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Why the FBI Is Coming After Me

Nov. 12, 2006
by Ann Louise Bardach
Reprinted from the Washington Post

As a rule, I don't believe in conspiracy theories. They tend to be tidy and selective, whereas life seems so random and messy. But the case of Cuban militant and would-be Fidel Castro assassin Luis Posada Carriles has sorely tested my convictions.

I've been writing about Posada for nearly a decade. I interviewed him in Aruba for a series of articles in the New York Times in 1998. He was a fugitive who had escaped from Venezuela in 1985 while awaiting trial in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane that killed all 73 people aboard-- the first deadly act of airline terrorism in the Americas. Posada has maintained his innocence, but in a rare instance of unanimity, the CIA and the FBI, as well as Venezuelan, Trinidadian and Cuban intelligence, concluded that he and fellow militant Orlando Bosch had masterminded the bombing.

Last year, I wrote an Outlook article about Posada's surprise arrival in Miami, where he filed a claim for political asylum. Not only did this move strike many as brazen, but it also seemed incomprehensible that the Bush administration, so committed to what it calls the War on Terror, could have allowed someone of Posada's notoriety to slip into the country.

Soon after, Homeland Security Department officials got around to arresting Posada and charging him with illegal entry. I assumed that the Justice Department would act on his self-admitted history of paramilitary attacks and extradite him somewhere, and that I'd just continue to cover his case. Instead, the government has dithered for a year and a half while Posada languishes in an immigration jail in Texas.

And I, meanwhile, have found myself an unwitting player in the tangled drama of the United States and Luis Posada.

Not long after Posada's arrest, FBI and Homeland Security agents began to phone me, seeking information about the New York Times series. One agent came right out and asked if I'd share my research materials -- as well as my copies of FBI and CIA files on Posada. "Do us a favor," he said. "We can't find ours." I laughed politely, assuming it was a strained attempt at humor. But he wasn't kidding.

In August 2003, the Miami bureau of the FBI made the startling decision to close its case on Posada. Subsequently, according to FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela, several boxes of evidence were removed from the bureau's evidence room, or the "bulky," as it is known. Among the documents that disappeared was the original signed fax that Posada had sent to collaborators in Guatemala in 1997, complaining of the U.S. media's reluctance to believe reports about a series of bombings in Cuba, which he hoped would scare tourists and investors away from Castro's island.

I had shown Posada a copy of this fax during my interviews with him. The fax had been intercepted by Antonio Alvarez, a Cuban exile and businessman who had shared office space with Posada in Guatemala in 1997. Alarmed, Alvarez had notified agents from the FBI's Miami bureau, but when they took no action, he had turned to the Times.

"If there is no publicity, the job is useless," Posada wrote in the fax. "The American newspapers publish nothing that has not been confirmed. I need all the data from the [bombing of the] discotheque in order to try to confirm it." It was signed "Solo," his nom de guerre.

Posada fretted to me that the fax could cause him problems with the FBI. But he had no need to worry.

Héctor Pesquera, the special agent in charge of the Miami FBI bureau at the time, showed little interest in Posada's case. To his agents' distress, he enjoyed socializing with Miami's hard-line exile politicians, and denied agents' requests for wiretaps on Bosch, known as the godfather of the paramilitary groups, as well as other militants suspected of ongoing criminal activity. Pesquera shuttered investigations into exile militants, agents say, before retiring in December 2003.

Without the materials that were removed from the evidence room, which also included cables and money transfers between Posada and his collaborators in the Cuban bombings, a criminal prosecution of Posada is severely hobbled. Orihuela, the FBI spokeswoman, explained that "the supervisory agent in charge and someone from the U.S. attorney's office would have had to sign off" before evidence is removed and destroyed. She confirmed that the approval to dispose of the evidence was given by the case agent on Posada, who happened to be Ed Pesquera -- Héctor's son.

Though Posada's case was reopened in May 2005 and is now pending, the decision to close it in the first place baffled many longtime FBI and Miami Dade police investigators. Rarely had Posada been more active. In addition to the Cuban bombing campaign, he and three comrades had been arrested in Panama in 2000 in connection with an attempt to assassinate Castro.

