In 1955, Worthy spent six weeks in Moscow, interviewing Nikita Khrushchev. In 1956, he managed to board a plane to Apartheid South Africa, but was deported after 36 hours. He then traveled to China (1956–57), where he interviewed Zhou Enlai and Cuba (1961), where he interviewed Fidel Castro, in violation of United States State Department travel regulations. At the time he entered China, Worthy was the first American reporter to visit and broadcast from there since the country's communist revolution in 1949. While in China Worthy interviewed Samuel David Hawkins, an American soldier who was captured by the Chinese during the Korean War and defected to China in 1953. His passport was seized upon his return to the U.S. from China and American lawyers Leonard Boudin and William Kunstler represented Worthy in an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking the return of his passport.