Luis Posada Carriles, A Terror Suspect Abroad, Enjoys A ‘Coming-Out’ in Miami
MIAMI - The dapper octogenarian in a crisp blue suit, his face smoothed by plastic surgery, swanned from table to table in the candlelit banquet hall, bestowing kisses and collecting accolades.An aging movie star being feted by fans? A veteran politico taking his bows?
No, the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago.
Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge’s dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him — making false statements to immigration officials.
But recent events like the Friday dinner and an exhibition and sale of his paintings last fall show that the man who spent his life trying to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro has returned to the social forefront of this city’s exile community.
“We are coming to the end of a terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near,” Posada told the crowd of supporters in evening dress, referring to Castro’s failing health.
Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.
“This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about violence,” Alvarez said of Posada. “He said that the whole thing now is ‘to sharpen our machetes’ ” for a confrontation with leftist regimes in Latin America.
The U.S. government has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922, the ambassador said.
Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is alleged to have masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 on which all 73 on board were killed, including a youth fencing team returning from a tournament in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. He is also suspected of plotting a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the late 1990s, one of which killed an Italian tourist.
He has boasted of his many attempts to kill Castro and has allegedly been involved in, according to court documents, “some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics.”
Posada was serving time in a Panama prison for a 2000 assassination attempt on Castro when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him and three accomplices in August 2004 in what some observers saw as a favor to President Bush to rally the Cuban-dominated Florida vote for his reelection.
The three other Cuban Americans returned to Miami as heroes; Posada arrived six months later, reportedly fetched from Mexico by a shrimp boat owned by an anti-Castro benefactor.
As Venezuela, Cuba and human rights groups clamored for Posada’s extradition for trial on the plane-bombing charges, federal authorities here arrested him in May 2005 for illegal entry. A federal judge in Texas ordered him deported, but another judge prohibited his being sent to Venezuela, heeding claims by Posada’s lawyers that he could face torture or execution there.
None of a half-dozen friendly countries contacted by the State Department would agree to take Posada.
An immigration fraud case was brought by federal prosecutors later that year but dismissed in May 2007. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone accused federal authorities of using trickery, fraud and deceit in pursuing a criminal case against him.
Federal prosecutors appealed and are waiting for a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Dean Boyd, spokesman for the Justice Department.
Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.
Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.
“The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration’s commitment to wage a war on terrorism,” he said of Posada’s coming-out party.
Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) convened a congressional hearing in November on the administration’s handling of the Posada case, arguing that there was “compelling evidence” implicating Posada in the plane bombing.
Delahunt said Tuesday that “there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm” under the current administration for prosecuting Posada, but that he would push again for legal action against Posada after the fall election. “To have Posada honored in such a way sends a terrible statement to the rest of the world,” the congressman said of the tribute.
Posada, still under a supervision order with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, entered the banquet to a standing ovation, his face beaming and minus the scar from a 1990 attack by gunmen in Guatemala.
“He’s a real hero for Cuba. He’s been fighting for the freedom of Cuba since the day he arrived in the United States,” said Hector Morales-George, a retired surgeon who attended the dinner.
© 2008 The Los Angeles Times
The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration’s commitment to wage a war on terrorism..
But he’s our terrorist.
No different to the US funding of the terrorist organization Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) for the killing of innocent Iranian civilians.
Typical US hypocrisy.
Terrorism from any perspective has been a bonanza for the Bush Regime.
The pro-US terrorists (Posada being a good example) help global capitalists exploit other nations, resulting in the capitalists being able to channel more money to the Regime to enable corporate control of the US government.
The Regime’s economic and foreign policy helps anti-US terrorists recruit more members, thereby giving the Regime leverage to expand destruction of the US constitution, regressive economic policies and pre-emptive miltary actions.
Terrorist? On the contrary, he’s a good, patriotic Amerikan!
A little headstrong, maybe, but good at heart.
Also, he looks a little bit like an emaciated Andy Griffith. Maybe the “Matlock” association is working in his favor.
When the U.S. destabilizes and infiltrates another government we are above the law.
