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.

Statement from Cuba re US travel measures

Statement from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs

ON January 11, 2011, the United States government announced new measures in relation to Cuba. Although it is necessary to await the publication of the regulations in order to understand their true significance, according to preliminary information released by the White House press office, the measures will:

* Authorize travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens for academic, educational, cultural and religious purposes.
* Allow U.S. citizens to send limited remittances to Cuban citizens.
* Authorize U.S. international airports to request permission to operate charter flights to Cuba under certain conditions.

The adoption of these measures is the result of efforts by broad sectors of U.S. society which, in their majority, have been demanding the end of the criminal blockade of Cuba and the elimination of the absurd prohibition of travel to our country.

It is also an expression of recognition that the U.S. policy towards Cuba has failed and new ways to accomplish the historic objective of dominating our people are being sought. Although the measures are positive ones, they are much less than what is being justly demanded, their reach is very limited and they do not modify policy against Cuba.

The announcement by the White House is basically limited to reestablishing the regulations which were in place in the 1990's during President Clinton's administration and were eliminated by George W. Bush in 2003. The measures only benefit certain categories of U.S. citizens and do not reinstitute the right to travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens, who will continue to be the only people in the world who cannot freely visit our country.

These measures confirm that there is no willingness to change the policy of blockade and destabilization against Cuba . Upon announcing them, U.S. government officials made it very clear that the blockade will remain in force and that the administration is proposing to use the new measures to strengthen subversion and intervention in Cuba's internal affairs. This confirms the charges presented in the MINREX statement of January 13.

Cuba has always been in favor of interchanges with the people of the United States, its universities, academic, scientific and religious institutions. All the obstacles which make visits by U.S. citizens difficult have always been, and continue to be today, created by the U.S. government. If a real interest in broadening and facilitating contact between our peoples exists, the U.S. should lift the blockade and eliminate the prohibition that makes Cuba the only country to which U.S. citizens cannot travel.

Havana,
January 16, 2011.

How Obama's USAID operates in Cuba

Reversing Bush policies: "Like taking cocaine from an addict."
Source: Along the Malecón, 27 November 2010.
by Tracey Eaton.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent some $140 million toward Cuba pro-democracy programs since 1996. The Obama administration is asking for another $20 million for fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30, 2011.

Over the past few years, USAID has gotten behind on programming and distributing funds. The agency is still working its way through fiscal 2009 funds, and says it’s too early to say how much of that money has reached Cuba. But USAID told me in a statement:

The vast majority of this money is intended for individuals on the ground in Cuba. Our objective is to maximize the amount of support that benefits Cubans on the island. Since the $15.62 million in fiscal year 2009 funds has recently been programmed, it is too early to have a precise figure at this point, but the overall goal is to have the funds directly benefit Cubans on the island.

I posted that statement on Oct. 25. Later a former State Department officer told me he believes that the USAID statement was “horseshit.”
Speaking to me on condition of anonymity, he said:

Only a tiny fraction of the money ever gets to these regime opponents. A tiny fraction of it. For them to juice up their rhetoric as if the regime-change programs were going full bore…It’s really too bad that your source said that because it’s not true.
Whoever you talked to is somebody that’s using talking points prepared by the extreme right wing that supports these regime-change programs and wants them to be as provocative toward the regime as possible.

The source said President Obama has signed off on new people-to-people programs related to Cuba, but supporters of more aggressive tactics persuaded the White House not to implement the programs quite yet.
Such programs will make it easier for people to bring money and assistance to Cubans, and not just regime opponents.
The source said he believes that some of the pro-democracy programs may not legal under USAID and State Department guidelines. USAID and State Department employees:

are not authorized to do covert actions. They’re not authorized to do classified programs in foreign countries. And they’re not authorized to do clandestine political activities, which they’ve been doing.

The source said the State Department did not sign off on and was not aware of the activities of Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba on Dec. 3, 2009.

They were unaware. And some of them, in a moment of honesty, say, ‘Well, that’s pretty fucking stupid.’ If you’re going to do satellite communications gear, something that provocative, then you should at least should do some basic research and the person who goes and does it should at least be a Spanish speaker.

Ending these kinds of programs is difficult, the source said.

It’s very tough because the bureaucracy loves these programs. They love the clandestinity and all of that.