In late April last year, while I was out at the hair salon, my husband phoned to tell me that two Department of Homeland Security agents had arrived at my home in Santa Barbara, Calif., to serve me with a subpoena. I told him to ask the agents to leave and refer their inquiries to the Times. Eventually, they served the Times' lawyers. Over the next few months, a dance played out in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. After the Times filed its motion to quash the subpoena, the Justice Department withdrew it in August 2005.

Later, while I was working on an article about Posada for the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, one of his attorneys told me that Posada's case "is being handled at the highest levels" of the Justice Department. All they have to do to detain Posada indefinitely, he explained, is to have Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales certify him as a national security threat. "But they're not going to do that," he added. "That would create problems for the Bush people with their Cuban-exile base in Miami." In other words, the government does not want to mount its own case -- and risk alienating Cuban American allies. Better it should get reporters to build its case.

On Sept. 11, the Justice Department whirled into action, perhaps emboldened by the symbolism of the date. It struck a plea deal for about two years in prison for Posada's comrades Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, who had been facing up to 50 years in prison for the illegal possession of hundreds of firearms. On the same day, a magistrate judge in El Paso recommended that Posada be released, as Justice had yet to file charges. (On Nov. 3, the presiding judge gave the government 90 days to make its case.) And later that afternoon, a Justice lawyer called the Times and said that another subpoena would be issued for materials relating to Posada.

On Oct. 6, the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Cuban plane (you have to give them credit for timing), I received a new subpoena. This one, issued by a federal grand jury in Newark, was requested by Gonzales. They may be ambivalent about the war on terrorism over at the Justice Department, but you can't question their dedication to their war against the Fourth Estate. For my part, it raised a peculiar pickle: contemplating how far one should go to protect the civil liberties of an accused terrorist.

My case, thankfully, does not involve confidential sources. And both the law according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, where the case is pending, and the Justice Department's own guidelines are clear: Prosecutors cannot compel reporters to turn over information that they can obtain through other means. Only after other avenues have been pursued should the government turn to the media to build a prosecution.

Call me a strict constructionist, but somehow I do not believe that our founding fathers meant to allow the government to raid the news media for their work files after it bungles a case and destroys crucial evidence.

The Justice Department's new subpoena says that it wants only the tape recordings from my interview with Posada. Aside from the huge intrusion and inconvenience of searching through about 15 years' worth of research materials, the entire ordeal strikes me as a waste of time.

Posada agreed to meet with me because he wanted to publicize his efforts to topple Castro. I recorded as much as possible in the event that Posada may later have regrets. Which he did. But over the two days I spent with him, he revealed a good deal about his various bombing campaigns and his general philosophy.

My coauthor Larry Rohter, Times editors and I picked out the strongest and most interesting parts of the transcripts and notes for our stories. Contrary to what the great minds at Justice may think, we don't hold back the best bits -- we publish them. And just last month, the Atlantic published on its Web site Posada's notes to me, in which he offered editorial guidance -- "He does not admit the bombs in the hotels, but he does not deny either," he wrote.

The FBI and the Justice Department are filled with dedicated public servants, but it is the political appointees who make the final decisions. And for them, Posada may be a man who knows too much. His attorneys say that he was a paid CIA agent from 1959 until the mid-1980s. Indeed, upon his "escape" from prison in 1985, Posada promptly found employment running the Iran-contra field operation in El Salvador. Bosch, his co-defendant in the Cuban plane bombing, was championed by none other than Jeb Bush in his bid for U.S. residency, which was granted in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush over the objections of the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

And there are other thorny details in this case. The Miami-Dade Police Department's liaison to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been a well-regarded detective named Luis Crespo Jr. -- who is the son of Luis Crespo, one of the most famous anti-Castro militants, known as El Gancho, or The Hook, because of the hand he lost to an ill-timed bomb.

Working alongside Crespo Jr. is detective Héctor Alfonso, whose father is also a legendary anti-Castro militant, known as Héctor Fabian. Assigned to the MDPD intelligence unit, Alfonso's son has access to the most sensitive information on homeland defense, including on Cuban exile militants. "Say you had a tip for the FBI about a bombing," muses D.C. Diaz, a 27-year department veteran. "Would you want to give it to a guy whose father is Luis Crespo?"

