'The U.S. cannot afford to shelter terrorists'

• An interview with attorney José Pertierra

Taken from Progreso Weekly
June 29, 2005

On June 22, Francisco Aruca, director of Radio Progreso Alternativa, had an exclusive interview with José Pertierra, one of the most prestigious immigration attorneys in the United States. Pertierra, a Cuban-American, currently works for the Venezuelan government and has a leading role in the process relating to the extradition of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Before joining Venezuela's legal team, Pertierra was an obligatory news source for the U.S. and international media when it came to "the Posada case."

His explanations and first-hand information led to the rectification of a statement, repeated often by news agencies and the press, to the effect that Posada Carriles had been acquitted by the courts on two occasions. Proof of this is the article published June 19 by The Miami Herald under Oscar Corral's byline.

The so-called "Posada case" has great importance for the relations between the United States and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Further, the Posada case qualifies as a test of the consistency of the Bush administration with its antiterrorist gospel, because it holds in its hands the man many have called the Bin Lade of the Western Hemisphere.

What will happen with Posada? What is the outlook of the case, from the judicial-legal point of view? These and other questions are brilliantly answered by José Pertierra.

Progreso Weekly is pleased to present to its readers this version of the radio interview.

FRANCISCO ARUCA (FA): Dr. Pertierra, I would like to begin by addressing the fact that Venezuela has already submitted a request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela. On what grounds do you say that the extradition case raised by Venezuela to the U.S. Department of State is a strong case and that therefore it deserves to be answered in a positive way?

JOSÉ PERTIERRA (JP): The standard used by tribunals regarding a request for extradition is quite broad. It is not necessary to demonstrate guilt; it is enough to demonstrate probable cause that the individual is guilty.

You also have to demonstrate that the crime for which the individual is sought is a crime contained in the 1922 Treaty of Extradition between the United States and Venezuela. You have to demonstrate that it is contained in the Venezuelan Penal Code and also contained, in a similar manner, in the U.S. Penal Code.

In this case, Posada Carriles is sought for the aggravated homicide of 73 persons. In Venezuelan law, that's called "qualified homicide." It appears in the Venezuelan Penal Code, the U.S. Penal Code and is crime number one in the 1922 treaty between Venezuela and the U.S. You only need to establish probable cause and demonstrate that an arrest warrant has been issued.

We have also submitted the arrest warrant. As to probable cause, in terms of the evidence, we have so much, Aruca, that I think we've demonstrated Posada Carriles' guilt. For example, we have submitted to the State Department the confession of one of the material authors, a gentleman named Hernán Ricardo, a Venezuelan. He is a person who admits being an agent for, and employee of, Posada Carriles in a business that Posada Carriles had in Caracas in 1976. This is the individual who placed the bomb in the Cubana de Aviación airliner.

In his testimony, [Ricardo] says that they planned the attack in two Caracas hotels, the Caracas Hilton and the Anauco Hilton. He says everything was planned together with the other material author, Freddy Lugo, with Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. He tells how he obtained the C4 [plastic] explosive, how he carried it to the plane from Caracas in a tube of toothpaste and transferred it to a photographic camera, and how he placed the bomb in that camera in the rear toilet of the plane.

Ricardo and Lugo left the plane in Barbados and after the plane took off it exploded over the coast of Barbados. We submitted evidence that Ricardo phoned Posada Carriles in Caracas from his hotel in Barbados. We submitted the telephone records from Barbados, showing Posada Carriles' telephone numbers, called by Ricardo. We submitted testimony from the hotel receptionist who placed the calls to Posada Carriles. We submitted the testimony of the secretary in Caracas who received the call from Ricardo to Posada Carriles.

We also submitted the testimony of Ricardo's former sweetheart, who received a phone call from Ricardo in which he asked her to tell Posada Carriles that "the bug has exploded and the dogs have died" (the dogs, of course, were the plane's passengers) and that the situation was red hot and that Ricardo and Lugo needed help and that Luis had to send help and that they would be near the Venezuelan Embassy in case they needed to seek asylum there, that they were in Barbados at that moment and were asking for that kind of help.

In other words, that type of proof -- which is corroborated by the documentation recently declassified by the FBI and the CIA -- demonstrates this gentleman's guilt. And remember, we don't even have to prove his guilt; that has to be done by the courts in Venezuela.

FA: You said it very clearly: you only need to demonstrate probable cause.

JP: I think that, in terms of extradition, Posada Carriles is legally buried.

FA: All that testimony, at least most of that testimony, apart from the fact that it now appears on those CIA and FBI documents, isn't it also testimony that the Venezuelan courts had accepted at the time Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were tried and found guilty? Much of this testimony was proved by Venezuelan law to be valid enough to sentence them to jail.

JP: That is correct. Those documents are depositions that were included in the trial against Lugo, Ricardo, Posada Carriles and Bosch. At that trial, Ricardo was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for homicide. Lugo and Ricardo. Not Posada Carriles, because Posada Carriles escaped from jail on the eve of the court's verdict and, under Venezuelan law, the court cannot pronounce a verdict if the defendant is absent. So, the court, instead of sentencing him, issues a warrant for his arrest and keeps the case open until that gentleman appears again before Venezuelan justice or is captured.

FA: Which is what would happen if [the United States] extradites him.

JP: Exactly.

FA: We know that the first inquiries in connection with the destruction of the plane were made by the authorities in Barbados and Trinidad. I also understand that the inquiries were very good, very objective. What's more, it was Trinidad that arrested Lugo and Ricardo ...

JP: Yes, because they fled from Barbados.

FA: And I understand that those inquiries, which were to be part of the legal process in Venezuela in the 1980s, were thrown out the window, were dropped for the simple reason that they were in English and they didn't bother to translate them into Spanish. However, the inquiries made by the governments of Barbados and Trinidad now appear as part of the documents in both languages, in Spanish and English, [and] have been submitted to the Department of State. Is that true?

JP: You are right in that the documentation was submitted last Wednesday [June 15] to the Department of State and that it contains testimony from police officers and investigators, both from Trinidad and Barbados, where these investigators talk about the confession they obtained from Hernán Ricardo and about the phone calls, and all that.

That documentation was translated from English into Spanish and was recently authenticated by the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. It was sealed and submitted to the Department of State, in compliance with all the regulations dealing with extradition. That's the documentation that serves as a basis to describe the events that occurred before, during and after the attack on the Cubana de Aviación airliner. These police officers, these individuals, these witnesses in Trinidad and Barbados, the witnesses in Venezuela exist not only on paper, these people are flesh and blood.

FA: Many of them are still alive ...

JP: Yes, and those individuals will be witnesses at any proceeding held in Venezuela. In other words, the evidence is overwhelming, it is evidence that at one time served to sentence Ricardo and Lugo on charges of homicide and now will be used against Posada Carriles as the intellectual author of the crime, just as Ricardo said.

FA: Posada Carriles is facing immigration hearings for entering the country illegally and now, simultaneously, Venezuela submits its petition for extradition. We have read statements you made to the press, where you say that the extradition proceedings take precedent over the immigration hearings being held in El Paso, Texas. On what do you base those statements? And if they are correct, what do they mean in specific terms?

JP: The regulations of the State Department establish very clearly the priority of the extradition process over the immigration process. There are cases that interpret those regulations and establish precedents that enable the extradition process to have priority over the immigration process. One of the main cases is that of former Venezuelan president Pérez Jiménez, an extradition process where the Immigration Appeals Court states very clearly that the immigration or deportation proceedings must be suspended until the extradition process has concluded.

This is not something arbitrary or done simply because the regulations exist. This has common sense. Let's suppose, for instance, that Posada Carriles is a permanent resident of the United States and that he did not entered [the country] illegally but has lived here for many years. If the Venezuelan government submits a request for extradition with all the evidence I have mentioned to you, and if a federal court orders his extradition, Posada Carriles cannot argue in his defense that he is a permanent resident and therefore cannot be extradited.

He will be extradited because he is a Venezuelan citizen, an arrest warrant for him was issued in Venezuela, there is evidence that there is probable cause that he committed those crimes, there is evidence that he is accused of homicide, [a crime] included in the Venezuelan Penal Code, in the extradition treaty between the United States and Venezuela, and in the U.S. Penal Code. That's the only thing the court needs to consider, and if he claims in his defense that he is a permanent resident, the immigration judge will say to him: "Look, that defense is moot because [your residence] is immaterial."

I was a bit surprised when I read statements to the press by Posada Carriles' legal team to the effect that he had entered the United States illegally and that he continued to be a permanent resident. In cases where someone requests asylum, it is common for that person to say he entered illegally. That doesn't surprise me. But to say at the same time that one continues to be a resident is a contradiction, because the law says very clearly that if you are a permanent resident and enter the country illegally without going through the immigration booth, you are deportable from the United States. In other words, to tell the judge that the client entered illegally and then say that [the client] is a permanent resident is a contradiction.

FA: There are two theories as to how Posada Carriles entered the United States. One, the explanation he himself gave to the media, that he entered by land from Mexico all the way to Miami, and the other, that he entered by ship, that a ship from Miami piloted by his associates went to pick him up at Isla Mujeres and they brought him in.

If the latter is true, there is another series of complications in terms of a conspiracy, the commission of the crime of smuggling a person into this country, etc. In either case, is there something that could lead to an investigation of how the illegal entry being heard in El Paso was committed?

JP: From the point of view of extradition, the manner in which he entered the country is of no importance, because, although he is a resident, he is extraditable from this country. From the point of view of immigration, I believe that as soon as the judge in El Paso is told that this man entered the United States illegally deportability will be established, and it won't matter if [Posada Carriles] entered illegally from Mexico in a bus, or if he entered illegally through Miami on a boat.

However, from the prosecutor's point of view, in this case the Department of Homeland Security, there is an obligation to investigate exactly how this gentleman entered the country, because if he was helped to enter on a boat through Isla Mujeres, the individuals who helped him committed serious felonies, because not only is it a crime to transport and introduce a person into the country illegally but also if that person is a terrorist the punishment is even more severe. And in this case there is evidence that was initially presented by a newspaper in Yucatán called Por Esto ...

FA: We interviewed one of the journalists who conducted that investigation, so the public is well aware of that ...

JP: The Department of Homeland Security has an obligation to investigate that, and -- if they are protecting the country from terrorists -- they'll have to bring to trial those who helped [Posada Carriles]. Now, if you are an immigration judge and an individual tells you that he wants asylum in the United States and he tells you a cock-and-bull story about the way he entered and you determine that his story is not credible and that the fellow is lying to you, that has a deadly effect on whatever he claims in his bid for asylum.

That's why an immigration lawyer will always tell a client to speak nothing but the truth, because if they catch you in a lie, they'll bury your case. So, it would be to Mr. Posada Carriles' advantage to tell the truth in his case; if he doesn't, I believe that even his bid for asylum will sink with the Santrina.