Such programs endure, the source said, even when some of the pro-democracy funds are funneled to Cuban:

government-controlled agents, and it doesn’t matter because it is really fun to spend money and run programs and do clandestine operations. It’s really, really fun. And it’s really fun to have no supervision. You basically move it all out of the government so it can’t be FOIA’ed. It can’t be FOIA’ed and there’s no accountability.

The source contends that these types of pro-democracy programs are not always effective. He said:

This shit doesn’t work. It undermines the legitimacy of these people. It opens them up to – even the good ones, the sincere ones – it opens them all up to severe criticism if not arrest by the Cuban government because like in the United States to be a foreign agent is against the law. If the Cubans came and started passing around money in the United States of America, we would arrest that person. We would arrest the recipients, too, for receiving foreign money.
The moral question of whether we should support democracy isn’t on the table. Of course, we support democracy. All of this is looking at the how.

The source was referring to how such programs should be carried out. He asked:

Why are these treated as clandestine programs? Where's the oversight? What are we doing with taxpayer money? There's no accountability.
These programs have cost $160 million. Show us where it has contributed, where it has helped the Cuban people, not contractors and lobbyists. No one dares ask that question because there's no answer.

Another shortcoming of the pro-democracy programs, he said, is that once private contractors start operating pro-democracy programs, they sometimes use their political assets, their surrogates, to attack interests who work against their political goals.

For example, John Kerry put a hold on regime-change programs. Surprise, surprise, the people that are nurtured and funded by the some of the Miami-based groups, start attacking Senator Kerry.
Or Cardinal Ortega successfully negotiates the release of political prisoners. Surprise, surprise. The people who don’t want there to be an improvement in bilateral relations start attacking Cardinal Ortega through their surrogates on the island.

The source said he didn’t know how the situation will evolve, but believes that it will be difficult to reverse policies implemented during the Bush administration.

The bureaucracy has basically hijacked this policy, which then puts the political people in the position of trying to wrestle it away from them. But, boy, that’s like taking cocaine from an addict.

Open letter from Manuel Zelaya re WikiLeaks revelations

Letter From Zelaya on the Cable by Fomer US Ambassador to Honduras
by Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, 25 December 2010.
Source: ResistenciaHonduras.net
Translated by Fry Warwick.

A new embarrassment in the foreign policy of north America has been exposed. This time, it concerns my persona as the constitutional President of Honduras that does not reflect my status, but rather is designed to make rash criminal accusations that constitute criminal defamation and calumny, and constitutes an affront to the dignity of the people of Honduras.

Over a year has gone by; 18 long months since the coup, in which groups of the extreme right in Honduras, so called friends and partners of "USA” took over the country. It is odd that so far they haven't been able to demonstrate a single connection with organised crime, nor of a connection with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, in the alleged acts of corruption I was supposed to have committed during my mandate.

The author of this absurdity is Charles Ford allegedly a diplomat, the ambassador in Honduras when I took on the top position in that country. Supposedly a diplomat, he was revealed here as a liar and instigator, and reveals the hidden nature of north American diplomacy to all countries of the world.

This is the same ambassador who demanded that I give a visa of political asylum to the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles; the same who said publicly in the media that president Chavez had tainted and corrupt business relations and attacked my friendship with him; the same who, when I won the Presidency gave me a list of the people whom I had to nominate for my cabinet, and who very quickly became furious with my refusal.

He is the same man who accompanied me to the White House to attend a meeting with President Bush, with part of my cabinet, where Bush ranted against my friendship with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and attacked my friendship with him. The same who, during my entire term committed himself to defending the fraudulent activities of the north American transnational petrol companies in Honduras, something strangely absent from this cable, as though avoiding mention of the matters over which we had problems and differences.

These serious and baseless accusations of Ambassador Ford, full of mockery of my person as head of state, bring to light the capricious methods used by diplomats of the self proclaimed oldest democracy in the world; like lying, manipulating in a malicious way to justify crimes and attacks on power that they promote throughout the world. The cable of Mr. Ford, made public by Wikileaks and remarked upon by all the media in the world, as well as being offensive, shows the manner in which the United States, in its imperial capacity, manufactures its enemies.

By disparaging people personally they seek to stigmatise those of us who struggle with dignity and independence against the imposition of subjugation that US diplomacy is accustomed to exercising.

