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CounterPunch - June 9, 2005<br>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html<br><br>
</a>The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer<br><br>
Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax<br><br>
By SAUL LANDAU<br><br>
President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of
<br>
U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or <br>
carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a
<br>
dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap
<br>
when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the
<br>
United States.<br><br>
But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel
<br>
Castro, these rules don't apply.<br><br>
Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba,
<br>
receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the
<br>
president's commitment to fight terrorism.<br><br>
For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada
<br>
in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western
<br>
Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken <br>
"Kenny Boy" Lay ENRON's CEO got handcuffed?) Justice
Department <br>
spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the <br>
western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United
States."<br><br>
The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called
"Bambi" by <br>
his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New
<br>
York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his
eyeballs" in <br>
the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over <br>
Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published
<br>
FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also
<br>
reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform
<br>
Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.<br><br>
Posada denied involvement at the time, but police nabbed two of the <br>
plotters who had disembarked in Barbados. They fingered Posada as the
<br>
man who hired them to place the bomb on the plane. His name became <br>
ubiquitous in the files of agencies that monitored terrorists. <br>
Nevertheless, several weeks after Posada announced his presence on U.S.
<br>
soil, Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
<br>
Affairs, still claimed he had no information that Posada had even <br>
entered the country.<br><br>
Posada himself promoted his high international profile. So that the <br>
world knew of his exploits, he boasted to New York Times reporters Anne
<br>
Bardach and Larry Rohter in 1998 that he had organized a sabotage <br>
campaign of Cuban tourist spots. In 1997, one of Posada's agents in Cuba
<br>
detonated a bomb at a Cuban hotel that killed an Italian tourist. Posada
<br>
replied that "it was a freak accident, but I sleep like a
baby." A <br>
hardened terrorist can't afford to be sentimental!<br><br>
In 1999, Panamanian police discovered that the 71-year-old Posada, <br>
between visits to his proctologist, conspired with three other <br>
anti-Castro geezers to assassinate Cuba's leader in Panama. Castro was
<br>
to give a public speech there.<br><br>
This quartet of seniors, Guillermo Novo, Pedro Remon, Gaspar Jimenez
and<br>
Posada, planned to blow up the platform from which Castro would speak.
<br>
After Panamanian police arrested them, they denied any involvement. <br>
"What proof do they have?" sneered Posada et. al. a mere set
of their <br>
fingerprints on the explosives found in their rented car.<br><br>
This March, Posada entered the U.S. surreptitiously. He left Panama less
<br>
than a year after out-going Panamanian President Mireyea Moscoso <br>
pardoned him and his accomplices.<br><br>
Moscoso also apparently contravened Panamanian law by issuing the <br>
pardons before the appeals process had ended. The Panamanian press mused
<br>
about the "coincidence" between the issuing of pardons and the
<br>
simultaneous $4 million deposited in her Swiss bank account.<br><br>
After pardoning the geezers, Moscoso phoned U.S. Ambassador Simon Ferro,
<br>
saying she had complied with Washington's request to release the
men.<br><br>
On May 20, 2004, the four caught a waiting airplane that took them to
<br>
Honduras. There, Posada, the veritable padrino of Latin American <br>
terrorism, disembarked while the other three continued to Miami so their
<br>
arrival could coincide with President Bush's campaign stop. They entered
<br>
the United States without problems, despite their terrorist rap
sheets.<br><br>
Did Homeland Security personnel read Bush's November 26, 2001 <br>
declaration? "If anybody harbors a terrorist, they're a
terrorist." Did <br>
Bush send a note to anti-terrorist agencies explaining that they should
<br>
make exceptions for "zealous patriots" who wanted to
assassinate Castro <br>
and anyone else who happened to be near him when the bomb went
off?<br><br>
Indeed, all four pardoned Castro-haters had for decades tried to <br>
assassinate and commit sabotage against Cuban and other officials and
<br>
properties in New York, Mexico and the Caribbean.<br><br>
A Washington D.C. jury had convicted Guillermo Novo first of conspiring
<br>
to assassinate former Chilean Chancellor Orlando Letelier. When an <br>
appeals court reversed that conviction on procedural grounds, a second
<br>
jury in 1982 found Novo guilty of perjury for lying to a grand jury <br>
about his knowledge of the assassination plot. In September 1976, five
<br>
Cubans working with Chilean secret police agents on orders from <br>
Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet had car-bombed Letelier on Washington's
<br>
Embassy Row.<br><br>
Ronni Moffitt, Letelier's young colleague at the Institute for Policy
<br>
Studies, also died in the bombing. The FBI also knew that Posada had
<br>
knowledge of the plot to kill Letelier.<br><br>
Born Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles in Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1928,
<br>
this Cuban expatriate served on dictator Fulgencio Batista's repressive
<br>
forces until the January 1959 revolutionary takeover. Posada then swore
<br>
vengeance.<br><br>
The CIA recruited him for its 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
<br>
But the Agency placed Posada in an anti-Castro version of the Waffen SS,
<br>
a squad that would "mop up" after the invaders had prevailed.