Before the government starts tampering with the Constitution's protections of the press, it needs to do some housecleaning. A good start would be a special prosecutor to look into who ordered the removal of the Posada evidence, and why. If it then decides that it wants to go further, it might peruse the 45 years' worth of CIA and FBI files on Posada that detail his paramilitary career. And there are a dozen or so comrades of Posada's in Miami and New Jersey who know a great deal more than I do.

But that's assuming that the government wants to prosecute Posada. It has declined to do so for decades. And nothing so far suggests that it is inclined to start now.

bardachreports@aol.com

Ann Louise Bardach is the author of "Cuba Confidential" (Vintage) and the editor of "Prison Letters of Fidel Castro," forthcoming from Avalon in February.

Revelation from the Washington Post

The Posada file, destroyed by the son of Héctor Pesquera

Nov. 13, 2006
by Jean-Guy Allard
Reiprinted from Granma Internacional

The order to destroy Luis Posada Carriles’ file, kept under lock and key in the FBI’s evidence room in Miami, was given by its agent Ed Pesquera, the son of Héctor Pesquera, former Head of the FBI in South Florida who arrested the Cuban Five.

The information was revealed this Sunday in The Washington Post by Ann Louise Bardach, the U.S. journalist who, some years ago, published an interview with Posada in which he confessed his links with the Cuban American National Foundation.

In an article entitled “Why the FBI Is Coming After Me”, the reporter recounts how Homeland Security agents turned up at her home, whilst she was absent, with a warrant to review documents she possesses relating to the terrorist’s case. Alerted to what was occurring, Bardach advised the investigators to speak to lawyers at the newspaper, who immediately intervened in the case.

The reporter had already revealed during an interview with Amy Goodman, on her radio show “Democracy Now!” how the file had suddenly been thrown into the paper shredder “in 2003”. This time, she prints additional details in which she specifies that the destruction of the dossier, which brings together a variety of original documents, took place in August of that year. The date is important: Posada was at that time in Panama where the district attorney tried to obtain documents from the U.S. authorities that certified his criminal past.

Although they were forced to cooperate fully in this way with the Panamanian judicial system, in virtue of an agreement signed between the two countries, the U.S. embassy in Panama only handed over photocopies of obsolete declassified reports on the case.

Among the documents that were destroyed in Miami was a fax that Posada had sent to certain accomplices located in Guatemala in 1997, complaining that the U.S. media was reluctant to believe reports about the attacks he was planning to carry out in Havana.

“I had shown him a copy of that fax during my interviews with him,” revealed Bardach, recalling her meeting with Posada on the Caribbean island of Aruba. “The fax had been intercepted by Antonio Álvarez, a Cuban exile and businessman, who shared office space with Posada in Guatemala in 1997. Alarmed, Alvarez had advised agents at the FBI’s office in Miami, but when they took no action, he sent it to the (New York) Times.”

In his fax, Posada asked his interlocutors for “all the information about (the bombing of) the discotheque in order to try to confirm it.” He then signed the name “Solo”, another one of his nicknames.

"ED PESQUERA, SON OF HÉCTOR"

Bardach reminds her readers how – according to her sources - Héctor Pesquera, then chief at the FBI’s office in Miami, showed little interest in the Posada case. “He enjoyed socializing with Miami's hard-line exile politicians, and denied agents' requests for wiretaps on Bosch, known as the godfather of the paramilitary groups, as well as other militants suspected of ongoing criminal activity.”

According to agents, reveals The Washington Post article, Pesquera “closed the investigations” into Cuban-American terrorists before retiring in December 2003.

Héctor Pesquera is the same FBI agent from Miami who, in September 1998, brought about the arrest of the five anti-terrorist fighters who were falsely accused of “espionage” and sentenced to exceptionally long jail sentences after a trial which the same investigator and mafia accomplice made sure was rigged.

Bardach then indicated that FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela confirmed to her that “the approval to dispose of the evidence was given by the case agent on Posada, who happened to be Ed Pesquera -- Hector's son.”

THE “POLITICAL” OFFICIALS DECIDE

In her article, the journalist comments that “The FBI and the Justice Department are filled with dedicated public servants, but it is the political appointees who make the final decisions. And for them, Posada may be a man who knows too much.”

