Declassified document says Posada Carriles likely planned 1976 bombing of Cuban plane

Declassified document says Posada Carriles likely planned 1976 bombing
of Cuban plane
NORA GÁMEZ TORRES AND ALFONSO CHARDY
ngameztorres@elnuevoherald.com

A 1976 document declassified Wednesday by the State Department shows
concerns about the CIA's links with extremist groups within the Cuban
exile community and points to Luis Posada Carriles as the most likely
planner of the bombing attack against a Cubana Airlines plane that year.

The memorandum was sent to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by
two high ranking State Department officials who evaluated the
accusations made by Fidel Castro on the alleged U.S. involvement in the
downing of a Cubana plane traveling out of Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, in
which 73 people were killed.

"We have now pursued in detail with CIA (1) what we know about
responsibility for the sabotage of the Cubana airliner and (2) how any
actions by CIA, FBI, or Defense attache´s might relate to the
individuals or groups alleged to have responsibility," states the report.

The memorandum concludes that the CIA had previous ties to three of the
people "supposedly" involved in the downing of a Cuban airliner, "but
any role that these people may have had with the demolition took place
without the knowledge of the CIA."

The document details the CIA's links with "individuals allegedly
involved" in sabotaging the plane — and specifically cites Hernán
Ricardo Lozano, Freddy Lugo, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Frank
Castro, Orlando Garcia, Ricardo Morales Navarrete and Felix Martínez
Suárez — but concludes that the CIA had only made contact in the past
with Posada, Bosch and Martínez Suárez. Martínez Suárez was not involved
in the bombing incident, according to the report's authors.

The document is signed by Harold H. Saunders, director of the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and Harry W.
Shlaudeman, assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. It
was declassified with a volume of other documents concerning Central
America and Mexico, between 1973 and 1976.

POSADA'S ROLE

The document, which was already part of a redacted collection of
documents at the National Security Archive, confirms what the Miami
Herald reported in 2007: that Posada was a paid CIA informant and
communicated his plans to attack a Cubana plane flying between Panama
and Havana on June 21 of that year. At the time, his lawyer Arturo
Hernandez, said Posada alerted the CIA so the agency would derail the
planned attack.

Another document in the National Security Archive indicates that the CIA
reported the bombing plan to other agencies, without revealing the name
of its source. The United States did not inform Cuba of the plan,
according to Peter Kornbluh, author of the book Back Channel to Cuba,
which also points out that the exchange of intelligence information
between the U.S. and Cuba did not resume until the administration of
Jimmy Carter.

The assessment outlined in the document sent to Kissinger suggests that
at the time, the State Department also considered Posada as the
mastermind of the bombing plot:

"CIA's relationship with Posada, who more and more appears to be the
person who planned the bombing, could possibly lead to some
misinterpretation and embarrassment in that he provided unsolicited
information on significant extremist planning, most recently in February
and June of this year," states the document, referring to information on
plans to assassinate a nephew of Salvador Allende in Costa Rica and to
sabotage a Cuban airliner in June 1976.

The report indicates that the Intelligence Bureau did not know why
Posada may have volunteered such information, but since his contract as
an informant for the CIA had concluded, "He could have been trying to
remain in CIA's good graces, hoping to use the relationship on visa
requests and such," the statement said.

"However, it would be at least a possibility that he might have been
testing the reaction of the CIA's efforts CORU [Coordinator of United
Revolutionary Organizations, an anti-Castro organization set up by
Posada Carriles and Bosch] to harass the Cuban government. In this
context, we considered the possibility that Posada may have
misunderstood the answer to their approaches, but CIA assured us that it
could not have been the case. "

The report does not present evidence directly linking Posada to the
case. Other official U.S. documents declassified so far do not contain
evidence or eyewitness accounts that Posada allegedly planned or ordered
to blow the Cubana de Aviacion plane in air.

But that could change with the declassification of more documents, said
Kornbluh, a researcher at the National Security Archive of George
Washington University, who has tried for decades to verify Posada's role
in the attack.

"The CIA has never released its internal report on the meeting with
Posada Carriles. The history of this international act of terrorism is
incomplete without these documents," Kornbluh said.

Although internal CIA documents are not subject to regular
declassification, "the Obama administration could order it to clarify
what happened, in the spirit of more normal relations with Cuba and to
leave the past behind," said Kornbluh, adding that the current document
"again brings up the issue of how an international terrorist like Luis
Posada Carriles can live happily ever after in Miami."

Hernandez, who continues to represent Posada, said Thursday that his
client was innocent.

"He passed the polygraph, he had nothing to do with it. He told the CIA
of plots to put bombs on airliners."

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Source: Declassified document says Posada Carriles likely planned 1976
bombing of Cuban plane | Miami Herald Miami Herald -
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article23119197.html