FA: Posada Carriles' lawyer, Mr. Eduardo Soto, has said that Venezuela has no jurisdiction in this case,as regards its petition for extradition, because the plane that blew up over Barbados was not a Venezuelan aircraft and, besides, the explosion did not occur in Venezuela but over the coast of Barbados. What do you say to this argument?

JP: First of all, the argument of lack of jurisdiction is out of order in an extradition hearing. The extradition judge only wants to know if an arrest warrant is standing, if the crime is included in the extradition treaty and if there is probable cause to determine guilt. If [the defendants] want to raise the arguments of jurisdiction in Venezuela, they can do so, but I don't thing they'll get anywhere because it has been well established that they planned the attack in the Caracas Hilton and the Anauco Hilton, that they provided the materials for the attack in Caracas,armed the explosive in Caracas, boarded a plane with the explosive in Caracas, and Posada Carriles, Lugo and Ricardo are Venezuelans.

That alone establishes jurisdiction. The simple fact that they are Venezuelans establishes extraterritorial jurisdiction. Beyond that, the fact that Barbados and Trinidad decided not to prosecute the cases and turned them over to Venezuela gives jurisdiction to Venezuela. I understand that both Barbados and Trinidad decided to extradite them to Venezuela as a way of helping them, because if they extradited them to Cuba, Cuba had capital punishment and Venezuela didn't. So, to say now that Venezuela has no jurisdiction makes no sense. Also, ever since this case began in 1976, the Venezuelan courts are very clear on the fact that they have jurisdiction.

FA: You and Rosa Miriam Elizalde wrote an article that was published in Progreso Semanal and Progreso Weekly, in which you really demolished -- because that's the correct word -- the myth that Posada Carriles was acquitted twice by the Venezuelan authorities. That allegation was made regularly by all the communications media. Even the State Department made it when it referred to Venezuela's request for the preventive detention of Posada Carriles.

By raising those arguments, you prompted the English-language [The Miami] Herald to admit last Sunday [June 19] that actually there is no way to say that he was acquitted twice. Tell us how you demonstrated so clearly that such double absolution never existed.

JP: First of all, I would like to acknowledge the work The Miami Herald did on this story, because it's not often that you see a newspaper make the same mistake for so many years. They started this theory of the double absolution in the year 1997 ...

FA: And they so admitted in the article ...

JP: And in the article they themselves admitted that the myth of the double absolution began with The Miami Herald in 1997. In other words, we must recognize that The Miami Herald did a gentlemanly form of self-criticism; they should be congratulated, because they did it with seriousness and professionalism.

FA: Nevertheless, to keep the record straight, to this day Oscar Corral's article has not been translated into Spanish. Let it be clear that we're talking about The Miami Herald.

JP: Yes. Well, what happened with this myth was than in '97, in an article The Miami Herald published about Posada Carriles' connection with the bombs that exploded in Havana's tourist sector, [the newspaper] said that he was acquitted twice in Venezuela. After that, the story was repeated by the news services and, until very recently, everyone assumed that it was true.

That myth is important, because the American people -- upon hearing that he was acquitted twice -- ask themselves why he is still being sought and think that instead of bringing him to trial the Venezuelans want to persecute him. We went to Caracas to investigate this, and not just in the legal records but also in the public record.

In the newspapers from October 1976 to 1985, you read the history of this case, the history of the facts and the history of the law. And you learn that, after Trinidad sends Lugo and Ricardo to Caracas and Posada Carriles is arrested six days after the destruction of the plane, [the Venezuelan authorities] decided to try them in a military tribunal, a tribunal that had no jurisdiction to hear such cases, that had no legal authority to hear them.

It was the wrong forum, because neither Posada Carriles nor Ricardo nor Lugo were military personnel or worked for the Venezuelan government in 1976. And the crime of qualified homicide or aggravated homicide cannot be tried by a military tribunal; it must be tried by a criminal court. Nevertheless, the military tribunal initially handed down an acquittal. The prosecutor appealed, [arguing] that it was the wrong forum. The military appeals tribunal then agreed with the prosecutor and said: "We have no legal authority, no jurisdiction to proceed with this case, to hear this case, or to rule on this case." And it annulled the acquittal.

According to the law, to annul a verdict means to eliminate it, to establish that it never existed. It's like the difference between a divorce and an annulment. When you get a divorce, the court says that your marriage did exist. When you get an annulment, the court says that the marriage never existed. The first acquittal cited by The Miami Herald was legally annulled and does not legally exist. [The Herald] refers or referred -- and so did the news services -- to an alleged acquittal that never occurred.

What happened was that when the military tribunal remanded the case to the civil sector, the [criminal] court restarted the process by hearing the evidence and Posada Carriles tried twice to escape from jail. He even did it with explosives smuggled into jail by his friends. Every time he tried to escape, the proceedings were halted. On the eve of the civil court's verdict, Posada Carriles managed to escape a third time, again thanks to explosives.

After he escaped from jail, the court ruled against Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo and sentenced them to 20 years each. But the court could not rule in the case of Posada Carriles because Venezuelan law says that a court may not rule on a case if the defendant is not present, much less in a case where the defendant has escaped.

What the court did then was to issue an arrest warrant for Posada Carriles -- which is a version of the arrest warrant we have submitted to the State Department -- and kept the case open in Venezuela until such a time as Posada Carriles can be extradited. Then he will undergo a new trial, where he will enjoy all the rights granted by law to any citizen. He will even be entitled to have a public defender, if he cannot afford the legal team he has now.

FA: It is clear then that not only was there no double absolution, but also there never was an acquittal.

JP: No, there was no double absolution. One acquittal was annulled and the other never happened.

FA: You have almost built the case that, on the strength of the case being presented by Venezuela, the federal judge who will deal with the extradition could conclude that, yes, he is extraditable. We all know that if the federal judge says there is a case for extradition, the case goes to the Secretary of State [Condoleezza Rice]. What can you tell us in this respect?

JP: When a judge orders someone's extradition, the Secretary of State has three options. She can extradite, she can refuse to extradite and thus violate the extradition treaty -- and that, of course, has political and legal consequences for the United States -- or she can extradite while placing conditions on Venezuela, that is, telling Venezuela that it can try [the defendant] only for homicide, for example.

Anticipating that request and those conditions, Venezuela took a first step in good faith and dropped the charges of treason to the motherland and escape from prison, so the only charge pending against Posada Carriles is qualified homicide of 73 persons, something for which he must be extradited. So, I don't believe that the Secretary of State should worry about imposing any conditions on Venezuela, because Venezuela is complying with everything.

Venezuela may not extradite Posada Carriles to any other country, either. Under Venezuelan law, he must remain in Venezuela and render accounts in Venezuela and only for homicide. Certain [U.S.] government officials have said that the United States does not intend to extradite Posada Carriles to Cuba or to any country that acts "on behalf of" Cuba. Well, Cuba has said it renounces any right of extradition it may have over Posada Carriles. Venezuela has asked for him and has said it won't extradite him anywhere else; and it cannot do so, according to its own laws.

Venezuela is not a country that functions "on behalf of" another country, either. Venezuela is a sovereign and independent country. The officials who have expressed themselves that way do not work for the State Department; they work for the Department of Homeland Security, which has no legal authority to rule on the extradition of Posada Carriles. This is a decision that lies in the hands of the Secretary of State and she still hasn't made it.

We understand, from U.S. government officials, that we shouldn't rule out that this country will extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela, so we are confident that the United States will obey the law, the treaty and any order issued by a federal judge and will extradite him to Venezuela. I have seen on many occasions that the U.S. government has been reluctant to do something, but -- out of respect for the law and respect for the process, and also recognizing the consequences of breaking the law -- it has done what perhaps it was not eager to do.

I believe that, after the entire legal process is completed and a ruling is made by the federal court, the government of the United States will recognize its legal and moral obligation to extradite this man. Especially after 9/11, the United States cannot afford to shelter terrorists, especially if it wants the world to take its war on terrorism seriously.

[Posada Carriles] is the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America; he is an extremely dangerous man. He is responsible not only for the destruction of the plane but also for a campaign of terror in Latin America, first in South America, later in Central America and then in Cuba. I would say to you that the United States eventually will extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela so he may settle accounts with the Venezuelan people.

FA: Dr. Pertierra, many, many thanks. All I can say is that your presentation has been, if you'll allow me to say it, brilliant.

JP: Thank you for the invitation, Aruca. You may call on me again any time you wish.

FA: It will be a pleasure. It has been very clear, very precise. It has provided a huge amount of information, which I am sure our audience will value for its merit. Many thanks.

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The mass media, symbols and ownership

By Saul Landau
Taken from Progreso Weekly
June 22, 2005

How to understand torture by a free society with a free press!

Over the last year, overwhelming evidence forced the media to report that U.S. military personnel had tortured Muslim prisoners. On May 9, Newsweek claimed that a prison guard had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

Apparently, millions took this insult to the Koran more seriously than they had taken the torture of hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Muslims. Riots occurred in several cities.

Ironically, the Bush Administration chastised the messenger. Newsweek became a target of Bush wrath – for inaccurate reporting. And, accepting the White House spin, the rest of the media piled on, ignoring that reliable sources – including the FBI – had already documented the use by U.S. military and CIA personnel of Koran desecration. Leading news organs sent reporters on assignments to examine whether the actual “flushing down the toilet” incident had occurred.

The fact that this incident, not any of thousands, ignited the riots did not seem to provide incentive for investigating the torture. Rather, Newsweek became the subject of the question “did they or didn’t they have sufficient proof to run the story?”

Newsweek retracted the story several days later. The rest of the media failed to back up the news magazine; nor did they examine the disproportionate response that Koran desecration brought on as compared to human desecration.

After all, the Vietnam War had produced flag burners who some self-designated patriots thought merited the death penalty for desecrating a piece of cloth. So, apparently it was implicitly understood that symbols are better than people at inflaming zealous publics: a “holy” book hitting a toilet meant more than torture to live people. (No one asked what it did to the toilet.)

Newsweek did not benefit from findings by the Pentagon itself, which issued a report on late Friday afternoon, June 3, a typical ploy to minimize readership. The report cited “two other cases of desecration,” one involved “a two-word obscenity written in English inside a prisoner’s Koran.” In another episode “one soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book, other guards hit it with water balloons and a soldier’s urine was splashed on a prisoner and his Koran” (LA Times June 4).

The New York Times (June 4) reported that “the guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine into a detainee’s cell.” The Times did not ask if the guard’s urine went astray because the Guantanamo base lacks latrines. Indeed, it doesn’t require Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the guard was pissing on the prisoner and that the poor guy happened to have his Koran in hand when the pee hit the cell.

Previously, newspapers and TV news programs carried photos of U.S. personnel using sex and animal torture. Reports from the Red Cross, the FBI and other first hand observers added sleep deprivation, incessant noise and other forms of torture outlawed by the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. The attack on Newsweek and its subsequent retraction for having printed a basically accurate story marks the second occasion in the past year that the U.S. public has witnessed righteous anger aimed successfully at true stories.

