Source: Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) no. 222, August/September 2011.
by Ali Erkaslan
12 September 2011 will mark 13 years since the arrest in Miami, Florida of five Cuban intelligence agents who had infiltrated right-wing terrorist organisations in the United States to help foil terrorist attacks against the Cuban people. They remain incarcerated in US prisons. The campaign for their release is an essential part of the struggle to defend Cuban socialism. In September, Rock around the Blockade will join activists from around the world demanding the release of the Cuban Five.
Showing posts with label Orlando Bosch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orlando Bosch. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up Indeed!
Source: The Havana Note
by Lawrence Wilkerson, 11 April 2011.
Several nights ago (6 April), I watched “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” at the West End Cinema in Washington. Six months ago, Saul Landau, the filmmaker, had given me an earlier rough-cut version on DVD that I had watched, but I was not prepared for the final version with all of the added footage gained by Saul’s recent sojourn in Cuba itself and the slap-in-the-face showing on the large screen.
But the added footage from the island and the bigger screen were not all that made the final version more electrifying. It was, all in all, the pro-Cuba aspect of the film that stunned me.
And it was clear that this pro-Cuba aspect was not conjured by the filmmaker but by history. Perhaps, I told myself, I knew much of this history, intellectually, academically. But I had never seen it so graphically put before me, in such a tight, cinematic package that seemed to leap off the screen almost in synch with the beating of my pulse.
The backdrop of the film was the U.S.-Cuba relationship from the 1959 revolution to the present. That relationship was portrayed quite accurately, leaving no doubt why Theodore Roosevelt referred to the island as “that infernal little Cuban Republic” even though TR pre-dated the revolution by a generation-plus. That is chiefly because the one-sided nature of U.S. policy has been the same from 1823 to the present. TR’s remark demonstrated well before the Cuban revolution, well before the dictator Fulgencio Batista, well before the U.S. mob took over Havana, well before Fidel Castro shouted “¡Bastante!” from the Sierra Maestra, well before Jesse Helms displayed his latent racism toward Cubans, just how badly the U.S. had treated its island neighbor since the beginning of our republic. So badly, in fact, that the portrayal of it, however evanescently, by a master filmmaker made one want to weep for his country and its policies. I doubt there was a single person in the audience that night who felt any differently, except perhaps the several Cubans who were present who, indeed, probably wept for el coloso del norte as well but for different reasons.
And then there was the main point, the point embodied in the film’s title.
Clearly shown and vividly documented was the fact that the United States sponsors terrorism. In Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch alone, there are overtones of Osama bin Laden and Aman al-Zawahiri, the nefarious leadership of al-Qa’ida. In the film, Carriles and Bosch as much as tell us this in their own words. Moreover, they seem to rejoice in it, as they live today undisturbed and unmolested in Miami; indeed, as heroes among the ignorant Batista-like refuse whose mother’s milk sustains them. Neither man has even the redeeming feature of religious asceticism that some would argue gives bin Laden and Zawahiri a grudging respect; instead these two terrorists seem precisely what the film depicts, criminal thugs.
Whether it is bringing down a Cuban airliner with more than 70 people on board—including the young people on the Cuban fencing team—or murdering a young Italian man in a Havana hotel, these terrorists appear to take joy in what they have done, declaring in so many words and facial expressions that such deaths are the collateral damage of war. War? Yes, a war waged from the territory of the United States—the state of Florida primarily—and against another sovereign country. A war that continues to this day with the United States doing almost nothing to stop it and, as the film depicts in subtle ways, from time to time even aiding and abetting the terrorists who are waging it.
Once, of course, the dictates and fears of the Cold War afforded a patina of credibility to this war waged from our own shores and against the laws of our own land. As a U.S. soldier for 31 years, I participated in that twilight struggle most of my professional life, so I understood its demands however imperfectly they were sometimes met. But the Cold War ended almost 20 years ago. Not the case, however, with the undeclared war against Cuba.
Perhaps the best cinematic summary of this reality was rendered in the film by none other than the current chairman of the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who declared for all to see and hear that she would welcome the assassination of Fidel Castro. No matter how cynical one may have become, that is an astonishing scene. A U.S. Congresswoman asking for the murder of another country’s leader—a most egregious, unbelievable demonstration of this undeclared war with Cuba.
