Dear Diane, <\/p>\n
Thank you for contacting my office about Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban exile. I appreciate hearing from you. As you know, Mr. Posada is alleged to have plotted the 1976 planting of a bomb on Cuban jetliner that resulted in the death of 73 people. Although he was jailed in Venezuela for nine years for this and other alleged violent activities, he was never convicted by a civilian court…<\/p>\n
Rep. Leach didn’t “hear” me, he responded to my form letter with a form letter. At least my letter reflected widely accepted facts, readily available even from mainstream sources<\/a>, that “Posada has openly boasted about his terrorist crimes. He has vowed to continue his reign of murder and mayhem.” – “The case was transferred, and was still being tried when Posada Carriles escaped from prison in Venezuela’s Guarico state Aug. 18, 1985, according to court documents.”<\/p>\n Terrorist Network Operating Openly In The United States<\/em><\/strong> Among the earliest Cuban ?migr?s to become CIA agents were Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, two of the most notorious terrorists in the Western Hemisphere. As Posada boasted in 1998 to New York Times<\/em> reporters, “The CIA taught us everything–everything.” “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.”<\/p>\n When George Bush Sr. became CIA director in 1976, Bosch founded CORU (Commanders of United Revolutionary Organizations), an umbrella group for carrying out terrorist actions against Cuba as well as countries and individuals considered friendly to Cuba. Posada joined CORU in a rampage of bombs in various countries. Their most spectacular success came in October 1976 when two bombs blew up a Cuban passenger jet a few minutes after it took off from Barbados, killing all 73 people aboard. Bosch and Posada, who at one time had both worked with Venezuelan intelligence, were quickly arrested in Venezuela as masterminds of this massacre and tried by military, not civilian, courts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Posada Carriles Bust Blows Bush?s Anti-Terror Cover<\/em><\/strong> President George W. Bush has made it clear that the punishment for even being suspected of planning, abetting, or carrying out a terrorist act is, at a minimum, getting tossed into a dark hole. Bush has thrown out even the Magna Carta when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.<\/p>\n But if suspected terrorists turn their ire toward Fidel Castro, these rules don?t apply.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leach<\/strong>: He managed to escape in 1985 and for the next 20 years lived and operated in several Latin American countries, including Guatemala and El Salvador…<\/p>\n Operated! Kudos to Rep. Leach for his honesty<\/a>. Again, from Saul Landau<\/a>:<\/p>\n The CIA recruited him to invade Cuba in the 1961 Bay of Pigs plot. The agency placed Posada in a Cuban version of the Waffen SS, a squad designed to ?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, he partnered with Antonio Veciana, founder of Alpha 66, another anti-Castro terrorist group, to plan an elaborate plot to assassinate Castro.<\/p>\n In a 1996 interview, Veciana told me how he and Posada had recruited a couple of 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 a news camera with a gun. Fortunately for Fidel, the assassins chickened out. Posada became enraged over their cowardice. He and Veciana recruited other assassins to use the same 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.<\/p>\n Perhaps Posada?s frustration over the failed 1971 hits abated after the ?success? of his 1976 Barbados air sabotage. Venezuelan authorities charged him with responsibility for the airline bombing and threw him in prison until August 1985. Leaders of the Cuban American Nation Foundation in Miami apparently ? according to Lt. Col. Oliver North?s notebooks, published by the Iran-Contra congressional subcommittees ? bribed prison authorities to help Posada ?escape.?<\/p>\n North then engaged him in the late 1980s to resupply the CIA-backed Contras from El Salvador. From there Posada went into the business of bombing hotels in Cuba, as he told Times<\/em> reporters Bardach and Rohter, with money that came from wealthy Cubans in Miami.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leach<\/strong>: In April 2005, he requested political asylum after he smuggled himself<\/strong> into the United States from Mexico…<\/p>\n Bosh! Again, from Landau<\/a>: <\/p>\n In 1999, Panamanian police discovered that the 71-year-old Posada, between visits to his proctologist and gerontologist, conspired with three other anti-Castro geezers to assassinate Cuba?s leader in Panama. Castro was to give a public speech there.<\/p>\n 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. They sneered at the Panamanian prosecutors, claiming that no proof existed?just a set of their fingerprints on the explosives found in their rented car.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Moscoso also apparently contravened Panamanian law by issuing the pardons before the appeals process had ended. The Panamanian press openly ?suspected? that more than a coincidence existed between the almost simultaneous issuing of pardons and the mysterious $4 million deposited in her Swiss bank account.<\/p>\n After she had pardoned the four, Moscoso phoned U.S. Ambassador Simon Ferro, saying she had complied with Washington?s request to release the men.<\/p>\n On May 20, 2004, the four caught a waiting airplane that took them to Honduras. There, Posada, the padrino of Latin American terrorism, disembarked while the other three continued to Miami so their arrival could coincide with President Bush?s campaign stop.<\/p>\n On November 26, 2001, Bush had declared that ?if anybody harbors a terrorist, they?re a terrorist.? He apparently forgot to mention that he had made exceptions for ?zealous patriots? who wanted to assassinate Castro and anyone else who happened to be near him when the bomb went off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How Authentic Journalists Caught an International Terrorist in Mexico<\/em><\/strong> Another day on the job, another seemingly routine story to be reported: Early on the morning of March 14, journalist Yolanda Guti?rrez learned that a 90-foot shrimp boat was stranded near a sand bar off the shores of the island. She leaped into action. After all, the journalist Guti?rrez has steadfastly defended the nearby endangered coral reefs from environmental destruction, and the locals were worried that this boat adrift might do them more harm.<\/p>\n Her report<\/a>, a local news story that would soon blow into an international scandal, in the March 15th issue of Por Esto!, began:<\/p>\n ?ISLA MUJERES, March 14: A shrimp boat from the United States with five crew members aboard was stranded for various hours while it attempted to enter the navigation canal and drifted to close to shore, although sources of the Port Captain?s office said that it did not affect any coral reef zones.