“Our” Terrorist Goes on Trial

Today, Luis Posada Carrilles goes on trial. Posada is, of course, the Cuban-American who was a CIA asset for at least the Bay of Pigs era and almost certainly for years after. Among other things, he orchestrated the bombing of a Cuban plane in 1976, and more recently involved in the bombing of Cuban tourist sites in 1997.

He’s not being tried for terrorism. Instead, he’s being tried for lying about his terrorism.

Nevertheless, as Peter Kornbluh notes, it’ll be the first time evidence of his terrorism gets introduced into trial in this country.

In the annals of modern justice, the Posada trial stands out as one of the most bizarre and disreputable of legal proceedings. The man identified by US intelligence reports as a mastermind of the midair destruction of a Cuban airliner—all seventy-three people on board were killed when the plane plunged into the sea off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976—and who publicly bragged about being behind a series of hotel bombings in Havana that killed an Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo, is being prosecuted for perjury and fraud, not murder and mayhem. The handling of his case during the Bush years became an international embarrassment and reflected poorly on the willingness and/or abilities of the Justice Department to prosecute crimes of terror when that terrorist was once an agent and ally of America. For the Obama administration, the verdict will carry significant implications for US credibility in the fight against terrorism, as well as for the future of US-Cuban relations.

[snip]

To its credit, the Justice Department did quietly empanel a grand jury in New Jersey to weigh an official indictment of Posada for masterminding the hotel bombings in Havana. (Evidence gathered by the FBI indicates that Posada raised funds for that operation from Cuban-American benefactors in Union City, New Jersey.) In April 2006 government lawyers decided to hold a naturalization interview with Posada while he was in jail, surreptitiously gathering self-incriminating evidence against him in the hotel bombing case.

But, for reasons that remain under seal, the New Jersey grand jury proceedings stalled. Initially, as a senior State Department official confided, prosecutors were unable to secure a key piece of evidence—the tape recordings of an interview Posada had given to then–New York Times stringer Ann Louise Bardach in 1998, in which he appeared to take full responsibility for the hotel bombings. “The Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby,” Posada proclaimed, according to his statements published in the Times. Under subpoena, Bardach turned over the tapes to the grand jury on December 15, 2006. But no indictment was ever handed down.

Instead, on January 11, 2007, Posada was indicted in El Paso on six counts of making “false statements” and one of fraud about how he came to the United States and for his use of false names and false passports—charges that carry an maximum sentence of five to ten years each. To make matters worse for the credibility of the US legal system, four months later Judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed all charges against Posada. The government, she ruled, had engaged in “fraud, deceit and trickery” in obtaining evidence against Posada under the guise of conducting a naturalization review. The court, she declared, could “not set aside [Posada’s legal] rights nor overlook Government misconduct [just] because Defendant is a political hot potato.”

A free man, Posada took up residence in Miami. Since he is on the government’s no-fly list, Posada was forced to drive back to Florida, where he has lived openly for the past several years, attending right-wing exile fundraisers and even participating in public protests against Castro’s Cuba.

But in August 2008 the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overruled Cardone’s decision and ordered Posada to proceed to trial. In another positive turn of events in this long, twisted legal saga, in April 2009 the new Obama Justice Department used the New York Times tapes of Posada’s interview with Bardach to file several additional counts of perjury and fraud relating specifically to lying about “soliciting other individuals to carry out…[the hotel] bombings in Cuba.” To be sure, Posada is still not being charged with actually perpetrating those terrorist operations, only with lying about aspects of his involvement in orchestrating them. But for the first time in a US court, a team of lawyers from the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Division will present concrete evidence to prove that Posada was indeed behind a series of terrorist attacks on Cuban soil.

Now, it always pays to be skeptical about the possibility the United States will hold its old terrorist, Posada, accountable for later acts of terrorism that we may not have officially sanctioned. While most of the efforts to avoid trying him have come under Bush (whose father reportedly was tied to the Bay of Pigs invasion, was director of the CIA at the time of the 1976 Posada bombing, was directly implicated in Iran-Contra, and was President during the 1997 bombings in question [pre-coffee f-up]), it’s not clear the Obama Administration is any more willing to hold “our” terrorists–or those of our allies–accountable.

Also (as Kornbluh further explains in his article), the government was unable to exclude evidence of Posada’s ties to the CIA from trial. Particularly given that DOJ just indicted a former CIA officer who alleges he was ordered to lie in his memoirs, it will be fairly easy for Posada to say he lied about his involvement in terrorism as he was required to to protect the CIA.