But if Cuba has informants infiltrating groups in Miami bent on destroying Cuba, they don’t get a fair trial it seems.
The Cuban Five
The same ol same ol, if he is our thug he is a good guy and if he is their thug he is a terrorist and a bad guy! There really is only the flow of $$ and that is what determines who is good terrorist and who is bad terrorist.
The author is far too kind to Mr. Posada. He is “suspected” of involvement in the fatal terrorist hotel bombings in Havana? Has the author read the lengthy New York Times interview with Posada — in which he boasted of having directed the hotel bombings, said the death of the innocent Italian turist in one of his bombings did not cause him any loss of sleep, and defended terrorist bombings of civilian targets as necessary acts of “war” against the Castro regime? Has the author read the US newspaper accounts of Mr. Posada’s public statements in Miami, after he secretly entered our country illegally, boasting of how he had lied to and tricked our immigration agents into allowing him through the Texas border (another lie, since it was subsequently discovered that he entered illegally by boat into Florida)? The author’s “it is alleged” and “it is suspected” qualifications are essentially dishonest. A man who repeatedly boasts of committing terrorist acts which took the lives of numerous innocent people deserves to be called what he is: a terrorist. And people who choose to attend a banquet in honor of such a self-proclaimed terrorist deserve to be called what they are: supporters of terrorism.
Maybe they can stretch out Carriles’ face for the TV audience and run him as a VP candidate with McCain. How many innocents died from bombs dropped by McCain’s plane in Vietnam. Terrorists both.
“We are coming to the end of a terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near,” Posada told the crowd of supporters in evening dress, referring to Castro’s failing health.”
What a short-sighted murderous twit . Our present hospital system survived the death of Florence Nightingale . The Women’s Right to Vote survived the death of it’s staunchest advote ,Susan B Anthony . Anti-slavery legislation in all European countries survived the deaths of their respective champions ( except in the USA where being slow learners with the lowest literacy rate in the western worl;d , it’s 2 steps forward-1 step back ).
Apart from anger amongst Cubans for the perpetual miscarriage of justice , I’m sure Cuban-Cubans are laughing at the “500 supporter gala-gala doo ” who praise the alleged assassin for singular successes at regime change and quietly ignore the hundreds of failures . Maybe next time ? What’s the definition of insanity again ? . When you have a noble cause like anti-slavery , don’t give up , even when your opponents say you are insane.
When the cause is not just( and whole world except USA and Israel say that LPC’s cause is not just ) then refer to the definition of insanity.
If we failed to send this terrorist to Venezuela or Cuba, does that mean that Venezuela and Cuba will become a safe haven for terrorists that oppose U.S. Imperialism?
What I really don’t understand is the reception given to this man by former Cubans. I know that I’m not real up to date on the attitude of Cuban-American’s but violence is not an answer, nor is a hero’s welcome for a murderer.
So….when is Bush holding the “Bin Laden Bash” ??
I hear their families are VERY close
There is a little island east of Big Pine Key Florida called No Name Key. On it’s east side just north of the main road was a training compound that exiled Cubans used to train to invade Cuba. I used to rummage through the remains in the late sixties when I was young. I was impressed by the bullet holes in a concrete wall where they did target practice.
I’ll try a search to find out more.
Send hime to Guantanamo….but when he gets there, kick his old ass out the front gate…lets see what kind of party Castro holds for him
Your comment is awaiting moderation. What did I say NOW?
Yo soy un hombre TERRORISTO
De donde crece la SOCIALISTA
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos de ODIO
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera
Mi verso es de un ROJO SANGRE
Y de un AVION encendido
Mi verso es de un INFANTIL herido
Que YO MUERTO QUANDO RISANDO
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera
Cultivo una AMISTAD CON ARBUSTO
En ESTADOS UNIDOS
Para el amigo MALVADO
Que me da su mano DELECTIVO
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera
Y para el POBRE que TE arranca
El corazon con que vivE
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la MORTALIDAD
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera
Con los pobres de la tierra
CHINGA TUS MADRES
El CLOACA de MIAMI
Me complace más que el DINERO
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera
Shame on the Cuban-American community in Miami. One thing is being against Castro’s regime but another to treat a terrorist that killed 73 people as a hero. And if they think that the Castro ideology will die with him, they’re going to be very dissapointed.