The nerve! These actions of theirs - evident most of all to those whom they offend and accuse - doesn't authorise them as presumed "saviours" of the world to accuse presidents of other countries of being crazy, megalomaniacs, mythomaniacs, erratic, corrupt and sinister; especially those who won't follow their orders. With this we can identify a ‘patron’ and it shouldn't surprise us if these kinds of profiles continue to emerge.

And it should draw our attention strongly to the fact that the words of Ford have been the same that were published for three and a half years by those who attacked me persistently from Washington, from the Arcadia Foundation directed by Otto Reich and Robert Carmonaq. And they continue to be used by those who conspired and carried out the coup in Honduras.

This document makes cynicism a spectacle when it unashamedly states that they can intervene in the choice of cabinet members of a government, consult with Cardinals and find even a public event suspicious; like when the this ambassador declared that in my speech about the role of the US fleet (or something like that), "in spite of the fact that I highlighted the good commercial relations with the empire, I spared no effort to extol the exploits against the North American invader William Walker"; a freebooter who invaded Nicaraguan and Honduran territory and who was shot and buried in the Port of Trujillo in Honduras. So the fact that a hero to them is a bandit to us is indicative of the interference and intervention of groups from the United States in our nations since the 19th Century.

In his note Ford has a mental lapse and neglects to mention my intention to make commercial use of the airport of Palmerola, a north American military base whence thousands of conspiracies have been forged, many of them fatal, and which is stuck in the very heart of our territory; and whose last fateful deed was the Coup of June 28 2009. In his perfidy he has omitted mention of his boycott of my initiative and his support for the most reactionary forces in the country who argued in favour of Tocotin, one of the ten most dangerous airports in the world. And the fact is, Charles Ford, and the empire are not at all interested in anyone's safety or progress, only in their military bases to safeguard their supremacy.

The Honduran people know me and support me. I regret none of my actions, which I implemented and promoted as president. I think they were very concerned about my level of popularity, and because I achieved the best results in the history of Honduras in terms of the environment, socially, and in economic growth - between 6 and 7 percent maintained annually. For the first time poverty was being reduced, largely due to Petrocaribe and ALBA; facts which can be verified in the statistics of CEPAL and the World Bank. They were worried that in one year of working with Chavez and Lula we obtained support for projects that would have taken us ten years to get from the United States. They were upset that I was the only President who passed a law of transparency to eliminate confidential government documents, which directly affected the structure of subjugated lackeys that the empire maintains in the country, and the only one in recent history who left accountable spending down to the last cent in public hands and controlling organizations.

We don't know what the Cardinal whispered in his ear about my family history; he forgot to tell Ford that my family prevailed for more than 400 years (as the same ambassador made evident) thanks to its extraordinary relations with the people, and that in arriving at the presidency of the Republic I had at my disposal a legacy of many generations and a rural heritage generated by the work of centuries for which is known by all Hondurans, like an enormous intellectual and political fortune inherited by the most illustrious sons of the homeland.

It is obvious that the pro consul looks down on our culture and our customs, saying that we behaved like animals to "mix" ourselves with the "Moorish class". There are certain things a barbarian without any culture cannot understand. This is the case; we go back for generations to colonial Spain changed now into a proud latin american identity, mixed indigenous and black. Why degrade the emotional relations of my sons and daughters to common grubby deals? Thus the empire conducts itself; we are human and we answer to values and principles that they wouldn't be able to understand for another two centuries.

Ford says that it is necessary to "save what can be saved" of the Honduran system. He says that I'm willing to make a martyr of myself, trying to leave an unfinished legacy, with the argument that they have kept me away from powerful influences that can't be named. The people know that we have unmasked time and time again such influences in my own speeches in the United Nations and in all the forums across which our struggle continues. It is not martyrology that they imposed on me by overthrowing me and then digging me up again; it is the struggle of the people in resistance, it is a legacy, it is the moral, libertarian strength of our men and women in building a new history.

What narrow-mindedness this ambassador demonstrates to justify himself to his superiors after his failure to subjugate us in Honduras. For his destabilising role he was sent to the southern command, where he still remains, and from where he hatched and executed the Coup. It is impossible to put aside the fact that he literally regards me as an enemy of the interests of the United States, and blames me for my sovereign and honourable actions. Actions that he confirmed absolutely while I express my friendship and admiration for the American people - even their country, at the same time that I declare myself anti-imperialist, a struggle in which I would prefer to die than yield.