Most vividly and disconcertingly, however, the film goes on to portray this continuing illegal war through the case of the Cuban Five. These are the five Cuban intelligence agents who, in the 1990s, were dispatched to Florida to help the government in Havana defend itself better in this undeclared war.
We know a little of their story. After infiltrating the Cuban-American terrorists ranks in Florida, they accumulated information about planned terrorist activities against Cuba. Alarmed at what they learned, they informed their government in Havana. That government, itself now alarmed, confided in the FBI, hoping that that law enforcement organization would act on the evidence thus accumulated and break up the terrorists ranks in Florida. Instead, the FBI—no doubt at the prompting of the White House—used the information to identify the five Cuban agents, then arrested them. Afterward they were tried in a Miami Court—like trying an Israeli spy apprehended in Iran in a Tehran court. Surprise, surprise, the Cuban Five were not only convicted, twelve years later they are still rotting in U.S. federal prison with the “worst” of them having been awarded two life sentences-plus.
At the very worst, these five Cubans were “foreign agents operating on U.S. soil”, an offense warranting 18 months in jail under U.S. law. As the film makes quite clear, however, usual U.S. practice—for Russians like Anna Chapman, e.g.—is deportation. Instead, these men still languish in jail. Perhaps had they been sexy, provocative women...?
When the film ended and the short, crisp vignettes came on, interspersed among the film’s credits, the main points were hammered home adroitly by some of the film’s principal characters.
As these characters summed up from the screen, I don’t believe there was any doubt in anyone’s mind in that audience—Cuban or American—who the “real terrorist” in the U.S.-Cuba relationship actually is.
The question that had to be buzzing around in everyone’s mind, however, as they walked out of the theater—again, Cuban and American—was what to do about it?
Just like the failure to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, the extension of the draconian provisions of “the national security cover-up” methodology in courtroom after courtroom across America, the civil liberties-usurping parts of the Patriot Act, the military tribunals for the likes of Khaled sheik-Mohammad, and on and on in the litany of dangerous and illegal acts by the U.S. Government in the name of perfect security and corrupt, special interest politics, the affair of the Cuban Five, and all it represents about the U.S.-Cuba relationship, stains the very fabric of our democratic republic.
Recently, a long-serving veteran of the CIA wrote a heavily-redacted yet still extremely eloquent and convincing memoir of his days in that agency, days that included the most intense period of our so-called Global War on Terror during the George W. Bush administrations. Here is one of his final conclusions in that memoir:
“I saw that a few of our leaders, in their insularity and sanctimonious certainty, corrupted the laws and started to corrode our social compact. We can take actions, however, to diminish such men, and that reaffirm our society’s commitment to our principles, our institutions, and the rule of law.”
That is the answer to our question and Saul Landau has taken a powerful action.
Colonel, US Army (Retired) Lawrence Wilkerson is the Visiting Pamela C. Harriman Professor of Government at the College of William Mary, as well as Professorial Lecturer in the Honors Program at the George Washington University. His last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02). Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997 and then worked as an advisor to General Powell.
by Lawrence Wilkerson, 11 April 2011.
Several nights ago (6 April), I watched “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” at the West End Cinema in Washington. Six months ago, Saul Landau, the filmmaker, had given me an earlier rough-cut version on DVD that I had watched, but I was not prepared for the final version with all of the added footage gained by Saul’s recent sojourn in Cuba itself and the slap-in-the-face showing on the large screen.
But the added footage from the island and the bigger screen were not all that made the final version more electrifying. It was, all in all, the pro-Cuba aspect of the film that stunned me.
And it was clear that this pro-Cuba aspect was not conjured by the filmmaker but by history. Perhaps, I told myself, I knew much of this history, intellectually, academically. But I had never seen it so graphically put before me, in such a tight, cinematic package that seemed to leap off the screen almost in synch with the beating of my pulse.
