Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen HouglandEchoes of Lockerbie
Seán Mac Mathúna
e-mail: thefantompowa@fantompowa.org
George
Herbert Walker Bush
accused of war crimes by Sean Mac Mathuna POSADA
CARRILES THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD CIA and FBI Documents Detail Echoes of Lockerbie: CIA links to blowing
up of Cuban airliner exposed USA exposed again
as state sponsor of terrorism Family members
of Capt. Wilfredo P who was killed in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana
Airlines plane. Massive controversy
now surrounds the fate of one of the CIA's leading terrorists now
detained in the USA. The story of Luis
Posada Carriles contradicts the whole stance the US has taken
in its bogus "war on terror". Here is a terrorist,
directly implicated in a classic act of terrorism - the
blowing up of a civilian airliner - but this is no "normal"
terrorist: Carriles was a long-term CIA agent in numerous CIA sponsored
terrorist groups- such at CORU- who waged a "dirty war"
against states like Cuba and opponents of US foreign policy. The whole case has had
huge media coverage one central fact is missing. Not only did Carriles
work for the CIA and is directly implicated in the attack on the
airliner; but these events happened when a certain George
Herbert Walker Bush, was director of the CIA - a post
he held from 30th January 1976 until 20 January 1977. Bush, the former US
President has always been closely connected to the Cuban exiles,
who are mainly based in Florida. His son, Jeb is now Governor of
Florida and of course his other son, George W. is the current US
President. When he was arrested
in 2005, his lawyer announced that Posada is asking the Bush administration
for asylum because of the work he had done for the CIA in the 1960s.
This coincided with
CIA records being released that confirm Posada was an agent in the
1960s and early 1970s, and remained an informant in regular contact
with CIA officials at least until June 1976. This, of course, links
Carriles ultimately to the then CIA director, George Bush and begs
the question: exactly what did Bush know about these attacks - and
what was his involvement ? When these kind of links
were made with Libya and the Lockerbie bombing it was front page
news - why then keep the President's father out of the picture ?
Back in Spring 1999,
Flame reported on the involvement of the George Bush senior,
the former US President and CIA director and his links to terrorism
in Latin America in the 1970s. We detailed the background to the
blowing up of a Cuban Airlines plane shortly after it took of from
Barbados on 6th October 1976. The attack, which was claimed by a
then new Cuban exile terrorist group called CORU, killed 73 people,
including the entire Cuban Olympic championship fencing team. The good thing about
the arrest of Carriles is that is had led to even more information
being released from the official archive of various US government
departments confirming the role of the CIA in this case and its
general involvement in certain types of state terrorism - the case
of the murder of Orlando Letelier and the attack on the Cuban airliner
in 1987 - both when Bush was CIA Director. For example, on May
18, 2005, the National Security Archive released documents that
show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as
June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cuban
airliner. Another document showed
that the FBI's attach? in Caracas had multiple contacts with one
of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided
him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite
suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction
of Luis Posada Carriles. In addition, the Archive
posted the first report to the alleged (!) war criminal, Henry
Kissinger from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research on the bombing of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that
a CIA source had overheard Posada prior
to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, "We are going
to hit a Cuban airliner." This information was apparently not passed
to the CIA until after the plane went down. Other declassified CIA
and FBI records released by the National Security Archive at George
Washington University identify Posada Carriles
as one of the "engineer[s]" of the attack on the airliner. The Archive also posted
a second FBI report, dated one day after the bombing, in which a
confidential source: ". . . all but admitted that Posada and
[Orlando] Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline." In October 1976, the
CIA admitted that it "had a relationship with one person whose name
has been mentioned in connection with the reported bombing" . .
. Luis Posada Carriles. A secret intelligence
Report, "Suspected Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados"
released by the FBI from 1976 notes that a confidential source has
identified Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch as responsible for the
bombing: "The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had
engineered the bombing of the airline." The recent demands by
Cuba and Venezuela for Carriles to be extradited to face justice
have placed the Bush Administration in a conundrum. On one hand,
it cannot grants asylum to Luis Posada Carriles
because this would negate its so-called "war on terrorism",
which is supposed to be a bastion against those nations that offer
"harbor or refuge terrorists". But if it denies asylum
to Carriles, it turns it back on a powerful and influential CIA
sponsored terrorist - and who is to say that if he is sent back
to Venezuela he would not want to call George
Bush as a witness in his trial - and reveal even more embarrassing
secrets for the Bush familyalong with their links to the Cuban exiles
in Florida. His trial would expose
the "war on terrorism" for what it is. After all, as Cuba
has noted you cannot have "good" terrorists like Luis
Posada Carriles and "bad" terrorists (like Bin Laden).
It appears that the
US thinks that it can. The US is also in an awkward position because
any extradition here would be victory for both Hugo Chavaz and Fidel
Castro who have both really put the pressure on for the USA to extradite
Luis Posada Carriles. It could even lead
to a break in diplomatic relations between these countries. Such
are the contradictions in this case most of the mainstream western
media have chosen not to cover it at all. Relatives of Cuba's
national fencing team and teachers that died in 1976 plane bombing.