By the way, where is the Italian government outcry for the killing of one of their citizens?
Bush’s policy is to bomb places that harbor terrorists and alleged terrorists. By that logic, Miami would be struck with missiles. But, wait; Miami is filled with human beings. Oh yeah, so are the places we do bomb. Sometimes, we make mistakes, but it isn’t murder, it’s just collateral damage–the Timothy McVeigh defense.
Haters of God and religion are excused from this post, but scripture does have an interesting evaluation of such arogance as that of Carilles:
Prov. 3:16 “Pride [goes] before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.”
He will destroy himself soon enough and no one will mourn his passing.
Castro freed Cuba from Batista, a REAL dictator–and brought progress to Cuba that never would have happened otherwise. Cuba went commie because John Foster Dulles wouldn’t allow Castro to come to the White House.
This CIA op Posada is no hero.
Say it again:
“The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration’s commitment to wage a war on terrorism.”
Bush is no more committed to fighting terrorism than he was to stopping the spread of WMD or helping the women of Afghanistan (remember them) or any of the sanctimonious right wing values he claimed to believe in either. He has never been committed to anything other than his own self-aggrandizement. He is and has always been nothing but an opportunist pure and simple, and anyone who is still taken in by this man as an example of anything other than the lowest form of human scum is gullible indeed.
Do a search on interpen & “no name key”-Thank you
Mmmm… Smell that? That’s the putrid stench of hypocrisy.
Didn’t Bush say “You’re either with us, or against us’?
I guess if you’re a CIA paid assassin that makes you ‘with’ Bush.
Oh wait.
Wasn’t Osamma BinLaden on the CIA payroll too?
You don’t have to go very far to find fuckin’ terrorists.
Home Land Srewicity ought to br raiding the White House before the bastards go into retirement.
I hate to drag the corporate mass media in again (actually I don’t). But they are accomplices in the crime of not calling out the fuckin’ terrorists in the White House. And, they are accomplices in the crime of not informing the general citizenry(who do not access the sources of info read by posters on this board) of crimes of Posada Carriles and other Miami terrorists (Miami, surprise, surprise, where there’s also a strong Mafia presence), & the truth about the coups in Haiti & Venezuela, etc.
And, as for catching the Bush crime family before they leave office, I think they’re more vulnerable to criminal prosecution out of office. (That does not mean there shouldn’t be mass impeachments). I have to laugh that Bush bought all of this land in Paraguay when the right-wingers were still in charge. It does my heart double good that a lefty has been elected.
Galen May asked:
“Didn’t Bush say “You’re either with us, or against us’?”
Sure did. But a google search, or any other means wouldn’t find a truth from Bush’s mouth since he first ran for President.
I know, we could invite that nice Dr. for dinner, Josef, whatshisname? oh yeah, Mengele. Such a charming fellow and what delightful dinner stories he can tell. He’ll have the entire room enthralled, dinner of the season. Now that Goering fellow, he was well, just too Germanic, BUT that Dr. Mengele, well, we just wish there were more like him at home, a real credit to his race. Almost an American. I mean come on. It may have taken us a couple of hundred years to butcher 20+ million in the continental US, but remember darling, we got away with it….we even name our missiles after them…I mean come on, missiles. Too cute.
Pasada is a logical criminal product of US imperialism.
Designs on Cuba began before the Spanish-American War and continue today. This news report is pure evidence of that.
Cuba was winning the a war of national independence when the US created the pretext to come-in and never to help the Cubans, but to takeover, to expand imperialistically period.
It took until 1959 to win true independence from foreign domination, meaning US rulling class interest.
Eisenhower conspired to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, the proof is the covert criminal plan called Operation Northwoods. Which 9/11 was an update of, but for expansion into the Middle East instead.