The backdrop of the film was the U.S.-Cuba relationship from the 1959 revolution to the present. That relationship was portrayed quite accurately, leaving no doubt why Theodore Roosevelt referred to the island as “that infernal little Cuban Republic” even though TR pre-dated the revolution by a generation-plus. That is chiefly because the one-sided nature of U.S. policy has been the same from 1823 to the present. TR’s remark demonstrated well before the Cuban revolution, well before the dictator Fulgencio Batista, well before the U.S. mob took over Havana, well before Fidel Castro shouted “¡Bastante!” from the Sierra Maestra, well before Jesse Helms displayed his latent racism toward Cubans, just how badly the U.S. had treated its island neighbor since the beginning of our republic. So badly, in fact, that the portrayal of it, however evanescently, by a master filmmaker made one want to weep for his country and its policies. I doubt there was a single person in the audience that night who felt any differently, except perhaps the several Cubans who were present who, indeed, probably wept for el coloso del norte as well but for different reasons.
And then there was the main point, the point embodied in the film’s title.
Clearly shown and vividly documented was the fact that the United States sponsors terrorism. In Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch alone, there are overtones of Osama bin Laden and Aman al-Zawahiri, the nefarious leadership of al-Qa’ida. In the film, Carriles and Bosch as much as tell us this in their own words. Moreover, they seem to rejoice in it, as they live today undisturbed and unmolested in Miami; indeed, as heroes among the ignorant Batista-like refuse whose mother’s milk sustains them. Neither man has even the redeeming feature of religious asceticism that some would argue gives bin Laden and Zawahiri a grudging respect; instead these two terrorists seem precisely what the film depicts, criminal thugs.
Whether it is bringing down a Cuban airliner with more than 70 people on board—including the young people on the Cuban fencing team—or murdering a young Italian man in a Havana hotel, these terrorists appear to take joy in what they have done, declaring in so many words and facial expressions that such deaths are the collateral damage of war. War? Yes, a war waged from the territory of the United States—the state of Florida primarily—and against another sovereign country. A war that continues to this day with the United States doing almost nothing to stop it and, as the film depicts in subtle ways, from time to time even aiding and abetting the terrorists who are waging it.
Once, of course, the dictates and fears of the Cold War afforded a patina of credibility to this war waged from our own shores and against the laws of our own land. As a U.S. soldier for 31 years, I participated in that twilight struggle most of my professional life, so I understood its demands however imperfectly they were sometimes met. But the Cold War ended almost 20 years ago. Not the case, however, with the undeclared war against Cuba.
Perhaps the best cinematic summary of this reality was rendered in the film by none other than the current chairman of the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who declared for all to see and hear that she would welcome the assassination of Fidel Castro. No matter how cynical one may have become, that is an astonishing scene. A U.S. Congresswoman asking for the murder of another country’s leader—a most egregious, unbelievable demonstration of this undeclared war with Cuba.
Most vividly and disconcertingly, however, the film goes on to portray this continuing illegal war through the case of the Cuban Five. These are the five Cuban intelligence agents who, in the 1990s, were dispatched to Florida to help the government in Havana defend itself better in this undeclared war.
We know a little of their story. After infiltrating the Cuban-American terrorists ranks in Florida, they accumulated information about planned terrorist activities against Cuba. Alarmed at what they learned, they informed their government in Havana. That government, itself now alarmed, confided in the FBI, hoping that that law enforcement organization would act on the evidence thus accumulated and break up the terrorists ranks in Florida. Instead, the FBI—no doubt at the prompting of the White House—used the information to identify the five Cuban agents, then arrested them. Afterward they were tried in a Miami Court—like trying an Israeli spy apprehended in Iran in a Tehran court. Surprise, surprise, the Cuban Five were not only convicted, twelve years later they are still rotting in U.S. federal prison with the “worst” of them having been awarded two life sentences-plus.
At the very worst, these five Cubans were “foreign agents operating on U.S. soil”, an offense warranting 18 months in jail under U.S. law. As the film makes quite clear, however, usual U.S. practice—for Russians like Anna Chapman, e.g.—is deportation. Instead, these men still languish in jail. Perhaps had they been sexy, provocative women...?
When the film ended and the short, crisp vignettes came on, interspersed among the film’s credits, the main points were hammered home adroitly by some of the film’s principal characters.
As these characters summed up from the screen, I don’t believe there was any doubt in anyone’s mind in that audience—Cuban or American—who the “real terrorist” in the U.S.-Cuba relationship actually is.
The question that had to be buzzing around in everyone’s mind, however, as they walked out of the theater—again, Cuban and American—was what to do about it?
Just like the failure to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, the extension of the draconian provisions of “the national security cover-up” methodology in courtroom after courtroom across America, the civil liberties-usurping parts of the Patriot Act, the military tribunals for the likes of Khaled sheik-Mohammad, and on and on in the litany of dangerous and illegal acts by the U.S. Government in the name of perfect security and corrupt, special interest politics, the affair of the Cuban Five, and all it represents about the U.S.-Cuba relationship, stains the very fabric of our democratic republic.
Recently, a long-serving veteran of the CIA wrote a heavily-redacted yet still extremely eloquent and convincing memoir of his days in that agency, days that included the most intense period of our so-called Global War on Terror during the George W. Bush administrations. Here is one of his final conclusions in that memoir:
“I saw that a few of our leaders, in their insularity and sanctimonious certainty, corrupted the laws and started to corrode our social compact. We can take actions, however, to diminish such men, and that reaffirm our society’s commitment to our principles, our institutions, and the rule of law.”
That is the answer to our question and Saul Landau has taken a powerful action.
Colonel, US Army (Retired) Lawrence Wilkerson is the Visiting Pamela C. Harriman Professor of Government at the College of William Mary, as well as Professorial Lecturer in the Honors Program at the George Washington University. His last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02). Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997 and then worked as an advisor to General Powell.
Sunday, 21 August 2011
Cuba's statement on bogus US 'terrorism list'
Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Source: Granma, 20 August 2011.
On August 18, the State Department includes Cuba, for the thirtieth time, in the bogus list of "state sponsors of international terrorism," with the sole purpose of discrediting our country and continuing to justify the cruel and repudiated the policy of blockade against Cuba.
The U.S. government, which historically has practiced state terrorism, extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, assassinations with drones, torture and illegal detentions, which has established secret prisons, which is responsible for the death hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as a result of occupation and wars of conquest in Iraq and Afghanistan, that systematically bombed sovereign states such as Libya, does not have the slightest morals nor any right to judge Cuba, which has an unblemished the fight against terrorism and has also been consistently the victim of this scourge.
The U.S. government acts as if it had not protected, permanently, the confessed criminal Luis Posada Carriles, whom it has refused to prosecute on terrorism charges, despite having ample evidence. Posada Carriles, with, Orlando Bosch Ávila, who benefited from a presidential pardon from George Bush, is the author of the horrific bombing of a Cuban airliner in flight, which cost the lives of 73 innocent people. He is also directly responsible for the death of Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, during the bombings of Cuban tourist facilities in 1997. Today Posada Carriles walks freely and with impunity through the streets of Miami after being acquitted in a sham trial in El Paso, Texas.
At the same time, as irrefutable proof of its double standards, the U.S. government unfairly holds in prison and punishes our five antiterrorist fighters, for preserving the lives of Cuban and U.S. citizens, and those of other countries.
Some 3,478 Cubans have been killed and 2,099 have been maimed as a result of terrorist actions, organized, funded and perpetrated from U.S. territory, often with the very complicity of the government the United States.
Political manipulation of a subject as sensitive as the fight against terrorism offends the memory of victims of the criminal acts of September 11, 2001, a fact that prompted the offer of solidarity and unconditional support of our government and people.
Cuba demands that the U.S. government punishes the real terrorists who now reside in U.S. territory, frees the Five anti-terrorist heroes and ends the policy of blockade and hostility against our country, which threatens the legitimate interests of both peoples.
Havana, August 19, 2011
See also: Venezuela Says U.S. Lacks “Moral Authority” to Judge Antiterrorism Efforts, Franklin Rosales, 19 August 2011.
Source: Granma, 20 August 2011.
On August 18, the State Department includes Cuba, for the thirtieth time, in the bogus list of "state sponsors of international terrorism," with the sole purpose of discrediting our country and continuing to justify the cruel and repudiated the policy of blockade against Cuba.
The U.S. government, which historically has practiced state terrorism, extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, assassinations with drones, torture and illegal detentions, which has established secret prisons, which is responsible for the death hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as a result of occupation and wars of conquest in Iraq and Afghanistan, that systematically bombed sovereign states such as Libya, does not have the slightest morals nor any right to judge Cuba, which has an unblemished the fight against terrorism and has also been consistently the victim of this scourge.
The U.S. government acts as if it had not protected, permanently, the confessed criminal Luis Posada Carriles, whom it has refused to prosecute on terrorism charges, despite having ample evidence. Posada Carriles, with, Orlando Bosch Ávila, who benefited from a presidential pardon from George Bush, is the author of the horrific bombing of a Cuban airliner in flight, which cost the lives of 73 innocent people. He is also directly responsible for the death of Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, during the bombings of Cuban tourist facilities in 1997. Today Posada Carriles walks freely and with impunity through the streets of Miami after being acquitted in a sham trial in El Paso, Texas.
At the same time, as irrefutable proof of its double standards, the U.S. government unfairly holds in prison and punishes our five antiterrorist fighters, for preserving the lives of Cuban and U.S. citizens, and those of other countries.
Some 3,478 Cubans have been killed and 2,099 have been maimed as a result of terrorist actions, organized, funded and perpetrated from U.S. territory, often with the very complicity of the government the United States.
Political manipulation of a subject as sensitive as the fight against terrorism offends the memory of victims of the criminal acts of September 11, 2001, a fact that prompted the offer of solidarity and unconditional support of our government and people.
Cuba demands that the U.S. government punishes the real terrorists who now reside in U.S. territory, frees the Five anti-terrorist heroes and ends the policy of blockade and hostility against our country, which threatens the legitimate interests of both peoples.
Havana, August 19, 2011
See also: Venezuela Says U.S. Lacks “Moral Authority” to Judge Antiterrorism Efforts, Franklin Rosales, 19 August 2011.
Sunday, 8 May 2011
The death of Orlando Bosch – ‘unrepentant terrorist’
written for RATB by Ben Watson, 08 May 2011.
On Wednesday 27 April 2011, Orlando Bosch Avila died peacefully, after a four-month spell in a hospital in Miami at the ripe age of 84 years. His wife, Adriana Bosch said she wants her husband to be remembered as a great father, husband and doctor. His daughter, Karen Bosch added: ‘I never considered him a violent man, growing up with him and I don’t relate him to any violence’. Thank goodness for family, as there are many who would disagree and with good reason.
Orlando Bosch was born in Cuba on 18 August 1926 (within a week of his contemporary, Fidel Castro) in Potrerillo village, 150 miles east of Havana. His father was a policeman and later a restaurant owner. His mother was a teacher.
In 1946 Bosch enrolled in the medical school at the University of Havana where he first met Fidel. Both were leading figures in their respective fields: Bosch was president of the medical school student body while Fidel was head of the law school student body.
The two men, from similarly middle class backgrounds, became allies. Bosch participated in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, which culminated in the successful 1959 revolution headed by Fidel. During the struggle, Bosch fled to the United States to escape arrest. On his return, Fidel rewarded Bosch with an appointment as governor of a province. The relationship turned sour as Bosch rejecting the radicalization of the revolutionary process. He quit and retreated to the mountains in central Cuba to lead an armed rebellion against the revolution. By mid-1960, Bosch returned to the United States with his family. According to his autobiography he refused to participate in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion because the USA had refused to help his rebellion.
The US National Security Archive Bosch records that Bosch was in contact with the CIA in 1962 and 1963. He became a case officer for Operation 40, a covert operation to mount another Cuban exile invasion force to depose Fidel. He also ran the Insurrectional Movement of Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR), one of a number of ultra-violent Cuban exile groups which launched attacks against their native country, killing innocent families and destroying agriculture crops. Overthrowing and killing Fidel became Bosch’s sole mission in life.
The following are a few examples of his activities:
1964: Arrested in Miami for ‘towing a homemade, radio-operated torpedo through downtown in rush-hour traffic’.
1965: Arrested for attempting to smuggle bombs out of the country.
1966: Arrested for ferrying ‘six dynamite-stuffed, 100 pound surplus aerial bombs’ up the Tamiami Trail ‘to a secret base where there was a boat we could use to bomb Castro’.
None of these charges resulted in convictions.
1970: Finally convicted for misfiring a bazooka at a freighter docked at the Port of Miami, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison but paroled after only 4 years! He violated the terms of his parole by leaving the US for other Latin American countries when he was wanted for questioning in connection with the assassination of another Cuban exile leader, Jose Elias de la Torriente.
1974-1976: US authorities rejected offers from Venezuela and Costa Rica to return him to the United States.
