MIAMI-DADE REVERSAL--
A CUBAN TERRORIST PAYBACK TO BUSH FAMILY?
by PETER DALE SCOTT � 2000, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
If Gov. George W. Bush wins the presidency because votes in Miami-Dade County
were not recounted, consider it a payback for past favors granted Cuban
terrorists by George Bush Sr.
When the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board reversed itself and voted to stop
recounting ballots, at least one of the three members said his decision was
influenced by the vehement protests of Radio Mambi.
This stridently anti-Communist station is an arm of the violently anti-Castro
Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), founded in 1981 by a former CIA
terrorist, Jorge Mas Canosa, with the encouragement (some say, at the behest)
of the newly elected Reagan-Bush administration.
Author Gaeton Fonzi, who has deep roots in the Miami Cuban community, has
written that the CANF was "secretly seeded" by the "public diplomacy" program
set up at the time by CIA Director William Casey "as cover for a covert
domestic propaganda effort."
Certainly the Reagan-Bush administration showered federal funds on Radio
Marti, which beams anti-Castro propaganda into Cuba. As president, Bush
established TV Marti and shielded it against the criticism that no one in
Cuba could see it.
Mas Canosa was chairman of the advisory board on broadcasts to Cuba, and kept
tight control over the activities of the two stations.
But from the outset the CANF was involved in more than propaganda. It quickly
became a haven for former CIA terrorists, many of them known to Mas Canosa
from the era when he himself plotted to blow up a Cuban ship for the CIA.
For example, Mas Canosa appointed the brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo to
the CANF's "Information Commission." The two were implicated, though
ultimately not convicted, in the September, 1976 assassination of former
Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier. At that time, George Bush was director
of the CIA.
For weeks after the killing, the U.S. press ran stories that (as the New York
Times put it) the FBI and CIA "had virtually ruled out the idea that Mr.
Letelier was killed by agents of the Chilean military junta." Instead, they
were reportedly investigating "the possibility that Mr. Letelier had been
assassinated by Chilean left-wing extremists." George Bush was said to have
told Kissinger personally that operatives of the Chilean junta "did not take
part in Letelier's killing."
But recently released CIA documents reveal that a month before Letelier's
murder the U.S. Government was concerned about information indicating the
Chilean junta was contemplating an assassination inside the United States.
Two days after the murder, Bush received the following message from his
Special Assistant:
"(Name obscured) tells me that his people have noted a strong similarity
between Letelier killing and the sort of thing that goes on all the time in
Miami within the Cuban exile community. . . . (and) speculates that, if
Chilean Government did order Letelier's killing, it may have hired Cuban
thugs to do it."
Only under the succeeding Carter administration were four Miami Cubans
convicted of the murder. Two (including Guillermo Novo) were cleared in 1981
after an appeal and second trial.
At the core of the CANF terrorist connection was Mas Canosa's personal
friendship with two other Cubans who had worked for the CIA, Luis Posada and
Felix Rodriguez. In 1985 Rodriguez was reporting personally to Vice President
Bush's office about his logistical support for the Contras from a base in El
Salvador.
That same year, Mas Canosa helped Posada escape from a Venezuelan prison and
relocate in El Salvador as part of the Rodriguez Contra supply operation.
(Seven years later, at a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner, President Bush
said, "I salute Jorge Mas.")
Since then Posada has been arrested a number of times for attempts to murder
Fidel Castro--most recently during November's Ibero-American Summit in
Panama, where he was arrested with three
other Cuban exiles including Guillermo Novo.
The CANF has issued a press release denying published reports from Panama
that the Foundation is paying the expenses of the attorney representing the
four men. But Posada has spoken and written of CANF support for past
terrorist attacks, as once documented in the New York Times.
Jose Antonio Llama, a member of the CANF executive board, was indicted as the
principal organizer of the attempted murder of Castro at the 1997 Summit.
Although Llama was ultimately acquitted, observers noted that his indictment
signaled that the U.S. government would no longer tolerate anti-Castro
terrorism by Miami Cuban extremists.
One of the defense attorneys in that case, Juan Masini-Soler, commented: "If
it was Ronald Reagan or George Bush in the White House, they'd be giving
these people the Medal of Freedom. And here, now, they're indicting them."
It remains to be seen whether Gov. Bush, if he is elected President, will
adopt the anti-Castro policies of his father.
COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
660 Market Street, Room 210, San Francisco, CA 94104
Tel 415-438-4755, website www.pacificnews.org
EDITOR'S NOTE: Strident broadcasts from a violently anti-Castro radio station
influenced the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board's decision to reverse itself and
vote to stop recounting ballots. The radio station's founding was sponsored
by the Reagan-Bush administration. PNS correspondent Peter Dale Scott is
author of Deep Politics and the Death of JFK and co-author of Cocaine
Politics. Scott's website
is http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott
