Any way you look at it, former senior Venezuelan intelligence officer Luis Posada Carriles is not a very nice fellow. In fact, by any objective standard, he’s a murderous terrorist.
He’s been implicated in the plot to blow up a Cuban airliner in 1976 that took the lives of 73 innocent people. And Fidel Castro has accused Carriles of trying to kill him, a deed which if successful could have saved thousands of Cubans from enjoying the hospitality of El Presidente’s communist gulags and secret police torture chambers.
Although an estimable goal, one deed full of good intentions does not wash away the multitude of mortal sins committed by Carriles.
And now Mr. Carriles, 77 years old and apparently retired, would like to spend his remaining years in the United States. A Miami attorney who claims to represent the terrorist says that Mr. Carriles would like asylum.
Mr. Carriles is no freedom fighter. He’s an assassin. He’s been tied to the CIA of the 1960’s when the agency was hell bent on getting rid of Castro by hook or by crook. To that end, the spooks used some of the slimiest low lifes in the western hemisphere in order to get close to the Cuban dictator including vengeful mafioso, loony Cuban exiles, dope smugglers, and various riff raff who always seem to hover around the edges of intelligence operations.
According to FBI files, they seem to have the goods on Mr. Carriles’ involvement in the terror attack on the commercial airliner:
The decision on whether an anti-Castro activist will get to stay in the United States may end up hinging on the word of a dead man.The problem is, the dead man told two tales about Luis Posada Carriles, a man some hail as a hero and others condemn as a terrorist.
Ricardo “Monkey” Morales was once an informant for the Miami-Dade police, and according to previously secret U.S. government documents, Morales said Posada was present for two meetings to plan the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 76 people.
“Luis Posada Carriles and (Morales) were present,” Detective Raul Diaz wrote in a report to the FBI describing what Morales had told him about Posada.
The Miami Herald reported in 1982 that during an unrelated drug smuggling case, Morales said he was the “conduit” for explosives used in the bombing.
Not long after that newspaper article, Morales was shot and killed in a Key Biscayne bar brawl.
Still more documents show that Mr. Carriles had other dirty tricks up his sleeve – as long as you were willing to pay the price:
Other documents say Posada was also a CIA agent in the 1960s and that he was paid about $300 by the CIA while working with an alliance of several groups based in the Dominican Republic that sought Castro’s overthrow.Still another FBI document quoted an unnamed Cuban refugee as saying Posada was paid $5,000 in 1965 by a prominent Cuban exile in Miami to finance an attempt to attach powerful explosive mines to Cuban or Soviet ships in the port of Veracruz, Mexico.
The documents were released by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization based at George Washington University that collects government records.
Their release comes as U.S. officials wrestle with the political asylum request from Posada, who is regarded by Cuba, Venezuela and some in the United States as a criminal or terrorist.
In the past, the United States has employed some pretty nasty people to help achieve one goal or another. During the 1980’s former National Guardsmen for Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza were employed by the CIA to initially help recruit and train the Contra army that eventually succeeded in bringing down the Sandanistas. And there’s some evidence the spooks used drug smugglers to ferry arms to those same contras.
At the time, a real politiker like me could condemn the people involved but support the policy because it furthered national ends at an absolutely critical juncture of the cold war. We relied on far worse to help us in World War II including Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslavian freedom fighter every bit as murderous as his genocidal successors from the 1990’s,
In this day and age, however, there’s no conceivable justification for allowing Mr. Carriles into this country for any purpose except to hand him over to the Venezuelans for prosecution. If perception is reality in politics, in order to maintain our credibility on terrorism we must be like Cesar’s wife; above reproach. And the fact that Castro was one of Mr. Carriles’ targets should not sway our opinion that he’s anything except a criminal that needs to be prosecuted and made to answer for his crime against innocents.
At this juncture, the US government is waiting for an extradition request from the Venezuelan government. It would send the strongest possible signal to our friends and enemies if we were to honor that request.
