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Gandalf Grey
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Bush Sat on Evidence of Cuban Terror
By Robert Parry
Created May 8 2007 - 9:07am
Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles
successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed
secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist
bombings in Havana a decade ago.
The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources
in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that
killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the
document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada
that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.
On April 19, however, Posada was freed on $350,000 bond and allowed to live
in his wife's home in Miami, where many right-wing Cuban exiles regard him
as a hero.
The relatively gentle handling of Posada and other right-wing Cubans
connected to terrorist acts against the communist government of Fidel Castro
is in marked contrast to George W. Bush's harsh treatment of Islamic
militants captured during the "global war on terror."
While suspected Islamic terrorists are locked away indefinitely at the U.S.
military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and can undergo "alternative
interrogation techniques," Posada has been afforded all U.S. legal
protections and then some.
Bush has refused to extradite Posada to Venezuela or Cuba, where he is
sought on other terrorism charges for masterminding the 1976 mid-air bombing
of a Cubana Airliner killing all 73 people on board, including the young
Cuban national fencing team.
During a court hearing in Texas on Posada, Bush administration lawyers
allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would
face torture if he were returned to Venezuela where he held citizenship and
once worked as an intelligence officer. The judge, therefore, barred Posada
to be deported there.
After that ruling, Venezuela's Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accused the Bush
administration of applying "a cynical double standard" in the "war on
terror." As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said,
"There isn't a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in
Venezuela."
It now appears the Bush administration also was sitting on evidence
implicating Posada in more recent acts of terrorism, the 1997 hotel bombings
in Havana.
The Associated Press reported that the FBI document, now filed with the
court, cited "confidential sources," including one source saying that two
Posada associates at a Guatemalan utility company spoke about plans to
assassinate Castro. The source then planted a listening device in an office
and picked up conversations about smuggling a "putty-like explosive" into
Cuba in the shoes of operatives posing as tourists, the document said.
The source added that another employee of the utility company found 22
plastic tubes in a closet in August 1997 labeled "high-powered explosives,
extremely dangerous." The explosives were being mixed into shampoo bottles,
the employee said.
According to the AP, the confidential source provided the FBI with a fax
about wire transfers from individuals in New Jersey that was signed Solo,
one of Posada's aliases. The FBI concluded that at least $19,000 in wire
transfers connected to the hotel bombings were sent from the United States
to El Salvador and Guatemala to a "Ramon Medina," the code name used by
Posada in the 1980s when he worked on the Iran-Contra operations overseen by
White House aide Oliver North. [AP, May 4, 2007]
Admissions/Denials
In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a
role in the Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from
Cuba. But Posada later denied making the admissions. He also has denied
masterminding the 1976 airliner bombing in collusion with another notorious
Cuban exile, Orlando Bosch, who is living in Miami, too, with the help and
protection of the Bush family.
Not only did the Bush administration take a dive during Posada's deportation
hearing by letting the Venezuela torture claim go unchallenged, but also it
ignored Bosch's statement a year ago, when he justified the 1976 mid-air
bombing in a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami's Channel 41.
"Did you down that plane in 1976?" Cao asked Bosch.
"If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself," Bosch
answered, "and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you
would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or
the other."
But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane
crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us
Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to
down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack
anything that is within your reach."
"But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their
families?" Cao asked.
"Who was on board that plane?" Bosch responded. "Four members of the
Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese." [Officials tallies
actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]
Bosch added, "Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our
enemies."
"And the fencers?" Cao asked about Cuba's amateur fencing team that had just
won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in
Caracas. "The young people on board?"
Bosch replied, "I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There
were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six
dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. . She gave a speech filled with
praise for the tyrant.
"We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba
to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that
fight alongside the tyranny." [The comment about Santo Domingo was an
apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist
organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.]
"If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't
you think it difficult?" Cao asked.
"No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were
cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba," Bosch answered.
CIA Files
Beyond Bosch's incriminating statements about the Cubana Airlines bombing,
other evidence of his and Posada's guilt is overwhelming.
Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana Airlines plane
was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction
of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the
bombing.
But in fall 1976, Bush's boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight
election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration
wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and
other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert
Parry's Secrecy & Privilege [1].]
Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were known. According to a
secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela
relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in
anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and
Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela's intelligence
agency, DISIP.
The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976
under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close
Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia "to
protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela."
On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report.
Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch's honor. "A few days following
the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, 'we are going to
hit a Cuban airplane,' and that 'Orlando has the details,'" the CIA report
said.
"Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados,
Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave
Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the
Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory."
In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles,
Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados,
confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the
architects of the attack.
A search of Posada's apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines
timetables and other incriminating documents.
Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing,
but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in
possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass
President Andres Perez.
Lost Interest
After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in 1981, the
momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist
plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing
terrorism.
In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help
of Cuban exiles. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban
activist Jorge Mas Canosa for providing the $25,000 that was used to bribe
guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.
Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez,
who was close to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Rodriguez then was
handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet
project of President Ronald Reagan.
After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and
began using the code name "Ramon Medina." Posada was assigned the job of
paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.
When one of the contra-supply planes was shot down inside Nicaragua in
October 1986, Posada was responsible for alerting U.S. officials to the
crisis and then shutting down the operation's safe houses in El Salvador.
Even after the exposure of Posada's role in the contra-supply operation, the
U.S. government made no effort to bring the accused terrorist to justice.
By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela's jails and back
in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks,
was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington
couldn't credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a
terrorist like Bosch.
But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a
lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad,
President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the
unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.
