Horhey

Update - May 18, 2005 - Documents featured on May 17, 2005 edition of ABC's Nightline

Washington D.C. May 18, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.

Both documents were featured last night on ABC Nightline's program on Luis Posada Carriles, who was detained in Miami yesterday by Homeland Security.

In addition, the Archive posted the first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner." This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down.

There is no indication in the declassified files that indicates that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist threat against Cubana planes. Still classified CIA records indicate that the informant might actually have been Posada himself who at that time was in periodic contact with both CIA and FBI agents in Venezuela.

CIA, June 22, 1976, Report, "Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists to Blow Up a Cubana Airliner"
FBI, October 9, 1976, "Unknown Subjects; Suspected Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976"
State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, October 18, 1976, Memorandum, "Castro's Allegations"

Washington D.C. May 10, 2005 - Declassified CIA and FBI records posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University identify Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who is apparently in Florida seeking asylum, as a former CIA agent and as one of the "engineer[s]" of the 1976 terrorist bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 that killed 73 passengers.

The documents include a November 1976 FBI report on the bombing cited in yesterday's New York Times article "Case of Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist," CIA trace reports covering the Agency's recruitment of Posada in the 1960s, as well as the FBI intelligence reporting on the downing of the plane. The Archive also posted a second FBI report, dated one day after the bombing, in which a confidential source "all but admitted that Posada and [Orlando] Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline." In addition, the posting includes several documents relating to Bosch and his suspected role in the downing of the jetliner on October 6, 1976.

Using a false passport, Posada apparently snuck into the United States in late March and remains in hiding. His lawyer announced that Posada is asking the Bush administration for asylum because of the work he had done for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s. The documents posted today include CIA records confirming that Posada was an agent in the 1960s and early 1970s, and remained an informant in regular contact with CIA officials at least until June 1976.

In 1985, Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela where he had been incarcerated after the plane bombing and remains a fugitive from justice. He went directly to El Salvador, where he worked, using the alias "Ramon Medina," on the illegal contra resupply program being run by Lt. Col. Oliver North in the Reagan National Security Council. In 1998 he was interviewed by Ann Louise Bardach for the New York Times at a secret location in Aruba, and claimed responsibility for a string of hotel bombings in Havana during which eleven people were injured and one Italian businessman was killed. Most recently he was imprisoned in Panama for trying to assassinate Fidel Castro in December 2000 with 33 pounds of C-4 explosives. In September 2004, he and three co-conspirators were suddenly pardoned, and Posada went to Honduras. Venezuela is now preparing to submit an official extradition request to the United States for his return.

According to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project, Posada's presence in the United States "poses a direct challenge to the Bush administration's terrorism policy. The declassified record," he said, "leaves no doubt that Posada has been one of the world's most unremitting purveyors of terrorist violence." President Bush has repeatedly stated that no nation should harbor terrorists, and all nations should work to bring individuals who advocate and employ the use of terror tactics to justice. During the Presidential campaign last year Bush stated that "I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." Although Posada has reportedly been in the Miami area for more than six weeks, the FBI has indicated it is not actively searching for him.

Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

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Horhey

Washington D.C. June 9, 2005 - Luis Posada Carriles spoke of plans to "hit" a Cuban airliner only days before Cubana flight 455 exploded on October 6, 1976, killing all 73 passengers aboard, according to a declassified CIA document from 1976 posted by the National Security Archive today. The unusually detailed intelligence was provided by a source described as "a former Venezuelan government official" who "is usually a reliable reporter," according to the secret report.

Posada, a violent anti-Castro exile, is due to have his first legal hearing on June 13, after entering the United States illegally in March and applying for political asylum from the Bush Administration. After living for almost two months in Miami unmolested by law enforcement officials, he was detained on May 17. Venezuelan authorities say they are planning to formally request his extradition back to Caracas where he escaped in 1985 after being incarcerated for alleged involvement in the bombing of the Cuban airliner.

