Luis Posada Carriles dies a free man - shame on the USA/CIA!

[Peter Lemkin]

Luis Posada

Luis Posada was born in Cuba in 1928. He became a pediatrician in Havana. An opponent of Fidel Castro, Posada was a leading figure in JURE, a political party led by Manolo Rey. He took part in the Bay of Pigs. According to Gaeton Fonzi, the author of The Last Investigation, Posada was a former lieutenant in the United States Army, where he took an intelligence staff officer course.[/FONT]
Posada worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until 1967. He then moved to Venezuela where he became chief of security and counterintelligence in the secret police, Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención (DISIP).[/FONT]
In 1971 Posada worked with William C. Bishop and Antonio Veciana in the plot to assassinate Fidel Castro on a visit to Caracas on 31st November. As well as providing all the credentials necessary to get the assassins into Venezuela, Posada also planted phony documents so that if the two men were killed, the trail would lead to two Russian agents in Caracas. After the fall of President Carlos Andre Perez, Posada started his own private security agency.[/FONT]
On 25th November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Juan Manuel Contreras in Santiago de Chile. The main objective was for the CIA to coordinate the actions of the various security services in "eliminating Marxist subversion". Operation Condor was given tacit approval by the United States which feared a Marxist revolution in the region. The targets were officially leftist guerrillas but in fact included all kinds of political opponents. Posada soon became involved in this undercover operation.[/FONT]
In October, 1976, the midair explosion of Cubana Flight 455 flying out of Barbados killed all 73 people aboard. This included all 24 young athletes on Cuba's gold-medal fencing team. Police in Trinidadarrested two Venezuelans, Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Ricardo worked for Posada's security agency in Venezuela and admitted that he and Lugo had planted two bombs on the plane. Ricardo claimed the bombing had been organized by Posada and Orlando Bosch. When Posada was arrested he was found with a map of Washington showing the daily route of to work of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Foreign Minister, who had been assassinated on 21st September, 1976.[/FONT]

Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were both sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. He escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 as a result of a bribe from Jorge Mas Canosa, the head of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), an organization created under Ronald Reagan. The organization received substantial federal funds for running Radio and TV Marti, in order to transmit propaganda to Cuba.[/FONT]
In the 1980s Posada was accused of being involved in importing large quantities of cocaine into the US in support of the Contras in Nicaragua. According to Peter Dale Scott, the author of Cocaine Politics(1992) Posada was second in charge of a major Contra resupply operation at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. He was recruited by Felix Rodriguez, a long-time CIA operative who was with the Bolivian forces that captured and executed Che Guevera.[/FONT]
Posada gave an interview to the New York Times (July 12th, 1998), where he admitted to planning a series of bombings in Cuba. He also revealed that he had received $200,000 in US government funding via the Cuban American National Foundation for these attacks.[/FONT]
Posada continued to take part in terrorist attacks on Cuba. In November 2000 Posada and three colleagues, Guillermo Novo, Gaspar Jiménez and Pedro Remón, were arrested and imprisoned after trying to assassinate Fidel Castro at the University of Panama. In August, 2004, President Mireya Moscoso of Panama, pardoned Posada, Novo, Jiménez and Remón for their role in attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.[/FONT]
Posada was interviewed by Dollan Cannell for his documentary, 638 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (2006). So also was Orlando Bosch. He was asked if he and the CIA were involved in the bombing of Cubana Flight 455. Bosch replied that he was not allowed to talk about such matters. He was therefore not able to answer "yes" or "no". He then pointed out that he had been accused of organizing the placing of bombs on three Cuban planes. He then went onto to justify this action by claiming that as far as he was concerned he was a soldier carrying out orders in a war against Castro.[/FONT]
The film then showed a clip of George W. Bush making a speech where he says "people who harbour terrorists, are also terrorists". This was followed by an explanation of how the Bush family had protected Bosch and Posada over the years. Wayne S. Smith then appeared on camera to argue that by his own definition, Bush was a terrorist.[/FONT]
In 2005 Posada began living in Miami. The governments in Cuba and Venezuela applied to have him extradited. The US refused these requests, claiming he would not receive a fair trial in either country. Soon afterwards US authorities charged Posada with the relatively minor offences of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and his role in the Havana bombings.[/FONT]
In April 2011 Bosch was released by the US authorities after he was found not guilty on all 11 counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud. The head of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, denounced the trial as a "shameful farce" and accused the judge, Kathleen Cardone, of not allowing jurors to see crucial evidence. He added: "There were things the jury did not know."[/FONT]