Kennedy invaded and Cuban defeated the contras funded and created by the CIA, of which Pasada was one. It was a criminal act of aggression by the US, a war crime in fact, and Kennedy should have been impeached.
But the Kennedy brothers would not cease and desist, brother Bobby wanted land his wives family lost in the revolution for his own. He had a private incentive beyond his rich kid arrogance and counter-revolutionary nature, lead him, in spite of being the US Attorney General, into heading up assassination teams to get Fidel Castro.
Castro went to Khrushchev for help, and got some nuclear missiles for deterrence to protect Cuba from another invasion by the Kennedy brothers and their fascist co-conspirators.
That lead to the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and very close to nuclear war too.
Castro was right to do as he did, it was certainly legal under International Law, an act of self-defense of a predatory power.
Khrushchev saved the day diplomatically, and the back-channelKENNEDY-KHRUSHCHEV EXCHANGESproves that the deal was the US would never again invade Cuba and file papers to that effect in the UN, but stalled as brother Bobby continue with the assassin teams in The Key With No Name in Florida.
BTW, it was after reading those exchanges that I dropped the work I had done on the JFK assassination as being irrelevant to me, for I no longer gave a shit about the victim, but hated those that is it nevertheless.
For the record I will state as I have on my former radio programs on KPFK that had Castro wacked Kennedy it would have been justified, just political suicide for his country, but clearly he had it coming as moral, legal, and personal matter. But, the Cubans in Cuba, not nothing like the psychopaths in Florida, with Pasada a prime example.
I will not go into who, why, and how those brothers were killed, it is not germane to this post, other than saying Bobby was worse, had assassinated journalist Lisa Howard and Miss Marilyn Monroe to keep her to exposing publicly what Bobby had bragged about in bed in regard to Cuba.
So, what was created as a criminal asset that was hooked to the hip with George Bush Sr., and that is why Pasada among others carried out mission when GHWB was DCI in 76, and later as V-P in Central America. And why he is walking free today. He is as much as a hero as any Blackwater mercenary of B-2 pilot, or neocons in Washington today. They are all the same guy, psycho blood-thirsty murders. The real difference is Pasada and his pals, actually did the wet-jobs themselves, unlike the dandies in suits and ties in the beltway who at most might face puffball questions!
The irony of the Carriles case is really quite ugly. It’s well past time to admit that United States, by policy, is the No. 1 terrorist government on the planet.
Barack Obama disowned his Trinity Church pastor for saying that the United States supports terrorism (the Reverend Wright was refering to the U.S. attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan). However, even before the U.S. conducted its “shock and awe” carpet bombings in those countries, there was Latin America.
Latin America is probably Exhibit A if there were to be a trial investigating U.S. involvement in terrorism. The list of U.S. supported coups is a long one: Guatemala, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela (and more, I just can’t remember them all off the top of my head). Plus, there’s the U.S. School of the Americas, still in business at Ft. Benning, Ga. That’s the school that trained future Latin American generalissimos, dictators and coup leaders in the methods of torture and so-called “counterinsurgency.”
It used to be that the U.S. government tried to hide all of this scullduggery. Now, it’s pretty much all in the open, and judges and Bush administration officals bend over backwards to accomodate murders like Carriles. Makes me sick at heart.
Terrorism is the term used for groups or nations unable to fund a military for the purposes of State sponsored terrorism. Any other characterization of the use of militaries for offensive purposes is simply propaganda. Most people figure this out by the 3rd grade - unless you were educated in the US.
These Old Miami exile Cubans are just pawns in the Great Game that will continue as long as the Bushes, Clintons and the McCains are in power.
So you tell me People,
Who are the worse criminals… the ones who carry out the assassinations, set the bombs and pull the triggers or the politicians and government agents who set the policy and cover up the operations and if things get out of hand, for “national security” allow assassination of assassins so the coverup can continue?
Jim Glover,
‘… Who are the worse criminals…’
A. ‘the politicians and government agents’ and the “special interest” “the private section” “the establishment” they actually work for. Well, it is a revolving door between government, corporations, and universities.
