National Committee to Free the Cuban Five

AT THE TRIAL OF THE FIVE

FBI turned to perjury to protect Posada

by Jean-Guy Allard
Jan. 25, 2008
Reprinted from Granma Internacional

THE Miami FBI grossly disinformed and lied at the trial of the five Cuban anti-terrorists in the United States in order to protect Luis Posada Carriles, by failing to reveal the existence of a conspiracy to assassinate President Fidel Castro masterminded by this same terrorist.

Testifying on behalf of the Bureau, George Kiszynski intentionally omitted to state that a boat anchored in Miami, which he checked after an anonymous tip-off, and its owner were linked to a conspiracy hatched in U.S. territory with the participation of the most notorious terrorist on the continent.

Three years previously, on August 7, 1998, The Miami Herald published a front-page report titled "Assassination attempt on Castro foiled," written by its veteran analyst Juan O. Tamayo, who revealed that a Cuban exile implicated in a number of terrorist attacks was planning to assassinate Fidel Castro during his visit to the Dominican Republic.

Tamayo went on to state that Luis Posada Carriles, an old anti-Castro militant and three Miami exiles (Enrique Bassas, Ramón Font and Luis Orlando Rodríguez) met up in July of that year in the Holiday Inn in the Guatemalan capital to discuss how to smuggle in weapons and infiltrators, these latter including the terrorists referred to by the daily.

In its report, the Herald noted that terrorists located in Santo Domingo, among them Frank Castro, the founder of CORU, were ready to help put up and transport "a commando" that was to try and assassinate Fidel between August 20 to 25 at a summit on that Caribbean island.

However, the daily related, Posada’s plan was reported to the U.S. authorities in July and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched a vessels complex owned by Enrique Bassas.

Bassas is an old CIA collaborator with a long terrorist record. Font is "an explosives expert trained by the same Agency, as is Rodríguez, a "Vietnam veteran."

According to the Herald, the FBI agents interviewed Bassas on July 24, 1998 when they checked a vessels complex on the River Miami, Bassas Cargo International. Bassas was not arrested in spite of information already in the possession of the FBI on the Posada conspiracy.

The Herald analyst then makes an interesting observation: "Police veterans interpreted the search as a signal to Bassas to cancel any conspiracy. This is a common practice in the south of Florida, known as "telling off" or "demobilizing" an operation."

In other words, informed of the plot, the FBI warned the plotters and then sat back with their arms crossed.

He then comes up with the following hypothesis: "Cuban intelligence agents who, according to the police and experts on the exile movement, have penetrated many of the exile organizations, warned the FBI in order to protect Castro’s life during his visit to the Dominican Republic."

FBI NOT LACKING IN INFORMATION

One should recall the speech by Cuban President Fidel Castro on May 20, 2005, in which he revealed how he communicated in April 1998 with U.S. President Bill Clinton via Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel García Márquez. In his confidential message to the U.S. president, Fidel approached the subject of acts of terrorism organized and financed from the United States in 1997 by Luis Posada Carriles and with funding from the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF).

On June 15, 1998, a FBI delegation arrived in Havana and from June 16 through 17 there were various meetings between Cuban and U.S. experts, during which a large amount of documented and testimonial evidence on terrorist acts and plots against Cuba from 1990 to 1998 was handed over by the Cuban side. Most of these actions were directly linked to the CANF, which was then using the terrorist structure headed up by Luis Posada Carriles in Central America. The FBI officers then committed themselves to informing the Cuban side of the results of an analysis of the material as soon as possible.

The facts were to show an FBI conduct quite different from its supposed good intentions. Not only did Posada Carriles – without anyone bothering him – conclude his Guatemala City Holiday Inn meetings on the Santo Domingo assassination attempt with the Miami envoys Enrique Bassas, Ramón Font and Luis Orlando Rodríguez on July 12, but he also granted an interview to The New York Times in which he boasted to the point of giving himself the luxury of scaring his sponsors.

Barely 12 days prior to the FBI visit to Enrique Bassas’ installations on the Miami River, the Times published that extremely long conversation with Posada, given a few days previously in Aruba, in which the terrorist openly admitted, without any scruples, having masterminded the series of attacks on tourist installations in Cuba that took place the year before. He added that the CANF leadership had funded his operations, even stating that Jorge Mas Canosa, the organization’s chairman, had personally supervised the logistics of the operation.

REVENGE FOR SOME HUMILIATING FAILURES

After the accidental arrest in 1997 of terrorists aboard the yacht Esperanza by the U.S. Coast Guard, the sudden interruption of their plots for Santo Domingo due to an exposé were a humiliating failure for Posada and his CANF accomplices, which translated into intense pressure from their Miami sponsors for a police operation against Cuban agents whose activities had been identified.

In the days following the publication of the Herald report describing the blow received by Posada, the CANF and their conspirators, Special Agent Héctor Pesquera began to ask the FBI hierarchy and the Justice Department for the green light to go ahead with a raid on a group of Cubans infiltrated into the terrorist ranks.

Pesquera, whose links to the CANF have been documented on a number of occasions, confessed later that his dealings in that context took him to the office of his chief, James Freeh, FBI director, and Attorney General Janet Reno, whose officials were not in favor of the operation.

On September 12, Pesquera arrested the Cubans and put on a raucous media show accusing those who were annoying his mafia buddies of being spies.

In his interview with the Times, Posada had identified Special FBI Agent George Kiszynski as "a very good friend."

It was precisely Kiszynski, as closely tied to the CANF and the CIA as his colleague Pesquera, who made the visit to Bassas’ installations on the River Miami, to warn the terrorists that their plot was known. And it was Kiszynski again who appeared at the trial of the Five on March 26, 2001, to disinform the court on that matter.

With the anxious aid of the district judge, who multiplied the interferences, Kiszynski did not state that Bassas was one of the individuals who met with Luis Posada Carriles in the Guatemala City Holiday Inn to prepare an assassination attempt on the Cuban president.

By acting in that way – as he had done on other occasions – Kiszynski was protecting his "buddy" Posada Carriles and implicitly confirming to the terrorist elements present in the court that the FBI would guarantee them its complicity, and trying to negate the legitimate nature of the activities of the Cuban anti-terrorists in combating a terrorism that the FBI not only tolerates but helps.

More than nine years after their arrest, the five Cuban anti-terrorist combatants are still incarcerated in lamentable conditions, isolated from each other in different prisons within the vast U.S. penal system, the victims of the FBI that did not hesitate to turn to disinformation, lies and perjury as part of its sinister support for anti-Cuban terrorism.