CIA assassin walks free, sparking world outrage

Across the U.S. and around the world, angry protesters answered Cuba’s call to take to the streets on May 11 in a coordinated day of actions denouncing the release of CIA terror commando Luis Posada Carriles.

Ramsey Clark speaks at New York protest over terrorist’s release. WW photo: Deirdre Griswold

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone—appointed to the bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush—tossed out all charges against Posada Carriles on May 8, freeing him just days before he faced trial on immigration fraud.

Demonstrations took place in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Spain and Canada, and in more than a dozen U.S. cities.

Many in the U.S. were initiated by the ANSWER coalition and endorsed by a broad front of forces, including U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Congressperson Cynthia McKinney and the Congress of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).

Endorsers of these and other actions included the National Lawyers Guild, GABRIELA, the International Action Center, Workers World Party, FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), National Network on Cuba, Bolivarian Youth—Miami, CLASP (Caribbean & Latin America Support Project), Action Center for Justice, Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban Five, Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Peace and Justice of La Luz, N.M., Cuba Education Tours, Venezuela Solidarity Network, Socialist Workers Party, Young Socialists and many more groups and individuals.

The release of Posada Carriles could mark a turning point in the anti-imperialist struggle, particularly within the U.S.

Anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles may have been an asset of the CIA over the quarter century the agency trained him as an operative in munitions and commando invasions, but right now he is a liability to the Bush administration and to U.S. finance capital as a whole.

Freeing Posada Carriles, who has bragged about his terrorist killing of civilians, can expose to a larger population in the U.S. and around the world Washington’s “war on terror” double-speak regarding its war for empire in the Middle East and Central Asia, its covert dirty wars against Cuba and Venezuela, the hypocrisy of jailing the Cuban Five for trying to stop terror attacks, and its cynical political manipulation of immigration policies and policing.

The National Security Archives at George Washington University publicly released documents on May 18, 2005, that it says “unequivocally prove” Posada Carriles’ role in the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people on board, many of them youths.

The lead article on the archive’s Web site notes that “the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner.

“The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI’s attaché in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles. Another intelligence report shows that he also organized attacks on Cuban installations in Panama, Colombia and Trinidad in the months before Flight CU-455 was bombed.” (Electronic Briefing Book No. 153)

Venezuela has filed for Posada Carriles’ extradition to try him on charges of masterminding the plane bombing. Cuba accuses him of being behind a series of 1997 bombings of Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist. Panama jailed him in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. The CIA operative is also accused of running guns to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary mercenaries.

Yet Washington refuses to extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he escaped from prison, or to Cuba to face charges there. After his release, the Cuban and Venezuelan governments renewed their demand that the U.S. stop violating international law and honor the extradition request by Venezuela.

Posada Carriles has admitted sneaking into the U.S. through Mexico. Clearly he still has friends in high places; he didn’t have to risk his life crossing the desert on foot, or face the gun barrels of the Minutemen. His presence in the anti-communist political citadel in Miami was an open secret.

When a million Cubans demonstrated, demanding the U.S. extradite him—and he came out of “open hiding” to hold a media conference—the CIA operative was picked up in May 2005 and charged with minor immigration violations.

“Trying him for minor immigration infractions was a travesty of justice and was designed to fool people into believing the government was serious about prosecuting this man,” charged José Pertierra, a Washington-based attorney representing the extradition demand of the Bolivarian Venezuelan government.

But the release of this accused assassin and torturer, known around the world to have masterminded CIA-bankrolled terrorist attacks on the Cuban population, strips the mantle off Wall Street’s war of terror.

It creates the basis for a wider mobilization of mass consciousness about the need to take the anti-war movement to the stage of active resistance. It lifts the rock off the undeclared half century of illegal warfare by U.S. imperialism: invasion and infiltration, sabotage and subterfuge, the military and political blockade of Cuba, and the covert attempts to carry out “regime change” after the Venezuelan people chose Hugo Chávez to lead the Bolivarian Revolution.

Letting Posada Carriles, who boasts of his terror killings of civilians, walk freely in the streets of Miami creates an opening to raise the struggle to free the Cuban Five—five brave Cubans who infiltrated the CIA-commando network in order to halt terror attacks against the island. The Cuban Five were tried in Miami, dominated by the CIA-linked, right-wing exile community.

While Washington and its border police and Minutemen and media declare war on undocumented workers, unleashing police state raids on workplaces and homes, Posada Carriles can slip across the border at will. Hypocritical U.S. immigration manipulation invites Cubans to risk their lives at sea in a propaganda ploy, while turning back Haitians who are fleeing U.S.-backed terror in their homeland.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called the U.S. “a terrorist empire,” and added, “The release of this terrorist must be denounced and a demand made for justice with outrage.”

This outrage is a compelling opportunity to turn up the heat, with a high degree of unity.

Feinberg is an initiator of Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five (www.freethefiveny.org).