by Alvaro Cruz Rojas
July 2, 2007
Reprinted from Daily Granma

The following are excerpts from an extensive article in El Mundo newspaper of El Salvador on Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born, naturalized Venezuelan who resides freely in Miami, Florida but is wanted in Venezuela for several deadly crimes including a plane bombing that killed 73 persons:

The presence of Luis Posada Carriles in El Salvador as well as Central America nations is generating a controversy since he was involved in series of terrorist attacks against the Castro regime. However, in previous times, the Cuban-born terrorist was a personal advisor of two ex presidents: Jose Napoleon Duarte (1984-1989) in El Salvador and Vinicio Cerezo (1986-1990) in Guatemala.

Posada confessed his personal relationship with both ex-presidents during a secret interview made by FBI special agents at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on February 7, 1992. The document that was marked "secret" for many years was recently declassified.

The Cuban arrived to El Salvador in 1985, from the Caribbean island of Aruba, thanks to a private flight arranged for him by veteran CIA official, Felix Rodriguez.

The aircraft used was a small Cessna 310 twin engine plane that made stopovers in Panama and Costa Rica on its flight to El Salvador, stated Posada in his book "The path of the guerrilla fighter."

When he arrived in El Salvador, an associate of Rodriguez, who is only identified in the document as a "Captain Leiva", and in Posada’s book as "Captain Roberto Leiva", provided him with several false IDs (including driver’s license and military identification) under the name of Ramon Medina Rodriguez, one of the aliases used by Posada.

Later Posada joined the network of military support for the Nicaraguan "contra" rebel forces (the peasant anti-Sandinista guerrillas), from a base located at the Ilopango military airport and with the complicity of the Salvadorian Air Force, states the testimony.

Posada identifies as one of his closest collaborators General Juan Rafael Bustillo, who at that time was the head of the air force, but he assures that Bustillo didn’t know his real identity.

The operation didn’t last long. The downing in Nicaragua of one of the aircraft used by the network provoked the end of the illegal shipments and the unleashing of a political scandal in the Unites States, to be known later as "Iran-Contras." That’s the known history.

After the scandal, Posada kept a low profile and spent three months at the Xanadu beach resort-ranch, in a beautiful private zone near EL Sunzal. There he lived from his savings, he told to the FBI. During the supply operation to the contras, he had earned between $6,000 and $7,000 USD a month, plus free housing, a car and gasoline.

Shortly afterwards, Posada would begin to work as an advisor to the now defunct Policia Nacional (National Police) thanks to the fact that he knew Hermes or Hernan Rojas, one of the Venezuelans that had come into the country to advise the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte on security matters.

The chief of the group of Venezuelan advisors was Victor Rivera (Zacarias) a dark figure that later would be investigating kidnappings in the country, and that has been mentioned in the case of the policemen that assassinated members of the Salvadorian Parliament in Guatemala last February. Posada and Rivera didn’t get along well; so when Rivera leaves the country in the middle of a scandal; Rojas arrives and gives him a job.

The National Police paid Posada about $2,000 USD a month, plus free housing, a car and gasoline. Soon Posada became important and reached a high profile, meeting with the then Minister of Interior at his home to deal with the solution of high level cases.

According to Posada, Duarte called him to his house and made him his personal advisor. The president ordered that he be provided with bodyguards because he was investigating the political assassinations attributed to the far right.

That led to Posada becoming "highly visible" again and he had to go to Guatemala, where another Christian democrat was governing: Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo (today a member of parliament).

Posada left El Salvador in 1989, (when Duarte had already left power) to work as security chief for the state telephone enterprise Guatel. A short time afterwards he became Cerezo’s investigations personal advisor.

But on February 28, 1990, Posada suffered an attack on Vista Hermosa Boulevard of the capital of Guatemala, where he is badly wounded.

It was precisely Cerezo who paid the bills of the El Pilar Hospital and then Posada departs to Honduras, where his track was lost. Later he would reappear in El Salvador, where his presence became public in 1997, when he hired two Salvadorian mercenaries —Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, and Otto Rodriguez Llerena— to plant bombs in Cuba.

Jose Napoleon Duarte, who was president of El Salvador between 1984 and 1989, had Luis Posada Carriles as his personal advisor in security matters. He had assigned him with the job of investigating the political crimes supposedly attributed to the extreme right wing or "death squads."

Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, governed Guatemala between 1986 and 1990. Also a Christian democrat as Duarte, he hired Posada Carriles to be his personal advisor on security matters.

A CHAIN OF ACCUSATIONS OF TERRORISM

Luis Clemente Posada Carriles, born in Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1928, is considered a terrorist, due his participation (as the mastermind) in the terrorist bombing of Cubana de Aviacion flight 455, on October 6, 1976.

Posada Carriles is also credited as the organizer of a series of bomb attacks in 1997 against hotels in Havana. He was a member of the US Army, and a career police official in Venezuela. He was a key figure in the supply network to the Nicaraguan contras (1985-86) from Ilopango airport and later an advisor to the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte.

(Excerpts from El Mundo daily newspaper of El Salvador)

Posada Carriles fue asesor personal de Napoleón Duarte