Last year, CBS also pulled back publicly from an accurate story because the ultra right and the Bush Administration aggressively accused them of bad reporting. And the rest of the media piled on.

Dan Rather’s “60 Minutes” Wednesday story aired on September 8, 2004. Bushies screamed that CBS had used forged documents and timed the story to coincide with the presidential race. A chorus of right wing AM radio talk show hosts chimed in. “Liberal bias,” they screamed, had motivated CBS’ broadcast of a show that impugned Bush’s military record.

“60 Minutes” offered four written documents. Rather said they were written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now dead, who was Bush's Texas Air National Guard commander in the early 1970s. The documents showed that Bush disobeyed orders to report for a physical exam, and that Bush family buddies intervened to “sugar coat” his Guard service. The memos showed Bush as a shirker who used family influence to stay out of Vietnam and then reduce the time he agreed to serve in the Guard. Killian’s then secretary backed up the thrust of the documents in her appearance on the show.

Bush supporters immediately challenged the documents’ validity, but even if the actual papers were forged, CBS had accumulated sufficient material to support the gist of their story. The forgery complaints obscured the focus of the reporting and shifted the issue to one of “integrity in journalism.” CBS retracted the story. Instead of the media focusing on how Bush got out of service while his rival Kerry served in dangerous combat, the media helped the Bushies turn the story into its opposite.

The liberal media was out to get Bush. Meanwhile the “Swift Boat” vets began a defamation campaign against Kerry, implying that he didn’t deserve the medals he got for his combat.

On January 10, 2005, CBS continued its capitulation ritual by firing three executives for their role in preparing and reporting the Bush-National Guard service story. CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves deeply regretted “the disservice this flawed 60 Minutes Wednesday report did to the American public, which has a right to count on CBS News for fairness and accuracy.”

Senior producer Mary Mapes accused Moonves of making her a “scapegoat.” She said, correctly, that he acted out of “corporate and political considerations – ratings rather than journalism.”

Viacom, a multinational corporation, owns CBS. The other networks belong to similar transnational titans all of whom have a basic interest in staying on the good side of the U.S. government. The result of multinational corporate ownership on reporting is that mass media fear to de-legitimize government. Instead, they attack the “investigative journalist” who might make a tiny factual error in reporting otherwise true government criminality or deviousness.

The change occurred after the Watergate era, when Washington Post owners, who also own Newsweek, kvelled over the role Post reporters played in forcing Richard Nixon to resign. What a difference three decades make. In 2005, exposés of government and corporate misdeeds vitiate corporate interests
For decades, the old 60 Minutes show had exposed government and corporate corruption. But in 1995, the relationship of the CBS corporation and an exposé of the tobacco industry forced the show’s producers to compromise.

In 1995, CBS decided not to air a “60 Minutes” report produced by Lowell Bergman on Jeffrey Wigand, a former vice president of Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company. Wigand said that the tobacco executives purposely “hid the truth about tobacco’s addictive and harmful properties from the American public. CBS and the key producers and reporters all had interest in tobacco stock and softened the attack against the giant tobacco producers” (Bergman, Columbia Journalism Review May/June 2000). A CBS lawyer told Bergman that “the corporation will not risk its assets on the story.”

Ironically, the ultra right still rant about the liberal media, but in fact as the retractions by Newsweek and CBS show, the networks cannot play a legitimate news function because they must legitimate both their own corporate interests and that of the government, which protects and abets them in their international pursuits of greater wealth. Thus, an editor, who explicitly or implicitly understands these facts of corporate power, will be reluctant to assign reporters or commit resources to stories that might conflict with basic corporate interests – despite the fact that the public needs to know about them.

News about Michael Jackson abounds while only rare reporting deals with issues like the adverse health effects of depleted uranium, the 2002 Downing street memo that showed Bush and Blair colluding to go to war against Iraq, and the billions apparently skimmed by Administration-friendly companies in Iraq. The major media loves celebrity news, which obscures stories about unaccountable corporate and government power.

Those who represent multinational corporate interests – network and newspaper executives – understand that their media’s primary function is to validate the system that has spawned them, for which government power is essential. The law doesn’t restrict the U.S. press, but its owners obviously do. For the time being, go to the internet and non-U.S. sources for accurate news and proper context for the events that define our history. That way, you too may be able to participate in the process of your own history with proper facts and background.

Desecrating the Koran is part and parcel of the torture regime, the holding of prisoners without charges. It’s what imperialism does in its modern and worried phase. But don’t expect the mass media to tell you this.

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Posada Carriles: The double acquittal myth

By Rosa Miriam Elizalde and José Pertierra
Taken from Progreso Weekly
June 22, 2005

CARACAS - The mass media repeats – in radio spots, television reports, wire services, and newspapers stories – the same news that “Luís Posada Carriles was twice acquitted in Venezuela.” We get the impression that Venezuela still persecutes an innocent man.

Google’s search engine yields 1,229 references to the terrorist's supposed double acquittal – 953 of these in English. A lie, if repeated often enough, turns into truth – the only truth.

A fallacious conclusion always follows from a false major premise. Does it matter that the premise is unsupported by the court files in Venezuela? Does it matter that recently declassified documents from the CIA and the FBI leave no doubt that Posada Carriles is guilty of the murder of 73 people aboard a civilian airliner – including an unborn child in a mother’s womb?

Posada Carriles’ own attorney, Eduardo Soto, fans the fallacy and says to the Miami Herald: “My client was acquitted twice in Venezuela.”

Hardly a coincidence, the State Department repeats the fallacy in a May 27 diplomatic note to the Venezuelan Embassy, when it rejected Venezuela's first request for the preventive detention of Luís Posada Carriles. “There is no mention,” says the State Department in the diplomatic note “of the fact that Posada Carriles was acquitted by a military tribunal in Venezuela in a previous prosecution, and the legal effect that that decision will have under Venezuelan law.”

Why is this false premise used so cavalierly by lawyers and the government alike? Why does the press today accept as gospel truth something that can so easily be shown to be false? What really happened in Venezuela in the case of Luis Posada Carriles?

The facts

The plot was carried out by two Venezuelans named Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo who boarded a Cuban passenger plane in Trinidad on October 6, 1976. They hid C-4 explosives in a camera that Mr. Ricardo placed in the rear bathroom of the plane. Both men deplaned in Barbados, and the ill fated plane took off, exploding soon after in midair off the sandy beaches of Barbados, killing all 73 aboard, including a pregnant passenger.

Police in Barbados immediately focused their investigation on Lugo and Ricardo and arrested them a few hours after the attack. Under interrogation, both confessed and implicated two others in the plot: Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Venezuelan authorities arrested Posada and Bosch in Caracas. During a search of Posada Carriles´ home and business, police found evidence corroborating the confessions of the men in Barbados.

On August 25, 1977, Judge Delia Estava Moreno referred the case to a military tribunal, charging all four co-conspirators with treason. The military court absolved them, thus giving rise to the origin of the acquittal myth. But that is not the end of the story. Later, the Military Court of Appeals found that the military tribunal lacked jurisdiction to try the men, and nullified the previous proceedings. The Judge ruled that “those prosecuted in the case of the Cubana flight, brought down off Barbados on October 6, 1976, are civilians and the crimes imputed to them are governed by the penal (and not the military) code.” “Military jurisdiction,” said the Court, “is applicable to the military for military infractions. Civilians and common law crimes are not subject to the dispositions of the Code of Military Justice... The Military Court considers it necessary to clarify that it does not possess the subjective procedural capacity to take on the current judicial process.”

The meaning of the court’s ruling

What did the Court mean that it has no “procedural capacity” to try the case? And that the lower Court’s decision is annulled, and that the entire record of the case is void, much akin to the legal effect that an annulment has on an attempt at a marital union. For example, a divorce legally tears asunder a marriage, whereas an annulment legally declares that the marriage never happened.

The four were then charged with aggravated homicide and treason before a Civilian Court: the 10th Superior Court in the Judicial District of the State of Miranda. The litigation began as if for the first time.

The evidence on file and in the Venezuelan press

The evidence from that trial is voluminous and is now corroborated by documents recently declassified by the CIA and the FBI by the National Security Archives of George Washington University. Posada Carriles admitted a scant few days before the downing of the plane, “We are going to attack a Cuban plan, and Orlando (Bosh) has all the details.” Venezuelan court files contain affidavits confirming that the person who actually planted the bomb in the rear bathroom of the plane, Hernán Ricardo, admitted to calling Luis Posada Carriles long distance from Barbados to inform him that the mission to blow up the plane had been accomplished, referring to the murdered passengers as “dogs.”

According to an FBI document dated October 21, 1976, the organization responsible for the bombing of the plane is CORU, a terrorist organization founded a few weeks earlier to carry out terrorist attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere. One of the members of CORU, Secundino Carrera, declared that the “bombing and the resulting deaths were fully justified because CORU was at war against the regimen of Fidel Castro.”

Posada’s escape from prison

On the eve of the pronouncement of his sentence on August 8, 1985, he fled from the San Juan de los Morros penitentiary, located in the State of Guárico, where he had been confined after two previous failed escape attempts. No verdict was entered against Posada Carriles because according to the Venezuelan Penal Code judicial proceedings cannot continue without the presence of the accused. The court issued an arrest warrant against him.

His accomplices, Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo, were found guilty of murder on July 21, 1986, and sentenced to 20 years. The judge reduced the penalty to its lowest limit “due to the extenuating circumstance of no prior criminal records.” Orlando Bosch, however, was mysteriously acquitted.

Posada in El Salvador

After fleeing from that Venezuelan prison, Posada Carriles reappeared in El Salvador, using the alias of “Ramon Medina”, a name given to him by the Salvadoran government. According to FBI documents made available by the National Security Archives, he became the “support director” for the illicit contra re-supply operation being run by the Reagan White House out of the the Illopango airbase in San Salvador. In a 31-page deposition given to FBI agents in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as part of the Independent Counsel investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal, Posada detailed his participation in these covert operations, including flying on re-supply missions for contra soldiers in southern Nicaragua.

Posada Carriles continued his campaign of terror from his lair at the Ilopango air base in San Salvador. He admitted to the New York Times on July 12, 1998, that he organized a string of bombings in Havana that led to the murder of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several others. In 2004, he was convicted in Panama for “endangering public safety” in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, using powerful C-4 explosives, at the University of Panama, where the Cuban leader was to speak before a large gathering of students. Months later, he was pardoned by the President of Panama.

Posada Carriles in Texas

Posada arrived in the United States several weeks ago, surfacing at a cloak and dagger press conference in Miami on May 17. The Department of Homeland Security arrested him while he tried to flee and charged him only with “entry without inspection,” as if he had merely crossed the border illegally to pick artichokes in Salinas. DHS officials say for the record that the U.S. will not deport Posada to either Cuba or (in a not so veiled reference to Venezuela) “to any country that acts on behalf of Cuba.”

