8:53 am
ORLANDO Bosch, the mastermind behind of the sabotage of the Cuban airplane off of Barbados, confessed that in 1971 he counted on the active complicity of General Manuel Contreras, Pinochet’s intelligence chief, in an assassination attempt on President Fidel Castro in Chile.
On August 16, the sinister pediatrician, accomplice of Luis Posada Carriles, recounted some of his exploits – although 'the word terrorist has become a bad one' – to the Barcelona daily La Vanguardia
'We went to Buenos Aires and the journalist Manuel Fuentes put me in contact with Triple A, the most powerful anti-communist organization of the time, and we attacked the Cuban embassy. After that we did thousands of things…
'Under the presidency of Salvador Allende, Fidel spent a month in Chile. Two men from our group went to this country carrying journalist credentials from the Venezuelan television channel Venevision,' Bosch revealed. 'They were carrying a .45 caliber pistol inside a photographic camera. The plan was backed by the Chilean intelligence chief, Manuel Contreras. His agents told our men that they would throw them to the ground after they fired and simulate arresting them. They were two meters from Castro.'
'What happened?' reporter Andy Robinson asked him in Miami.
'The guy who was supposed to do it, didn’t shoot. He got scared!'
Bosch also boasted about how they sent the Novo brothers to Spain in 1992, with false passports also to try and assassinate the Cuban president.
THE KILLERS OF FORMER CHILEAN FOREIGN MINISTER ORLANDO LETELIER
Like Bosch, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Ignacio y Guillermo, have a long history of terrorist actions that not only now 'have become a bad word.' This September 21 precisely marks the 30th anniversary of the bloody assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister and ambassador Orlando Letelier and his secretary Ronni Moffit, in the middle of Washington, DC. When Bosch and Posada planned the sabotage of the Cuban airplane one month later in October 1976, they bragged —according to FBI documents— of their success in murdering Letelier.
These acts of terrorism by the gang of Bosch and Posada planned since June of that year 1976 in Santo Domingo, comprised what they decided to call 'the war around the world,' considered the basic antecedent of the Operation Condor: assassinations on any country, including Washington, with the blessing of the CIA.
However the life sentences and other heavy prison terms have been handed down to the five Cubans who tried to prevent such acts of terrorism in 'around the world.'
A good part of the gang was involved in the explosion of Letelier’s car along with Bosch and the Novo brothers: Alvin Ross, Virgilio Paz Romero, José Dionisio Suárez Esquivel, Michael Townsend and Juan Manuel Díaz, following the orders of Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinosa, directors of Pinochet’s Intelligence and Operations, respectively, for whom these characters worked at the time.
And something even graver, the investigation by the U.S. Congress Select Committee pointed to the group, together with other members of the CIA’s famous Operation 40, Frank Sturgis and Pedro Díaz Lanz, as suspects in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Despite Guillermo Novo’s two life sentences, he is a free man today. It could be no less in the case of Bosch. In July 1990, Bush Sr. pardoned him and granted him permission to live in Miami, despite his criminal record that officially labels him a terrorist. Bush Sr. was one of the administrators of Operation 40.
While Bosch was reaffirming his terrorist past, it emerged that ultra-right Miami groups—still harboring frustration after President Fidel Castro’s recent surgery— are inciting plans against the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit scheduled for Havana from September 11-16.
Representatives of two groups accompanied by Cuban and Venezuelan activists are traveling to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru and the Dominican Republic to develop a support campaign for their plans against the NAM Summit among the delegations from those countries, according to spokesperson María Eugenia Cosculluela.
La Vanguardia likewise noted that Bosch was imprisoned for five years in the United States for having fired a bazooka at a Polish ship in a Miami port in 1968, adding that 'he spent seven years in a Venezuelan prison accused of attacking Cubana Flight 455—the aircraft exploded in mid-air off the coast of Barbados— in October 1976 causing the death of 73 passengers'… Bosch was freed in 1987 via gestures on his behalf made by Otto Reich.
Bosch claims that the CIA and the Cuban-American National Foundation participated in those plots only in determined periods.
