Jane Franklin
The
Cuban American National Foundation is well-represented on the GOP’s list of
presidential electors from Florida by CANF’s treasurer, Feliciano M. Foyo, who
happens to be a good friend of Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Foyo has another
friend named Luis Posada Carriles, one of the most notorious terrorists among
Cuban expatriots. In an autobiography published in Honduras in 1994,
Posada names Feliciano Foyo as one of his financial backers. What does it
mean to be one of Posada’s financiers?
Posada,
along with three other well-known terrorists, was detained by Panamanian
authorities November 17 for an alleged plan to assassinate President Fidel
Castro while the Cuban leader addressed thousands of students at the University
of Panama. If the plastic explosive discovered in Panama had been used,
hundreds of people could have been killed or injured. But Posada does not
seem bothered by "collateral damage."
Posada
has previously aimed to kill Castro in several countries, including Chile,
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. A sales
representative for Firestone Tire and Rubber in Cuba, Posada started working for
the CIA at least by 1960. Found out and forced to flee, for years he led
raids carried out by Alpha 66, a terrorist organization that continues such
raids to this day–with impunity.
In
June 1976, while George H.W. Bush (the elder) was head of the CIA, a CIA
operative, Cuban expatriate Orlando Bosch, founded and led the Commanders of
United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Posada was one of those
"commanders." As revealed later in FBI and CIA documents, CORU
was soon involved in more than 50 bombings and, quite likely, political
assassinations. Venezuelan and U.S. authorities reported that a network of
terrorists carried out a "vast" number of attacks in seven
countries against Cuba and against countries and individuals considered friendly
to Cuba. This reign of terror culminated in October 1976 when a Cubana
passenger plane was blown up after it took off from Barbados headed for Cuba,
killing all 73 people aboard, including 57 Cubans.
With
overwhelming evidence against them, Posada, Bosch, and two Venezuelans were
arrested and held in Venezuela. Military courts in Venezuela acquitted
them, not a surprising development since the CIA in 1967 had transferred Posada
to Venezuela, using him as a leader of terrorist activities against Cuba in
Latin America and the Caribbean. In the Interior Ministry, he ran the
Intelligence and Prevention Services Division (DISIP), which persecuted,
interrogated, and tortured Venezuelan citizens. Awaiting retrial, in 1985 Posada
walked out of the prison.
According
to Posada himself, his guards were bribed with money from Miami. One of
the couriers of such financing was Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, one of the
terrorists now held in Panama. From Venezuela, Cuban expatriot Felix Rodriguez,
another notorious terrorist, took Posada to El Salvador where Rodriguez was
operating with Col. Oliver North in supplying Contras against the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua. The exposure of that operation led to the
Iran-Contra hearings of 1987. At those hearings before Congress, Rodriguez
was asked about "Ramon Medina." He replied that Medina was an
alias in El Salvador for Posada, a "good friend of mine," an
"honorable man." He testified that he brought Posada to El
Salvador from Venezuela, claiming that Posada "deserved to be free."
Not another question was asked about Posada. Instead Rodriguez was
complimented on his role by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fl), one of his questioners.
Rep. Peter Rodino (D-NJ) also told him that we all appreciate his fighting
against communism.
Two
years later, in a speech on the Senate floor, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said
the American people "deserve a full accounting of [then Vice President]
Bush and the vice president’s office and its knowledge of Luis Posada’s role in
the secret contra supply operation." In his testimony before
Congress, Rodriguez had bragged about meeting with Vice President Bush (he
showed Bush a picture of himself with captive Che Guevara in the hours before
Che was executed). Senator Harkin wondered "why Bush never bothered
to use his good offices to investigate charges of Posada’s links with the supply
operation and Felix Rodriguez even after the press reported them in late
1986."
After
El Salvador, Posada spent time in terrorist activities in Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador. Money from Miami, said Posada, was used to finance the
1997 bombings aimed at the tourist industry in Havana–bombings that killed an
Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo, and injured several people. Posada
admitted paying Salvadorans to go to Cuba to plant those bombs. After Posada and
his three cohorts were detained in Panama, Justino di Celmo, father of the dead
tourist, appeared on Cuban television to appeal to Panamanian President Mireya
Moscoso not to release Luis Posada. The families of the 57 Cubans killed
in the 1976 explosion of the passenger jet are pleading for justice. Time will
tell if Posada’s financiers can pay his way out of this one.
—–
Jane
Franklin is the author of Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History