Yet Venezuela is actively seeking his extradition. It has provided the Department of State with ample evidence to meet the standard for extradition: probable cause that he is wanted in Venezuela for an extraditable offense under the 1922 Treaty between the United States and Venezuela, namely homicide. He has not been acquitted. He is a fugitive from justice. The charges are pending and he is wanted in Caracas for the first degree murder of 73 innocent people.

Posada Carriles is the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America. If the Bush Administration is at all serious about the war of terror, he needs to be extradited to stand trial for the murder of 73 passengers aboard that ill fated plane. His campaign of terror needs to end for the sake of the victims, for the sake of our safety and in the name of justice.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist, and José Pertierra is a Cuban-American attorney with an office in Washington, D.C. This article first appeared in the Cubadebate website.

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Cuba: The island of Miracles

By Salim Lamrani
Taken From Cubanow
June 15, 2005

Thanks to the relations between Cuba and Venezuela, sometimes miracles can be accomplished and many people can give truth of this. Since June 2004, twenty thousand Venezuelan citizens who had lost their eyesight -some for many decades- due to cataracts and other diseases, were able to see the light of day again thanks to the wonders of the Cuban Revolution and its matchless health care system. Obviously, the international media silenced the medical feats accomplished by Cuban specialists because it was too busy talking about the ideological issue of the “violations of human rights.”

The Venezuelan patients, who for years had not had access to medical assistance in their country, have become a priority for the government of Mr. Hugo Chavez, who decided to pay special attention to the disinherited. They were operated on for free in Cuba, according to the humanitarian and internationalist policy in force since 1959.

Cuba plans to extend this service to the rest of the Latin American nations where almost 4 million poor persons suffer from ocular maladies. At the end of 2005, nearly 100,000 Latin Americans with this suffering will benefit from the experience of the 600 ophthalmologist surgeons that the Caribbean Island has. No other country in the world has launched such an important humanitarian program to ease the misfortunes that devastate the American hemisphere.

In addition to the 100,000 foreign patients cured each year in Cuba, Havana’s government has currently taken in more than 76,000 students from poor countries, offering them a free high-level university education and runs with all the expenses. Nearly 6,000 new foreign students will be accepted next year. The Latin American School of Medicine of Havana is one of the most famous in the American continent and it has formed thousands of professionals in the field of health care from more than 123 countries.

During a meeting in Havana on the struggle against AIDS, in March 2005, the United Nations and the University of Harvard had words of praise for the Cuban health care system. The Cuban model for the prevention and treatment of HIV is considered one of the most efficient by specialists from UNDP, from Harvard School of Medicine and from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Mr. Bruno Moro -UN representative- stressed the importance of the meeting in Cuba -a country where research on the disease has gone very far.

On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out through its representative in Cuba, Mrs. Lea Guido, that the island is a model for developing countries regarding the care for mothers and children. The child mortality rate reached the record number of 5,8 per every one thousand born alive in 2004 in Cuba (only Canada has a lower child mortality rate than Cuba's in the American continent). Mrs. Guido stressed that “an investment in health care and education like the one this country has made will allow to have strong and capable citizens in the future to achieve economical progress.” She expressed her surprise to see the “successes achieved in favor of life.”

Dr. David R. Buckley, Who inspector, also admitted having been happily surprised by the high scientific and technological level of the Cuban pharmaceutical industry. According to him, the preparation of national professionals and the respect for regulation standards in force for pharmaceutical products are two fields of excellence. Experts from Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay, went to Havana to study the Cuban method.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) rewarded Cuban excellence in scientific matters granting it the Gold Medal for the invention of the vaccine -the first in the world created from synthetic antigens- against the Haemophilus influenzae type B bacteria. Every year, this germ causes half a million deaths among children under five years of age in the world. It's the sixth time that the WIPO gives a decoration to Cuba -an exceptional happening for a Third World nation.

Even Costa Rica, considered as the neoliberal social model for developing countries, used Cuban professionals. The authorities requested that Havana's government extend the presence in Costa Rican hospitals of its doctors, who went to offer their services to their Central American peers. Of course, the doctors accepted to extend their stay “in order to not affect the service to the patients.”

Cuban international assistance extends to the entire Latin America and the under-developed regions of the planet. For instance, in Belize -a small Central American nation- the Cuban medical brigade, formed by 103 persons, allowed more than 1,257,000 patients -most of which had never known a doctor’s visit- to receive care during the last five years. In 2004, nearly 400,000 patients from this country were cured by the Cubans. Currently, almost 160 students from Belize are receiving education in Cuban universities. No other nation in the world -including developed countries- has contributed so much human aid as that offered by the government of Mr. Fidel Castro to the poor regions of the Third World.

In April 2005, the Mexican government lent itself to the United States political maneuvering in the Human Rights Committee in Geneva by voting for the resolution against Cuba. In reply, the Cuban doctors successfully operated Mr. Randu Contreras, a young 30 year old Mexican who suffered from elephantiasis and who Mexican specialists, after many tests, had declared incurable. On the other hand, the Peruvian television considered Cuba as “the island of health.”

Ecuador also benefits from Cuban internationalism. The municipality of Cotacachi became the first territory in the country to be rid of illiteracy, thanks to the Cuban method “I can.” After a year of work, there's barely an illiterate in that municipality. More than 1,700 persons received the assistance of the Caribbean Island's professionals and the illiteracy rate dropped from 22,3% to 3,8%, allowing the UNESCO to declare it free of illiteracy.

The Cuban program against illiteracy also extends to the rest of the Latin American countries. The Argentinean province of Santa Fe used the services of Cuban professors after verifying the efficiency of its method in other Argentinean regions, like Buenos Aires, Chaco, Corrientes, Rio Negro, Neuquen, Cordova, Mendoza, and others. The government of Santa Fe expressed its gratitude to the Cuban government. In El Salvador, in three months, nearly 1,000 persons were alphabetized by Cuban professors.

The international help offered by the Cuban government isn't carried out in prejudice of its own population. As a matter of fact, the regional director for the International Labor Organization for the Americas qualified the Cuban social security system as a “miracle” when he discovered the protection it offered its workers. “It's almost a miracle compared to other countries,” announced Mr. Daniel Martinez, also very impressed by the low unemployment rate in Cuba (1,9%).

According to the ILO, in Latin America, 11% of the people do not have a job and nearly 65% of the population has no access to social security. In Latin America, one of the great paradoxes lies in the fact that 25 million children are forced to work while 19,5 million adults are jobless. Cuba is the only country in the world that allows its workers from restructured fields -such as the case of the sugar industry- to receive an education in the university and continue to draw their entire salary.

The developed countries, seeking juicy profits, loot the riches of the Third World, drain their brains, and support the elites which defend their interests. At the same time, they are so indecent as to give lessons of democracy to the people who refuse to submit. Cuba, on the other hand, prefers to give a hand to the needy and continue its way to build a more just society.

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Venezuela’s Deep Throat

• An exclusive interview with Venezuelan investigative reporter Alicia Herrera

By Manuel Alberto Ramy
Taken from Progreso Weekly
June 15, 2005

For more than 30 years a mysterious character provoked speculations and intensive research in order to put a face, a true name and an official post to the key man who gave information that finally led then President Richard Nixon to resign and abandon the White House in disgrace.

A couple of weeks ago, Deep Throat surfaced on TV and in the headlines of almost every newspaper in the world. Mark Felt, 90, former FBI Assistant Director was the man that supplied secret information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Washington Post journalists who investigated the case known as the Watergate scandal.

Now in Venezuela, from the shadows, another Deep Throat leaks important secret documents linked to the legal process against Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo for the bombing of the Cuban airliner that cost the lives of 73 people.

“These are the papers”, says Alicia Herrera, the Venezuelan journalist who in 1979 wrote the book We planted the bomb, so what?, the title being an expression shouted at the prison yard of the San Carlos Barracks, in Caracas, by Hernán Ricardo, one of the two sentenced to prison for the most barbaric and dramatic terrorist act in the Western Hemisphere, before 9/11.

While I looked at the documents I asked her how she got them. And Ms. Herrera looks at me through her clear and slight glasses, incapable of hiding the loquacity of her intelligent eyes. She is a woman that combines talent and imagination in search of truth behind her investigative reporting. She has already proved it with her book, which I have in my hands, now reprinted with the addition of the documents supplied by the Venezuelan Deep Throat. Great material, particularly for confirming sources and discarding others, until Deep Throat comes back. That’s what I think while I begin the formal interview with the question about how the documents reached her hands.

Alicia Herrera (AH): Ernesto Villegas, who anchors “In Confidence” a Venezuelan Channel 8 program, invited me again in late April to be on his show. To my surprise, I saw that he was presenting some documents that were sent to him anonymously, with evidence of the guilt of the Barbados terrorists. They are documents that were hidden by the accomplices of the case and the terrorists at the DISIP (Venezuelan political police) at the time of the trial. Probably, all these years they were waiting for the right moment.

MAR: Which of the documents do you think is most important?

AH: All of them. But there is a transcript of an interrogation, about 22 pages, of Hernando Ricardo by Superintendent Francisco…

MAR: Who is Superintendent Francisco?

AH: He is from DISIP, and is constantly wanting Ricardo to tell him where the explosives and other weapons are hidden, which the terrorists had scattered in great quantity all over Caracas – for the Cuban plane and for the other crimes they had planned for all the Caribbean region. At that interrogation, the superintendent asks Hernán Ricardo: “Who planted the bomb in the plane?” And he answers very clearly: “Freddy Lugo and I”. And afterwards, Ricardo confesses to another series of bombings, including one in Barbados some months before, in July, which could be confusing. But no, the document specifies the date. “And who planted the bomb in Barbados?” and in parenthesis the date, October 6, 1976, and he answers, “Freddy Lugo and I”. This is one of the documents that also show the involvement of the people who financed those terrorists in Venezuela. In a big fund raising dinner it was said: “We need $100,000,” and the money was raised right there.

MAR: From what you say it seems that these documents coincide with others recently declassified and published by the University of George Washington’s National Security Archive.

AH: The declassified documents by the FBI and the CIA prove that those people participated in the bombing of the Cuban plane. They knew it before the actual bombing happened. You can see it in the declassified documents. They even said it out loud at a fund raiser in which Posada Carriles says that he is going to blow up a Cuban plane and that Orlando Bosch has all the details. And Bosch boasts of the success of the Letelier operation and the preparation of bigger things to come. The CIA knew what these people were doing, because Posada Carriles was always a CIA man and that’s no secret. Everybody knows it.

MAR: Speaking of Posada Carriles, Is he mentioned in those documents?

AH: Of course. Luis this, Luis that, that’s the name that is all over this document. “Luis knew it all.” “What did Luis tell you?” There are many details in relation to Posada Carriles that incriminate him directly to the crime. From top to bottom Posada Carriles is mentioned.

MAR: Carlos Andrés Pérez was president at the time. Are people from his administration involved? Was Superintendent Francisco’s mission to exonerate not only the two Cubans involved (Posada and Bosch), but also DISIP in the case of the bombing of the Cuban plane?