1976: Bosch helped found the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), an umbrella organization for the most extreme anti-Castro groups. US government documentation shows that CORU was directly responsible for 50 terrorist operations in the next 5 years. The most lethal operation happened on 6 October 1976, just west of the Caribbean island of Barbados, when 2 bombs were set-off on a Cubana Airlines civilian aeroplane in mid-air, killing all 73 people on-board.
The CIA, who had been keeping track of Bosch and his associates for years, identified Bosch, along with CORU co-founder Luis Posada, as masterminds for the outrageous action. Other participants were found guilty after trial and sentenced to 20 years, but Bosch’s case dragged on until 1986 when he was acquitted on a technicality.
In 1987, Bosch was arrested in the United States on a parole violation and held for 6 months. The powerful Cuban-American lobby put pressure on wannabe Florida governor Jeb Bush, son of the then President George Bush Senior, to intervene. Despite strong objections from the President’s own Defense Department, which labelled him as one of the most deadly terrorists within the hemisphere, all the charges were dropped and Bosch was released. He had acquired friends in high places.
Federal attorneys told a judge in 1990 that they had tried to deport Bosch to 31 different countries but all had refused to take him. Cuba’s request for Bosch to be sent to back for trial on the island was denied by the United States.
A former US attorney called Bosch an ‘unrepentant terrorist’. With so much evidence stacked against him and no final words of regret or remorse, that is exactly how he should be remembered.
On Wednesday 27 April 2011, Orlando Bosch Avila died peacefully, after a four-month spell in a hospital in Miami at the ripe age of 84 years. His wife, Adriana Bosch said she wants her husband to be remembered as a great father, husband and doctor. His daughter, Karen Bosch added: ‘I never considered him a violent man, growing up with him and I don’t relate him to any violence’. Thank goodness for family, as there are many who would disagree and with good reason.
Orlando Bosch was born in Cuba on 18 August 1926 (within a week of his contemporary, Fidel Castro) in Potrerillo village, 150 miles east of Havana. His father was a policeman and later a restaurant owner. His mother was a teacher.
In 1946 Bosch enrolled in the medical school at the University of Havana where he first met Fidel. Both were leading figures in their respective fields: Bosch was president of the medical school student body while Fidel was head of the law school student body.
The two men, from similarly middle class backgrounds, became allies. Bosch participated in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, which culminated in the successful 1959 revolution headed by Fidel. During the struggle, Bosch fled to the United States to escape arrest. On his return, Fidel rewarded Bosch with an appointment as governor of a province. The relationship turned sour as Bosch rejecting the radicalization of the revolutionary process. He quit and retreated to the mountains in central Cuba to lead an armed rebellion against the revolution. By mid-1960, Bosch returned to the United States with his family. According to his autobiography he refused to participate in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion because the USA had refused to help his rebellion.
The US National Security Archive Bosch records that Bosch was in contact with the CIA in 1962 and 1963. He became a case officer for Operation 40, a covert operation to mount another Cuban exile invasion force to depose Fidel. He also ran the Insurrectional Movement of Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR), one of a number of ultra-violent Cuban exile groups which launched attacks against their native country, killing innocent families and destroying agriculture crops. Overthrowing and killing Fidel became Bosch’s sole mission in life.
The following are a few examples of his activities:
1964: Arrested in Miami for ‘towing a homemade, radio-operated torpedo through downtown in rush-hour traffic’.
1965: Arrested for attempting to smuggle bombs out of the country.
1966: Arrested for ferrying ‘six dynamite-stuffed, 100 pound surplus aerial bombs’ up the Tamiami Trail ‘to a secret base where there was a boat we could use to bomb Castro’.
None of these charges resulted in convictions.
1970: Finally convicted for misfiring a bazooka at a freighter docked at the Port of Miami, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison but paroled after only 4 years! He violated the terms of his parole by leaving the US for other Latin American countries when he was wanted for questioning in connection with the assassination of another Cuban exile leader, Jose Elias de la Torriente.
1974-1976: US authorities rejected offers from Venezuela and Costa Rica to return him to the United States.
1976: Bosch helped found the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), an umbrella organization for the most extreme anti-Castro groups. US government documentation shows that CORU was directly responsible for 50 terrorist operations in the next 5 years. The most lethal operation happened on 6 October 1976, just west of the Caribbean island of Barbados, when 2 bombs were set-off on a Cubana Airlines civilian aeroplane in mid-air, killing all 73 people on-board.
