POSADA CASE
Released documents spark new intrigue
Recently released declassified CIA and FBI documents about Cuban exile
militant Luis Posada Carriles raise questions involving what he knew
about a 1976 Cuban plane bombing but offer no clear answers.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY, JAY WEAVER AND OSCAR CORRAL
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
Once-secret CIA and FBI documents make a compelling case that Cuban
exile militant Luis Posada Carriles knew of a plot to bomb a Cuban
airliner more than three decades ago -- but not the one that Cuba and
Venezuela blame Posada for orchestrating.
One document shows the former CIA operative referring to a plan to bomb
a Cuban plane leaving Panama in June 1976. But that was unrelated to the
Cubana plane that was attacked off Barbados about three months later --
killing 73 people.
None of the declassified documents says Posada ordered the bombing of
any Cuban plane.
A confidential source, however, ''all but admitted'' to the FBI that
Posada and fellow exile militant Orlando Bosch ''had engineered the
bombing of the airline'' in October 1976. In another document, Posada
was overheard saying: ``We are going to hit a Cuban airplane.''
Posada's lawyer said his client had no involvement in the jetliner
bombing. He declined to let Posada be interviewed.
Bosch denied the account: ``That's not true.''
Multiple references to what Posada knew or did in connection to the
downed plane are contained in formerly classified U.S. government
documents obtained by the Washington-based private research group
National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The documents are drawing renewed scrutiny because Venezuela has vowed
to step up pressure on the United States to extradite Posada. Venezuela
signaled its intentions after a federal judge in El Paso, Texas,
recently threw out immigration fraud charges against him. He is now
living in Miami.
The new batch of once classified documents contain two bombing suspects'
statements to authorities in Trinidad and Tobago. One was an employee in
Posada's private security firm in Caracas.
To those who believe Posada masterminded the plane attack off Barbados,
the archive's documents provide solid evidence. But to Posada's attorney
and his supporters, the documents are nothing but a collection of
uncorroborated rumors and unnamed sources.
''The combination of documents from the CIA and FBI, together with the
documents from Trinidad and Tobago, show more than probable cause that
Posada Carriles was responsible for the downing of the plane or was, at
least, a co-conspirator,'' said José Pertierra, a Cuban-American
attorney who represents Venezuela.
Peter Kornbluh, director of the archive's Cuba documentation project,
said that taken together the documents point the finger at Posada and
Bosch as the attack's ``intellectual authors.''
Miami attorney Arturo Hernandez, who represents Posada, said the Cuban
and Venezuelan governments have distorted the facts to frame his client.
He said that during a military tribunal in Venezuela in 1980, forensic
evidence showed that metal shards recovered from some of the victims
indicated those materials came from the plane's cargo hold -- not the
bathroom, where prosecutors said the explosives were planted.
''No American jury would convict on these facts,'' Hernandez said,
adding that Posada passed a privately administered polygraph test on the
airliner bombing a few years ago.
He said the CIA and FBI documents are mostly based on confidential
sources whose credibility could not be ascertained 31 years later.
Hernandez noted that one CIA document shows that Posada was alerting his
contacts in the agency's Caracas office in June 1976 about a
''possible'' bombing plot involving a Cubana Airliner departing from
Panama. ''He is, in fact, working against any kind of bombing of that
nature,'' Hernandez said.
While suggestive of a Posada role, none of the documents directly link
him to ordering the assault or supplying explosives to either of the
Venezuelans convicted as bombers: Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo.
Posada, who has consistently denied any role in the plane bombing, was
arrested by Venezuelan authorities within days of the attack and charged
along with Bosch as masterminds of the attack. Ricardo and Lugo were
charged as actual bombers.
All four were acquitted by a Venezuelan military court in 1980. However,
the military verdict was annulled and the criminal charges re-filed in a
civilian court.
Posada escaped from prison in 1985, two years before the civilian court
acquitted Bosch and convicted Ricardo and Lugo. They were released from
prison in 1993.
A cable filed soon after the bombing by the FBI Caracas representative
quoted an unidentified ''confidential source'' saying that a senior
Venezuelan intelligence official claimed Posada attended two meetings
where Cuban exiles discussed ''the bombing of a Cubana Airlines'' plane.
The cable said the source received the information from Cuban-born
Ricardo Morales, then working for Venezuelan intelligence and known to
Miami's Cuban exiles as ''Mono'' or Monkey.
Morales told the confidential source that Posada and other exiles
discussed the attack with him at the Anauco Hilton bar in downtown
Caracas ''sometime before the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 near
Barbados on October 6, 1976,'' the FBI cable says.
Morales told the same source that Posada was among exiles at ''another
meeting to plan the bombing of a Cubana airliner'' in Morales' apartment
at the Anauco Hilton.
In a self-published 1994 autobiography, Posada blamed the bombing on
Morales. Posada wrote that Morales staged the attack on behalf of the
Cuban government after Cuban agents paid him $18,000 at a secret meeting
in Mexico City. Posada did not cite his source.
Morales' credibility was called into question in an unrelated Miami
drug-trafficking case. As a government informant in that case, Morales
said in depositions that he played a role in the Barbados plane attack.
The circuit court judge in the case found Morales unreliable and threw
out the narcotics case.
Morales, who was shot and killed at a Key Biscayne bar in 1982, did not
mention Posada in connection with the airliner attack in the Miami case.
Among the archive's documents is a handwritten list of Cuban embassies,
travel offices, news agencies, and consulates in the Caribbean, along
with the itinerary of the plane attacked off Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976.
Kornbluh described the document as a surveillance or scouting report
prepared by Ricardo, who had worked for Posada's security firm.
Ricardo and Lugo flew from Caracas to Trinidad and Tobago to board the
doomed plane, which had begun its flight in Guyana. They got off at the
next stop in Barbados and returned to Trinidad. The plane blew up
shortly after taking off from Barbados en route to Jamaica and Cuba.
Ricardo's whereabouts today are unknown, but Lugo is now driving a taxi
in Caracas. He told The Miami Herald in 2005 that he was innocent, and
insisted that statements attributed to him in Trinidad and Tobago,
implicating Ricardo in the bombing, were false.
The earliest reference to a plane plot is contained in a CIA cable dated
June 22, 1976. It said an unidentified ''businessman with close ties to
the Cuban exile community'' contacted the agency to warn that a ``Cuban
exile extremist group, of which Orlando Bosch is a leader, plans to
place a bomb on a Cubana Airline flight traveling between Panama and
Havana.''
A separate CIA document listing agency contacts with Posada says that on
June 22, 1976, he relayed a warning on ''possible exile plans to blow up
Cubana Airliner leaving Panama.'' Posada also asked help to obtain a visa.
Perhaps the most intriguing document is a CIA cable that quotes an
unidentified former Venezuelan government official saying that a few
days after a Caracas fundraiser for Bosch, 'Posada was overheard to say
that, `we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,' and that 'Orlando has the
details.' ''
Bosch denied the account. He referred to Posada as ''my brother'' and
talked about their time in a Venezuelan prison awaiting trial.
''We were in prison together and we never had an argument,'' Bosch said.
'Many reporters came to see us. He [Posada] said, `talk to the leader.'
He considered me the leader.''
Read Oscar Corral's blog Miami's Cuban Connection in the blogs section
of MiamiHerald.com
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