Reheating the Cold War
The trial of a suspected terrorist is stoking old passions, from D.C. to Miami to Havana
MIAMI-It's cool and sunny in Little Havana, and the men from this city's aging but still-powerful Cuban exile community crowd the Versailles restaurant's outdoor coffee bar, talking politics in the shade and drinking cups of high-octane espresso.
It's a community known for passion, but on this recent morning, the conversation is livelier than usual, and the reason, down here anyway, is obvious: Days earlier, a 79-year-old anti-Castro militant who many here hail as a hero-but who is reviled elsewhere as a terrorist-was ordered released on bond from a Texas prison where for two years he had been held on immigration fraud charges.
Notorious Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative accused of plotting the deadly bombings of a Cuban airliner in 1976 and tourist sites in Havana in 1997, was back in Miami after decades away, confined to his wife's apartment and awaiting a trial that is scheduled to start this week in El Paso. When it's over, says Josa Fabregas, as he steers a visitor to the pastry counter, Posada should be allowed to return to this city, unshackled.
"All the leaders of the counterrevolution should be living free among us," says Fabregas, 57, an advocate for affordable housing who left Cuba for Florida 46 years ago. "Yes, some people call it terrorism, and unfortunately, some people have to die. But an armed struggle is an armed struggle."
One person's freedom fighter, however, is another's terrorist. And the trial of a man linked to many years of violent efforts by Cuban exiles to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro, as well as to U.S. covert operations in Central America, promises to resonate far beyond west Texas and Biscayne Bay.
From the moment Posada surfaced at a press conference here in 2005, some 20 years after escaping from prison in Venezuela, where he faced murder charges for plotting the bombing of the Cuban airliner, he has been a vexing problem for the Bush administration. How does a president with deep political ties to the Cuban exile community, a brother who was Florida's governor, and an unyielding, "with us or against us" stand on terrorists handle a larger-than-life problem like Posada?
Hot potato. It's a good question, but even now, on the verge of Posada's trial, the answers aren't clear. Posada has been a political hot potato for a slew of U.S. government agencies. Six countries, including Canada, have refused the U.S. government's plea to take him off its hands. A judge in Texas barred Posada's extradition to Venezuela. Cuba, Venezuela, and a host of other countries have demanded-unsuccessfully-that Posada be tried as a terrorist. So barring some unforeseen development, Posada will most likely face only immigration fraud and false statement charges when jury selection commences this week in Room 3 of the Western District of Texas federal courthouse in El Paso.
To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip it's been. Posada has traveled a circuitous path back to Miami, where he first arrived in 1961 after fleeing Cuba, stopping briefly in Mexico, when Castro came to power. Already in his early 30s, he joined the U.S. Army and trained with the CIA for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the beginning of a long association with the agency. The U.S. government claims its relationship with Posada ended in 1976, just after the airliner bombing; Posada's lawyers say it continued for a decade longer.
Either way, 1976 was a fateful year. In one declassified FBI document from 1976, Posada, then living in Venezuela, is quoted as saying a few days after a Caracas fundraising dinner for his fellow militant exile and CIA operative Orlando Bosch: "We are going to hit a Cuban airplane." A short time later, on October 6, Cubana Flight 455, carrying members of the Cuban national fencing team, as well as a half-dozen Guyanese scholars on their way to medical school in Havana, blew up off the coast of Barbados. Seventy-three people died.
Posada and his lawyers deny his involvement, though Venezuelan police records show that a Venezuelan who worked for Posada, then a naturalized citizen in that country, staked out potential Cuba-connected bombing targets. According to the documents, at least four targets, and the airliner, were on the list and bombed that summer and fall.
Posada and his lawyers say he was at the center of some of the U.S. government's most notorious operations in Central America, including the supplying of the Nicaraguan contra rebels with arms. The CIA says it was finished with him before some of the operations took place. Either way, he stayed busy; Posada was shot in the face during a 1990 attempt on his life in Guatemala. He was later convicted in Panama of plotting to blow up an auditorium there during a 2000 visit by Castro but was ultimately pardoned.
When Posada surfaced in the United States in 2005, he claimed he crossed over from Mexico with a smuggler, then rode a bus to Miami. There, Posada lawyer Eduardo Soto said his client would petition for asylum. But after skipping a scheduled interview with the Department of Homeland Security, Posada announced he would withdraw his application, and Soto said his client might leave the country. Instead, he was arrested and charged with illegal entry. Government lawyers later alleged that Posada was brought to the United States from Mexico on a boat owned by a friend.
Posada may have believed he could end up living freely in Miami like his friend, Bosch, also implicated, in CIA and FBI documents, in the airline bombing. Bosch was granted a special parole in 1990 by former President George H. W. Bush after being charged with violating the terms of his release from a previous terrorism conviction. The parole was promoted by the president's son, Jeb Bush (who later became Florida governor), despite objections of officials at the Justice Department who argued that the Cuban exile had long been an active terrorist. But in the post-9/11 world, the politics of such determinations may well have changed.