The CIA document described a $1000-a-plate fundraiser in Caracas held between September 22 and October 5, 1976, to support the activities of Orlando Bosch, the head of CORU, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization." The informant quoted Bosch as making an offer to Venezuelan officials to forgo acts of violence in the United States when President Carlos Andres Perez visited the UN in November, in return for "a substantial cash contribution to [Bosch's] organization." Bosch was also overheard stating: "Now that our organization has come out of the Letelier job looking good, we are going to try something else." Several days later, Posada was reported to have stated that "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details." (Both the Bosch and Posada statements were cited in an October 18th, 1976 report to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger posted by the Archive on May 17th.)

Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, called these documents "part of a trove of intelligence records that provide leads and evidence on major acts of terrorism committed by violent anti-Castro groups." He called 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."

The Archive also posted a declassified CIA summary that provided new details of Agency ties to Posada and Bosch in the 1960s and 70s. The CIA "traces" noted that Posada "was recruited by the Agency to serve as a Maritime Training Branch instructor" in early 1965 and also was "used as a source of information on Cuban exile activities." The CIA continued to maintain relations with Posada after he became a high ranking official in the Venezuelan secret police, DISIP, between 1967 and 1974, although the nature of Posada's work for the Agency during that time remains censored in the document. The CIA also admitted that it had multiple contacts with Orlando Bosch in 1962 and 1963.

In addition, the Archive posted a declassified FBI document dated October 21, 1976, citing sources who stated that CORU "was responsible for the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 on October 6, 1976." The source quoted a CORU member, Secundino Carrera, as stating that "this bombing and the resulting deaths were fully justified because CORU was at war with the Fidel Castro regime." At the time, CORU was led by Orlando Bosch.

According to the declassified documents, CORU was created at a meeting of Cuban exile groups in a small town called Bonao in the Dominican Republic in June 1976. In a June 29, 1976, report on Orlando Bosch's group Accion Cubana, FBI sources stated that "these groups agreed to jointly participate in the planning, financing, and carrying out of terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (page 8) Bosch, according to the document, was committed to violent acts against other countries he believed supported Cuba, including Colombia, Mexico and Panama. At the meeting, according to the document, the groups discussed kidnapping and executing a diplomat. A month later CORU members attempted to kidnap the Cuban ambassador to Mexico; one of his aides was shot and killed.

After Posada escaped from prison in Caracas, he flew aboard a private aircraft to Aruba, and was then taken to El Salvador where he assumed the alias "Ramon Medina" and became "support director" for the illicit contra resupply operation being run by the Reagan White House out of Illopango airbase in San Salvador. (see diagram) 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 resupply missions for contra soldiers in southern Nicaragua.

According to Posada, he was able to save $40,000 from his pay and lived on that in Central America after the scandal broke in late 1986 and the resupply operation was shut down. When he ran out of money, he asked another exile figure, Rafael Quintero for help. "Quintero told him to send one of his paintings to [Richard] Secord," the retired special forces official who collaborated with Oliver North in selling arms to Iran and transferring the profits to sustaining the contra war. According to the deposition, "Posada did so and Secord sent Posada $1000 for it."

The Posada File: Part II

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

Horhey

Washington D.C., October 5, 2006- On the 30th anniversary of the first and only mid-air bombing of a civilian airliner in the Western Hemisphere, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web new investigative records that further implicate Luis Posada Carriles in that crime of international terrorism. Among the documents posted is an annotated list of four volumes of still-secret records on Posada's career with the CIA, his acts of violence, and his suspected involvement in the bombing of Cubana flight 455 on October 6, 1976, which took the lives of all 73 people on board, many of them teenagers.

The National Security Archive, which has sought the declassification of the Posada files through the Freedom of Information Act, today called on the U.S. government to release all intelligence files on Posada. "Now is the time for the government to come clean on Posada's covert past and his involvement in international terrorism," said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project. "His victims, the public, and the courts have a right to know."

Posada has been in detention in El Paso, Texas, for illegal entry into the United States, but a magistrate has recommended that he be released this week because the Bush administration has not certified that he is a terrorist.

