[News] When Our Assassins Go Free --Saul Landau

[News at freedomarchives.org]

CounterPunch - Sept 11-12, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau09112004.html

When Our Assassins Go Free

Geezers Make Gas
by Saul Landau

Our cause is just, it's just to slay
Fidelista Cubans on any given day
If cops ever catch us, we could care less
Proud members of GAS will never confess

We are GAS
You bet your ass
We got class

We kill for cause and cause is a killer
Posada's his name, he's our Godzilla
We whack Commy dragons, they go straight to hell
The Commy of Commys his name is Fidel

We are GAS
We kick your ass
We are nass--ty

(Lyrics from the GASeous hymn)

GAS, or Geezers Assassination Society, a Miami source claims, refers to
a secret club formed by four recently pardoned anti-Castro terrorists,
all in their twilight years. The group offered honorary membership --
women can only become honorary members -- to outgoing Panamanian
president Mireya Moscoso, who on August 26 released the convicted men.
A Panamanian court had sentenced them and two others to 7 and 8-year
terms for threatening public security and falsifying documents. The
prosecutor presented a large cache of explosives and related gear with
the defendants' fingerprints on them. Witnesses avowed that the men
planned to use this material in 2000 to bomb Cuban President Fidel
Castro--not engage in playful fireworks -- during a scheduled speech at
a Panamanian university.

GAS membership requires that aspirants swear in blood rituals to
dedicate the remainder of their lives--when not seeing prostate
specialists to plotting to assassinate Castro. GAS stole its credo --
Viva la Muerte!--from Nazi pilots during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9).

The newly pardoned admirers of those Nazi aces caught a waiting airplane
that carried them out of Panama. The plane stopped in Honduras to allow
the padrino of Latin American terrorism, Luis Posada Carriles (76), to
disembark. Guillermo Novo (65), Pedro Remon (60) and Gaspar Jimenez
(68), the other august GAS founders, all with impressive criminal
records, continued on to Miami, where perspective GASers and groupies
greeted them.

Out-going President Moscoso apparently contravened Panamanian law by
issuing the pardons before the appeals process had ended. Moscoso
immediately phoned US Ambassador Simon Ferro, saying she had complied
with Washington's request to release the men. Their arrival in Miami
coincided with President Bush's campaign stop there. Bush had declared
himself a mortal enemy of those who harbor terrorists. Apparently, he
made a nuanced exception for anti-Castro terrorists--"zealous patriots."

Some Panamanians suspect that Moscoso deposited millions in a Swiss bank
prior to issuing the pardons. Such an act would have helped offset the
hurt feelings she suffered from the worldwide criticism of her actions.
I empathize with Moscoso. The poor woman had become addicted to the
lavish lifestyle she developed in her five years as President. But she
spent only $23 million of public money on her personal needs and only $3
million on trips abroad. Her critics charged her with disguising
personal tourism as state missions since her overseas junkets
accomplished nothing for Panama. I say: "No one's perfect."

Unkind Panamanians call her a kleptomaniac. More generous compatriots
consider this a slight exaggeration. But, her defenders point out, she
resisted pressure to pardon the anti-Castroites until their advocates
offered a sufficient sum of money.

The newly liberated but still grumpy seniors had shared membership in
various terrorist organizations like Omega 7 and the Cuban Nationalist
Movement and had received support from the prestigious Cuban American
National Foundation (CANF) for their ongoing but unsuccessful efforts to
whack Cuba's leader. They had, however, dispatched other, lesser Cuban
officials and destroyed Cuban property in New York, Argentina, Mexico,
Barbados and elsewhere.

Indeed, part of GAS' pledge week activities require aspirants to
memorize Posada's decades of failed assassination attempts, just as
religious Christians return to the film, "The Passion of Christ," to
internalize the pain of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, en route to his
crucifixion.