Other “thorny” details appear in this case, confesses Bardach. “The Miami-Dade Police Department's liaison to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been a well-regarded detective named Luis Crespo Jr. -- who is the son of Luis Crespo, one of the most famous anti-Castro militants, known as El Gancho, or The Hook, because of the hand he lost to an ill-timed bomb.”

She then reveals that one of Crespo’s assistants is Detective Héctor Alfonso, whose father is another anti-Cuba terrorist by the name of Héctor Fabián. “Assigned to the MDPD intelligence unit, Alfonso's son has access to the most sensitive information on homeland defense, including on Cuban exile militants.”

“Before the government starts tampering with the Constitution's protections of the press, it needs to do some housecleaning,” concludes Bardach. “A good start would be a special prosecutor to look into who ordered the removal of the Posada evidence, and why. If it then decides that it wants to go further, it might peruse the 45 years' worth of CIA and FBI files on Posada that detail his paramilitary career. And there are a dozen or so comrades of Posada's in Miami and New Jersey who know a great deal more than I do,” writes the reporter.

Besides showing that, although informed by Álvarez, the FBI did not act when Posada led the attacks on Havana and that it sabotaged legitimate attempts by the Panamanian judicial system to incriminate him and his accomplices in Miami, the revelations from Ann Louise Bardach, published in The Washington Post, confirms the direct link between the Posada case and the arrest of the Five.

By persecuting the Cubans who had infiltrated terrorist groups, Héctor Pesquera gave cover and protection to his friends in the terrorist mafia who were financing and directing Posada, such as has been confessed by the terrorist himself and also recent statements by Antonio “Toñin” Llama.

More than ever before, with these revelations from the influential Washington daily, the innocence of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States, whose liberation has been demanded by a panel of UN jurists, remains proven.

Revelación del Washington Post

El expediente Posada, destruido por el hijo de Héctor Pesquera

Nov. 13, 2006
por Jean-Guy Allard
Reimprimado de Granma Diario

La orden de destruir el expediente de Luis Posada Carriles, guardado en la sala de evidencias del FBI de Miami, fue dada por su agente Ed Pesquera, el propio hijo de Héctor Pesquera, el ex Jefe del FBI del Sur de la Florida que arrestó a los Cinco.

Héctor Pesquera

La información fue revelada este domingo en The Washington Post por Ann Louise Bardach, la periodista norteamericana que publicó, hace años, la entrevista de Posada donde este confesaba sus lazos con la Fundación Nacional Cubano-Americana.

En un artículo titulado Por qué el FBI me cae atrás (Why the FBI Is Coming After Me), la reportera cuenta cómo agentes del FBI se presentaron en su domicilio, en su ausencia, con una orden judicial, para revisar los documentos que posee sobre el caso del terrorista. Alertada, Bardach hizo avisar a los investigadores para que se dirigieran a los abogados de su periódico, que de inmediato intervinieron en el caso.

La reportera había ya revelado en una entrevista con Amy Goodman, en su programa radiofónico Democracy Now!, cómo el expediente había sido repentinamente echado al triturador de papeles, "en el 2003". Esta vez, publica informaciones adicionales con las cuales precisa que la destrucción del dossier que reunía una variedad de documentos originales, ocurrió en agosto de este año. La fecha es importante: Posada se encuentra entonces en Panamá donde la fiscalía intenta obtener de las autoridades norteamericanas documentos que certificarán, en el juicio del delincuente, su pasado criminal.

Aunque se encontraba obligada a colaborar plenamente en este sentido con la justicia panameña, en virtud de un convenio firmado entre ambas naciones, la embajada de EE.UU. en Panamá solo entregó fotocopias de informes desclasificados obsoletos sobre el caso.

Entre los documentos destruidos en Miami se encontraba un fax que Posada había transmitido a unos cómplices radicados en Guatemala, en 1997, quejándose de que los medios de comunicación estadounidenses tenían reticencia a creer reportes sobre los atentados de La Habana que el terrorista estaba provocando.