Posada was recruited, used, and is protected. Nonetheless an international terrorist and a JFK assassin. But at heart a rabid right-wing nationalist, not a mercenary, he was motivated by politics, not money. But, so was JFK actually. I can’t find the link, but I did save the text.
‘Abroad, as at home, the problems were becoming too great for conventional leadership, and Kennedy, when the tinsel was stripped away, was a conventional leader, no more than an enlightened conservative, cautious as an old man for all his youth, with a basic distrust of the people…
Let us ask ourselves honest questions. How many Americans have not assumed - with approval - that the C.I.A. was probably trying to find a way to assassinate Castro? How many would not applaud if the C.I.A. succeeded? How many applauded when Lumumba was killed in the Congo, because they assumed that he was dangerously neutralist or perhaps proCommunist? Have we not become conditioned to the notion that we should have a secret agency of government - the C.I.A. - with secret funds, to wield the dagger beneath the cloak against leaders we dislike? Even some of our best young liberal intellectuals can see nothing wrong in this picture except that the ‘operational’ functions of the C.I.A. should be kept separate from its intelligence evaluations! How many of us - on the left now - did not welcome the assassination of Diem and his brother Nhu in South Vietnam? We all reach for the dagger, or the gun, in our thinking when it suits our political view to do so. We all believe the end justifies the means. We all favour murder, when it reaches our own hated opponents. In this sense we share the guilt with Oswald and Ruby and the rightist crackpots. Where the right to kill is so universally accepted, we should not be surprised if our young President was slain. It is not just the ease in obtaining guns, it is the ease in obtaining excuses, that fosters assassination. This is more urgently in need of examination than who pulled the trigger. In this sense, as in that multi-lateral nuclear monstrosity we are trying to sell Europe, we all had a finger on the trigger.
But if we are to dig out the evil, we must dig deeper yet, into the way we have grown to accept the idea of murder on the widest scale as the arbiter of controversy between nations. In this connection, it would be wise to take a clear-sighted view of the Kennedy Administration because it was the first U.S. government in the nuclear age which acted on the belief that it was possible to see war, or the threat of war, as an instrument of politics despite the possibility of annihilation. It was in some ways a warlike Administration. It seems to have been ready, soon after taking office, to send troops into Vietnam to crush the rebellion against Diem; fortunately both Diem and our
nearest Asian allies,notably the Filipinos, were against our sending combat troops into the area. The Kennedy Administration, in violation of our own laws and international law, permitted that invasion from our shores which ended so ingloriously in the Bay of Pigs. It was the Kennedy Administration which met Khrushchev’s demands for negotiations on Berlin by a partial mobilization and an alarming invitation to the country to dig backyard shelters against cataclysm.
Finally we come to the October crisis of a year ago. This set a bad precedent for his successors, who may not be as skilful as he was in finding a way out. What if the Russians had refused to back down and remove their missiles from Cuba? What if they had called our bluff and war had begun, and escalated? How would the historians of mankind, if a fragment survived, have regarded the events of October? Would they have thought us justified in blowing most of mankind to smithereens, rather than negotiate, or appeal to the U.N., or even to leave in Cuba the medium-range missiles which were no different after all from those we had long aimed at the Russians from Turkey and England? When a whole people is in a state of mind where it is ready to risk extinction - its own and everybody else’s - as a means of having its own way in an international dispute, the readiness for murder has become a way of life and a world menace. Since this is the kind of bluff that can easily be played once too often, and that his successors may feel urged to imitate, it would be well to think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy as an apostle of peace.’ - I.F. Stone
Posada Carriles also bragged about the murder of Che Guevara.
He also helped train the contras in Arkansas in the 1980s, before moving on to El Salvador.
http://www.infocollective.org/reedabstract.html
The man is a cold blooded terrorist and a friend of the US ruling class.
He looks like a cast member from the movie DAWN of the DEAD.
What else can be expected from a country that has been ‘giving the finger’ to the entire world for years and years. Repulsive.