[News] Terrorist Network in U.S. [Miami]

[News at freedomarchives.org]

April 30, 2005

TERRORIST NETWORK OPERATING OPENLY IN THE UNITED STATES

By Jane Franklin

Three years ago, President Bush said that his War on Terror would pursue
terrorists "in any dark corner of the world," but no light has been cast on
Miami where terrorists for decades have waged a campaign against Cuba of
hit-and run attacks, sabotage, infiltration of armed agents, assassination,
etc. After the failure of the CIA's 1961 invasion, using Cuban émigrés at
the Bay of Pigs, the CIA tried another plan, Operation Mongoose, which also
failed after leading directly to the 1962 October Missile Crisis. Then, for
years, about 300 agents operating out of a CIA station housed at the
University of Miami, with the code name JM WAVE, employed a few thousand
Cuban émigrés in efforts to overthrow the Cuban government. These covert
activities and the overt trade embargo and travel ban constitute a
continuing State of Siege against the island 90 miles from Florida.

To this day, groups with names like Alpha 66 and F4 operate with impunity.
They even brag about their exploits on TV. After a raid on a Havana hotel
in 1992, Tony Bryant, the head of Comandos L, announced at a televised news
conference plans for more raids on Cuba's tourist industry, which was
becoming the mainstay of the Cuban economy after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Bryant warned tourists to stay off the island, declaring, "From this
point on, we're at war," adding, "The Neutrality Act doesn't exist."

Last year on Channel 41, Oscar Asa, nephew of former Cuban Dictator
Fulgencio Batista, hosted Comandos F4 leader Rodolfo Frómeta, who described
continuing plans for armed attacks against Cuba. These days another nation
has become a target of U.S.-based terrorists: along with F4 on Asa's
program was former Venezuelan Army Captain Eduardo García, who was involved
in the 2002 coup that briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
García praised Comandos F4 for their help in his continuing efforts to
topple the Venezuelan government. They train together in the Florida
Everglades.

Among the earliest Cuban émigrés 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 reporters,
"The CIA taught us everything--everything." "They taught us explosives, how
to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage."

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.

In his autobiography, Los caminos del guerrero (The Paths of the Warrior),
Posada named major financial supporters, extremely wealthy Cuban-Americans,
pillars of terror: Jorge Mas Canosa, Pepe Hernández, and Feliciano Foyo.
Mas Canosa became the chair of the Cuban American National Foundation
founded in 1981 by the Reagan Administration. CANF, the wealthiest and most
influential right-wing Cuban-American group, campaigned for Bosch's
freedom. On March 25, 1983, with Mas Canosa leading a committee to
intercede in his release, the Miami City Commission proclaimed "Orlando
Bosch Day." In 1986, Otto Reich, a right-wing Cuban-American politician,
was placed in Venezuela as the U.S. Ambassador. Bosch's release was thus
assured.

When he was let out of prison the following year, Bosch returned to Miami,
where he was detained because of a 1974 parole violation related to his
conviction for firing a bazooka in 1968 at a Polish freighter docked in
Miami. Greeted in Miami as a hero, Bosch's cause was championed in 1989 by
Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, on her way to becoming the first
Cuban-American in Congress, and Jeb Bush, the president's son who was
Ros-Lehtinen's campaign manager. In 1990, President Bush Sr. freed Bosch
from detention despite the fact that the Justice Department had ordered
that Bosch be excluded and deported from the United States.

In his deportation order, Associate Attorney General Joe D. Whitley wrote:
"For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of
terrorist violence. He has threatened and undertaken violent terrorist acts
against numerous targets, including nations friendly toward the United
States and their highest officials. He has repeatedly expressed and
demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death. His
actions have been those of a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human
decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity
of his victims."

Living free in Miami, Bosch has continued his terrorist operations. In
February 2004 during a long television interview on Channel 22, Bosch
justified the bombing of the Cuban civilian airliner and boasted about his
role in eleven attempts to carry out military attacks against Cuba in the
previous ten years and his three attempts to assassinate President Castro,
in Chile, Nicaragua and Spain. Bosch receives ovations in Miami whenever he
appears on public stages with high-ranking politicians. He is a celebrity
terrorist.

So now it is no wonder that Posada is asking for asylum, which he naturally
would expect George Bush Jr. to grant him based on his devoted service, as
his lawyer points out, to the CIA. After all, he is no less a terrorist
than Bosch. In 1985, nine years after the bombing of the Cuban passenger
jet, Posada escaped from Venezuelan prison thanks to a bribe paid by Mas
Canosa. Posada went to El Salvador where he helped another Cuban-American
CIA agent, Félix Rodríguez, direct aid to the contras in Nicaragua, an
illegal operation directed from the White House by Colonel Oliver North.

Rodríguez, another Miami stalwart, was a CIA agent before the Bay of Pigs
invasion. He boasts that he was present in Bolivia at the execution of Che
Guevara and proudly wears Guevara's watch as a memento. In May 1987,
Rodríguez testified to the congressional committees investigating the
misnamed "Iran-Contra Affair" about his meetings with then Vice President
Bush in 1985 and 1986. When he was asked about "Ramón Medina," Rodríguez
boasted that "Medina" was Posada, a "good friend of mine." He testified
that he brought Posada to El Salvador because this "honorable man"
"deserved to be free." Not another question was asked.

