Q: Years ago a sharp-eyed member posted a screen grab of Questadt sitting behind Roth in Havana. A lot of people on this board hadn't noticed it before. It raised an immediate question: If Michael had seen Questadt sitting behind Roth in Havana, he'd have known, as soon as Questadt turned up as the lawyer questioning him at the Senate hearing, that he'd fallen into a trap set by Roth--and he would have comported himself differently. Some people here speculated that Michael's diabetes, which manifested itself in III, had already begun to affect his vision in II. Another member resolved it: He found an earlier script treatment in which Michael was to meet with Questadt in Havana. FFC dropped that idea from the final cut--wise decision, since Michael finding out (from Fredo, no less) that Questadt belonged to Roth--after he perjured himself--made for far better drama.

That left another question: Why did FFC leave that snippet of Questadt in the final cut? My guess is that FFC had already shot the Presidential meeting scene and may have shot the Michael/Questadt scene later (if it was shot). After he made the decision to drop the Michael/Questadt meeting, he was unable to cut out that snippet of Questadt in the Presidential meeting--probably because, in that pre-digital era, he couldn't have done so without disrupting the visual and audio content of the scene. All of the Havana scenes were shot on location in the Dominican Republic, and it would have been prohibitively expensive--maybe impossible--to redo that scene just to cut out two seconds of Questadt. So, I'm guessing, FFC left the snippet of Questadt in, hoping no one would notice. Of course, that was before this Board existed.