The Prince of terrorists, Posada Carriles, achieved world status in 1976
by directing the sabotage of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados.
Shortly after taking off from Barbados International Airport, the bomb
exploded on board, the plane plunged into the sea and all 73 passengers
and crew members died. Posada denied involvement, but police nabbed two
of the plotters who identified Posada as the man who hired them to place
the bomb on the plane before they disembarked in Barbados.

Posada's wife told a Venezuelan journalist of her mate's emotions. "When
he started with the Barbados affair, I knew he would be successful
because the 'poor guy' had dedicated so much effort, with so much
passion" (We Placed the Bomb and So What, by Alicia Herrera).

Born Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles, he became known as Bambi to
his terrorist pals--how sweet. He served on dictator Fulgencio Batista's
repressive forces until the January 1959 revolutionary takeover. Posada
then swore vengeance.

In 1963, after the Bay of Pigs, the CIA trained Posada at Fort Benning,
Georgia on the fine points of 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 a movie script type
plot to assassinate Castro.

In 1996, 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 rest of the media. CIA technicians had
outfitted one of their news cameras with a gun that would fire when they
activated the camera. Fortunately, for Fidel, the assassins chickened
out. Posada became enraged over their cowardice, Veciana continued, and
recruited other assassins to use the same camera on Castro when he
stopped in Caracas for a press conference on his return to Cuba. But
those whackers also had second thoughts.

The plot failed again. But killing Castro remained the driving force in
Posada's life. Veciana quit the assassination business in 1973 after an
unknown gunman shot him in the head.

Perhaps, Posada's frustration over the failed 1971 hits abated after the
"success" of his 1976 Barbados air sabotage. But, alas, Venezuelan
authorities charged him with that crime and threw him in prison, where
he remained until August 1985, when leaders of CANF bribed prison
authorities to help Posada "escape."

Lt. Col. Oliver North then engaged him in the late 1980s to re-supply
the CIA-backed Contras from El Salvador. In 1990, in Guatemala, a gunman
shot Posada in the face. Down, but not out, the determined Castro slayer
hatched a plot to bomb Cuban hotels to deter the tourist trade. In one
hotel bombing, an Italian tourist died. Cuban police nabbed a Salvadoran
man who fingered Posada as his recruiter. The attacks did reduce tourism
for a brief time.

In a New York Times interview (July 12, 1998) with Anne Bardach and
Larry Rohter, Posada described "the Italian tourist's death as a freak
accident." But "I sleep like a baby," he said. "That Italian was sitting
in the wrong place at the wrong time." Posada told the Times that he
"still intends to try to kill Castro, and he believes violence is the
best method for ending Communism in Cuba."

Inevitably, the violence-prone Posada linked his fading professional
destiny with another pit bull-like GAS founder, Guillermo Novo.

When the newly freed Novo landed in Miami in late August he passed
quickly through US Immigration. Luckily for him, his name wasn't Ted
Kennedy or the authorities would have questioned him about terrorist
connections. "We beat you," Novo crowed to Fidel, who wasn't listening.
There were no reports that Castro had conceded or even acknowledged
Novo's existence.

Novo, like Posada, eligible to collect social security, swore eternal
allegiance to terrorism as the only way to remove Castro. Terrorism has
animated his life since 1964 when he fired a bazooka at the UN building
in New York while Che Guevara addressed the General Assembly.

In 1979, a Washington DC jury convicted him of conspiring to assassinate
former Chilean Chancellor Orlando Letelier. Novo appealed and got
acquitted at a second trial, but was convicted of perjury for lying
about his knowledge of the assassination conspiracy. But he had already
served his time, the judge ruled. Novo rejoiced in the courthouse hall.
Since then, he's had little to laugh about.

Both Novo and Posada have earned reputations as serious men. So, when
they smile, it's not because they've succeeded in whacking Fidel.
Remember, young babies also evince smiles when GAS enters their system.


[Saul Landau is the Director of Digital Media and International Outreach
Programs for the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. His new
book is The Business of America.]

*

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