-Caveat Lector- http://www.courant.com/news/special/article/2special9.stm A Rocket Attack, An FBI Revelation By EDMUND MAHONY This story ran in The Courant on November 12, 1999 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Six weeks after the Wells Fargo robbery, someone fired a rocket at the gray concrete federal building in Hato Rey at 7:45 on a Sunday evening. The attackers appear to have been aiming at the FBI�s offices. They missed. The rocket hit a suite used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. No one was hurt, but the building was badly damaged. Later the same night, Los Macheteros issued a communique taking responsibility. The group said the attack was in retaliation for the Oct. 25 U.S. invasion of the obscure Caribbean island of Grenada. There was no reason to connect the rocket attack to the Wells Fargo robbery. FBI agents in Puerto Rico were not even aware of the robbery. They were sure angry about the rocket, though. Los Macheteros were just as irked about Grenada. Documents seized from the organization show that on Oct. 28, 1983, two days before the rocket was fired, members of one of the group�s executive committees had a long discussion about how to react to the wild events on a tiny island that for most of recorded history had managed to exist without anyone�s noticing it. A Cuban-backed politician had staged a coup on Grenada. Then-U.S. President Reagan, alarmed about a new Cuban airport on the island and the safety of American students at an offshore medical school, decided to invade. The war, if it could be called a war, was over in hours. The Grenadans ended up with a new airport, and some aspiring American internists were free again. The Macheteros were furious. The long arm of U.S. imperialism had reached into the Caribbean yet again. One participant at the executive committee meeting proposed a march and rally to protest the invasion. Juan Segarra Palmer, the influential young Machetero who used the code name Junior and who recruited Victor Gerena for the Wells Fargo robbery, argued that a protest march simply wasn�t going to be enough. ��Junior is in agreement with solidarity, but feels it should not be limited to activity of the masses,�� a meeting summary explained. Short of a group confession, it is difficult to imagine anything Los Macheteros could have done to better assist the FBI in eventually unraveling the Wells Fargo robbery. Until the events set in motion by the rocket attack, it had been law enforcement�s great whodunit. Unbeknownst to the FBI, the Macheteros were falling over themselves in private, self-congratulatory celebration those first heady weeks after the robbery. The leadership talked about laundering money and buying certificates of deposit. They raised their salaries. In a moment of hubris, they voted to embark on a foreign aid program to other Latin American insurgencies: Rebels in El Salvador would get $100,000; the Sandinistas in Nicaragua would get $50,000. Segarra and Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who founded Los Macheteros, had remained in Boston during the days immediately following the robbery. They had to get Victor Gerena and the money out of the country. The task turned out to be easier than anyone imagined, even in the face of one of the most comprehensive police dragnets in New England history. The two men bought a used motor home from a dealer outside Boston. They put Gerena in his cramped, coffin-like false closet and packed $2.024 million in cash into the walls around him. They crossed safely out of Texas at Laredo, and the Cubans escorted them to Mexico City. Jorge Masetti, the Cuban spy who helped Los Macheteros when they were planning the robbery earlier in the year, was again on hand to help out in Mexico City. Masetti was traveling in Argentina when his boss in the Cuban intelligence service called from the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. By the time Masetti got back to the embassy, Gerena was stashed in an apartment. Gerena was waiting for the counterfeit Argentine indentity papers he would need to leave Mexico for Cuba. Anyone could glue Gerena�s photograph on an Argentine passport, but the passport lacked a stamp showing Gerena had legally entered Mexico. He had, after all, been smuggled into Mexico, hidden behind a false wall in a motor home. ��Finally, we sent a sample to Havana so the technicians could make an identical stamp,�� Masetti said. Gerena boarded a plane to Cuba. The first shipment of money traveled in the Cuban diplomatic pouch. The rest of the money moved out of the country the same way. The authorities still hadn�t a clue about the robbery. The West Hartford police, which had local jurisdiction over the case, were doing about the only thing they could: making life miserable for Gerena�s newly abandoned fiancee, Ana Soto. They found it inconceivable that she could live with a man, be engaged to marry him and remain oblivious to the fact that he was planning the biggest cash robbery in