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with reference to Luis Posada's time spent as a secret service official in Venezuela, taken from the series on this criminal by Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter for the New York Times: A Bomber's Tale
July 13, 1998
Life in the Shadows, Trying to Bring Down Castro
~snip~
Posada's life took a new turn in 1967, when he abruptly left Miami and joined Venezuelan intelligence. This marked the beginning of his years as an operative for a succession of Latin American governments. He has not lived again in the United States, depending instead on a web of powerful friends in the region who see to his welfare and shield him from prosecution.
He got his job as chief of operations for Venezuelan intelligence with the help of C.I.A. recommendations and was immediately sent to wipe out the leftist guerrilla movements that Castro was supporting in Venezuela.
To Posada, who believes in simple, utilitarian politics, the work was merely an extension of his efforts to bring down Castro, and by all accounts, he carried out his job in Venezuela with gusto. "I persecuted them very, very hard," he said of the guerrillas, some of whom later abandoned armed struggle and now are important political figures in Venezuela. "Many, many people got killed."
Posada also arranged for an old friend from his C.I.A. days, Orlando Bosch, to "come to Venezuela to make sabotage" against the Castro government. Bosch had earlier been convicted in the United States of a bomb attack on a Polish freighter bound for Cuba and advocated the violent overthrow of Castro.
But a falling out with Venezuela's newly elected president, Carlos Andres Perez, led to Posada's dismissal and prompted him to found his own private security agency, "the largest in Venezuela," he said.
Around that time, Posada's relationship with the American authorities was suddenly thrown into crisis by an intelligence report that "Posada may be involved in smuggling cocaine from Colombia through Venezuela to Miami, also in counterfeit U.S. money in Venezuela."
According to the report, a copy of which is summarized in the House investigators' files, the C.I.A. decided "not to directly confront Posada with allegation so as not to compromise ongoing investigation." But subsequent cablegrams call Posada a "serious potential liability." The agency would most likely "terminate association promptly if allegations prove true," one read.
Posada was questioned, and "found guilty only of having the wrong kind of friends," the synopsis of another report read. Interrogators were convinced by his denial of drug trafficking, the report concluded.
Even so, by February 1976, the agency's officers decided to break their ties with Posada in what the documents cryptically described as concerns about "outstanding tax matters."
Over the next few months, Posada volunteered information to the agency in hopes of obtaining American visas for himself and his family. He warned that Bosch and another Cuban exile were plotting against the nephew of Chile's deposed leftist president. In June, Posada was calling the C.I.A. again, "concerning possible exile plans to blow up Cubana airliner leaving Panama." He again asked for help with his visa.
Four months later, on Oct. 6, 1976, a Cubana jetliner with 73 people aboard was blown out of the sky shortly after it took off from the Caribbean island of Barbados. The dead included teen-agers from Cuba's national fencing team.
The following day, the C.I.A. made what its records call "unsuccessful attempts" to reach Posada.
Jail and an Escape
The bombing dramatically changed Posada's fortunes. Investigators in Venezuela traced the bomb to the plane's luggage compartment and identified two Venezuelans who checked bags through to Havana but got off the plane in Barbados. The men had worked for Posada, who was arrested and charged with the bombing. Also arrested was Bosch, who had long collaborated with Posada.
To this day, Posada maintains that he did not order the bombing and blames a Cuban colleague in Venezuelan intelligence for the action, which he called "stupid." Bosch has defended the attack in a published interview as "a legitimate act of war."
A retired C.I.A. official familiar with the case said in a recent interview that "Bosch and Posada were the primary suspects," adding, "There were no other suspects."
Posada was jailed in Venezuela, and for most of the next nine years, he remained behind bars, where along with Bosch he learned to paint.
During the interviews, Posada emphasized that he was never convicted of the bombing, and blamed corruption and political influence-peddling in the Venezuelan justice system for his failure to be freed on bail.
Mas, in contrast, was flourishing, his business booming and his political influence growing. At the behest of the Reagan administration, he founded the Cuban-American National Foundation in 1981.
Posada acknowledged that he might still be in jail in Venezuela had not his friends, led by Mas, come to his rescue. In a sworn deposition taken in a civil lawsuit, Ricardo Mas, the estranged brother of Jorge Mas, recounted how he had traveled to Panama to obtain the cash used to pay for the escape.
Ricardo Mas was the comptroller of his brother's company, Church & Tower, from 1972 to 1985. He said that at his brother Jorge's instruction he deposited a check in one of the company's Panamanian accounts and returned with cash.
"He said that he needed me to go down and bring back $50,000, that it would be used to get Luis Posada Carriles out of jail, that Carriles wanted out, that he might start talking," Ricardo Mas testified. "The guy, I guess, was breaking down, they had to get him out of jail."
Posada's version of how money was raised for escape is somewhat different. He said that a bribe for the warden had come from the sale of his house in Venezuela and that the money from Mas had paid for additional expenses.
During a changing of the guard at midnight on Aug. 18, 1985, Posada, dressed in a black jacket with a collar turned up like a priest's, crossed the courtyard of the prison. He carried a Bible, to strengthen the impression that he was a priest, and a satchel containing a small survival kit of food and a lamp. More: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/071398cuba-commando.html |
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