Washington
D.C., October 5, 2006 - On the 30th
anniversary of the first and only mid-air bombing of a civilian
airliner in the Western Hemisphere, the National Security Archive
today posted on the Web new investigative records that further
implicate Luis Posada Carriles in that crime of international
terrorism. Among the documents posted is an annotated
list of four volumes of still-secret records on
Posada's career with the CIA, his acts of violence, and his
suspected involvement in the bombing of Cubana flight 455 on
October 6, 1976, which took the lives of all 73 people on board,
many of them teenagers.
The National Security Archive, which has sought the declassification
of the Posada files through the Freedom of Information Act,
today called on the U.S. government to release all intelligence
files on Posada. "Now is the time for the government to
come clean on Posada's covert past and his involvement in international
terrorism," said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's
Cuba Documentation Project. "His victims, the public, and
the courts have a right to know."
Posada has been in detention in El Paso, Texas, for illegal
entry into the United States, but a magistrate has recommended
that he be released this week because the Bush administration
has not certified that he is a terrorist.
Among the documents posted today are four
sworn affidavits by police officials in Trinidad
and Tobago, who were the first to interrogate the two Venezuelans--Hernan
Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo--who were arrested for placing
the bomb on flight 455. (Their statements were turned over as
evidence to a special investigative commission in Barbados after
the crime.) Information derived from the interrogations suggested
that the first call the bombers placed after the attack was
to the office of Luis Posada's security company ICI, which employed
Ricardo. Ricardo claimed to have been a CIA agent (but later
retracted that claim). He said that he had been paid $16,000
to sabotage the plane and that Lugo was paid $8,000.
The interrogations revealed that a tube of Colgate toothpaste
had been used to disguise plastic explosives that were set off
with a "pencil-type" detonator on a timer after Ricardo
and Lugo got off the plane during a stopover in Barbados. Ricardo
"in his own handwriting recorded the steps to be taken
before a bomb was placed in an aircraft and how a plastic bomb
is detonated," deputy commissioner of police Dennis Elliott
Ramdwar testified in his
affidavit.
The Archive also released three declassified FBI intelligence
reports that were sent to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
after the bombing. The updates, classified "secret"
and signed by director Clarence Kelly, focused on the relations
between the FBI legal attaché in Caracas, Joseph Leo,
Posada, and one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the
plane, to whom Leo had provided a visa. One
report from Kelly, based on the word of an informant
in Venezuela, suggested that Posada had attended meetings in
Caracas where the plane bombing was planned. The document also
quoted an informant as stating that after the plane went into
the ocean one of the bombers placed a call to Orlando Bosch,
the leading conspirator in the plot, and stated: "a bus
with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed."
Another State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
report to Kissinger,
posted again today, noted that the CIA had a source in Venezuela
who had overheard Posada saying "we are going to hit a
Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details"
only days before the plane was blown up off the coast of Barbados.
Both Bosch and Posada were arrested and imprisoned in Venezuela
after the attack. Posada escaped from prison in September 1985;
Bosch was released in 1987 and returned to the United States
illegally. Like Posada, he was detained by immigration authorities;
over the objections of the Justice Department, which determined
he was a threat to public security, the first President Bush's
White House issued him an administrative pardon in 1990.
Still-secret intelligence documents cited in the file review
released today suggest that the CIA assigned several cryptonyms
to Posada when he was working for them, first as an operative
and trainer in demolitions and later as an informant based in
the Venezuelan secret police service DISIP. In 1965 he was assigned
the codename "AMCLEVE-15." In 1972 he "was given
a new crypt CIFENCE-4," according to a still-unreleased
CIA document, and later referred to as "WKSCARLET-3."
Documents
Note:
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House
Select Committee on Assassinations, LUIS POSADA CARRILES, ca.
1978
In 1978, investigators for a special committee investigation
into the death of President John F. Kennedy conducted a comprehensive
review of CIA, FBI, DEA and State Department intelligence files
relating to the life, operations and violent activities of Luis
Posada Carriles. The committee examined four volumes containing
dozens of secret memos, cables and reports, dating from 1963
to 1977, relating to Posada's employment by the CIA, his efforts
to overthrow the Castro government, his transfer to Venezuela,
and his involvement in the bombing of Cubana flight 455. Investigators
for the committee were able to take notes on the documents and
compile this list, which was declassified by the CIA as part
of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board work in the
late 1990s. The annotated list of documents represents a rare
but comprehensive overview of Posada's relations with U.S. intelligence
agencies and his career in violence. The National Security Archive
is seeking the full declassification of documents through the
Freedom of Information Act.