He reproaches my appointees on the UN and expresses annoyance because we did not cease to make state decisions in spite of his machiavellian manipulation associated with an entire oligarchy, a band of mercenaries who never ceased to conspire in keeping me away from the people and contribute to a sense of patriotism and struggle and put paid to their supine actions.

When sub secretary of state John Dimitri Negroponte, together with Ambassador Ford accused me in Washington of nominating a communist to the United Nations - the ex-Rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras - and indicated that as a terrorist he was denied an American visa, I strongly pursued this violation of the statute of this international organisation, and felt obliged to take a firm protest up to the White House to get through to them that these gentlemen were stuck in the cold war, sectarian, fundamentalist, and that they should understand that the world has changed and that the United States too, has to change.

The cable of falsehoods, like many which earlier were used to justify wars and the massacre of children, women, and old men on various parts of the planet; slanders, degradation and rudeness used to smooth the way to barbarity and exploitation by a system that has no limits. Except for those that have always been set by the transnationals, previously the banana companies, and today the financial and petrol companies, against my people. These notes from the Ambassador serve only to leave the destiny of my homeland in the hands of those who have lost honour and dignity, to be humiliated to secondary interests. There is no doubt. The problem is the same, the method is the same, and the motive is the same; perfidious and cowardly practices that sacrifice generations to their fat businesses. I could continue dealing with the opinions of Mr. Ford one by one, emphasising my own image to refute his tall stories, but I think the basic problem is something else; this document highlights the agents of the coup; it indicates what the empire was thinking in May 2008; it makes it clear that the coup is not accidental, that it was prepared, and that they also conspired, and it makes clear how long they were preparing to overthrow me and to destroy democracy in Honduras.

In this cable of Ford is the history of the Coup; for them it is unforgivable that in the decade of the eighties I would raise my voice against the irregular armed forces of the central American counterrevolutionaries when I was a representative in the National Assembly, demanding explanations of why they were threatening brother and sister countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador, where they committed a brutal genocide from our territory, while our beloved homeland Honduras was used as an aircraft carrier for the north Americans. The empire is not interested in my personal life, but they destroy it so long as they can prevent my political actions from contributing to the liberation of my people.

Finally, what Charles Ford is effectively saying is, that the North American Empire only makes me bigger as a human being, as a politician and as one of the actors of the 21st Century, and makes the struggle of the Honduran people greater and invincible, which continues to resist the return of the military castes to the civic life of our nation, so that the murdering and intense blaze from criminals, from here and from there, moved by the same old puppeteers, has to stop one day and they have to think that it is better to coexist with us, rather than try to rob us of what belongs to us.

Once more, we see the actions of the United States, as the world policeman; tribunals of the Holy Inquisition of the 21st Century, more barefaced and bloodthirsty than ever in the history of humanity. Today we see that they don't have double standards of morality, they don't have any standards of morality at all; they only function at the level of parameters, numbers, and interests. I will continue to struggle against this brutal and sinister power that denies revolution of thought and solidarity to impose barbarity and infamy that does not cease for a single moment, in their effort to subjugate and enslave us.

Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales,
Constitutional President 2006-2010
General Coordinator of the The National Popular Resistance Front.

Narco-trafficker Uribe appointed 'Distinguished Scholar' by Georgetown University

Rally Against Uribe’s Appointment at Georgetown
by Rachel Winch, 18 November 2010.
Source: NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America).


In 2004 Gerardo Cajamarca Alarcón, a union activist finally fled Colombia after paramilitary forces killed four of his friends and threatened to kill him. He believed his life was in imminent danger, and he had good reason. Colombia has been named “the murder capital of the world for trade unionists”; over the past few years, out of every ten trade unionists killed in the world, seven have been from Colombia.

Cajamarca fled a land ruled by Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, who has been accused of supporting the paramilitary forces responsible for a number of the union deaths. On November 3, Cajamarca stood in front of a rally of students, faculty, and human rights activists who were demonstrating against Uribe’s appointment as a “Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership” at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. to share his story and demand that Uribe be prosecuted for his crimes.

“We are here in the name of our dead,” Cajamarca told the crowd. “For truth, justice, and reparations.” Holding photos of union leaders who had been assassinated, he went on to describe the cooperative links between transnational corporations and the 2002-2010 Uribe administration, and the role this cooperation played in these killings. Uribe “represents this criminal system,” he concluded.

