The Downing Of Cubana Flight 455
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-Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch And The Downing Of Cubana Flight 455-

A Glimpse Into The Mind Of A Terrorist

Courtesy of: CounterPunch
By Jose Pertierra
April 11, 2006

Last week, in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles's accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch. I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview:

Juan Manuel Cao: "Did you down that plane in 1976?"

Orlando Bosch: "If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself...And if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or another."

Juan Manuel Cao: "In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant woman)?"

Orlando Bosch: "No chico, in war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach."

Juan Manuel Cao: "But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?"

Orlando Bosch: "...Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers)...Concho chico, four members of the Communist Party Chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies..."

Juan Manuel Cao: "And the fencers? The young people on board?"

Orlando Bosch: "I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television, there leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc, etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny."

Juan Manuel Cao: "If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult...?"

Orlando Bosch: "No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba."

Bosch's answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorists that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: Terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.

What happened to Cubana de Avacion's 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA's own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.

More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviacion flight.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that "We are going to hit a Cuban Airliner."

Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.

The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called "Coordinacion de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas" (CORU).

According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to "Plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).

When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernan Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: "Investigaciones Commerciales e Industriales" (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.

To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.

We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plane. At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be
known as the "bus," and the passengers would be called the "dogs." "The rest is up to you," Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.

The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera. Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo boarded the CU-455 Flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a forged passport using a false name. They sat in the middle of the plane. During the flight, they placed the C-4 explosives in two separate place in the plane: The rear bathroom and underneath the seat belonging to Freddy Lugo.

Lugo and Ricardo got off the plane during its brief stopover at Seawell Airport in Barbados. They later admitted under oath that they had each received special training in explosives from the CIA.

Aboard CU-455 were 73 persons. 57 of the passengers were Cubans. 11 of them were Guyanese medical students in Cuba. The remaining five passengers were Koreans. Those on board averaged only 30 years of age...

...Nine minutes after take-off from Barbados, the bombs exploded and the plane caught fire. The passengers on board then lived the most horrifying ten minutes of their lives, as the plane turned into a scorching coffin.

the cockpit voice-recorder captured the last terrifying moments of the flight at 1:24 PM: "Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell!!...! We have an explosion on board...We have a fire on board."

The Pilot Wilfredo Perez (affectionately known as "Felo"), asked Seawell Airport for permission to return and land, but the plane and its passengers were already doomed. As the plane approached the shore, it was rapidly losing altitude and control. "Hit the water, Felo, hit the water,"

Rather than crashing into the white sands of the beach called Paradise and killing the beachgoers, Felo courageously banked the plane toward the water where it crashed in a ball of fire one mile north of Deep Water Bay...

...After deplaning, Lugo and Ricardo hurriedly left Seawell Airport in Barbados and checked into a local hotel under assumed names. from the hotel, Hernan Ricardo called his boses in Venezuela: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Unable to find Posada at his desk, he left a message with Posada's secretary. He then called Caracas again and asked a mutual friend, Marines Vega, to deliver the following message to Posada:

"We are in a desperate situation, the bus was fully loaded with dogs...They should send someone I can recognize...I will be waiting in a soda fountain near the embassy Just in case something happens and I need to ask for asylum there."

Ricardo was able to communicate with Bosch who allegedly said: "My friend we have a problem here in Caracas. An aircraft is never blown up in midair...," Implying that the plan had been for the bomb to explode while the plane was on the ground before takeoff...

...In Port of Spain, the terrorists checked into the Holiday Inn with false identities and made more desperate calls to Caracas, trying to reach Posada Carriles. The nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.

Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to be CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. he told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as "Condor."

...In one of the very first reports of the October 6, 1976, downing of Cubana Flight 455, the FBI Venevuela Bureau cables 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," according to the report.

During the television interview three days ago in Miami, Bosch talked about an agreement reached between terrorists in Santo Domingo. The FBI itself tells us about that secret agreement.

According to an FBI report, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists formed an umbrella terrorist organization called CORU at a meeting in the Dominican Republic. The FBI details how at that meeting in the Dominican Republic, CORU planned a series of bombing attacks against Cuban entities, as well as the murder of Communists in the Western Hemisphere. On page 6, the report relates in great detail how Orlando Bosch was met in Caracas on September 8, 1976, by Luis Posada and other anti-Castro exiles and a deal was struck as to what kind of activities he could organize on Venezuelan soil.

