

 BEWILDERING LETTER

 On Nov. 29 he wrote a four-page, single-spaced letter to Rep. Jim McDermott,
 D-Wash., offering an almost unintelligible explanation for his decision not to
 attend an international trade conference in Seattle. He later said the Seattle
 police crackdown on street riots during the World Trade Organization summit was
 ``worse than that unleashed by [Gen. Augusto] Pinochet after his coup in Chile.''
 More than 3,000 Chileans died as a result of political violence following the coup.

 By early December Castro was turning Elian Gonzalez into a national icon,
 ordering massive street protests that drained his poor country of millions dollars in
 transportation costs and by forcing the closing of dozens of factories and schools.

 Wayne Smith, former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana and a
 frequent visitor to Cuba, acknowledged that Castro's behavior has become a topic
 of discreet conversation in Havana.

 ``There are all these things that don't necessarily mean Castro is going over the
 hill, but certainly people are wondering . . .,'' Smith said.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald