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POLITICS-U.S.:
A Terrorist Comes
Home to Roost
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, (IPS) - The sudden
and untimely arrival on U.S.
territory of a former Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset
and admitted terrorist, Luis
Posada Carriles, poses an
embarrassing challenge to the
credibility of the Bush
administration's war on
terrorism.
Posada, who in an interview with
the New York Times seven years
ago admitted to organising a
wave of bombings in Cuba in 1997
that killed an Italian tourist
and injured 11 others, is best
known as the prime suspect in
the bombing of a Cubana Airlines
flight shortly after it took off
from Barbados in October 1976.
The incident, in which all 73
crew members and passengers
including teenaged members of
Cuba's national fencing team
were killed, was the first
confirmed mid-air terrorist
bombing of a commercial
airliner.
Then-President George Bush in
1990 pardoned Orlando Bosch,
another Cuban exile opposed to
President Fidel Castro and
implicated in the plot,
overruling a strong U.S. Justice
Department opinion that called
for Bosch's deportation.
Posada, who also worked for the
operation supplying ''Contra''
rebels in Central America in the
mid-1980s until the Iran-Contra
scandal broke open with the
downing of one of its planes,
was also convicted of conspiring
to assassinate Castro during a
2000 visit to Panama. A
Panamanian court sentenced him
to eight years in prison in 2004
but he was unexpectedly pardoned
by outgoing President Mireya
Moscosa last September and flew
to Honduras.
”This is a real test of
(President) George W. Bush's
commitment to fighting
terrorism,” said Peter Kornbluh,
a Latin American specialist at
the non-governmental National
Security Archive (NSA). This
week, the organisation released
a series of declassified U.S.
documents that detailed Posada's
terrorist history and his
previous association with the
CIA.
”Already, U.S. credibility has
been eroded in the six weeks
since Posada apparently arrived
in the United States without the
government doing anything about
it,” Kornbluh told IPS Thursday.
He said Posada had apparently
arrived in south Florida, almost
certainly by boat, in late
March.
A spokesperson at the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in
Miami, where Posada's attorney,
Eduardo Soto, announced April 12
that his client had filed an
asylum claim, told IPS that its
agents were not looking for
Posada because ''no warrant for
his arrest has been issued.”
”We do have an interest in
talking with him but we don't
have a way to exercise
jurisdiction without a warrant,”
she said.
Venezuela, where Posada was
originally arrested shortly
after the 1976 Air Cubana
bombing, is expected to transmit
a provisional arrest warrant to
the State Department either
Friday or Monday, according to
Arelis Baiba, a spokesperson for
its embassy here. The issuance
of the warrant will be followed
by a formal extradition request.
In deliberating on the case
earlier this week, the
Venezuelan Supreme Court
referred to Posada as ”the
author or accomplice of
homicide,” adding, ”he must be
extradited and judged.”
It is unclear how the Bush
administration, whose ties to
Venezuela are increasingly
fraught, will react, although
many analysts said they believe
that Washington will not deport
him to Caracas.
Some said that administration
intermediaries are trying to
persuade Posada to leave the
U.S. precisely in order to avoid
further embarrassment for Bush.
”I think they're trying to
persuade him to quietly leave
the country,” said Wayne Smith,
a Cuba specialist at the
Washington-based Center for
International Policy (CIP) who
served as chief of the U.S.
Interest Section in Havana in
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
''But will he go along with
that? I don't know.”
For now, the administration
insists it has no idea where
Posada is or even whether he is
actually on U.S. soil. At a
public appearance earlier this
week, the hardline Assistant
Secretary of State for Western
Hemisphere Affairs, Roger
Noriega, ignoring the fact that
Posada's lawyer was the first to
declare that he was in the
United States, charged that more
recent charges by Castro himself
that Posada was here could be
”inventions.”
In a call-in to a Miami radio
station, Bosch, who said he
believes Posada should indeed
receive asylum, said he had
talked with Posada who confirmed
that he was in the United
States.
”In terms of where he presently
is, I think it's fair to say we
don't know,” said State
Department spokesman Tom Casey
Monday. Asked whether the State
Department considered Posada to
be a terrorist, Casey said the
foreign ministry had no
”particular assessment.”
According to the NSA, Posada,
who is now 77 years old, joined
the U.S. military in 1963 and
was recruited by the CIA, which
trained him in demolitions. CIA
documents posted at the NSA's
Web site show that he was
terminated as an asset in July
1967 only to be reinstated four
months later.
The relationship lasted until
1974, although he retained
contact with the agency at least
until June 1976, three months
before the plane bombing,
according to the documents.
During that period, he worked as
a senior official in the
Venezuelan intelligence agency,
DISIP.
Another 1972 CIA document
describes Posada as a high-level
official in charge of
demolitions at DISIP. The report
noted that Posada had apparently
taken CIA explosives supplies to
Venezuela and was associated
with a Miami mafia figure named
Lefty Rosenthal.
A series of 1965 FBI memos
obtained by NSA describe
Posada's participation in a
number of plots involving
sabotage and explosives, as well
as his financial ties to Jorge
Mas Canosa, another anti-Castro
activist who would later go on
to found and lead the Cuban
American National Foundation (CANF).
Plots included efforts to blow
up Cuban or Soviet ships in
Veracruz, Mexico, and the
bombing of the Soviet library in
Mexico City. One memo links him
to a major plot to overthrow the
Guatemalan government, an effort
halted by the discovery by U.S.
Customs agents of a cache of
weapons that included napalm and
explosives. During this period,
Posada was working with the CIA.
In one of the very first reports
on the Oct. 6, 1976 bombing of
the Cubana Air flight, a cable
from the FBI Venezuelan bureau
cites an informant who
identified Posada and Bosch as
responsible and notes that the
two Venezuelan suspects -- who
both worked for a Caracas
private security firm set up by
Posada in 1974 -- had been
arrested by police in Barbados.
A follow-up Nov. 2 cable cites
information from another
Cuban-exile informant for DISIP,
Ricardo Morales Navarrete, also
known as ”Monkey” Morales, about
Posada's participation in
planning meetings before the
bombing.
Posada was arrested by
Venezuelan authorities shortly
after the bombing in what one
former FBI counter-intelligence
official described to the Times
earlier this week as a
''preventative measure -- to
prevent him from taking or being
killed.”
”They knew he had been
involved,” said Carter Cornick.
''There was no doubt in anyone's
mind, including mine, that he
was up to this eyeballs,” in the
Air Cubana bombing. Posada then
spent the next eight years in
jail, punctuated by two
inconclusive trials, before
escaping a minimum-security
facility in 1985 and making his
way to Central America.
Posada, who is rumoured to be
suffering from cancer, now hopes
to gain asylum in the United
States, posing a particularly
delicate problem for a president
whose family has long courted
anti-Castro militants in the
Cuban-American community but who
himself has sworn that neither
terrorists nor the governments
that harbour them should escape
punishment.
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