In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush's presidency, the FBI interviewed
Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6
By Robert Parry
Created May 8 2007 - 9:07am
Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles
successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed
secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist
bombings in Havana a decade ago.
The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources
in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that
killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the
document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada
that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.
On April 19, however, Posada was freed on $350,000 bond and allowed to live
in his wife's home in Miami, where many right-wing Cuban exiles regard him
as a hero.
The relatively gentle handling of Posada and other right-wing Cubans
connected to terrorist acts against the communist government of Fidel Castro
is in marked contrast to George W. Bush's harsh treatment of Islamic
militants captured during the "global war on terror."
While suspected Islamic terrorists are locked away indefinitely at the U.S.
military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and can undergo "alternative
interrogation techniques," Posada has been afforded all U.S. legal
protections and then some.
Bush has refused to extradite Posada to Venezuela or Cuba, where he is
sought on other terrorism charges for masterminding the 1976 mid-air bombing
of a Cubana Airliner killing all 73 people on board, including the young
Cuban national fencing team.
During a court hearing in Texas on Posada, Bush administration lawyers
allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would
face torture if he were returned to Venezuela where he held citizenship and
once worked as an intelligence officer. The judge, therefore, barred Posada
to be deported there.
After that ruling, Venezuela's Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accused the Bush
administration of applying "a cynical double standard" in the "war on
terror." As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said,
"There isn't a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in
Venezuela."
It now appears the Bush administration also was sitting on evidence
implicating Posada in more recent acts of terrorism, the 1997 hotel bombings
in Havana.
The Associated Press reported that the FBI document, now filed with the
court, cited "confidential sources," including one source saying that two
Posada associates at a Guatemalan utility company spoke about plans to
assassinate Castro. The source then planted a listening device in an office
and picked up conversations about smuggling a "putty-like explosive" into
Cuba in the shoes of operatives posing as tourists, the document said.
The source added that another employee of the utility company found 22
plastic tubes in a closet in August 1997 labeled "high-powered explosives,
extremely dangerous." The explosives were being mixed into shampoo bottles,
the employee said.
According to the AP, the confidential source provided the FBI with a fax
about wire transfers from individuals in New Jersey that was signed Solo,
one of Posada's aliases. The FBI concluded that at least $19,000 in wire
transfers connected to the hotel bombings were sent from the United States
to El Salvador and Guatemala to a "Ramon Medina," the code name used by
Posada in the 1980s when he worked on the Iran-Contra operations overseen by
White House aide Oliver North. [AP, May 4, 2007]
Admissions/Denials
In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a
role in the Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from
Cuba. But Posada later denied making the admissions. He also has denied
masterminding the 1976 airliner bombing in collusion with another notorious
Cuban exile, Orlando Bosch, who is living in Miami, too, with the help and
protection of the Bush family.
Not only did the Bush administration take a dive during Posada's deportation
hearing by letting the Venezuela torture claim go unchallenged, but also it
ignored Bosch's statement a year ago, when he justified the 1976 mid-air
bombing in a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami's Channel 41.
"Did you down that plane in 1976?" Cao asked Bosch.
"If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself," Bosch
answered, "and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you
would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or
the other."
But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane
crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us
Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to
down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack
anything that is within your reach."
"But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their
families?" Cao asked.
"Who was on board that plane?" Bosch responded. "Four members of the
Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese." [Officials tallies
actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]
Bosch added, "Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our
enemies."
"And the fencers?" Cao asked about Cuba's amateur fencing team that had just
won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in
Caracas. "The young people on board?"
Bosch replied, "I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There
were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six
dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. . She gave a speech filled with
praise for the tyrant.
"We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba
to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that
fight alongside the tyranny." [The comment about Santo Domingo was an
apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist
organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.]
"If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't
you think it difficult?" Cao asked.
"No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were
cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba," Bosch answered.
CIA Files
Beyond Bosch's incriminating statements about the Cubana Airlines bombing,
other evidence of his and Posada's guilt is overwhelming.
Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana Airlines plane
was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction
of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the
bombing.
But in fall 1976, Bush's boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight
election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration
wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and
other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert
Parry's Secrecy & Privilege [1].]
Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were known. According to a
secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela
relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in
anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and
Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela's intelligence
agency, DISIP.
The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976
under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close
Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia "to
protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela."
On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report.
Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch's honor. "A few days following
the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, 'we are going to
hit a Cuban airplane,' and that 'Orlando has the details,'" the CIA report
said.
"Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados,
Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave
Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the
Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory."
In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles,
Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados,
confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the
architects of the attack.
A search of Posada's apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines
timetables and other incriminating documents.
Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing,
but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in
possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass
President Andres Perez.
Lost Interest
After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in 1981, the
momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist
plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing
terrorism.
In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help
of Cuban exiles. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban
activist Jorge Mas Canosa for providing the $25,000 that was used to bribe
guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.
Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez,
who was close to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Rodriguez then was
handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet
project of President Ronald Reagan.
After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and
began using the code name "Ramon Medina." Posada was assigned the job of
paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.
When one of the contra-supply planes was shot down inside Nicaragua in
October 1986, Posada was responsible for alerting U.S. officials to the
crisis and then shutting down the operation's safe houses in El Salvador.
Even after the exposure of Posada's role in the contra-supply operation, the
U.S. government made no effort to bring the accused terrorist to justice.
By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela's jails and back
in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks,
was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington
couldn't credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a
terrorist like Bosch.
But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a
lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad,
President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the
unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.
In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush's presidency, the FBI interviewed
Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6