Jose Pertierra, general counsel for the Embassy of Venezuela, fought unsuccessfully for Posada's return to face charges. But in August 2005, a Texas judge barred Posada's extradition to Venezuela after his lawyers argued he might be tortured there. U.S. prosecutors did not challenge the claim-a win for his client, Soto said.
Pertierra finds the current case against Posada absurd. "Prosecute him for killing 73 people in the downing of the plane. Prosecute him in the United States for the death of the Italian tourist in the Havana bombings. Don't prosecute him for an immigration violation," Pertierra said. "Certify him as a terrorist."
Indeed, there's no shortage of folks who are uncomfortable with the government's choice to pursue Posada on immigration charges rather than hold him under provisions of the Patriot Act that call for the detention of suspected terrorists or try him as a terrorist as required under international conventions covering terrorist bombings. The Cuban government last month called Posada's release "an outrage to the people of the United States and an emphatic denial to the alleged 'war on terror.'"
Some Americans are squeamish as well. "We've never seen lawyers move heaven and earth like the Bush administration lawyers have in terrorism cases when they're prosecuting suspects from the Islamic world," says Philip Peters, adviser to the U.S. House of Representatives' Cuba Working Group. "This leaves them in a complicated position."
Peters and others point to the Justice Department's assertion last fall that Posada is "an admitted mastermind of terrorist ... attacks," as well as declassified CIA and FBI records linking him to the airline bombing. A 1998 New York Times story quotes Posada as saying that with money from the Cuban-American National Foundation he organized bombings in Havana that injured 11 and killed an Italian tourist. But he, his lawyers, and the foundation now say none of it is true. Posada denies involvement in the bombings and in the downing of the airliner. "My client has never acknowledged involvement in those bombings," Soto said last week.
The administration has staunchly defended its legal path. "We have charged him with criminal violations that are serious and fought very vigorously to keep him detained," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said last week. If convicted of the seven counts of fraud and making false statements, Posada could face up to 40 years in prison. But his lawyers predict a more lenient sentence.
More charges? Justice officials say they have not ruled out additional charges against Posada. In fact, a federal grand jury in New Jersey is considering whether he should be indicted in connection with the Havana bombings. Last week, the Justice Department confirmed a Miami Herald report that the FBI is working with officials in Cuba to make the case against Posada in New Jersey, where money was allegedly wired to militants plotting the bombing. Underscoring the politics permeating this case, three Republican members of Congress from Florida quickly condemned the administration for searching for evidence in a "terrorist state"-Cuba.
But the sensitivities hardly end there. Last week, U.S. government prosecutors filed a motion that would prevent Posada from testifying about his relationship with the CIA. Posada's lawyers immediately challenged the request. Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, which collects and disseminates declassified government documents, said he had previously been skeptical that the government cared about what the exile might spill in court.
"But this motion tells me that there are still people inside the CIA concerned about what Posada has to say about his relationship with them in the 1960s and '70s," Kornbluh said. "This might have been a factor in the internal debate over whether to try him as a terrorist." CIA spokesman George Little said late last week that "any suggestion that the CIA influenced the handling of proceedings involving Mr. Posada is flatly wrong."
Whatever plays out in the El Paso courtroom won't satisfy people like Roseanne Nenninger, whose brother, Raymond, a 19-year-old Guyanese student with a full medical school scholarship on his way to Havana, was killed when the Cubana plane blew up. "I'm outraged that we have a terrorist in our midst," said Nenninger, whose family moved to the United States from Guyana in 1979. "I was hoping that when our president said that we're not going to harbor terrorists, he meant it."
She said she shudders to think that Posada could be allowed to live freely."I would love to see him spend the rest of his time behind bars, or at least I would like him to admit his wrongdoings."
Back in Miami, Fabregas says he and others in the exile community will try to accept the outcome of the trial. "House arrest or whatever, we'll accept," says Fabregas. "Anything except deportation. That would cause a very adverse reaction."
"His heart is still in the right place," he says about Posada, who in an interview two years ago declared himself committed to armed struggle. "You die," Fabregas said of the militant, "with your convictions and beliefs." A few days later, Fabregas and others gathered again at the Versailles to talk about Cuba's May Day demonstration; the highlights were Castro's failure to appear and protesters who carried signs demanding that Posada be brought to justice. Back at the Versailles, a handful of men hung an effigy of the Cuban leader.
After the case plays out, says Soto, Posada's lawyer, he wants to make a movie about his client's life. "You know what I'm going to call it?" he said." Made in the USA."
With Carol S. Hook
This story appears in the May 14, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.