"Yo le había enseñado una copia de este fax durante mis entrevistas con él", revela Bardach, recordando su encuentro con Posada, en la isla caribeña de Aruba. "El fax había sido interceptado por Antonio Álvarez, un exilado y hombre de negocios cubano, quien compartía espacio de oficina con Posada en Guatemala, en 1997. Alarmado, Álvarez había avisado a agentes de la oficina del FBI en Miami pero, como no actuaron, se dirigió al (New York) Times".

En su fax, Posada exigía de sus interlocutores "toda la información sobre (el atentado contra) la discoteca de manera de confirmar eso". Firmaba luego "Solo", otro apodo del personaje.

ED PESQUERA, EL HIJO DE HÉCTOR

Bardach recuerda a sus lectores cómo —según sus fuentes— Héctor Pes-quera, entonces jefe de la oficina del FBI de Miami, mostraba poco interés en el caso de Posada. "Le gustaba andar con los políticos de línea dura de Miami y denegaba a sus agentes solicitudes para realizar escuchas telefónicas de (Orlando) Bosch, conocido como el padrino de los grupos paramilitares, y de otros militantes sospechosos de realizar actividades criminales".

Según agentes, revela el artículo del Washington Post, Pesquera "cerró las investigaciones" sobre los terroristas cubano-americanos al abandonar su puesto en diciembre del 2003.

Héctor Pesquera es aquel mismo agente del FBI de Miami que provocó, en septiembre de 1998, el arresto de los Cinco luchadores antiterroristas cubanos que fueron luego falsamente acusados de "espionaje" y condenados a larguísimas sentencias de cárcel después de un juicio que el propio investigador cómplice de la mafia se encargó de arreglar.

Bardach luego indica que Judy Orhuela, la portavoz del FBI, le confirmó que "la aprobación de suprimir las evidencias fue dada por el agente del caso de Posada, Ed Pesquera, el hijo de Héctor".

LOS FUNCIONAROS "POLÍTICOS" DECIDEN

En su artículo, la periodista comenta que "el FBI y el Departamento de Justicia están llenos de funcionarios dedicados pero son los nominados como políticos quienes toman las decisiones finales. Y para ellos, Posada puede ser un hombre que sabe demasiado".

Otros detalles "torcidos" aparecen en este caso, confiesa Bardach. "El agente de enlace del Departamento de Policía de Miami-Dade con la Fuerza de Tarea conjunta del FBI sobre el terrorismo, es un detective bien conocido nombrado Luis Crespo Junior —hijo de Luis Crespo, uno de los más famosos terroristas, conocido como ‘el gancho’ por una mano que perdió por una bomba mal arreglada".

Revela luego que uno de los ayudantes de Crespo es el detective Héctor Alfonso, cuyo padre es otro terrorista anticubano llamado Héctor Fabián. "Asignado al grupo de Inteligencia de la policía de Miami, Alfonso tiene acceso a la información más sensible de la defensa del territorio, incluso sobre los exilados cubanos".

Antes de violar la protección constitucional de la prensa, el gobierno tiene que limpiar su casa, concluye Bardach. "Un buen principio sería ver quién ordenó el retiro de las pruebas contra Posada y por qué. Si luego decide ir más adelante, pudiera explorar los 45 años de archivos acumulados por la CIA y el FBI que detallan su carrera paramilitar. Y hay una docena de colegas de Posada en Miami y New Jersey quienes saben mucho más del tema que yo", escribe la reportera.

Además de mostrar que, aunque informado por Álvarez, el FBI no actuó cuando Posada dirigía los atentados de La Habana y que saboteó los intentos legítimos de la justicia de Panamá de incriminarlo a él y a sus cómplices de Miami, las revelaciones de Ann Louise Bardach, publicadas por The Washington Post, confirman la vinculación directa entre el caso Posada y el arresto de los Cinco.

Al perseguir a los cubanos infiltrados en grupos terroristas, Héctor Pesquera daba cobertura y protección a sus amigos de la mafia terrorista que financiaban y orientaban a Posada, tal como ha confesado el propio terrorista y las recientes declaraciones de Antonio "Toñin" Llama.

Más que nunca, con estas revelaciones del influyente diario de Washington, la inocencia de los Cinco cubanos encarcelados en Estados Unidos, cuya liberación fue reclamada por un panel de juristas de la ONU, queda evidenciada.