AH: During the questioning Hernán Ricardo says: “Don’t keep bringing up names, because we are going to reach the top”. That means there was a real involvement. But in the documents there is also a pact that I did not know of, which entails plans which Bosh could undertake and what he couldn’t do in exchange for DISIP protection, of government protection. The document said that Bosch was guaranteed his stay in Venezuela, he would get adequate protection, weapons for his protection, a DISIP badge so nobody would bother him, the right to visit, organize and raise funds from the Cuban community for his struggle against Castro, and the promise of a meeting with President Pérez on October 10, that is, a few days after the bombing of the Cuban plane.

MAR: And Bosch’s commitment?

AH: On the part of Bosch, the conditions of the agreement were not to undertake any action of war in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia. Panama was rejected at the beginning and later accepted; also that the struggle against Castro-Communism would not stop at the rest of the continent, and particularly the Caribbean, which explains quite well the bombing of the Cuban plane. In short, a pact that gave the terrorists mobility, and all kinds of favorable conditions.

MAR: These documents are potentially explosive. What are you going to do with them?

AH: At present they are in the hands of Venezuela’s Attorney General, so that they can be used as evidence demonstrating that those terrorists were really involved, not only in the preparation of the bombing, but also in the bombing itself.

MAR: The new edition of your book with the Deep Throat addendum has been launched in Cuba. When will it be presented in Venezuela?

AH: We are going to now launch the new edition of the book in Venezuela. Yes, in the near future it will be presented in Caracas.

MAR: Will the book be published in the United States?

AH: Yes, shortly it will be translated and distributed in the U.S. I can’t promise an exact date, because I still have a lot of work to do, but of course, it will be published

MAR: Will Alicia Herrera continue investigating and writing?

AH: Of course. It’s my commitment.

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Posada arrest points to Bush’s anti-terror hoax

By Saul Landau
Taken from Progreso Weekly
June 15, 2005

President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.

But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don’t apply.

Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president’s commitment to fight terrorism.

For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn’t even handcuff the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush’s pal Ken “Kenny Boy” Lay – ENRON’s CEO – got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with “illegal entry into the United States.”

The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called “Bambi” by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was “up to his eyeballs” in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick’s statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.

Posada denied involvement at the time, but police nabbed two of the plotters who had disembarked in Barbados. They fingered Posada as the man who hired them to place the bomb on the plane. His name became ubiquitous in the files of agencies that monitored terrorists. Nevertheless, several weeks after Posada announced his presence on U.S. soil, Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, still claimed he had no information that Posada had even entered the country.

Posada himself promoted his high international profile. So that the world knew of his exploits, he boasted to New York Times reporters Anne Bardach and Larry Rohter in 1998 that he had organized a sabotage campaign of Cuban tourist spots. In 1997, one of Posada’s agents in Cuba detonated a bomb at a Cuban hotel that killed an Italian tourist. Posada replied that “it was a freak accident, but I sleep like a baby.” A hardened terrorist can’t afford to be sentimental!

In 1999, Panamanian police discovered that the 71-year-old Posada, between visits to his proctologist, conspired with three other anti-Castro geezers to assassinate Cuba’s leader in Panama. Castro was to give a public speech there.

This quartet of seniors, Guillermo Novo, Pedro Remon, Gaspar Jimenez and

Posada, planned to blow up the platform from which Castro would speak. After Panamanian police arrested them, they denied any involvement. “What proof do they have?” sneered Posada et. al. – a mere set of their fingerprints on the explosives found in their rented car.

This March, Posada entered the U.S. surreptitiously. He left Panama less than a year after out-going Panamanian President Mireyea Moscoso pardoned him and his accomplices.

Moscoso also apparently contravened Panamanian law by issuing the pardons before the appeals process had ended. The Panamanian press mused about the “coincidence” between the issuing of pardons and the simultaneous $4 million deposited in her Swiss bank account.

After pardoning the geezers, Moscoso phoned U.S. Ambassador Simon Ferro, saying she had complied with Washington’s request to release the men.

On May 20, 2004, the four caught a waiting airplane that took them to Honduras. There, Posada, the veritable padrino of Latin American terrorism, disembarked while the other three continued to Miami so their arrival could coincide with President Bush’s campaign stop. They entered the United States without problems, despite their terrorist rap sheets.

Did Homeland Security personnel read Bush’s November 26, 2001 declaration? “If anybody harbors a terrorist, they’re a terrorist.” Did Bush send a note to anti-terrorist agencies explaining that they should make exceptions for “zealous patriots” who wanted to assassinate Castro – and anyone else who happened to be near him when the bomb went off?

Indeed, all four pardoned Castro-haters had for decades tried to assassinate and commit sabotage against Cuban and other officials and properties in New York, Mexico and the Caribbean.

A Washington D.C. jury had convicted Guillermo Novo first of conspiring to assassinate former Chilean Chancellor Orlando Letelier. When an appeals court reversed that conviction on procedural grounds, a second jury in 1982 found Novo guilty of perjury for lying to a grand jury about his knowledge of the assassination plot. In September 1976, five Cubans working with Chilean secret police agents on orders from Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet had car-bombed Letelier on Washington’s Embassy Row.

Ronni Moffitt, Letelier’s young colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, also died in the bombing. The FBI also knew that Posada had knowledge of the plot to kill Letelier.

Born Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles in Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1928, this Cuban expatriate served on dictator Fulgencio Batista’s repressive forces until the January 1959 revolutionary takeover. Posada then swore vengeance.

The CIA recruited him for its 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. But the Agency placed Posada in an anti-Castro version of the Waffen SS, a squad that would “mop up” after the invaders had prevailed. Following the April fiasco, the CIA sent Posada for “training” at Fort Benning, Georgia, to learn about spying, using explosives and other lethal devices. In 1971, working out of Venezuela, he partnered with Antonio Veciana, founder of Alpha 66, another anti-Castro terrorist group, to plan an elaborate plot to assassinate Castro.

In a 1996 interview, Veciana told me how he and Posada had recruited two Venezuelan hit men, disguised them as a TV news crew and sent them to Santiago, Chile, before Castro arrived on a visit. Meanwhile, the assassins “blended in” with the press corps. CIA technicians had outfitted their news camera with a gun. Fortunately for Fidel, the assassins chickened out. Posada, enraged over such cowardice, recruited other assassins to use the same lethal camera on Castro when he stopped in Caracas for a press conference on his return to Cuba. Those whackers also had second thoughts and the plot failed again.

Perhaps Posada’s frustration over the failed 1971 hits abated after the “success” of his 1976 Barbados air sabotage. After Venezuelan authorities charged him with responsibility for the airline bombing, they tossed him into prison while appeal after appeal took place – until August 1985. Then, someone who knew and admired Posada bribed prison authorities to help Posada “escape.” Interestingly, and related to that same period of time, Jorge Mas Canosa, deceased leader of the Cuban American Nation Foundation in Miami, was listed with a $50 note next to Posada’s name in Lt. Col. Oliver North’s notebooks, published by the Iran-Contra Congressional subcommittees.

Following his “escape,” North then engaged this fugitive to re-supply the CIA-backed Contras from El Salvador. When the United States stopped funding the Contra War, with the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Posada returned to the bombing business. This time, he selected bombing hotels in Cuba, a strategic target that would impair Castro’s foreign exchange source by making the island a dangerous spot for European tourists. Posada told Times reporters Bardach and Rohter that the money came from wealthy Cubans in Miami.

Given Posada’s own boasting and from the available evidence in published documents, the Justice Department had to either try him for terrorist acts or deport him to Venezuela, which has requested his extradition. He plotted the 1976 airliner bombing from Caracas and escaped from prison there. He also apparently committed murder and torture there as well. Despite this overwhelming documentation, however, the Justice Department rejected Venezuela’s May 2005 extradition request to try Posada for this crime on the grounds that the request lacked sufficient detail.

One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United States with the idea U.S. government complicity in aiding and abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities didn’t inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in 1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada’s agents placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has knowledge of Posada’s covert activities for U.S. intelligence as well.

Given Washington’s decade long history of terrorism aimed at Cuba, Bush might ask his staff to re-word the doctrinaire anti-terrorist statements they write for his press conferences.

After the foul 9/11 deeds, a few wise counselors had recommended that Bush leave the anti-terrorist campaign to police and judicial agencies. But Bush insisted on war. By employing the military to this task and in the process justifying the erosion of human rights as necessary to fighting terrorism, the world has come to think of the U.S. government as hypocritical – at best.

Posada, an old U.S. terrorist chicken, has come home to roost in Bush’s nest. He has also exposed Bush’s anti-terrorist policies as a hoax.

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New Evidence Links Posada Carriles to Airline Bombing

By Jonah Gindin
Taken from Venezuelanalysis.com
Jun 14, 2005

Caracas, Venezuela, June 14, 2005—Recently declassified CIA, FBI and State Department reports contain new evidence implicating Cuban exiles Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch in the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 in 1976, in which 73 people were killed. The documents were obtained by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute based at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Posada was arrested in Florida on May 17th, and is currently being charged with illegal entry into the United States. Venezuela has submitted a preventative detention request—a first-step in the extradition process—which was denied by the Department of State on May 27th, allegedly for lack of evidence. Last Friday, the Venezuelan embassy in the US submitted additional documents that they claim “include ample evidence of probable cause that Luis Clemente Posada Carriles is responsible for the explosion aboard the plane on October 6, 1976.”

Representatives of Venezuela’s National Assembly are traveling to Washington, D.C. today, where they are expected to deliver the full compliment of documentation collected by the Venezuelan government as part of their extradition request for Posada.

In a CIA intelligence report dated October 14, 1976—just a week after the October 6 bombing of flight 455—a CIA informant described as a “former Venezuelan government official who still maintains close relationships with government officials,” reports that Cuban exile leader Orlando Bosch was “in Venezuela under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. Furthermore, Perez had appointed his security and intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.”

This October 14, 1976 CIA report quotes Posada as saying "We are going to hit a Cuban airplane," a few months before Cubana Airliner flight 455 exploded over the Bahamas.
Credit: National Security Archive (modified)
Bosch was met at the airport by DISIP-head Garcia and by Posada, both Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelans. Garcia’s number two at the DISIP—Venezuela’s secret police—was also a Cuban exile living in Venezuela, and Posada himself had previously been a high-ranking official at the DISIP from 1967-74 during which time he was also a CIA informant.

The report notes that shortly after Bosch’s arrival in Venezuela prominent Cuban exile Hildo Folgar held a US$1,100 plate fundraiser at his home for Bosch’s organization, the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations—CORU). At the party, according to the CIA’s “usually reliable source,” Bosch approached an unidentified high-level official from the Ministry of the Interior and proposed that the Venezuelan government make a substantial cash contribution to CORU, in return for which Bosch would guarantee that there would be no Cuban-exile demonstrations during Perez’s planned trip to the US to speak at the United Nations. The CIA source thought that the Ministry of the Interior official had accepted Bosch’s offer.