<\/p>\n ?The boat named ?Santrina,? approximately 90 feet long and five or six meters wide, with license number 604553 went adrift at about 7:45 a.m. when it attempted to arrive in the Isla Mujeres port from the North.<\/p>\n ?The crew and its captain, Jos? Pujol, had left from the Bahamas and came to the island to stock up on food, water and fuel, in order to continue its route, which is unknown because the captain refused to speak with reporters<\/em>??<\/p>\n According to the report, the S.S. Santrina had ?tried to make a shortcut around the buoys? that set the path that most boaters obey when navigating shallow ports. This kind of running of red lights of the sea is particularly bad form if, say, you are harboring a fugitive, or, worse, a wanted international terrorist: the crew?s own sloppiness (?to live outside the law you must be honest,? chicos!) and disregard for the maritime traffic signs has now led to an intercontinental uproar that strikes at the cornerstone of Washington?s fake war on terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leach<\/strong>: When they learned of his application, the Venezuelan government asked for his extradition. Soon thereafter, federal agents arrested Mr. Posada, and he is currently being held by U.S. immigration authorities…<\/p>\n Landau<\/a>:<\/p>\n In mid-May, Homeland Security cops arrested Luis Posada Carriles. As TV footage showed, these officers didn?t even handcuff him. Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with ?illegal entry into the United States.?<\/p>\n 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<\/em> 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 documents from the FBI and CIA confirm Cornick?s statement. Published cables also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.<\/p>\n 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 U.S. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Leach<\/strong>: On September 28, 2005, a U.S. judge ruled that Mr. Posada cannot be deported to Venezuela because he faces the threat of torture in that country, and he remains incarcerated in El Paso, Texas. I will monitor this important judicial proceeding and will keep your views in mind should the House consider legislation related to it…<\/p>\n This is what Rep. Leach doesn’t say<\/a>:<\/p>\n But the idea of his extradition makes the Bush administration queasy. After his escape from a Venezuelan prison, Posada Carriles was hired by US covert operatives to direct the resupply operation for the Nicaraguan contras from El Salvador. Extraditing him for trial could send a worrisome signal to covert foreign agents that they cannot count on unconditional protection from the US government, and it could expose the CIA to embarrassing public disclosures from a former operative. It also would infuriate some members of Florida’s Cuban exile community who gave George W. Bush crucial support in both his presidential election victories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Posada Friend Says Return to Venezuela Would Mean Torture<\/em><\/strong> Dressed in a blue blazer and looking like a Venezuelan Peter Sellers with grey hair, Joaqu?n Fernando Chaffardet Ramos took the stand early this morning to provide support for his old friend, Luis Posada Carriles. Posada, in the second day of an asylum hearing in an effort to spend his final days in peaceful safety in United States custody, greeted his old friend with a beaming look. Admitting to the government?s claim that he entered the United States illegally<\/a> and therefore is deportable under U.S. law, Posada asserts, though, that the Convention Against Torture requires the United States keep him in its custody. The CAT prohibits the extradition or deportation of a person to a country where the deported or repatriated person is likely to be tortured, and this argument represents the best legal hope for Posada to escape deportation.<\/p>\n Yesterday<\/a>, the United States quickly agreed that under CAT, Posada could not be deported to Cuba, thereby implying that he would likely be subjected to torture at the hands of Fidel Castro. Raising this implication, Department of Homeland Security attorneys neglected to explain that Castro already made it clear that the Cuban government had no intentions of making a formal request for Posada?s extradition. The real threat to Posada is the extradition request from Venezuela, where he is wanted for participation in the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 in 1976, which killed 73 people. But the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Venezuela makes it unlikely, no matter what the law will say, that President George Bush will transfer Posada to Venezuelan jurisdiction.<\/p>\n Chaffardet?s purpose was to help relieve Bush of this dilemma, by establishing that if returned to Venezuela, Posada would be tortured or handed over to Cuban authorities. Looking calm, Chaffardet crossed his legs and let his loafer hang from his raised foot, swinging it back and forth. But this exterior calm was belied by a tenseness and a forced reticence in his responses to questions. Chaffardet, an attorney in Venezuela, has a long career in Venezuelan intelligence and other clandestine government services and appeared invulnerable to the concerns of the average person. He served in Special Services for the Interior of Venezuela, as a leader of general security for research and development of oil technology, an operative in the Venezuelan Attorney General?s office, the head of investigation into bank fraud after the financial crisis in 1995, and, finally, with Posada in DISIP (Venezuelan state and political security police) as the General Secretary. But even with experience and intrigue as twin mothers, Chaffardet appeared edgy and reluctant in his responses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Shout out<\/a> to the racist Kossack<\/a> who wondered what “skanky haired” people speaking about the Cuban 5<\/a> have to do with an antiwar rally. <\/p>\n “The bloody record of terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles includes not only the mid-air destruction of the airliner, but more than at least 50 violent attacks in the United States, Cuba, and other parts of the Americas and Europe.” (via<\/a>)<\/p>\n “The deadline for immigration judge William Abbott to decide what action to take regarding Posada is January 24. There are indications the U.S. government may permit his release into the U.S. public on or around that date.” <\/p>\n Does this warrant an update<\/a> or would that upset family friends<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Diane, Thank you for contacting my office about Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban exile. I appreciate hearing from you. As you know, Mr. Posada is alleged to have plotted the 1976 planting of a bomb on Cuban jetliner … Continue reading
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