The election is over. There’s no need to pander to the exile community in Florida any longer. Carriles must be handed over not because Castro desires it, but because it’s simply the right thing to do. He must not be allowed a quiet retirement while his victims cry out for justice from their graves.
CORRECTION:
In the original post, I erred in saying that Tito was a Serb. Tito was in fact half Croat and half Slovene. He did however, carry out several massacres in WWII which is the point I was trying to make.
Cross Posted at Blogger News Network
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9:32 am
Awesome post!
12:11 pm
Sorry, I respectfully disagree. I guess we should have handed the Shah over to the mullahs in ‘79, since the Shah, at least according to a lot of Muslims at the time, “had a lot of nasty tricks up his sleeve”.
The problem with realpolitik is that we have to stab former allies in the back, and often. And then people wonder why we’re not trusted. It sounds like you want to carry this policy on. Basically, “we don’t need you anymore, go pound sand.”
If we take this route with regards to Iraq, we ought to jump ship there as well, since Saddam is no longer an issue. THEN let’s see if anyone takes us seriously again.
TV (Harry)
12:16 pm
Inspector:
I think your comparison of a common criminal with the Shah stretches your point quite a bit. And I certainly think we should stay in Iraq until the job is done.
Having said that, Ronald Reagan abandoned Marcos of the Philipines when it becamse clear he was a liability to our national interest. Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah even though he was vital to our national interest.
I trust you see the difference.
1:13 pm
No bones about it, I am a lefty myself, so I’m not happy about granting asylum to a right-wing thug. But I believe the right (the White House) does have a nearly-reasonable for doing so. Both Condoleeza and GWB have made their opinion of the Venezuelan government quite clear. As Rice said during her “job interview,”
“I think President Hugo Chavez is a real problem. I think he will continue to find ways to subvert democracy in his own country. He will continue to find ways to make his neighbors miserable. He will continue his contacts with Fidel Castro, maybe giving Castro one last fling to try to affect the politics of Latin America, which is not a good thing. He’s involved in ways in Colombia with the FARC (Marxist rebels) that are unhelpful.
“The key there is to mobilize the region to both watch him and be vigilant about him and to pressure him when he makes moves in one direction or another. We can’t do it alone. This is a region where if we try to do it alone, we actually probably strengthen him. But the OAS (Organization of American States) can do a lot. We’re hopeful that the recognition that he’s not following a democratic course will help mobilize the OAS to do that. They have done it before—with Peru they did it. Watching his activities and making it costly at least politically for Chavez to carry out anti-democratic activities either at home or in the region is really about where we are.”
The hard evidence offered against Carriles is flimsy. The word of a thug who died in a bar shoot-out, testimony as likely to have been wrought by pay-off as by any other means.
Even the news source you reference is slanting the issue; the same report that says Carriles was “in the pay of the CIA for years,” later quotes the sum total of $300. If Carriles was paid “for years,” he was receiving cents a day, it seems. I thought thugs cost more than that, perhaps I should buy me a few…
I’m a lefty, but I find that lefties lie about as often as righties.
At any rate, from a right-wing POV I think it’s entirely reasonable to prevent someone being tried on such paper-thin evidence in a country ruled
by “strongman” Chavez, whose sales of oil to Cuba and China are viewed as evidence of his willingness to “subvert democracy.”
I don’t view Chavez as the present administration does. But if I did, I’d have no problem with the idea of preventing this man from being tried in a country where I have plenty of reasonable doubt about justice being done.
5:43 pm
Tito was not a Serb, you nut! He was a Croat…
5:46 pm
Yes…Tito was half Croat half Slovene. The point I tried to make (badly) is that Tito was our ally in WWII despite atrocities committed by his communist guerillas not unlike the atrocities committed in the 1990’s.
A little too flip there, sorry.
6:21 pm
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B252AC481-4489-4C26-8FE2-D339CC7E4BEF%7D&language=EN
According to Prensa Latina, declassified CIA and FBI documents confirm Carriles’ involvement in the airline bombing.
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