U.S. history. Love may be blind, they figured. But not that blind. Soto eventually became flustered. Detectives uncovered minor inconsistencies in what she was telling them and arrested her for giving a false statement. It was an attempt to pressure her into cooperating. But it was a dead end. The detectives quickly gave up when it became clear Soto was telling the truth, that Gerena had kept her in the dark. If there was going to be a break in the case, it wouldn�t come from Soto. But no one knew where else to look. In Puerto Rico, the FBI was ratcheting up its rocket attack investigation, but remained oblivious to the Wells Fargo case. The bureau opened an investigative file called FEDROC and set in motion a meticulous record-keeping process that rivaled that of Los Macheteros for turgid detail. The rocket was fired from an alley a hundred yards or so south of the federal building. A resident of the area led agents to a strange car. In the car was a part of a fingerprint left by a man identified as Avelino Gonzalez Claudio. In a compartment on the inside of the front passenger door was a torn scrap of a parking ticket. It had been issued to someone using a phony name. The attack was made with a light anti-tank weapon, commonly referred to as a LAWS rocket. It fires from a tube, and whoever launched it at the federal building left the tube behind. A serial number on the tube showed that the United States had abandoned the weapon in Vietnam. It was captured by the North Vietnamese and shipped to Cuba. The FBI was getting more interested all the time. Agents began following Gonzalez. He led them to a safe house being used by the Macheteros. And all of a sudden, the bureau realized it had Puerto Rico�s premier terrorist group under a microscope. The FBI staked out the house, keeping track of the people who came and went. One day, Gonzalez picked up an older man. The agents figured the man was probably the one using the phony name written on the torn scrap of the traffic ticket. But no one in the FBI recognized him. Meanwhile, when the Macheteros suspected they were being followed, they ��dry-cleaned�� themselves, attempting to shake the FBI surveillance. They abandoned cars. They changed houses. Bit by bit, month by month, the FBI continued to collect evidence. Seven months after the robbery, the bureau had enough to persuade a federal judge to give them a warrant to search a house used by Los Macheteros at 210 Ponce de Leon, near old San Juan. The house was a virtual archive of Machetero documents. The group�s penchant for keeping records was an evidentiary bonanza for the FBI. The Macheteros were deeply concerned because the records could link them to Cuba and the Wells Fargo robbery. The material at Ponce de Leon was enough to get the FBI a court order to begin tapping telephones. One day an agent overheard a conversation about $7 million. The FBI was flabbergasted. ��They�re talking about $7 million bucks?�� one agent said. ��We�re thinking, �Where on earth did they get that?� Because these guys have been pulling armored car jobs down here for years and robbing banks. But there was never that kind of money.�� The FBI office in San Juan sent a bulletin to bureau offices across the country. Had anyone lost $7 million? The answer from Hartford was an uneqivocal yes. Discovery of the possible connection between the nationalist group and the Wells Fargo robbery made it essential to identify the man using the phony name written on the scrap of the traffic ticket. But no one in the bureau�s San Juan office recognized him. Another request for help was sent to offices elsewhere in the country. ��He�s dry-cleaning surveillance,�� an agent investigating the FEDROC case said. ��So we�re like, �Who the hell is this guy?� �� The answer came from a veteran agent who had worked in San Juan in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ��He said, �I think that�s who we used to call El Viejo, the old man, who was making bombs that were going off in tourist hotels in San Juan,� �� the FEDROC investigator said. It was, in fact, Ojeda, the man who had jumped bail and fled to Cuba after being arrested in 1970 for bombing a tourist hotel. All of a sudden the FBI knew that Ojeda � a member of the Cuban intelligence service, a confidant of senior Cuban diplomats and spies, architect of the violent wing of the Puerto Rican nationalist movement � was at the center of what was then the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. The FBI was developing enough evidence to keep its electronic surveillance equipment humming indefinitely. Not only could agents tap phones, they could plant microphones in automobiles and homes. The work paid off. Because Los Macheteros did something else very unwise. The newly flush revolutionaries started arguing among themselves about everything. But mostly they argued about Gerena�s money. �1999 The Hartford Courant -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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