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zorroloco 06-Oct-06, 09:44	cubana flight 455 - oct 6, 1976 Washington, DC, 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. These and other documents on this case can be found on the Web site of the National Security Archive: www.nsarchive.org" target="_blank">-> www.nsarchive.org
zorroloco 08-Oct-06, 08:04	interesting this guy used to work for the cia. he has been accused of being involved in the blowing up of this cuban airliner. he also admitted it. yet, the bush admin will not try him as a terrorist, and is refusing to extradite him to a country where he will be tried as such (cuba or venezuela). one of their reasons? he may be tortured! here is an exerpt from the ny times article: Today, Mr. Posada, 78, is in a detention center in El Paso, held on an immigration violation while the government tries to figure out what to do with him. His case presents a quandary for the Bush administration, at least in part because Mr. Posada is a former C.I.A. operative and United States Army officer who directed his wrath at a government that Washington has long opposed. Despite insistent calls from Cuba and Venezuela for his extradition, the administration has refused to send him to either country for trial. Intensifying the problem is that Mr. Posada, who was arrested last year in Miami after sneaking into the country, may soon go free because the United States has been reluctant to press the terrorism charges that could keep him in jail. That prospect has brought a hail of criticism of the Bush administration for holding a double standard when it comes to those who commit terrorist acts. “The fight against terrorism cannot be fought à la carte,” said José Pertierra, a Washington lawyer who is representing the government of Venezuela in its effort to extradite Mr. Posada. “A terrorist is a terrorist.” The Bush administration has stopped short of prosecuting him as a terrorist, however, even though the Justice Department called him as much this week. In papers filed in federal court in El Paso on Thursday, it described him as “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites.” www.nytimes.com" target="_blank">-> www.nytimes.com
echo3 08-Oct-06, 09:04	Will he make it out alive? NYT - "By the time the Cubana Airlines plane exploded, Mr. Posada was no longer in the employ of the C.I.A. But records show that he may have notified his former bosses that a bomb was going to be set off on a plane shortly before it happened." I guess then he knows something which may be damaging to US prestige. In such cases administrations often prefer not to "lift the lid" for fear of what may crawl out. Perhaps this is wise or does absolute truth come at any price?

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