State
Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Memorandum,
"Castro's Allegations," October 18, 1976
The first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the
State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the
bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 details Cuba's allegation
that the CIA was involved in the bombing and provides an outline
of the suspects' relationship to the U.S. The report notes that
a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late
September 1976 stating that, "We are going to hit a Cuban
airliner." This information was apparently not passed to
the CIA until after the plane went down. (This document was
originally posted on May 18, 2005.)
FBI,
Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Special Agent Leo], October
20, 1976
This report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence M.
Kelly, director of the FBI, explains the association between
Joseph S. Leo, Special Agent and Legal Attaché in Caracas,
to the suspects of the Cubana Airlines Flight 455 bombing. Investigators
found Leo's name among the possessions of Hernan Ricardo Lozano,
one of the suspects implicated in the bombing. The report notes
that there were at least two contacts between Lozano and Leo
in the weeks leading up to the bombing.
FBI,
Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Contact with Bombing Suspects],
October 29, 1976
The second report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence
M. Kelly, director of the FBI, provides additional information
regarding the relationship between Special Agent Leo and the
Cubana Airlines bombing suspects. The report details Leo's contacts
with Lozano and Posada going back to the summer of 1975, and
notes that Leo suspected Posada and Hernan Ricardo Lozano of
acts of terrorism, but still granted Ricardo's request for a
visa to the United States.
FBI,
Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Ricardo Morales Navarette],
November 5, 1976
A third report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence
M. Kelly, director of the FBI, relays information from a confidential
FBI source that the bombing of the Cubana Airlines flight was
planned in Caracas, Venezuela by Luis Posada Carriles, Frank
Castro, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete. The source states that
the group had made previous unsuccessful attempts to bomb Cuban
aircraft in Jamaica and Panama. Shortly after the plane crashed,
bombing suspect Hernan Ricardo Lozano telephoned Bosch stating,
"a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed."
The source also states that anti-Castro Cuban exiles working
with the Chilean National Directorate for Intelligence (DINA)
carried out the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington,
DC on September 21, 1976.
Statements
to Police in Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad
and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 27, 1976,
[Randolph Burroughs deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo Lozano
and Freddy Lugo]
Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Trinidad and Tobago
Police Service, Randolph Burroughs' report notes that Hernan
Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo checked into the Holiday Inn
Hotel near the airport in Port-of-Spain under the names Jose
Garcia and Freddy Perez on the day of the crash. Burroughs'
report also states that Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo
originally said that they knew nothing about the Cubana airlines
plane crash when he approached them for questioning at their
hotel on the morning of October 7, 1976.
Trinidad
and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 27, 1976,
[Oscar King deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy
Lugo]
Corporal Oscar King of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service
attended the interviews with Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo
Lozano. His statement records Lozano saying that Freddy Lugo
boarded the plane with two cameras and that on his arrival in
Barbados he only had one camera. Lozano further states that
he is sure that the bomb was inside of the other camera.
Trinidad
and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 26, 1976,
[Gordon Waterman deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo Lozano
and Freddy Lugo]
Trinidad and Tobago Senior Superintendent of Police Gordon
Waterman's written deposition attests to statements made by
Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo while the two were detained
by the Criminal Investigation Department in Port-of-Spain. According
to Waterman's report, Lozano states that he and Lugo are paid
members of the CIA. (He later retracted that statement.) Prior
to admitting that he and Lugo bombed the plane, Lozano tells
Deputy Commissioner Ramdwar, "If you use your police brain,
it would be clear to you who bombed the plane."
Trinidad
and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 26, 1976,
[Dennis Elliott Ramdwar deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo
Lozano and Freddy Lugo]
Trinidad and Tobago Deputy Commissioner of Police Dennis Ramdwar
led the inquiries regarding the crash of Cubana Airline Flight
455. In his written statement he notes that Freddy Lugo initially
denied knowledge of the crash. Eight days later, Lugo tells
Ramdwar that he is convinced that Lozano placed the bomb on
the aircraft. He states that Ricardo told him twice that he
was going to blow up a Cubana aircraft as the two were headed
to the airport prior to the bombing. In a separate interview,
Lozano gives Ramdwar details of how a "certain chemical
is filled in a tube of Colgate toothpaste after the toothpaste
is extracted" to construct the bomb.