The CIA, who had been keeping track of Bosch and his associates for years, identified Bosch, along with CORU co-founder Luis Posada, as masterminds for the outrageous action. Other participants were found guilty after trial and sentenced to 20 years, but Bosch’s case dragged on until 1986 when he was acquitted on a technicality.
In 1987, Bosch was arrested in the United States on a parole violation and held for 6 months. The powerful Cuban-American lobby put pressure on wannabe Florida governor Jeb Bush, son of the then President George Bush Senior, to intervene. Despite strong objections from the President’s own Defense Department, which labelled him as one of the most deadly terrorists within the hemisphere, all the charges were dropped and Bosch was released. He had acquired friends in high places.
Federal attorneys told a judge in 1990 that they had tried to deport Bosch to 31 different countries but all had refused to take him. Cuba’s request for Bosch to be sent to back for trial on the island was denied by the United States.
A former US attorney called Bosch an ‘unrepentant terrorist’. With so much evidence stacked against him and no final words of regret or remorse, that is exactly how he should be remembered.
Friday, 29 April 2011
US-backed terrorist Orlando Bosch dies unpunished
Terrorist Orlando Bosch Dies Unpunished in Miami
by Jean-Guy Allard, 28 April 2011
Source: Granma
Orlando Bosch, the head of the terrorist organization CORU a protégé of the Bush clan, the NCAF and the CIA, and the co-author with Luis Posada Carriles of the explosion in mid-flight of a Cubana de Aviacion plane; died in Miami this Wednesday, at 12:05 pm, unpunished for the crimes he committed.
According to a statement, his death occurred after "suffering from an (unspecified) long and painful disease." He was 84.
Bosch was born on August 18, 1926 in Potrerillo, Cuba, 250 kilometers east of Havana. He arrived in the United States on July 28, 1960 with a 30-day stay permit. However, he immediately entered the dirty war against Cuba ordered by the CIA, and directed from Florida, and he would remain in US territory until 1972.
US-backed terrorists Orlando Bosch (l) and Luis Posada Carriles (r).
His barbarian methods can be related in some of the crimes he committed and never got punished for: on September 16, 1968 he took part in the launching of a bazooka projectile against the Polish ship Polanica, anchored in the port of Miami. On November 15, 1968, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Federal Court in the South Florida District for several crimes and, at the same time, for having sent written threats to the then-President of Mexico, to Spain’s Head of State and to the British Prime Minister, in which he express his intent to damage all the ships and planes of those nations as retaliation for their ties with Cuba.
In 1972 he was released on parole, upon which he left the United States. In a clear violation of his parole terms he actively participated in the gruesome Operation Condor together with the CIA and Pinochet’s dictatorship.
More obsessed than ever with his terrorist "mission," Bosch engaged in the creation, on CIA orders, of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) in Bonao, Dominican Republic, to gather together several terrorist Miami-based groups. The creation of the organization took place on June 11, 1976 in a secret work house of the agency.
The CORU would become the most devastating Cuban-American terrorist group in the second half of the 20th century. Under the CIA and other right-wing organizations orders, they planned and executed numerous attempts, murders, and kidnappings in Miami, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina and even Europe.
A report issued by the Acting General Attorney General Joe D. Whitley on May 1989, declared Bosch a public enemy of the United States and denied asylum to this dangerous character for the 30-odd terrorist acts committed, among them the hideous Barbados bombing.
The US Attorney emphasized one particular terrorist act: "In October 1976, Bosch was arrested in Venezuela in relation with the bombing committed against a Cuban civilian airliner on October 6, 1976, which killed 73 men, women and children aboard."
Bosch left Venezuela under the protection of the person who did the procedures to get his "acquittal," who was none other than Otto Reich, then the ambassador of the United States to Caracas. He arrived in the United States from Venezuela on February 18, 1988, without any valid papers. Upon his arrival, he was formally arrested under warrant for his parole violation in 1974, when it was debated whether to keep him under arrest or to expel him.
According to the New York Times issued on August 17, 1989 Cuba-American congresswoman Ileana Ross-Lehtinen and other Florida and NCAF politicians were personally negotiating his release with then President George Bush Sr. The meeting was arranged by his son Jeb Bush, who won in this way the support of the Cuban right-wing of Miami for his run for governor of Florida a few years later.
