National Committee to Free the Cuban Five

Castillo: the "missing link" in the Cubana airliner sabotage

An accomplice of Posada and Bosch in the most horrendous terrorist attack of the dirty war against Cuba unleashed by Washington almost 50 years ago, the likewise mastermind of the attack in Mérida, Mexico in which Cuban Artagñán Díaz Díaz was killed, is living peacefully in Hialeah, Florida

by Jean-Guy Allard
Dec. 12, 2008
Reprinted from Granma Internacional

JUST like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, masterminds of the mid-flight explosion of a Cuban airliner on October 6, 1976, and Frank Castro – currently a drug trafficker but, at that time, another CIA collaborator who took part in this terrorist attack that killed 73 people – there is another man who stills lives in Miami without ever having been taken to trial for his actions.

An FBI report dated November 2, 1976 places “El Cojo” (the Lame) Castillo in Caracas, “a few days” before the sabotage: “Certain plans related to the bomb attack on a Cuban passenger plane were discussed in the bar of the Anauco Hilton in Caracas, Venezuela. Frank Castro, Gustavo Castillo, Luis Posada Carriles and Morales Navarrete were present at the meeting.”

José Luis Méndez is a specialist researcher and author of a number of books on anti-Cuba terrorism. In conversation with Granma International, he analyses new, declassified documents on the subject, facilitated from Caracas by the U.S.-Venezuelan researcher, Eva Golinger.

As an expert on the subject of anti-Cuban terrorism, what comments do you have about terrorist Pablo Gustavo Castillo, revealed as the “missing link” in the attack on the Cubana plane over Barbados?

Pablo Gustavo Castillo Díaz – alias El Cojo – has a long terrorist career behind him and is strongly linked to the criminal Orlando Bosch Avila. He was one of three individuals involved in the attempt to kidnap the Cuban consul in Mérida which led to the murder of Artagñán Díaz Díaz on July 23, 1976. He fled from Mexico to the United States, a country that did not extradite him despite calls from the Mexican authorities, and in September of that year, he took refuge in Venezuela where his boss Orlando Bosch was located. The two men were given protection by Cuban-born members of the Venezuelan DISIP, during the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

This is the period in which the CIA, with total contempt for Venezuelan sovereignty, took control of that nation’s secret services. How many Cubans were there within DISIP – the country’s political police – at that time?

As part of the U.S. counterinsurgency plan for Latin America in the 1970s, the CIA sent their agents to organize, assess, direct and participate in various services of repression throughout the continent. Remember that Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía was in Peru and Argentina working on behalf of the agency. Specifically speaking, Luis Posada Carriles, Rafael Rivas Vázquez, José Vázquez Blanco, Orlando García Vázquez, arrived in Venezuela at the end of the 1960s, later followed by Ricardo Morales Navarrete and other anti-Cuban criminals who were naturalized and appointed to relevant posts within this Venezuelan security establishment. A whole galaxy of criminals in the service of the empire.

What kinds of activities did they engage in?

Repressing the Venezuelan people. Firstly within DIGEPOL, the general police department, and then in the DISIP. They attacked the Cuban embassy there, once diplomatic relations had been reestablished. They protected the Miami terrorists, participated in Operation Condor and in the activities of the CORU and contracted Venezuelans as mercenaries in order to perpetrate terror attacks in Panama, Costa Rica, Barbados, Jamaica and in the Caribbean, the region that the terrorists deemed “the war zone”.

What are Castillo Díaz’ relations with this mafia?

He was welcomed as one of them and began to participate in terror attacks. According to Morales Navarrete, who gave an interview to a magazine in Caracas, it was Castillo who primed the bombs placed on board the Cubana Aviation DC-8-43 which the terrorists detonated in midair when it was off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976. They were given to Venezuelan mercenaries Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo, who planted them on the plane.

You have spent a number of years researching the plots of anti-Cuba terrorists who wanted to blow up planes in mid-flight. What did you discover in relation to tolerance of these criminal activities on the part of the CIA and FBI?

Yes, I’ve been investigating the subject for years and the most surprising thing that I’ve discovered is that U.S. agencies like the CIA and FBI had prior knowledge of their plans and intentions and did nothing to stop them. It is a complicity that goes beyond impunity. From the time that George Bush Sr. was a CIA officer in charge of anti-Cuba plans and then went on to become director of the Agency, then vice president and finally, president – that is, for more than 40 years – the Bush clan has protected the terrorists in Miami.

Wasn’t Pablo Castillo detained in Venezuela after the Cubana airliner sabotage on October 6, 1976?

They hid him and then got him out of the country, just as they did with Bosch. They got him out to Colombia and then returned him to Caracas. But before he arrived in Venezuela, Castillo Díaz carried out several terror attacks.

Do you remember any of them?

In January 1978, the U.S. authorities detained Castillo and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, for the murder of the Cuban worker in Mérida, but they did not extradite him to Mexico; they released him some weeks later. But long before that, Castillo had been a “soldier” and I use that term because of the similarity between the Mafioso structure of the organizations created by Orlando Bosch. First came Poder Cubano, followed by Ejército Libertador Cubano, in which Castillo and Mario Solano were both active, and then came Acción Cubana and the Gobierno Secreto Cubano.

Do you recall any of the attacks that he took part in or led?

Castillo and Orestes Ruiz Hernández actively participated in the Mafioso war in Miami in 1975, when settling of scores among rival gangs of terrorists was paramount, as well as defining boundaries and controlling extortion, and using aggression to collect funds from the emigrant community. Castillo conspired to assassinate the Cuban-born commentator Emilio Millián. A bomb was placed under his car and he lost both his legs in the blast. He also took part in the murder of Cuban gangster Jesús González Carta, alias “El Extraño;” and even planted a bomb at the university in Coral Gables in Florida while civil rights activist, African-American Angela Davis was taking part in a public meeting. Not only this, but explosives ready to be detonated were also discovered underneath her car outside.

One of the Caracas conspirators – Ricardo Morales Navarrete – was found murdered in Miami. Posada and Bosch are now living in this U.S. city and benefiting from Bush’s protection. Frank Castro lives in his Antares apartment, close to the aquarium, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. El Cojo Castillo is also said to be living in Miami today, in Hialeah to be more precise, and denies complicity despite the evidence.

Exactly. Castillo is in Miami today, he’s a professional criminal and he’s free to walk the streets thanks to undercover impunity from the United States. And so he, like so many other criminals of various nationalities, has safe refuge in the United States. The coup faction from Venezuela: Posada, Bosch, Novo, Jiménez, Remón, all of them were taken to safety by their historic protectors.

José Luis Méndez has almost completed his latest research work, El terrorismo anticubano en los Estados Unidos. 1959-2008. (Anti-Cuban Terrorism in the United States. 1959-2008)