At the dinner Bosch told his audience: “Now that our organization has come out of the Letelier job looking good, we are going to try something else.”

Orlando Letelier acted as Ambassador the the US, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Defense to former Chilean President Salvador Allende before a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Allende government. Letelier was tortured by the Pinochet regime, but eventually released in 1974 when he moved to the US where he became a vocal human-rights activist, deploring the US government’s support for the Chilean dictatorship. He was assassinated in a car-bombing in Washington, D.C., on 21 September, 1976 in what was apparently an extension of the Southern Cone dictator’s dirty war cooperation, called “Operation Condor.”

A few days after the fundraiser for Bosch’s CORU, Posada was overheard to say, “we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,” and that “Orlando has the details.”

A CIA report dated June 22, 1976 warned that a “Cuban exile extremist group, of which Orlando Bosch is a leader, plans to place a bomb on a Cubana Airline flight traveling between Panama and Havana.” Yet, according to Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, there is no evidence that the CIA contacted Cuban authorities to alert them to the plot. These documents are “part of a trove of intelligence records that provide leads and evidence on major acts of terrorism committed by violent anti-Castro groups,” says Kornbluh, calling on the CIA to fully declassify its voluminous files on Posada “as a concrete contribution to justice for those who have committed acts of terror.”

On the basis of information received from Trinidadian authorities implicating him, Posada was arrested by DISIP authorities on October 12, 1976, but he escaped from a Venezuelan prison while awaiting a third trial in 1985. A former prison guard who was on-duty at the time of Posada’s escape alleged that the CIA bribed prison officials to facilitate the prison break.

Posada is currently awaiting trial for illegally entering the US. Demonstrations in a variety of countries including Venezuela, Cuba and Spain have demanded that the US comply with Venezuela’s extradition request. If they do not, they risk compromising their unflinching position in the War of Terror.

This October 14, 1976 CIA report quotes Posada as saying "We are going to hit a Cuban airplane," a few months before Cubana Airliner flight 455 exploded over the Bahamas.
Credit: National Security Archive (modified)

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The New CIA Revelations About Posada

Extradition US-Style

By Ricardo Alarcón
Taken from Counterponch.com
June 14, 2005

The secret documents recently disclosed by the National Security Archive throw new light on the responsibility of the government of the United States--and especially of the CIA, which was directed at that time by George H. W. Bush--in the horrendous mid-flight destruction on October 6, 1976 of a Cuban civilian airliner and the murder of all 73 people on board.

We already knew, by declassified documents published in May, that from at least June 1976 Washington was aware of the plan to carry out this terrible crime, had information about who its authors would be, and knew that the main guilty parties--Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles ­ were seeking to escape Venezuelan justice.

But, what is now known via one of the documents published only two days ago, that's the last straw!: the US government itself sought to save the terrorists, with US diplomats in Caracas conspiring to do so with some local officials.

The document is a secret cable sent to Washington by the CIA station chief in Caracas on October 14 1976. The last paragraph refers in detail to the meetings of the morning of October 10, the afternoon of October 12, and again on the morning of October 13, that the US Embassy had with several individuals, including the Director of the DISIP (the Venezuelan secret police), Raúl Giménez Gainza, and Orlando García, advisor to then President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

The object of the meetings was the delivery of Orlando Bosch to the US authorities--without a diplomatic note, without an extradition request. Nothing of this appears in the report. In these three meetings those attending, who were supposedly speaking on behalf of the Venezuelan president, have promised to give up Bosch. It's that simple.

On what source did the CIA base this information? This time it was not an anonymous informant. The person is clearly identified on page 4 and his words reporting the meetings, rightly in quotes, are cited with great care. He is none other than the US ambassador to Venezuela.

His Excellency complains that "I have still not received official confirmation about the President's (Carlos Andrés Pérez) decision."

The George W. Bush regime has spent three months helping Luis Posada Carriles, refusing to extradite him to Venezuela and seeking to shield him with invented chicanery and technicalities.

The father, George H. W. Bush, didn't worry about legal steps or diplomatic procedures ­ suffice to plot in the shadows. Then, as now, it was a US-style extradition:

* to try to remove Bosch from Venezuela in October of 1976 and take him to the United States to avoid justice;

*to keep Posada today and not extradite him to Venezuela;

* to prevent justice.

Now, as then, the son like the father is an accomplice and a protector of murderers. This makes them terrorists as well ­ and just as guilty as those they shelter.

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"Posada sailed for Miami on the ‘Santrina'”

• He (Posada Carriles) was there as a tourist. He was resting until they arrived to rescue him aboard the Santrina."

• Mexican journalist Renán Castro, of the Por Esto daily, says in an exclusive interview.

By Manuel Alberto Ramy
Taken from Progreso Weekly
Jun 8, 2005

The former mayor of Isla Mujeres ([*]) saw him, as well as the president of the fishing cooperative of the island. He was wearing white bermuda shorts, a guayabera shirt of the same color and sandals. Other people also identified him.

The subject of Posada Carriles’ entry into the United States is still an issue of interest; it is controversial and possibly could complicate the legal process due to the involvement of other people in the crime of smuggling of illegal aliens. For his part, Posada Carriles claimed at a press conference that he entered U.S. soil by land, from Mexico. Yet, Havana officially insists that he came to the U.S. by sea on the Santrina.

The newspaper that has closely investigated the issue is Por Esto, a daily published in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Renán Castro is the journalist who has led the team of several colleagues that did the research for a series of reports on the matter.

The following exclusive interview was broadcast by Radio Progreso Alternativa on Friday, June 2, and which Progreso Weekly publishes in this written version.

Manuel Alberto Ramy (MAR): How did your investigation on the Santrina begin? Did you have any previous information of the relation of the boat and its crew with Luis Posada Carriles, or was it a coincidence?

Renán Castro (RC): We began our investigative reporting that led us to confirm the presence of Luis Posada Carriles on Mexican soil due to an accident – the damage on a reef where the Santrina ran aground on the early morning of March 14. At 7 a.m. that same day, the boat and the crew were rescued by members of the fishing cooperative at Isla Mujeres, who warned the Mexican Navy who participated in the rescue. Consequently the boat is taken to the concrete pier at Isla Mujeres and there a routine check is made by Mexican authorities. Up to that moment it is routine case. What began to call our attention was the fact that from the moment the crew of the Santrina went ashore there was reticence with the media.

MAR: How did that happen?

RC: When they were walking down the pier, Santiago Álvarez was heading the group (you can see that in the photographs we took). When our reporter Yolanda Gutiérrez, who is the first to arrive, approaches him, he evades her rudely and hides behind José Pujol, who is the skipper of the boat. Pujol, in an insulting and rude manner, pushes her aside and struts past, flanked by Navy and Public Security personnel, and heads for the Port Authority. There they gave their depositions and remained isolated for 6 to 7 hours, which is customary in these cases, and the following day the Port Authority allows the media to contact them. Reluctantly, angrily and rudely, they agree to answer a few questions, among them the reason for their presence in Isla Mujeres and why hadn’t they used the Port Authority’s services to enter the reef area, the second in importance in the world. José Pujol, in an uncivil tone, said that they were an international ecological foundation and were on a test run, because the Santrina was going to be a school ship, a fact that later ecologists in Quintana Roo and Mexico refuted, because there is no record of the foundation they mentioned.

Afterwards they stayed only the necessary time to get provisions and repair the boat in a place called Port Island, and immediately left for Miami, Florida. Six people came in, but according to eye witnesses’ and official accounts, seven people left.

The claim is not a Por Esto invention; these are testimonies of people who saw all the maneuvers and the suspicious entry of strangers to Isla Mujeres. Let’s go back to how we first heard of this situation and how it evolved, until we were able to denounce what Mexican authorities tried to suppress: the entry to Mexican soil of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and his exit on the Santrina.

A month later, on April 14, Fidel Castro makes a declaration to international media about the presence of the Santrina that, according to what he knew at the time, had gone to Isla Mujeres to rescue Luis Posada Carriles. It drew our attention and I went to Lieutenant López Bridge, on the Mexican border with Belize, where I began my research with people working the border post and people who claim that Luis Posada Carriles had entered Mexico on March 6 or 7.

MAR: Are you telling me that he entered Mexican territory at Chetumal?

RC: That’s right. When he entered Mexico a car was waiting for him with people that looked like Cubans and who took him to Cancun, with a 1 or 1 ½ hour stopover to eat at a town called Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Six hours later they arrive at Cancun. Posada stays there for some days, hidden in a warehouse where a gang that smuggles Cuban illegal aliens keeps people that leave Cuba and arrive in Cancun. That’s a fact that I hope to confirm in order to make a parallel investigation. Later on, Posada leaves for Isla Mujeres, where he stays the following five days. We don’t know the exact number of days that he was at each place, Cancun and Isla Mujeres, but the island’s life long chronicler and former mayor, Fidel Villanueva Madrid, saw him at Isla Mujeres’ Harbor Marina.

MAR: He saw Posada Carriles?

RC: He saw him strolling by, looking at the boats being repaired. And he was also seen by Francisco Gaitán, the president of the Isla Mujeres fishing cooperative, who gave us the same version of the story two days later, that he had seen him at the seaside promenade wearing white Bermudas shorts, a white guayabera shirt and the typical sandals that tourists wear in the area.

MAR: How were those two people that you mentioned able to identify Posada Carriles? Because he is not in the media every day.

RC: The fact is that Posada Carriles looks very much like a close friend of Fidel Villanueva’s, who is the manager of the Isla Mujeres’ port. Villanueva comes up to him and taps him on the shoulder, believing he was his “compadre”, and Posada turns around and says to him with a Cuban accent: “Hey, chico, you take me for someone else.”

“When this thing blows up and I saw his picture”, said Fidel Villanueva, “I told myself, ‘I saw this guy, I talked to him’”. That’s the most authentic and most truthful version I know.

MAR: When you wrote in Por Esto that people at Isla Mujeres had seen Posada walking down the street, did you mean those two witnesses?

RC: Francisco Villanueva, Francisco Gaitán and some other people. We had as many as ten depositions of people that have been living there for many years, some of them native to the island. There is nothing that can mislead us.

MAR: Did you show photographs to those witnesses?

RC: Yes, we did. Por Esto has the largest readership on Isla Mujeres, so when we referred to the photographs that we had published they recognized him and said they had seen him. “This gentleman was here; he went to such and such place; he was strolling by the seaside promenade. He was at Mocambo, near the Posada Hotel.” And they made us think that maybe 2 or 3 people weren’t enough. But if 7 or 8 more people claim to have seen him, heck, I think that we weren’t wrong.

MAR: After those days that Posada Carriles spent in Isla Mujeres, what happened?

RC: He was there as a tourist, he was resting until they came on the Santrina to rescue him. That’s what happened, we have no report that he carried out any action that could have been a crime. There is nothing to point that out. He was waiting for people that were coming to rescue him. That’s all Posada Carriles did on Mexican soil.

