The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles
A Former Agency Asset Goes on Trial in the U.S.
From: http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, January 11, 2011 - As the unprecedented trial of Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles begins this week in El Paso, Texas, the National Security Archive today posted a series of CIA records covering his association with the agency in the 1960s and 1970s. CIA personnel records described Posada, using his codename, "AMCLEVE/15," as "a paid agent" at $300 a month, being utilized as a training instructor for other exile operatives, as well as an informant. "Subject is of good character, very reliable and security conscious," the CIA reported in 1965. Posada, another CIA document observed, incorrectly, was "not a typical 'boom and bang' type of individual."

Today's posting includes key items from Posada's CIA file, including several previously published by the Archive, and for the first time online, the indictment from Posada's previous prosecution--in Panama--on charges of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro with 200 pounds of dynamite and C-4 explosives (in Spanish).

"This explosive has the capacity to destroy any armored vehicle, buildings, steel doors, and the effects can extend for 200 meters...if a person were in the center of the explosion, even if they were in an armored car, they would not survive," as the indictment described the destructive capacity of the explosives found in Posada's possession in Panama City, where Fidel Castro was attending an Ibero-American summit in November 2000.

The judge presiding over the perjury trial of Posada has ruled that the prosecution can introduce unclassified evidence of his CIA background which might be relevant to his "state of mind" when he allegedly lied to immigration officials about his role in a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997. In pre-trial motions, the prosecution has introduced a short unclassified "summary" of Posada's CIA career, which is included below.  Among other things, the summary (first cited last year in Tracey Eaton's informative blog, "Along the Malecon") reveals that the CIA anonymously warned former agent and accused terrorist Luis Posada of threats on his life.

A number of the Archive's CIA documents were cited in articles in the Washington Post, and CNN coverage today on the start of the Posada trial. "The C.I.A. trained and unleashed a Frankenstein," the New York Times quoted Archive Cuba Documentation Project director Peter Kornbluh as stating. "It is long past time he be identified as a terrorist and be held accountable as a terrorist."