Uribe, who has been involved in the Colombian political system since he was elected mayor of Medellín in 1982, has also been connected with the illegal surveillance of Supreme Court judges, journalists, and human rights defenders. Hollman Morris, a Colombian journalist who is now a prestigious Nieman fellow at Harvard University (although his visa was initially denied by the U.S. State Department), described his experiences being targeted by Uribe at a talk following the rally: “I understood that any journalism I were to do just got a lot more dangerous. Any curve could have an ‘accident.’” Uribe targeted the internationally renowned journalist as a “publicist for terrorism,” a public smearing technique the Colombian president used to discredit a number of journalists and human rights defenders.

On August 11, just four days after Uribe finished his term in office, Georgetown University announced that he had been selected as a Distinguished Scholar and that beginning in September he would “conduct seminars and other programmatic activities for students in the School of Foreign Service and the broader university community . . . to help foster conversations on important issues facing the international community.”

“We are looking forward to having President Uribe join our university community,” said Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia. “Having such a distinguished world leader at Georgetown will further the important work of students and faculty engaging important global issues.”

However, on September 29, students delivered an open letter to DeGioia, signed by over 150 scholars, asking Georgetown to dismiss Uribe because of his involvement in human rights violations. The letter—which was written by Colombian Jesuit Father Javier Giraldo Moreno S.J.—explained some of Uribe’s controversial history in Colombia. It cited “Uribe’s ties to paramilitary groups,” among other serious human rights violations and scandals that defined his two terms as president. Not only did Uribe “continue to sponsor those paramilitary groups,” Giraldo wrote, “but he defended them and he perfected them into a new pattern of legalized paramilitarism . . . while at the same time lying to the international community with a phony demobilization of the paramilitaries.”

Georgetown Peace Studies professor Mark Lance explained at the rally that the decision to appoint Uribe as a Distinguished Scholar was not an isolated aberration to glorify human rights violations. Rather, it is a more deeply rooted practice of the university to invite people who are perceived as powerful to train students to be the next class of elite: “They brought him here for one very simple reason,” Lance avowed. “Because he was a president. That’s all that mattered in the making of this decision. Because if you’re powerful in this sense of power, if you run national organizations, you’re welcome here. Because that fits into a conceptualization of education that’s shared by many educators, many faculty, and, I’m afraid, many students at this university.”

Former Distinguished Scholars in the Practice of Global Leadership in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown have indeed been politically powerful, including Former President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, and former Ambassador at Large Robert L. Gallucci. The most controversial was the appointment of a George W. Bush administration Iraq war architect Douglas Feith as a professor at the School of Foreign Service in 2006 (but not as a Distinguished Scholar), which caused similar faculty and student protests.

Following the rally, Georgetown University law students delivered Uribe a subpoena summoning him to testify in a case against Drummond Company, Inc., an Alabama-based coal company that is being tried in U.S. Federal Court on accusations of paying paramilitary forces to kill union organizers and other civilians in the regions of Colombia where they are mining. After a number of thwarted attempts, the students successfully served the subpoena as Uribe was leaving a class he was teaching.

The subpoena itself encapsulates the core reasons why so many at Georgetown are angered by Uribe’s appointment: In 2009 nearly 500 family members of Colombian civilians who the paramilitary assassinated filed the case after uncovering evidence that Drummond funded the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the paramilitary forces responsible for the assassinations. The Drummond plaintiffs summoned Uribe to testify in the case on the grounds that he has “direct knowledge of several key issues in the case,” which includes both governmental collusion with the AUC and governmental protection of the Drummond mining facility. Students hope that the subpoena will further the case of the Colombian families and also support their efforts to repeal Uribe’s appointment at Georgetown.

Uribe’s deposition in the Drummond case is scheduled for November 22 in Washington, DC. Students and faculty are continuing to organize against Uribe’s status as “Distinguished Scholar” and are committed to do so until he has been discharged. “When we win this campaign and Uribe is forced to leave Georgetown,” Charity Ryerson, a Georgetown Law student and leader of the movement against Uribe’s appointment told a Georgetown University reporter “a message will be sent that our community does not condone the model of politics Uribe represents.”

As Gerardo Cajamarca Alarcón said as he closed his address to the crowd gathered, “For our dead, not one minute of silence. An entire life of fighting.”


Rachel Winch is a NACLA Research Associate

Terrorist Network Operating Openly In The United States

Source: Jane Franklin.Info April 30, 2005

By Jane Franklin


Three 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.