He indirectly acknowledged his participation in the aircraft sabotage by stating to La Vanguardia, 'For me it is a target of war. There are many things that I cannot say. But they were actions of war… We had agreed in Santo Domingo (when CORU was formed in 1976) that everything that comes out of Cuba and gives glory to Fidel would run the same risk as those of us combating the dictatorship.'
Asked on present-day Cuba he affirmed that nothing could be done 'due to the immense repression. The only thing that you can do is stick up signs.' He did not specify if he was referring to the messages on the U.S. Interest Section’s electronic billboard along the coast in Havana, but he recalled that 10 years ago 'there were attacks on hotels in Havana.'
'Luis Posada did that. He paid a Salvadorian and a Central American. Because they’re half starving, you give them $100 and they’ll do anything… This one entered Cuba, carried the material in a television. He planted three bombs, one in a hotel that killed an Italian; another in the Bodeguita del Medio.'
Bosch admitted that they presented the attacks as acts by members of the Cuban army 'to create propaganda.'
'But today it is difficult to find someone ready to do something... We sent one guy there. Instead of going there, he went to went to Santo Domingo to hook up with a whore. Today things are real bad.'
'What do you think about being called a terrorist?' asked Robinson.
'Since 9-11, the word terrorist has become a bad word. But U.S. soldiers are killing thousands of women and children in Iraq. Throwing flowers at Fidel doesn’t do anything.'
He also admitted to attacking Spanish ships:
'Yes, in 1968. We had 11 scuba divers. It was them who mined the Santurce vessel. In Miami, we Cubans were really angry with Spain… because Spain was making an entry into Cuba with Meliá, putting up hotels, etc. '
Bosch slipped up there. The Meliá chain did not move into Cuba until 20 years later. But he doesn’t have any arguments.
It would be interesting to know Aznar’s opinion and that of those in the EU who still wish to sanction Cuba.
When asked if he would do it all over again, Bosch concluded by savoring his criminal impunity:
'I would have done everything the same.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times in its August 17, 1989 edition, reported that Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met with President George W. Bush (Sr.) to ask him to pardon Orlando Bosch.
The meeting was organized by Jeb Bush, the president’s son, who was then acting as director of Ros-Lehtinen’s election campaign.
When the president pardoned Bosch on July 20 of that year, the New York Times was the only media agency to criticize it in an editorial.
Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, the notorious, murderous chief of Pinochet’s intelligence services, has stated that Bush Sr. was one of the organizers of Bosch’s gang, the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) and Operation Condor.
According to Pedro Escalona Carullo, a Cuban citizen born in Miami and who had been infiltrated into the main Cuban terrorist organizations based in the United States, the pardon wasn’t at all strange. Escalona has testified in court that former president Bush Sr., when he was CIA general director in 1976, organized an commando called CORE to carry out 'war around the world,' and placed notorious terrorist Orlando Bosch at the head of it, which was when the attack on the Polonika took place and he was given a 10-year prison terms, serving four years of it.
In Venezuela, he and Luis Posada Carriles organized the bombing of the airliner over Barbados in 1976. Both were convicted, but Bosch was able to get out of prison with the help of Otto Reich and Posada escaped from prison.
Bosch moved to Miami in 1988, but the U.S. immigration authorities refused to legalize his entry into the country due to Department of Justice documentation classifying him as the worst terrorist in the United States, and specifying that while he was out bail, with six years of his sentence to go, he had escaped from the United States.
Bosch instructed Adriana, his wife, to find him lawyers and told her that he was threatening to confess everything about the sabotage of the Cuban passenger plane after its take-off from Barbados, resulting in the death of 73 people.
That May, U.S. immigration authorities told him that he would be deported, which produced a mobilization by his friends. In order to implement his threat, the mastermind behind the Barbados crime wrote a letter narrating all the facts, which he handed over to Pedro Corzo.
In November, the U.S. presidential elections took place and were won by Bush. It wasn’t at all strange that Bush 'pardoned him.'
From Granma