During the period from October 1984 to October 1986 when U.S. aid to the
contras was prohibited by the Boland Amendment, Phyllis Byrne, a secretary
in Vice President Bush's office, prepared a routine request (April 16,
1986) for Bush to meet with Rodríguez so that Rodríguez could "brief the
vice president on the status of the war in El Salvador and resupply of the
contras." Soon after that, Byrne prepared a memo (April 30, 1986) to inform
Bush about the meeting the vice president would be having on May 1: "Félix
Rodríguez, a counterinsurgency expert who is visiting from El Salvador,
will provide a briefing on the status of the war in El Salvador and
resupply of the contras."

After the illegal "Iran-Contra Affair" was exposed, Posada worked for
Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo, keeping an eye on Cerezos own military
for signs of a possible coup or assassination. In 1997 the Miami Herald
reported that Posada had been involved in a bombing campaign that targeted
Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina, who was disposed to improving
relations with Cuba. Posada was forced out of Honduras in 1995 amid
allegations that he set off 41 bombs there in one year--almost a bomb a
week.

In a long interview by New York Times reporters (published July 12-13,
1968), Posada boasted that he paid a mercenary from El Salvador to bomb
Havana hotels in 1997, killing an Italian, Fabio di Celmo, and wounding
several people before Cuban police captured the bomber. Of di Celmo, Posada
shrugged, "That Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Back in 1960, the CIA launched a massive campaign to assassinate Fidel
Castro, and Posada, like Bosch, repeatedly tried to kill the Cuban leader.
In the year 2000, President Castro attended the Ibero-American Summit
meeting in Panama City. Shortly after arriving, he announced that Posada
and three other Cuban-Americans were at that very moment preparing to set
off a bomb that would kill not only the Cuban president but hundreds of
Panamanian people, mostly students, to whom he would be speaking in a
university auditorium. Thanks to Cuban intelligence agents, their exact
location was given to Panama's police, who arrested them and seized their
C-4 explosives, fake passports, etc.

Because Cuban intelligence officials had learned of the plot, more than
2000 people attended Fidel Castro's speech without being killed or wounded.
How did Cuba know about the plot and save all those lives? Through Cuban
agents who infiltrate terrorist groups. In 1998, a year after Posada's
bombing campaign in Havana hotels, Cuban officials received information
about terrorism they thought the FBI should know about. They gave that
information to the FBI. Did the FBI arrest the terrorists? No, the FBI
arrested the Cubans in Miami who had gathered the information and called
THEM terrorists. A change of venue was refused.

A Miami jury convicted the Cuban Five, and a Miami judge gave them long
sentences: Gerardo Hernández (two life sentences plus 15 years), Ramón
Labañino (life plus 18 years), Antonio Guerrero (life plus 10 years),
Fernando González (19 years), and René González (15 years). They remain in
separate prisons scattered around the United States, awaiting the decision
of an Appeals Court. This is their reward for trying to protect people from
terrorists. Cuban intelligence agents, of course, continued by necessity to
investigate terrorists and were able to stop the major Panama City plot
even as the Cuban Five were imprisoned.

Panama did not charge Posada and his gang with attempted murder but only
with possession of explosives, illegal association in order to commit a
crime, falsification of documents, and danger to public safety. After they
were convicted, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, on her way out of
office in August 2004, pardoned them. Posada's three co-conspirators were
welcomed home to Miami as heroes. These three have hair-raising histories.

Pedro Remón, an Omega 7 member, was charged in 1985 with two
assassinations: Cuban-American Eulalio José Negrín, who supported El
diálogo (the dialogue) in 1979 with Cuba, was shot to death in front of his
young son at his home in New Jersey; Cuban United Nations diplomat Félix
García Rodríguez was shot to death as he stopped for a red light in Queens,
New York City. It was the killing of the Cuban diplomat that forced the FBI
to make some arrests because of international repercussions. Remón
plea-bargained to setting off a bomb at Cuba's United Nations Mission and
attempting to assassinate Cuban UN Ambassador Raúl Roa Kourí. He was
sentenced to 10 years.

Guillermo Novo and his brother Ignacio Novo in 1964 fired a bazooka at the
UN General Assembly building where Che Guevara was speaking. In 1979
Guillermo Novo was found guilty of the 1976 car-bomb killing in Washington,
D.C. of Orlando Letelier, who had served in the government of Chilean
President Salvador Allende, and his aide, Ronni Moffitt, but was acquitted
in a 1981 retrial. The federal jury found him guilty of two counts of lying
to a grand jury. Jorge Mas Canosa then hired him to work in CANF's
"Information Commission."

Gaspar Jiménez murdered a Cuban diplomat in Mexico. He was indicted for the
1976 car-bombing of Emilio Milián in Miami but charges were dropped.
Milián, a radio commentator who had criticized terrorism by right-wing
Cuban émigrés, lost both legs. Jiménez then worked for Dr. Alberto
Hernández, Mas Canosa's physician and a financial supporter of Posada. In
his interview by New York Times reporters, Posada said that Jiménez was the
courier who took money from Mas Canosa to Posada with the message, "This is
for the church."

What about Posada? He is still a fugitive and both Cuba and Venezuela want
him extradited. In Cuba and other countries (for example, Guyana and
Italy), families of Posada's victims await justice, either extradition to
Cuba or to Venezuela or a trial in an international tribunal.

According to President Bush, any nation that harbors terrorists is a
terrorist state. The United States has obviously already met that
criterion, but without much attention being paid. Now, if Posada, whose
request for asylum has received worldwide attention, is harbored by the
United States, Bush will be blatantly proclaiming that the United States
meets his own definition of a terrorist nation.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20050502/0e5da698/attachment.htm>