And while we’re used to American hypocrisy on this front, the trial will be closely watched in Latin America. Even while we’re claiming that Posada illegally entered the US, we are refusing to extradite Posada to Venezuela. And the Wikileaks cables reveals our further inconsistency on the treatment of terrorism. While we like to pressure countries like Brazil without great evidence, we treat the claims of Bolivia’s government very skeptically. Yet here, the evidence is clear that Posada is a terrorist.

But chances are high that Posada, like Scooter Libby, will never see jail time for his alleged perjury.

But it will be worth watching to see whether the US is willing and able to put one of the Western Hemisphere’s most celebrated terrorists in prison.

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  1. jdmckay0 says:

    Your Bolivia WikiLeak link interesting… not sure what to make of it. Hard to tell whose water those guys were carrying.

    Wondering about 6.C reference

    (Note: The Embassy participates in the ExpoCruz fair only through its association with the American Chamber of Commerce, and does
    not have its own stand or storage area. End note.)

    … does that suggest what I think it does? I mean, sheesh, is the Chamber militarized?

  2. Jeff Kaye says:

    The Posada case can open a lot of musty closed doors that lead to the criminal behavior of the United States. The Iran-Contra link is important, as Posada, after escaping from prison in Venezuela, went to work for Felix Rodgriguez at Ilopongo Air Base in El Salvador, which acted as an arms dump/supply facility for the Contras. In fact, under the pseudonym Ramon Medina, Posada managed the facility for Rodriquez and the U.S. Contra backers, overseen largely by George H.W. Bush. Rodriquez himself had direct ties to the CIA and George Bush.

    The whole Cuban/CIA case is directly linked to the Kennedy assassination affair, which remains a verboten topic unless you want to be labeled as “off the reservation” and a conspiracy nut. But it is clear that the CIA ran Cuban policy, and Kornbluh’s own work, most notably here, and with documentation at George Washington University’s NSA website here, demonstrates the lengths to which the Kennedy administration had to go to hide its feelers of rapprochement with Castro in 1963, something the CIA was monitoring and undermining at every step. I agree with the thesis of James Douglass’s 2008 book that this game of chess over Cuba between JFK, Castro and the CIA was instrumental, along with changes in policy over Vietnam, in alienating JFK from the defense/intelligence establishment, and leading to his death.

    So a lot of cans of worms could be opened by a trial of one of the CIA’s own terrorists, if not in open court, in the press…. IF we had a press that cared to investigate anymore, and a belief in seeking the truth out, no matter where it might lead.

    • DWBartoo says:

      Posada, compelled to testify, could become a considerable “problem” for some people, certain government agencies, and “other” entities.

      Posada, facing a lengthy prison sentence, might well become a very considerable “problem” to those people, those government agencies, and thouse “other” entities.

      How much “stomach” can the American “government” truly have for allowing such “cans-o-worms” to be opened and examined … even before a tame and muzzled domestic media?

      What “strange developments” await?

      Perhaps the findings will be “secret” and sealed for seventy-five years?

      Perhaps some fickle “fate” might intervene … to the benefit of those who might become “embarrassed”?

      Perhaps only a few investigators, like yourself and EW, will take up the challenge of seeking the truth you mention … where … ever, and to whomever, it might well lead?

      Those of us old enough to clearly remember the “events” which you describe, will not be, in any way, surprised if some “magic” is used to explain it all away, merely disgusted and convinced that many things died on a long ago, chill November day … the need and desire of the actual, honest, and full truth among them.

      DW

      • Jeff Kaye says:

        Not sure I understand all the quotes, DW. Irony, which I missed? Besides, I never mentioned that Posada was in any danger, and I’d guess his only danger is being found guilty and being sentenced to prison. I imply no new cover-up in the making. What’s your point?

        • DWBartoo says:

          Simply that I doubt that truth will be served, Jeff.

          Posada faces no real danger, nor even token imprisonment, though he should. Posada is quite safe, as he has the “goods” and all that could come out, as you clearly suggested, will not.

          Were there, indeed, an honest media doing its proper task, much of what has been deliberately obscured, these last 48 years, would become much more clear, not the least of which would be that the American government has, while enforcing the ignorance of its citizens, engaged in behavior that is nothing less than terroristic and destructive of peace, leading to “endless” war and careless of “domestic tranquillity” to the direct benefit of a very specific few.

