The Bloody Face of “Bambi”

A Brief Dossier on Luis Posada Carriles

By Luis A. Gómez
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

June 21, 2005

Photo: Por Esto!

This man’s name is Luis Faustino Clemente Posada Carriles, better known among the CIA (for whom he worked) and intelligence circles as “Bambi.” He stands nearly six feet three inches tall, and has green eyes and a sweet look about him. Born on February 15, 1928 in Cienfuegos, Cuba, his hair has left behind its black color for an charming, grandfatherly white. He is a chemist by trade, and has used at least a dozen false names for a variety of “missions.”

This robust man, who has both Venezuelan and Cuban nationality, speaks slowly. This man, who U.S. immigration agents arrested on May 17 and now keep guarded in an El Paso, Texas prison, is the murderer of 73 people who died October 6, 1976, in a mid-flight attack on a Cubana de Aviación passenger airplane, as Authentic Journalist Alicia Herrera documented so well in her book Pusimos la bomba… ¿y qué? (“We Planted the Bomb, So What?”). But Luis Posada Carriles is responsible for more terrorist attacks in the last few decades… for many more…

For example, Posada has always been connected to dozens of anti-Castro terrorist groups, training them and supporting their actions from various countries throughout North and South America. Come on, the guy was an agent in former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista’s secret police before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. And according to the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde, which published a succinct biography of this terrorist, there is evidence he may have even been involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Let’s just take a look at some important dates:

A young Luis Posada, in an undated photograph. Photo: Wikipedia.org: Fair Use Doctrine

April 17, 1961: The day of the failed Bay of Pigs landing in Cuba. Dozens of mercenaries and anti-Castro Cubans hope to carry out an invasion of the island and create a “guerrilla war” against Fidel Castro’s government. They fail, infamously, and despite funding from Miami-based Cuban businessmen and the United States government. Among the participating groups is “Brigade 2506,” led by Félix Rodíguez. Rodríguez, another Cuban CIA, agent is famous for having been in Bolivia just after “Che” Guevara’s capture and cutting off the revolutionary’s hands after his execution. Posada Carriles, a member of Brigade 2506, does not participate in the landing, though he does in its organization and in logistical support from the United States. The reason? “Bambi” was recruited by the CIA, and also worked for the FBI, as he admitted to the New York Times in July 1998.

1961 to 1967: Posada, aside from raising suspicions of his involvement in the Kennedy assassination, receives military training in explosives and other skills at Fort Benning (later home to the School of the Americas), where he graduated with the rank of lieutenant. He, in turn, goes on to train anti-Castro mercenaries and dedicates himself to various terrorist operations while the CIA provides him a salary. Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa occasionally finances his activities, as declassified FBI documents have now shown. He operates during these years out of other Latin American counties, such as Mexico and Guatemala.

1967 to 1975: The CIA taps him to work with the General Directorship of the Venezuelan Police, and then later with that county’s intelligence service, the DISIP. From Caracas, until 1975, he works in the service of several intelligence agencies, always as a high-ranking DISIP official. He also has time to help organize torture sessions of Venezuelan guerrillas during this period. At this point in his career, according to the declassified CIA documents, Posada Carriles seems to have begun worrying his bosses with his extreme propensity for violence. From then on, his “actions” are no longer openly linked to the CIA and U.S. government (though this is merely because there are still not enough documents available to prove it).

1976: The key year in Luis Posada Carriles’ terrorist career.

• October 6: A plane from the Cuban airline Cubana de Aviación explodes in mid-air, just off the coast of Barbados. Seventy-three people die, among them several Latin American students and a Cuban sports club. Luis Posada Carriles and his partner in the Committee of United Counterrevolutionary Organizations (CORU in its Spanish initials), Orlando Bosch, according to multiple documents, had planned the attack. For this reason, Bosch and Posada are both imprisoned in Venezuela that same year, Posada escaping in 1985. Bosch is today based in Miami (the senior George Bush having pardoned him and granted him amnesty from pending terrorism charges in the United States, these resulting from the bombing of a Polish ship in 1972).
  
  
• But earlier, in May of that year, in Bonao, Posada was present in the Dominican Republic, putting together a plan “to overthrow the Castro regime” in the company of Orlando Bosch and other anti-Castro Cubans. Among the actions they agreed on was that year’s September 21st assassination of Chilean dissident and former defense minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. Posada, according to statements from Augusto Pinochet’s former intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was the one who led the meeting and planned the assassination.

This made-in-the-USA jewel of international terrorism then spends nearly nine years in the shadows, in reality living like a king (protected by Venezuelan police and intelligence officials)... until the night of August 18, 1985, when, draped in a black leather jacket, he walks out the door of the prison where he was staying in Caracas. He has new tasks to carry out for the United States government.

1985: After his “graceful flight” from Venezuela, via Aruba and Costa Rica, Luis Posada Carriles arrives in El Salvador, just in time for the climax of the counterinsurgency war in that country, and just as the Regan administration’s most brutal monstrosity, the Nicaraguan “contra” war, is really beginning to take off. There his old comrade in arms, Félix Rodríguez, awaits him. As the U.S. Congress had prohibited further funding for the contras, a terrorist group fighting against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, Posada and Rodríguez had to work extra to obtain guns… under the orders of the mind behind all of this: Oliver North. Yes, Posada Carriles, operating from the Salvadoran Ilopango military base, formed part of the group that gave rise to the famous Iran-Contra case.

With the Irangate scandal heating up, in October 1986 Posada begins working on a variety of projects that will take him through the next fourteen years. He works with the Salvadoran police to capture and torture members of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and does similar work in Guatemala. He allies himself with the Cuban-American National Foundation, presided over at that time by its founder Jorge Mas Canosa, to create the foundation’s “security commission.” This commission was a terrorist group that has continued to carry out violent attacks, including a failed assassination attempt against Fidel Castro in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1994. That same year, the dangerous agent dedicated himself to the task of publishing a book entitled El camino del guerrero (“The Path of the Warrior”), in which he declares himself “active” once again. (As a CIA agent? As a terrorist? Or as both?)

2000: Posada enters Panama on November 5 with a false passport. On the 17th of that month he is arrested together with three of his accomplices (one of them their Panamanian chauffeur) before trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, for at least the fourth time since 1959. “Bambi” goes back to jail in Panama for another three years and a few months… until then-president Mireya Moscoso pardons him on August 26, 2004, the day before she leaves office.

Posada and his henchmen were sent to the United States by plane, courtesy of Moscoso, but “Bambi” got off in Honduras and took a long tour of Central America and Mexico, by land, sea, and plane, until he finally arrived in Miami… where he was arrested on May 17, as we said earlier (see Al Giordano’s report of today for more details.) This señor, with his angelic face, is without a doubt the most soulless terrorist of our times: he has killed and tortured in Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Argentina, Portugal, and in the United States. But for the moment, Washington is only pressing hypocritical charges of “illegal entry” into U.S. territory.

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