Among the documents posted today are four sworn affidavits by police officials in Trinidad and Tobago, who were the first to interrogate the two Venezuelans--Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo--who were arrested for placing the bomb on flight 455. (Their statements were turned over as evidence to a special investigative commission in Barbados after the crime.) Information derived from the interrogations suggested that the first call the bombers placed after the attack was to the office of Luis Posada's security company ICI, which employed Ricardo. Ricardo claimed to have been a CIA agent (but later retracted that claim). He said that he had been paid $16,000 to sabotage the plane and that Lugo was paid $8,000.

The interrogations revealed that a tube of Colgate toothpaste had been used to disguise plastic explosives that were set off with a "pencil-type" detonator on a timer after Ricardo and Lugo got off the plane during a stopover in Barbados. Ricardo "in his own handwriting recorded the steps to be taken before a bomb was placed in an aircraft and how a plastic bomb is detonated," deputy commissioner of police Dennis Elliott Ramdwar testified in his affidavit.

The Archive also released three declassified FBI intelligence reports that were sent to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after the bombing. The updates, classified "secret" and signed by director Clarence Kelly, focused on the relations between the FBI legal attaché in Caracas, Joseph Leo, Posada, and one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, to whom Leo had provided a visa. One report from Kelly, based on the word of an informant in Venezuela, suggested that Posada had attended meetings in Caracas where the plane bombing was planned. The document also quoted an informant as stating that after the plane went into the ocean one of the bombers placed a call to Orlando Bosch, the leading conspirator in the plot, and stated: "a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed."

Another State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research report to Kissinger, posted again today, noted that the CIA had a source in Venezuela who had overheard Posada saying "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details" only days before the plane was blown up off the coast of Barbados.

Both Bosch and Posada were arrested and imprisoned in Venezuela after the attack. Posada escaped from prison in September 1985; Bosch was released in 1987 and returned to the United States illegally. Like Posada, he was detained by immigration authorities; over the objections of the Justice Department, which determined he was a threat to public security, the first President Bush's White House issued him an administrative pardon in 1990.

Still-secret intelligence documents cited in the file review released today suggest that the CIA assigned several cryptonyms to Posada when he was working for them, first as an operative and trainer in demolitions and later as an informant based in the Venezuelan secret police service DISIP. In 1965 he was assigned the codename "AMCLEVE-15." In 1972 he "was given a new crypt CIFENCE-4," according to a still-unreleased CIA document, and later referred to as "WKSCARLET-3."

Bombing of Cuban Jetliner 30 Years Later

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

Horhey

Twilight of the Assassins - The Atlantic (November 2006)


Outside the U.S. mission in Havana in February, protesters memorialize those who died in the Cubana bombing and the Bay of Pigs


Cuban Exile Could Test U.S. Definition of Terrorist

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/na...5rw5uNLJPM9KTA

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

Ausinus

Stop spamming.

The good of the People is the highest law.
- Cicero

Pragmatist

What the hell is your point?

roobarb

...that he's the Joker and the US is Batman.

See I know that cuz I am the Phantom Stranger talke a look at my avatar closely.

Horhey

The fear of independant nationalism can go to great lengths. An example of this is what Senator Max Baucus called "the Bush administration's absurd and increasinlgy bizarre obsession with Cuba". It is bizarre, but it's not absurd. The reasons were explained in internal documents during the Kennedy-Johnson years. US planners warned that "the very existance" of the Castro regime is "successful defiance" of the reformed Monroe Doctrine; intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere, alot like Iran's successful defiance in 1979, or Syria's rejection of Clinton's orders. By 1960, presidential adviser Adolfe Berle warned "this is the end of the Monroe Doctrine."

The punishment of the Cuban people increased in 1992 when the US tightened the embargo, at the initiative of Liberal Democrats. The author of the legislation declared "my objective is wreak havoc in Cuba." That punishment of the Cuban people has been considered to be legitimate since Eisenhower. "The Cuban people are responsible for the regime" Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon explaind in March 1990, so the US has the right to make them suffer by economic strangulation. Eisenhower approved sanctions expecting that "if the Cuban people are hungry, they will throw Castro out."