MAR: There were people on another boat at the time that the Santrina, after being repaired, sailed for Miami from Isla Mujeres. Were you able to document that information?

RC: I don’t believe in that hypothesis and we didn’t even mention it in our newspaper because that would have altered our research that Posada Carriles himself partly corroborated, because it was convenient for him. Posada Carriles never could have left Mexico through that route, because of the violent events in our country, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, from Tamaulipas to Quintana Roo. Don’t forget that in November 2004, drug traffickers executed 12 people. It’s much harder to enter the United States through our north border, unless you are connected to the mafia that flourishes there trafficking in illegal aliens. Posada Carriles traces the land route that takes to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in the North, to enter the United States through Texas, which is the same route used by the gang that smuggles in illegal Cubans. Let me tell you this: the Quintana Roo sea border, the Mexican sea border is most unprotected at its northern area. Every day an average of two shark fishing launches enter the country with approximately 1.5 tons of cocaine that mostly goes to the United States. So if Colombians can bring drugs to supply their Mexican partners, don’t you think that it would be much easier to enter and leave by sea route at any moment? We detected the Santrina because it had an accident on a reef, because they were unfamiliar with navigation in the area. Otherwise, we would never have known anything. That’s why I believe that taking the chance of another boat protecting them, I don’t think it’s true. Indeed there was a Cuban-American cell that helped him during his stay in Quintana Roo, but in a different manner, supplying him with resources, harboring him, because it seems that he didn’t stay at a hotel. We checked with the Mexican Hotel Association and there is no report of even one Cuban-American or a single Cuban that closely resembled his characteristics.

MAR: So according to your investigation he left for Miami on the Santrina?

RC: Undoubtedly. And additionally, something called our attention. A few days ago, Mr. Peirot, the Secretary of the Navy, declared that they had a report of Posada Carriles’ presence at the Santrina, and now one of his subordinates is saying that that’s not true.

MAR: What’s your interpretation of the fact that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy denies his superior’s previous statement 48 hours later? That, together with the fact that the Secretary’s statement was published only in local and state media, such as El Sol de Zacatecas, but that El Sol de México, which is the parent national newspaper of the chain did not run the item.

RC: Let me give you an example. Have you ever heard of a case where a statement by the CEO of a company is publicly refuted by an assistant manager? I think that these are contradictions due to the jitteriness of the federal government when it tried to evade its responsibility about Posada’s stay in Mexico. I believe Mr. Pierrot should answer that question. But we are aware of that and knew beforehand that what the Secretary of the Navy said is true. What the Rear Admiral said was not even fit to print, because I believe it’s in the interest of other people, and the federal government should answer to Mexican and international public opinion. There are many unanswered questions and I think it’s time for them to do it, because this international conflict is threatening security and our relations with the Cuban government, and even with the U.S. government.

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The Nation: The Posada File

by Peter Kornbluh
Taken from The Nation
June 6, 2005 issue]

The CIA document, stamped Secret, is dated June 22, 1976, and titled "Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists to blow up a Cubana airliner." A "usually reliable" source, described as a "businessman with close ties to the Cuban exile community," reports that an extremist group led by an anti-Castro terrorist named Orlando Bosch "plans to place a bomb on a Cubana airline flight traveling between Panama and Havana." The source says that the original plan for the attack called for two bombs to be placed on Cubana flight 467 on June 21. (This did not take place.) This intelligence report is disseminated to multiple US agencies, including the FAA, but there is no indication any action is taken, or that a warning is provided to Cuban authorities.

Less than four months later, on October 6, two bombs explode on Cubana Flight 455, which has just taken off from Barbados. The plane is carrying seventy-three people, including Cuba's teenage fencing team and eleven Guyanese citizens, most of them students on their way to Havana to attend medical school. All aboard perish when the plane crashes into the sea. A CIA source subsequently reports that sometime around the last week of September, another renowned anti-Castro exile in Caracas, Luis Posada Carriles, was overheard stating: "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner."

This past March, Posada sneaked into the United States using a false passport and requested political asylum. Despite repeated demands for his arrest and extradition to Venezuela, where the crime was planned, US authorities made no move until May 17. Homeland Security officials finally detained him after he gave an interview to the Miami Herald in which he discussed the relative ease with which he'd been able to move around Florida and then held a press conference.

The international community is now waiting to see what the Bush Administration will do with him. Posada's case not only forces the question of whether, in the opinion of Washington, there are "good" terrorists and "bad" ones but also refocuses attention on the cozy relationships that existed in the 1970s between violent anti-Castro Cubans and US intelligence. Declassified documents raise issues about what kind of advance warnings the CIA and FBI had about the attack on Flight 455 and what actions they took--or failed to take--to stop it.

Shortly after the bombing, the Castro government accused the CIA of "directly" participating in the atrocity. Not only were the leaders of the likely responsible exile group, CORU, known to have past ties to the agency but the name and phone number of the FBI legal attaché (Legat) in Caracas, Joseph Leo, was found among papers of one of the two Venezuelans arrested in Barbados and charged with placing the bombs on the plane.

On October 8, 1976, two days after the bombing, Leo filed a teletype to FBI headquarters in which he admitted multiple contacts in the two years leading up to the bombing with one of the bombers, Hernan Ricardo, whom he described as a photojournalist passing intelligence on Cuban Embassy officials to the FBI "in the personal service of Luis Posada." During one meeting, "Ricardo suggested Legat might wish to make some suggestions regarding courses of action that might be taken against the Cuban Embassy in Caracas by an anti-Castro group of which he formed part," Leo wrote. His response, Leo claimed, had been to tell Ricardo that this was not part of the function of his office, and that in any event he "abhorred terrorist activities."

Just tapping Ricardo's phone might have revealed the entire terrorist plot against the plane. But no such investigation was contemplated, let alone undertaken. Instead, when Ricardo returned to Leo's office at the end of September and asked for an expedited US visa, Leo took his application. In reviewing Ricardo's passport, Leo noted that Ricardo had been in Trinidad on September 1--the day the Guyanese consulate in Port-of-Spain had been bombed--"and wondered in view of Ricardo's association with Luis Posada, if his presence there during that period was coincidence." Yet when Ricardo returned October 1 with a letter signed by Posada attesting to his employment in Caracas, Leo raised no concerns with the vice consul, and the visa was provided. The last thing Leo remembers Ricardo saying was that "he might also be visiting Barbados" on this trip.

These CIA and FBI documents are part of a massive file on Posada and the Cubana plane bombing, which has been only partly declassified. What is available so far does not indicate that the United States covertly orchestrated or supported the attack. But the files do indicate that the close ties between CIA and FBI officials and allies inside the Cuban exile movement enabled the bombing to go forward--despite ample intelligence that, if acted upon, could have prevented it. When the entire file is made public, as it should and must be, the degree of US responsibility will be more apparent. Now that the Bush Administration has detained Posada, how that information is used, as well as what happens to Posada, will say much about whether those cozy ties of the past have survived into the post-9/11 present.

 

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by By Jeff Cohen
Taken from Antiterroristas.cu
June 6, 2005

No sooner was it established that Pan Am Flight 103 had been destroyed by a bomb than the American press went into its predictable ritual. Journalists peppered President Reagan and President-elect Bush with all the usual questions: How can we bring terrorists to justice? Will we retaliate against any country harboring those responsible for bombing passenger planes?

Reagan and Bush responded with the expected tough-sounding rhetoric. Reagan: "We're going to make every effort we can to find out who was guilty of this savage thing and bring them to justice." Bush pledged to "seek hard and punish firmly, decisively, those who did this, if you can ever find them."

What's wrong with this all-too-familiar script? In a word, hypocrisy.

As many in the media and in the Reagan-Bush Administration know, the United States has harbored an accused jet-bombing terrorist. Our government has done nothing to bring him to justice, nor have the media clamored for justice. And there's no doubt, Mr. Bush, about whether "you can ever find him." Folks working for the Reagan Administration, in close association with your office as vice president, hired him -- long after he was linked to a murderous jet bombing.

The terrorist's name is Luis Posada, a right-wing Cuban exile who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for years after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Posada says the CIA trained him in the use of explosives. In October, 1976, he was the reputed mastermind behind the explosion of a civilian passenger jet that killed all 73 people on board. The Cubana Airlines DC-8 blew up soon after taking off from Barbados en route to Jamaica and Havana.

Posada and other members of the Cuban terror group, Command of United Revolutionary Organizations, were charged in Venezuela with the crime. The two men who admitted planting the bomb identified Posada as a mastermind of the plot. Posada, however, whose trial was never completed, mysteriously escaped in 1985 from a high-security Venezuelan prison. To this day, he is wanted for terrorism.

Since the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations was led by CIA veterans, the agency learned within days of the jet bombing that Posada and his associates were involved. But the CIA, according to investigative reporter Scott Armstrong, did nothing to bring the men to justice. Bush was then director of the CIA.

After Posada escaped from jail, instead of hunting Posada down, the United States apparently found him a job. Posada was discovered two years ago in El Salvador working as a key overseer in the U.S. operation (Oliver North, William Casey & Co.) to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. In May, 1986, a Venezuelan television reporter interviewed Posada from "somewhere in Central America." "I feel good here," Posada exclaimed, "because I am involved once again in a fight against international communism."

Posada was recruited to the Contra supply program and was supervised in El Salvador by longtime CIA operative Felix Rodriguez. During this period, Rodriguez reported regularly to Vice President Bush's office. According to reports from a Senate subcommittee and the Wall Street Journal, Posada was one of four leaders of the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations who found work in the Contra operation. This despite the fact that the command's members had been involved in bombings and assassination plots, including one in 1976 targeted at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

What did the United States do after major American dailies identified Posada as a Contra operative in El Salvador? Not much. He was allowed to disappear again.

Instead of clamoring at Bush for hypothetical responses to still-unidentified terrorists behind the Pan Am explosion, journalists would do better to ask Bush why the United States has protected Posada and friends.

Other questions need asking. If it's terrorism to blow up innocent civilians in the fight against "international Zionism" or "Western satanism," isn't it also terrorism to perform the same acts in the struggle against "international communism"? Or is blowing up civilians acceptable as long as the target is Cuba?

And if it's justified for the United States to retaliate militarily against a foreign country linked to the Pan Am terrorists, would Cuba have had the right to launch an air strike against Washington because of our relations with Posada and his Command of United Revolutionary Organizations?

The stories of Luis Posada and the CIA's historic links to right-wing terror groups overseas have been under-reported because much of the U.S. media is content presenting a simplistic view of the world where Americans in white hats police the globe of black hats--usually worn by Middle Eastern terrorists.

In some countries of Western Europe and Latin America--where the terrorism issue is analyzed with fewer ideological blinders--people don't automatically see us in white hats. They are as familiar with Luis Posada's U.S. links as we are with Abu Nidal and Libya.

American journalists could begin cutting through the fog by asking George Bush a simple question: If we're serious about punishing terrorists, shouldn't we start with our own?