After the arrests of Lugo, Ricardo, Bosch and Posada, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Cuba ceded Jurisdiction over the downing of the passenger plane to Venezuela, and all four were prosecuted in Caracas for murder...

...Fifteen days after his escape form Jail, Posada was smuggled out of Venezuela bound for Aruba on a shrimp boat. He spent a week in Aruba and was then flown by private plane to Costa Rica and then San Salvador. He immediately started working alongside Felix Rodriguez, a high ranking CIA member, at the ilopango Airbase.

Posada's Job in San Salvador was to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms and supplies obtained through the sale of narcotics. This operation became a scandal known as "Iran-Contra."

Felix Rodriguez was the CIA's point man in Central America for the Iran-Contra scandal, hired for the Job by an old friend from the CIA Donald Gregg who was Vice-President Bush's National Security Advisor.

According to Anna Louise Bardach who interviewed Posada while she was a reporter for the New York Times, "Posada noted with a certain pride that George Bush had headed the CIA from November 1975 to January 1977--A period that covered some of the most violent crimes committed by Cuban exiles and Operation Condor: including the letelier assassination and the downing of the passenger plane.

Posada spent the next several years in Central America working for the Secret Services of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the early 90s he turned his attention once again to Cuba which was struggling to Jump start a tourist industry in order to offset a dramatic economic downturn after the demise of the Soviet Bloc.

From his lair in Central America he recruited Salvadoran and Guatemalan Mercenaries to smuggle explosives to Cuba, and in 1997 bombs began to blow in the finest hotels and restaurants of Havana--Killing an Italian tourist named Fabio DiCelmo and wounding several others.

Cuba learned that the campaign of terror against its tourist industry was being financed by a Miami exile organization and orchestrated by Louis Posada Carriles in Central America. faced with the FBI's refusal to reign in the terrorists in Miami, Cuba sent some very brave men to penetrate these terrorist organizations and gather information with the purpose of asking President Clinton to intervene and order the feds to arrest the terrorists...

...The US sent an FBI team to Cuba a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on a "war on terror." Cuba handed over to the FBI tapes of 14 telephone conversations of Luis Posada Carriles with details on the series of bombs that exploded in Cuba in the 90s...All together, Cuba turned over 60 sets of documents with information about 40 terrorists based in Miami, including their addresses, and evidence of their ties to terror.

...Cuba waited for the FBI to start arresting terrorists. But instead the FBI arrested on September 12, 1998, the men now known as the Cuban Five: The men who had come to Miami to penetrate the Miami exile terrorist organizations.

The Five were charged with 62 counts of violating federal laws. Their arrests illustrates Washington's double standard when it comes to its so-called war on terror: A war that the U.S. government chooses to fight a La Carte, distinguishing between terrorists it likes and those it doesn't.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass said recently who represents Antonio Guerrero said recently: "The Five were not prosecuted because they violated American Law, but because their work exposed those who were. By infiltrating the terror network that is allowed to exist in Florida they demonstrated the hypocrisy of America's claimed opposition to terrorism."

As the Five were being prosecuted in Miami, the campaign of terror against Cuba continued. In November 2000 Posada was arrested in Panama along with three accomplices before they could carry out the plan to blow up an auditorium filled with students at the University of Panama when Cuban President Fidel Castro was to speak.

The four were convicted by a Panamanian Court, but on August 26, 2004, in one of her last acts as President, Mireya Moscoso pardons them in violation of Panamanian Law. The three accomplices, all Cuban-Americans, go to Miami to be welcomed home.

...The story of CU-455 cries out to be told to the American people. If the American people hear the true story of how those 73 people were murdered in cold blood by terrorists whom the United States prefers to shelter rather than prosecute, they'll not stand for it.

Few people in this country know that Orlando Bosch was released from Immigration Custody by President George Bush Sr. in 1990, and that he now sits on the dais whenever President Bush Jr. delivers speeches in Miami.

...The U.S. government conducts a hypocritical war on terror, while it shelters and rewards the terrorists it prefers. Washington lectures other governments about human rights, while it blockades Cuba, using hunger as a foreign policy tool, in order to try and starve 11 million people into submission.

We cannot sit idly by while the U.S. government blockades and invades countries that have never attacked it, tortures prisoners and takes their pictures as if the victims were curiosity pieces rather than human beings, as it spies on Americans without a warrant, and tramples the civil rights of its citizens with a law whose authors dared title "Patriotic..."

The complete article can be read at:
http://counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html