Kennedy agreed that the embargo would motivate Cubans to overthrow Castro as a result of the "rising discomfort among hungry Cubans." Kennedy started a terrorist campaign designed to "bring the terrors of the Earth to Cuba." The reasons were explained by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory in April 1960: Castro would be removed "through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship so every possible means should be undertaken promtly to weaken economic life of Cuba, in order to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government."

The US could not tolerate "Cuban refusal to submit to the United States", the reaction of "a people stll convinced that they have a right to self determination and national sovereignty", Latin American scholar Louis Perez writes. There was a fear the Cuba might become another "contagious example", like Chile and other targets of subversion, aggression, and terror. Cuban independance would encourage others, who might be infected by the "Castro idea of taking matters in their own hands", Latin American adviser Arthur Schlesinger warned Kennedy. Eisenhower expressed the same concern that Castro had "gained great prestige in Latin America," which meant that "governments elsewhere cannot oppose him too strongly since they are shaky with respect to the potentials of actions by the mobs within their own countries, to whom Castro's brand of demagoguery apeals."

The dangers are especially grave, Schlesinger elaborated, when "the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes...and the poor and underprivilaged stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding oppurtunities for a decent living." The whole system of domination might unravel if the idea of taking matters in one's own hands spread beyond Cuba. Concern over "viruses" and the "infections" they may spead has a been a common theme among empires.

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

Horhey

U.S. Releases Cuban terrorist and former C.I.A. operative linked to the bombing of a Cuban airliner and hotels

U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect - New York Times

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe

Horhey

Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch - Pardoned by George H.W. Bush and is Living happily in Miami Fl

Orlando Bosch (also known as Orlando Bosch Avila) is a Cuban exile and former CIA-backed criminal, head of CORU organization, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization". Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called Bosch an "unrepentant terrorist." He has been accused of having taken part in Operation Condor and of a variety of terrorist attacks. Most notably he has admitted, together with another anti-Castro Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, of taking part in the October 6, 1976bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which all seventy-three people on board were killed, including many young members of a Cuban fencing team. Five people from North Korea were also killed on board the flight. This bombing would have been plotted at the same meeting, attended by Luis Posada Carriles and DINA agent Michael Townley, where Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, in Washington, D.C. in 1976, was decided.

Orlando Bosch was in contact with CIA in 1962 and 1963, as the agency itself admitted, as recorded in the National Security Archive [2]. At this time, Bosch was the General Coordinator of the Insurrectional Movement of Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR). He was a member of the anti-Castro Operation 40.

On October 6th, 1976 Cubana Flight 455 was destroyed after takeoff by a bomb detonation that had been placed in the aircraft toilets in which all seventy-three people on board were killed, including many young members of a Cuban fencing team. Five people from North Korea were also killed on board the flight. This bombing would have been plotted at the same meeting, attended by Luis Posada Carriles and DINA agent Michael Townley, where Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, in Washington, D.C. in 1976, was decided.

In 1968 Bosch was arrested in Florida for an attack on a Polish freighter with a 57 mm recoilless rifle and was as a result sent to prison for a ten year term. In 1987, almost a decade after the Flight 455 incident, Bosch was freed from Venezuelan charges and went to the United States, assisted by US Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich; there, he was ultimately arrested for a parole violation. Bosch was pardoned of all American charges by President George H.W. Bush on July 18, 1990 at the request of his son Jeb Bush, who later became Governor of Florida; this pardon was despite objections by the then President's own defense department, that Bosch was one of the most deadly terrorists working "within the hemisphere." [1] "Although many countries seek Bosch's extradition he remains free in the United States. The political pressure to grant Bosch a pardon was begun during the congressional campaign run by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, herself a Cuban American, and overseen by her campaign manager Jeb Bush. The resultant pardon reputedly saw huge celebrations in Miami, in what was then called 'Free Orlando Day.'" [2]

Orlando Bosch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In a signing statement, Bush declared that he will ignore legislation that forbids the establishment of “any military base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” and legislation that impedes U.S. actions “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act - The Boston Globe