I’ve been following (and covering) Luis Posada Carriles on DKos since almost the day I showed up here a decade and a half ago. This came across my news feed earlier this afternoon:
Washington, D.C., May 23, 2018 - CIA-trained Cuban exile and suspect in the 1976 Cuban jetliner bombing that killed all 73 people on board, Luis Posada Carriles, has died at the age of 90.
Posada had been the CIA’s go-to, anti-Castro wet work guy in the Caribbean, Central, and South America for nearly five decades. His exploits, including hotel and airline bombings, are covered in detail on the National Security Archives website. Much of his CIA skullduggery, including his possible connections to the JFK assassination, remains classified.
To say that Posada was a major influence on the anti-Castro Cuban American population in Florida would be an understatement. In return, their influence on George Bush’s administration in securing his 2005 acquittal of a myriad of immigration charges can’t be understated. The entire trial, prosecution, and judicial process was a farce. Here’s my coverage on his U.S. asylum request from May 11, 2005. You can find other pieces I wrote on Posada scattered through my DKos timeline. (No guarantee that any of these links still work, except for the diary.)
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BOMB A PLANE, ASK BUSH FOR ASYLUM
...that is, if you're a friend of Ollie North and John Negroponte. And the airplane is Cuban. And Poppy was DCI at some point when the bomber was still a CIA operative.
From the National Security Archive at George Washington University...:
Washington D.C. May 10, 2005 - Declassified CIA and FBI records posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University identify Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who is apparently in Florida seeking asylum, as a former CIA agent and as one of the "engineer[s]" of the 1976 terrorist bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 that killed 73 passengers...
Carriles is currently "somewhere in Florida", and requested asylum from the Bush administration back in March, as repayment for past services rendered.
His life story reads like a LeCarre novel. It would take a reader just about that long to get through all of the threads and strings to this story.
It's a humdinger. But, hey, he's our terrorist, right?
Carriles is a real man about town. Try Googling - "Luis Posada Carriles" Kennedy assassination - and see what you get. Not in the mood to google? How about a Cuban perspective on him - or this take from Rigorous Intuition?
The bottom line is that this guy, with a terrorism resumé much longer (and more successful) than Dubya's business resumé, is wandering around, unrestricted and whereabouts apparently unknown, on U.S. soil.
Sleep well tonight.
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I’m very pleased that this terrorist has received his just reward. He was a really bad guy that got away with it — until today. Like many in his past, may he receive an introduction into eternity that is not exactly what he might have expected when he was still being celebrated in Miami while in this mortal coil.