          I should, probably, have attached a snark tag or two, but the predictable failure of the fourth estate to do its proper job and the deliberate and intentional failure of specific individuals within government, over and through a number of administrations, to fulfill their official duties to the Constitution and to the people of this nation is so eggregiously destructive of trust and democratic principle, that mere irony seems, often, all that is left those of us who lament these realities.

          The rule of law is not merely dead, it has become a seriously and decidedly pathetic joke.

          Yet, no one of conscience is laughing.

          However, I cannot shake the suspician that others are.

          And at the expense of much of all that matters on the truly human level.

          DW

          • Jeff Kaye says:

            I can only say, “I understand.” I am not in any disagreement. But as a compass guide, I find that trying to tell the truth is all the sanity I have left in me. Times may yet change. History is not “dead”, as even Mr. Fukuyama had to recently admit (as if it ever were).

            • DWBartoo says:

              I may only say, “I agree, dear friend” … with what you say, with what you do, with what you stand for … and with what you will NOT stand for. I stand with you, Jeff, proudly and humbly, upon that patch of sanity … however small or shrinking it may be. I appreciate, more than mere words may convey, your life-long dedication to truth and the courage you daily manifest in its pursuit.

              DW

  3. fatster says:

    And there’s also the matter of the Letelier-Moffitt murders. I used to think that surely many of these matters would be resolved and appropriately punished during my lifetime. Needless to say, I don’t think that any more. Bitter stuff!

    • fatster says:

      The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles

      “Document 7: CIA, Secret Intelligence Report, “Activities of Cuban Exile Leader Orlando Bosch During his Stay in Venezuela,” October 14, 1976.

      “A source in Venezuela supplied the CIA with detailed intelligence on a fund raiser held for Orlando Bosch and his organization CORU after he arrived in Caracas in September 1976. . . . He [Bosch] was also quoted as saying that his group had done a “great job” in assassinating former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C. on September 21, and now was going to “try something else.” A few days later, according to this intelligence report, Luis Posada Carriles was overheard to say that “we are going to hit a Cuban airplane” and “Orlando has the details.”

      http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KOR20110112&articleId=22759&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

  4. jackie says:

    Completely OT.. Sorry… but this caught my eye?
    ‘Why search her personal safe.?’
    Did Gabby keep her office correspondence at home? or ‘Were folks’ just being ‘nosy’?

    ‘The affidavit also mentions that police searching a safe in Loughner’s home found a letter from Giffords’ office thanking the alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007 event.’
    http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message

  5. jackie says:

    I tried to delete previous comment…it wouldn’t let me.. I misread something and posted questions before I thought it through… working on that…lol!!

  6. strangely enough says:

    whose father reportedly was tied to the Bay of Pigs invasion, was director of the CIA at the time of the 1976 Posada bombing, was directly implicated in Iran-Contra

    Wait, the guy who pardoned Orlando Bosch? That guy? Whose son just so happened to be running for governor of Florida?

  7. jackie says:

    OT.. but strange… Is there any truth to this? and does it mean anything???

    ‘The dealer (our bankers) also were involved in the withdrawal of silver to the tune of 769,941 oz (there were 2 dealers involved removing 102,866 and 667,875 ozs). When you see this massive drain of silver, the fire is raging. The total silver withdrawal by both dealer and customer totalled an astronomical 1,789,251. The Brink’s trucks must have been very busy yesterday.’
    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/01/massive-customer-silver-withdrawals-at.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JessesCafeAmericain+%28Jesse%27s+Caf%C3%A9+Am%C3%A9ricain%29

    • emptywheel says:

      Not strange at all. Just as JP Morgan’s guy takes over as CoS at the White House, of course you’re going to see someone trying to expose (or fix) JP Morgan’s massive silver short.

    • jdmckay0 says:

      OT.. but strange… Is there any truth to this? and does it mean anything???

      FWIW, notice of this was fired by this Eric Sprout interview… your link and others all spread from that.

      IMO, most interesting is suggestion that Treasury inventories of Gold/Silver have been “moved around” by the FED… something FED’s charter does not allow. If Big Ben is somehow cashing in precious metal inventories, suggests USD even more precarious then many of most skeptical imagine.

      I’ve gotten kicked out of a few econ sites because of my well founded views $USD is running on smoke/mirrors, and headed for obscurity. Even some of “progressive” econ writers, some w/good creds, seem utterly unwilling to acknowledge depth to which WS manipulation of both currency and dilapidation of US economy has eroded $USD’s long term health.

      I can tell you from 1st hand experience, demise of $USD is near article of faith amongst Hong Kong currency people.