Following <br>
the April fiasco, the CIA sent Posada for "training" at Fort
Benning, <br>
Georgia, to learn about spying, using explosives and other lethal <br>
devices. In 1971, working out of Venezuela, he partnered with Antonio
<br>
Veciana, founder of Alpha 66, another anti-Castro terrorist group, to
<br>
plan an elaborate plot to assassinate Castro.<br><br>
In a 1996 interview, Veciana told me how he and Posada had recruited two
<br>
Venezuelan hit men, disguised them as a TV news crew and sent them to
<br>
Santiago, Chile, before Castro arrived on a visit. Meanwhile, the <br>
assassins "blended in" with the press corps. CIA technicians
had <br>
outfitted their news camera with a gun. Fortunately for Fidel, the <br>
assassins chickened out. Posada, enraged over such cowardice, recruited
<br>
other assassins to use the same lethal camera on Castro when he stopped
<br>
in Caracas for a press conference on his return to Cuba. Those whackers
<br>
also had second thoughts and the plot failed again.<br><br>
Perhaps Posada's frustration over the failed 1971 hits abated after the
<br>
"success" of his 1976 Barbados air sabotage. After Venezuelan
<br>
authorities charged him with responsibility for the airline bombing,
<br>
they tossed him into prison while appeal after appeal took place until
<br>
August 1985. Then, someone who knew and admired Posada perhaps Jorge
<br>
Mas Canosa, leader of the Cuban American Nation Foundation in Miami, who
<br>
is listed with a $50 note next to his name in Lt. Col. Oliver North's
<br>
notebooks, published by the Iran-Contra Congressional subcommittees --
<br>
bribed prison authorities to help Posada "escape."<br><br>
Following his "escape," North then engaged this fugitive to
re-supply <br>
the CIA-backed Contras from El Salvador. When the United States stopped
<br>
funding the Contra War, with the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista
<br>
government in Nicaragua, Posada returned to the bombing business. This
<br>
time, he selected bombing hotels in Cuba, a strategic target that would
<br>
impair Castro's foreign exchange source by making the island a dangerous
<br>
spot for European tourists. Posada told Times reporters Bardach and <br>
Rohter that the money came from wealthy Cubans in Miami.<br><br>
Given Posada's own boasting and from the available evidence in published
<br>
documents, the Justice Department had to either try him for terrorist
<br>
acts or deport him to Venezuela, which has requested his extradition. He
<br>
plotted the 1976 airliner bombing from Caracas and escaped from prison
<br>
there. He also apparently committed murder and torture there as well.
<br>
Despite this overwhelming documentation, however, the Justice Department
<br>
rejected Venezuela's May 2005 extradition request to try Posada for this
<br>
crime on the grounds that the request lacked sufficient detail.<br><br>
One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United <br>
States with the idea that U.S. government complicity in aiding and <br>
abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities
<br>
didn't inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in <br>
1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada's agents <br>
placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has <br>
knowledge of Posada's covert activities for U.S. intelligence as
well.<br><br>
Given Washington's decade long history of terrorism aimed at Cuba, Bush
<br>
might ask his staff to re-word the doctrinaire anti-terrorist statements
<br>
they write for his press conferences.<br><br>
After the foul 9/11 deeds, a few wise counselors had recommended that
<br>
Bush leave the anti-terrorist campaign to police and judicial agencies.
<br>
But Bush insisted on war. By employing the military to this task and in
<br>
the process justifying the erosion of human rights as necessary to <br>
fighting terrorism, the world has come to think of the U.S. government
<br>
as hypocritical at best.<br><br>
Posada, an old U.S. terrorist chicken, has come home to roost in Bush's
<br>
nest. He has also exposed Bush's anti-terrorist policies as a
hoax.<br><br>
<br>
[Saul Landau teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of
<br>
the Institute for Policy Studies. He and co-author John Dinges wrote
<br>
"Assassination on Embassy Row," an account of the
Letelier-Moffitt <br>
murders. A version of this article appeared in Foreign Policy In
Focus.]<br>
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