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

[Peter Lemkin]

CIA operative and Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles died Wednesday just outside of Miami. He was 90 years old. Posada Carriles is best known as the suspected mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airline jet. For decades, the U.S. refused to extradite Posada Carriles to face terrorism charges, despite demands by Cuba and Venezuela. Posada Carriles later publicly admitted ties to a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997. In 2000, he was arrested in Panama City for plotting to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro would be speaking. Despite his record, Luis Posada Carriles died a free man in Florida.

For more, we're joined by José Pertierra, a Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C., represented the Venezuelan government in its efforts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, and also represented Elián González in 2000, 2001, when Elián González was here in the United States, eventually sent back to Cuba to be with his dad.
José, if you could start out by talking just about the Cubana airlines bombing in 1976, howand the Cubana airlines bombing? How many people died? And the significance of who this man is, who has died in Miami [Wednesday]?
JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Thank you, Amy. Good morning.
The Cubana airline disaster in 1976 was, at the time, the worst airline passenger disaster or act of terrorism against a passenger airline in the history of aviation. It killed 73 innocent people, including 24 members of the juvenile fencing team from Cuba. There was a little 9-year-old girl on board named Sabrina. She also died. Posada Carriles was the mastermind of the bombing. He masterminded the placing of two bombsone in the front of the plane, one in the back of the plane in the restroomthat exploded in midair. And the plane crashed into a bay callednear Paradise Beach in Trinidad. And no bodiesor, some bodies were recovered, but most of the bodies were not. They went to the bottom of the sea, where they're still lying.
Venezuela presented charges against Posada Carriles, because there was overwhelming evidence of his involvement. There was even a confession by the persons who planted the bombs, who were arrested in Trinidad. They were interrogated, and they confessed to having worked for Posada Carriles. They even tried to communicate with Posada Carriles by telephone, by calling Caracas. This evidence was enough for Venezuela to charge him with 73 counts of first-degree murder. While the case
AMY GOODMAN: We don't have much time, José Pertierra, and I want to ask youso, that happened, 73 people dead. How did he end up dying a free man in Miami this past Wednesday?
JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Amy, Venezuelawell, he escaped from jail in Panama, where he was being held, as you said, for trying to bomb an auditorium full of people. But after getting out of jail in Panama, receiving a pardon, he came to the United States to Miami. And Venezuela presented a request for extradition. And the United States simply refused to extradite him. Instead, they charged him with violating immigration law, lying on immigration forms, for which he was ultimately acquitted, even though there were admissions by Posada Carriles that he had masterminded a string of bombings in Havana that resulted in the murder of an Italian businessman. And he lied about those on the immigration forms.
But even though there was of that, including a taped confession of Posada Carriles to New York Times correspondent Ann Louise Bardach, nonetheless he was acquitted of that, and the U.S. refused to extradite him. Why? Because he was the United States' man in Caracas. He worked for the CIA for, by his own admission, over 24 years. It just goes to show you, if you've got friends in high places, even though you may be a terrorist, the United States will protect you.
AMY GOODMAN: And I want to get to, before the endLuis Posada Carriles's death came days after a Cuban plane crashed and burned right after takeoff on Friday outside Havana, killing 111 people.
JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: It was another Cubana airlines jet. Critics say the crash is partly due to the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, which makes it so difficult for Cuba to acquire newer aircraft. I believe this plane was something like 40 years old. In this last minute we have, can you talk about the fallout from this tragic crash?
JOSÉ PERTIERRA: Well, the investigation is going on. There's absolutely no evidence it was an act of terrorism. It was either pilot error or something wrong with the plane.
What you're saying is absolutely true, however. Cuba has a fleet of aging planes, simply because they cannot buy new planes that either are made in the United States or contain parts that are made in the United States. And most jet planes today have parts that were made in the United States. It's a brutal blockade that's been imposed by the United States against Cuba since 1961. And that results in tragedya lack of medicine sometimes, lack of plane parts. This tragedy probably stems from that.
And Cuba is doing everything in its power right now to investigate what happened. Two survivors are in critical condition. The prognosis is not good for one of them. And Cuba, I'm sure, will try to prevent this from happening again. But the best way for the United States to respond is not to give prayers and condolences, but to lift the embargo and allow Cuba to purchase planes with American parts and fly safely over Cuban skies.

Carriles was involved in many other assassinations - including likely direct involvement in the Letelier-Moffit assassination in D.C. and many, many others! That a real and multiple terrorist for the US intelligence community is given 'safe haven' and not brought to justice - while false/fake 'terrorists' are survielled, denied work and a peaceful life, arrested, jailed, tortured and murdered is nothing short of vile.

[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]

[Peter Lemkin]

see https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_40 for Carriles' participation in Operation-40