In a press conference following his release, Bosch showed no remorse at all. In an open challenge, the terrorist said with haughty irony: "They may have bought the chain, but they have not bought the monkey."
His constant instigation to a terrorist war against Cuba in the media of Miami, his acknowledgement of plans to commit terrorist acts, and his hateful remarks on the victims of the Barbados bombing, are proof of the impunity he enjoyed in life. The same that Luis Posada Carriles enjoys today.
Read more on Orlando Bosch and his recent 2010 memoirs here.
by Jean-Guy Allard, 28 April 2011
Source: Granma
Orlando Bosch, the head of the terrorist organization CORU a protégé of the Bush clan, the NCAF and the CIA, and the co-author with Luis Posada Carriles of the explosion in mid-flight of a Cubana de Aviacion plane; died in Miami this Wednesday, at 12:05 pm, unpunished for the crimes he committed.
According to a statement, his death occurred after "suffering from an (unspecified) long and painful disease." He was 84.
Bosch was born on August 18, 1926 in Potrerillo, Cuba, 250 kilometers east of Havana. He arrived in the United States on July 28, 1960 with a 30-day stay permit. However, he immediately entered the dirty war against Cuba ordered by the CIA, and directed from Florida, and he would remain in US territory until 1972.
US-backed terrorists Orlando Bosch (l) and Luis Posada Carriles (r).His barbarian methods can be related in some of the crimes he committed and never got punished for: on September 16, 1968 he took part in the launching of a bazooka projectile against the Polish ship Polanica, anchored in the port of Miami. On November 15, 1968, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Federal Court in the South Florida District for several crimes and, at the same time, for having sent written threats to the then-President of Mexico, to Spain’s Head of State and to the British Prime Minister, in which he express his intent to damage all the ships and planes of those nations as retaliation for their ties with Cuba.
In 1972 he was released on parole, upon which he left the United States. In a clear violation of his parole terms he actively participated in the gruesome Operation Condor together with the CIA and Pinochet’s dictatorship.
More obsessed than ever with his terrorist "mission," Bosch engaged in the creation, on CIA orders, of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) in Bonao, Dominican Republic, to gather together several terrorist Miami-based groups. The creation of the organization took place on June 11, 1976 in a secret work house of the agency.
The CORU would become the most devastating Cuban-American terrorist group in the second half of the 20th century. Under the CIA and other right-wing organizations orders, they planned and executed numerous attempts, murders, and kidnappings in Miami, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina and even Europe.
A report issued by the Acting General Attorney General Joe D. Whitley on May 1989, declared Bosch a public enemy of the United States and denied asylum to this dangerous character for the 30-odd terrorist acts committed, among them the hideous Barbados bombing.
The US Attorney emphasized one particular terrorist act: "In October 1976, Bosch was arrested in Venezuela in relation with the bombing committed against a Cuban civilian airliner on October 6, 1976, which killed 73 men, women and children aboard."
Bosch left Venezuela under the protection of the person who did the procedures to get his "acquittal," who was none other than Otto Reich, then the ambassador of the United States to Caracas. He arrived in the United States from Venezuela on February 18, 1988, without any valid papers. Upon his arrival, he was formally arrested under warrant for his parole violation in 1974, when it was debated whether to keep him under arrest or to expel him.
According to the New York Times issued on August 17, 1989 Cuba-American congresswoman Ileana Ross-Lehtinen and other Florida and NCAF politicians were personally negotiating his release with then President George Bush Sr. The meeting was arranged by his son Jeb Bush, who won in this way the support of the Cuban right-wing of Miami for his run for governor of Florida a few years later.
In a press conference following his release, Bosch showed no remorse at all. In an open challenge, the terrorist said with haughty irony: "They may have bought the chain, but they have not bought the monkey."
His constant instigation to a terrorist war against Cuba in the media of Miami, his acknowledgement of plans to commit terrorist acts, and his hateful remarks on the victims of the Barbados bombing, are proof of the impunity he enjoyed in life. The same that Luis Posada Carriles enjoys today.
Read more on Orlando Bosch and his recent 2010 memoirs here.
Monday, 31 May 2010
Terrorist Network Operating Openly In The United States
Source: Jane Franklin.Info April 30, 2005
By Jane FranklinThree years ago [2002], 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 Cerezo’s 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, 1998), 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.
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