Note: This column appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 1989.

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Taken from antiterrorista.cu
June 6, 2005

The State Department’s summary and insulting rejection of the detention request issued by the government of Venezuela for Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles on the grounds that it "lacked sufficient basis from a legal point of view" was as shocking as it was predictable.

The decision not to detain Posada, as a prelude to extradition, to be tried for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner in which 73 innocent people were killed does violence to this administration’s respect for the rule of law. Yet this is nothing new for a White House which has a long history of selective indignation towards villainous acts committed abroad. Such a categorical rejection of the administration’s own antiterrorist rhetoric bears strong resemblance to its similarly hypocritical praise for the 2002 coup attempt against the democratically-elected Hugo Chávez, thus belying President Bush’s supposed commitment to the spread of democracy throughout the hemisphere. Worst of all, the Department of State has dishonored this country’s dead as a result of a terrorist act on September 11 by not honoring those murdered in 1976 when a bomb blew up on a Cuban Airlines flight over Barbados. A preponderance of evidence – some of it from the FBI and the CIA – and his subsequent acts of terror dispel any doubt that Posada is a world-class terrorist.

Just as it was entirely predictable that the Bush administration would reject the detention request as a cheap slap in the face to its adversaries in Caracas, it was predictable that the Washington would continue to see an already precipitous decline in its standing throughout Latin America. The moral cynicism behind the State Department’s rejection of the detention request of a major international terrorist suspect will certainly be pointed to by leaders of Latin America’s “Pink Wave” as further evidence of continued Yankee duplicity, and still another reason to continue its emerging policy's of disengaging from Washinton's influence.

While much of Latin America may be put off by Chávez’s style, they are not inclined to give any credence to the State Department’s claim that it does not arbitrarily detain suspects for trial in a “kangaroo court.” Foggy Bottom has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to extradite terrorist suspects to countries with a reputation for judicial integrity far below Venezuela’s, such as Syria and Uzbekistan – presumably because such lax judicial regulation will lead to the desired swift punishment for suspects.

Embarrassingly to the average American, the joke has been circulating for weeks that the State Department would choose to turn down Venezuela’s detention request for Posada on the eve of a Friday afternoon of a three-day national holiday, thus providing the slow news day environment in which indignation over his release would have time to cool down. This banal script was the exact one that the uncool Bush administration chose to follow.

But the administration’s decision was a fait accompli long before it was actually hatched. It has repeatedly revealed its inability to learn from its ethical pratfalls and to live by its own pretentious but non-observed standards, as evidenced by Bush’s nomination of the notorious intelligence manipulator, John Bolton, to be ambassador to the UN, and by the promotion of John Negroponte, who had a history of support for local death squads while he was Ambassador to Honduras. Additionally, the number two man in Bush’s National Security Council, Elliot Abrams, was an irresistable candidate for his post because he had to be pardoned by the first President Bush for lying to Congress during Iran-Contra. This White House has done itself and the nation a disservice by choosing to pander to the powerful Cuban-American interest groups in Miami rather than demonstrate its genuine dedication to the war on terrorism.

With Posada, Washington had a choice of maintaining the integrity of its already deeply troubled antiterrorism crusade or catering to its hard right Miami campaign donors and political backers. Lamentably, there was never any mystery as to which road Washington would choose to take.

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The Posada Precedent On the Use of State Terrorism

By Tom Crumpacker
Taken from Counterpunch.com
June 4 May, 2005

State terrorism is the use of state violence against innocent civilians to create fear in pursuit of a political objective. It has been called the ugly side of imperialism (now correctly called "globalization"). It sometimes promotes submission of nations to the domination by occupation or otherwise of the terrorist state. There are two varieties, overt and covert. Prior to the 1930s, the overt variety was frowned on in Western societies as supposedly repulsive to the civilized mind. However with the advent of aerial bombing and missiles and their fearsome payload possibilities, these scruples were overcome. Early examples of successful overt state terrorism were the 1937 bombing of Guernica and the 1945 atomic snuffing out of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese lives in a matter of minutes, which caused the Japanese empire to dissolve and it's rulers and people to submit to foreign occupation. However, non-atomic overt state terrorism has frequently been unsuccessful, since it sometimes produces a reaction of liberatory retaliation as well as fear and submission. Examples are the 1940 Luftwaffe bombing of London, the 1965-72 napalming of large areas of Vietnam, and the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of Bagdad. A key factor in the failure or success of overt state terrorism seems to be the liberation-domination dichotomy.

Hence the continuing use of covert state terrorism as the preferred method of promoting the neo-liberal global project. However covert state terrorism also has its difficulties and problems and there are many examples of these to be found by reading the Covert Action Quarterly. Supposedly the American people by their so-called representatives have authorized the US Central "Intelligence" Agency to use violence covertly to create fear and submission in the pursuit of our rulers' objectives. Although our representatives supposedly have "oversight" over CIA conduct, they seem to be constantly ignorant or surprised by what eventually sneaks into the public realm by conscience stricken agents or eventual forced publication of their undestroyed reports. Civilian airplanes carry people, and their destruction in air is one way to create fear and submission by others. But the problem with covert terrorism, in addition to the liberation-domination question, is keeping it secret. A distance must be created between the CIA projects and their intended consequences (the fear necessary for submission). Like all US governmental projects, covert state terrorism has become primarily a marketing or "public relations" issue, but this also has its limits in reason and rationality. A case in point is that of the CIA bombing of a Cubana airliner on October 6, 1976, killing 73 innocent civilians in an unsuccessful effort to create fear and submission by the Cuban nation.

CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles had been trained by CIA in explosives in the early 1960s. He was ostensibly in the US military, February 1963 to March 1964, which was the cover CIA gave its training agents then. There's evidence he was in Dealy Plaza in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. He's had close connections with the US Mafia as well as the Miami Cuban-American Mafia. During the 1960s as a salaried agent he ran a school in Florida training others in his trade, financed by CIA. He also did forays to other countries to do covert bombings and attempted bombings and assassinations. CIA now says it was in contact with him up until about four months before the Cubana bombing. In 1972 he listed his permanent residence as Miami. When in 1974 he left Florida for Caracas to work for the Venezuelan intelligence agency DISIP, he had with him a substantial supply of CIA bomb making materials and explosion devices. In the fall of 1976 he had supposedly left DISIP and was operating a private detective agency in Caracas.

Recently released (partially blacked out) CIA reports (see National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153, Peter Kornbluh), suggest that CIA was involved in the planning of the October 6 Cubana airliner bombing. Some reports are of the planning meetings in Caracas and Santo Domingo involving Posada and his partner Orlando Bosch and other CIA and DISIP agents, which concerned the Cubana flight as well as the Letelier car bombing murders which occurred in Washington, DC in mid-September. In late September Posada reported to CIA: "We're going to hit the Cubana airliner." On October 1, the State Department at Posada's request issued under special procedure one of the bombers (his employee) a US visa for the week after the bombing. These reports and information (and whatever other CIA reports and information still existed) were not made available to the Venezuelan officials who were prosecuting Bosch and Posada in the 1980s.

George Bush Sr. was the CIA Director at the time of the bombing. No one in US warned Cuba or potential passengers of their impending doom. Bush Sr. was Vice President at the time when Posada was allowed to escape during his trial in Venezuela and report to Col. Oliver North in El Salvador on the Nicaraguan Contra supply operation being run out of the White House. CIA had bribed his guards. Bush Sr. was President when he pardoned Bosch against the recommendation of his Justice Department, thereby harboring him in Miami.

CIA was aware in 1976 that the Bush family had important connections in the oil business and were dealing with key politicians in Venezuela. Young Jeb Bush (now governor of Florida) was establishing himself in Caracas with the Commerce Bank of Texas, owned by Bush family friend (later Secretary of State) James Baker. When Bosch arrived in Caracas on September 8 (after a visit with Pinochet officials in Chile), then Venezuelan President Perez allowed Bosch and Posada to conduct fundraising and otherwise operate freely in Venezuela, even contributing personal funds to their project. At the time, Bosch was representing CORU, an umbrella organization of anti-Castro groups in US which CIA had urged them to form. Two top DISIP officials were involved in the planning sessions with Bosch and Posada in Caracas, so that the Cubana bombing, the explosion at the Guyana Embassy in Port-of-Spain, and the attempted murder of a Cuban diplomat in Mexico, all of which occurred in September-October, appear to have been joint CIA-DISIP projects. On the other hand, the Letelier bombing (planned in Santo Domingo without DISIP participation) appears to have been a joint CIA-"Condor" project. One CIA report indicates Posada after the Cubana bombing threatened that if he were forced to talk the Venezuelan government would go down the tube and US would have another Watergate.

Indeed, there are signs that another Watergate type cover-up is beginning. Homeland has charged Posada only with not reporting immediately to them, a simple matter which could be determined by a small fine. However, it's been set for hearing on June 13 and Posada's Miami lawyers are talking about filing motions to move the case to Miami, filing asylum petitions and other such delaying tactics. From Secretary Rice's May 21 statement, one would think that the Homeland immigration cases will go on for many months and she has no extradition obligation until it's over. Reportedly Posada is ill.

There's no valid reason why Posada should not be extradited to Venezuela now. This Administration, more than anyone else, knows who is responsible for bombing the Cubana flight. It doesn't need to wait for Venezuela to produce or translate the evidence, much of which is in still classified CIA files. Nor is there any valid reason to wait while lawyers mess around with Homeland's insignificant illegal entry claim or any asylum claim Posada might make.

On May 27 Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said that Venezuela's extradition request for Posada had been rejected as inadequate because unsupported by evidence. But the US Embassy in Venezuela had told Venezuela to translate the 700 pages of evidence (without any time limit) and on May 27 said it was still ready to receive the request. It's also now put a time limit on the submission of the translated evidence, which Venezuela has said it will comply with.

Washington had previously denied Venezuela's request to keep Posada in custody pending extradition. As things stand now, according to Washington there is no Venezuelan extradition request, which if true would allow them to justify harboring Posada in a country like El Salvador where he presumably could be kept from talking, or even disappearing him under the Witness Protection Program or otherwise. These solutions however would not be risk free.

It appears the Administration is trying to use the immigration case, with Posada's cooperation, to delay or avoid decision on the extradition request in hope of preventing evidence of CIA's involvement in the bombing (and perhaps other ugly deeds in the past) from becoming public in a Venezuelan proceeding. It's also still promoting through unnamed officials the ideas that US has some policy preventing extradition, and that Venezuela's extradition request was rejected as procedurally inadequate because the evidence was not timely submitted. Neither of which is so.

This case demonstrates the kind of cover-up problems that can arise from unwise use of covert state terrorism. It can backfire in the public relations area. So far the harm in this case is primarily in the international arena, where the media's are not so controlled by the commercial oligarchies. But more and more American reporters and people are demanding that Posada be tried in Venezuela where the crime was committed and that CIA open its files on the matter.

 

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