This New York Times piece has been removed from the Times' website and is no longer available as of May 1st. The content and the removal continue the theme I sent you about Lopez Obrador and the profound changes rapidly developing in Latin America. The 2nd piece should be considered part of deep background of the previous relationship. It's speculative, but assasinations, merciless brutality and control have been hallmarks for longer than a century. Ed
sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews) The New York Times - April 30, 2005 O.A.S. to Pick Chile Socialist U.S. Opposed as Its Leader by Larry Rohter RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr. 29 - In a rebuff to the Bush administration's efforts to press Latin America to take a tougher stance on Cuba and Venezuela, a Chilean Socialist emerged Friday as the consensus choice to become secretary general of the Organization of American States. The O.A.S. is scheduled to convene in Washington on Monday to formally elect the Chilean, Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, 62. His opponent, Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican foreign minister and Washington's favored candidate, withdrew Friday afternoon after negotiations in Santiago, Chile, that involved Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and several of her South and Central American counterparts. It is the first time in the organization's history that a candidate initially opposed by the United States will lead the 34-member regional group. Until it became clear that the numbers were not in its favor, the United States sought twice to block Mr. Insulza, by first supporting a Salvadoran and then Mr. Derbez. The selection process was dogged by contention and deadlock for months. It finally came to balloting on April 11, but five rounds of voting all ended in a 17-to-17 tie between Mr. Insulza and Mr. Derbez, split largely along North-South lines. American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory. But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss. "Secretary Rice has supported a consensus, and therefore the candidate of the United States is now me," Mr. Insulza said at a news conference with Ms. Rice and Mr. Derbez on Friday. "For that reason, nobody should feel defeated." Mr. Insulza also said the organization must broaden its mission and begin to "hold governments that are not governed democratically accountable" for their actions. Aides to Ms. Rice said she had insisted on such language, which is clearly aimed at President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the most outspoken South American critic of the Bush administration. The O.A.S. was founded in 1948, part of the same post-World War II American effort to construct a multilateral foreign policy that also led to the creation of entities like NATO. The United States contributes about 60 percent of the organization's $76 million annual budget and has traditionally played the dominant role in the group, whose missions include monitoring elections and mediating political disputes in member countries. Washington's decision to back down and support Mr. Insulza ends a dispute that had become "a real mess, a bitter fight," said Michael Shifter, a senior policy analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. "It's going to require a lot of work, a lot of diplomacy, to repair things, but this process has not exactly endeared U.S. officials to the joys of multilateralism in the Western Hemisphere." The standoff began to take shape in October, when the newly chosen, Washington-backed secretary general, former President Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica, resigned two weeks after taking office to face accusations of corruption at home. The United States transferred its support to another Central American, former President Francisco Flores of El Salvador, but immediately encountered wide resistance. Much of that came because Washington's support for Mr. Flores was widely seen as a reward for El Salvador's role as the only country in Latin America to send troops to Iraq. It became clear that Mr. Flores had no chance of winning, and on April 8 he withdrew. The election was then transformed into a proxy fight over Cuba, which was expelled from the O.A.S. after Fidel Castro took power, and its main Latin American ally, Venezuela. The United States has repeatedly cited Chile as an example of economic and political stability for the rest of the continent, and a free trade agreement between the countries went into effect last year. But even though he is considered a moderate, Mr. Insulza is nominally a Socialist, and he not only favored steps to bring Cuba back into the organization but also had the support of Mr. Chávez. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited South America last month in what was seen as an effort to stitch together an anti-Chávez coalition, but got nowhere. Ms. Rice came to the region this week with much the same mission and received the same chilly reception from governments for whom the principles of nonintervention and sovereignty are nearly sacred. "It's counterproductive both to see what she is saying on Venezuela and what they are doing at the O.A.S., but the U.S. just doesn't seem to get the political and diplomatic reality," said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. If Washington wants South America to act as an interlocutor with Mr. Chávez, he added, "it would have been easy to drop our support for Derbez and push for a consensus at the O.A.S." Still, Mr. Chávez made the situation difficult for his allies with insults aimed at the United States and the organization. [Joel Brinkley contributed reporting from Santiago, Chile, for this article.] *** GRANMA INTERNATIONAL Havana. April 29, 2005 Posada has something on Bush, says expert on Kennedy case BYJEAN-GUY ALLARD Special for Granma International WIM Dankbar, a Dutch specialist on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, suspects that Luis Posada Carriles has highly discriminating evidence against Bush Sr. that could be divulged if the terrorist should die a suspicious death. In an interview with Granma International, Wim Dankbaar (www.jfkmurdersolved.com), who financed a new investigation into the death of Kennedy in cooperation with retired FBI agents, is not hiding his shock at the "reappearance" of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami, which: "I cannot understand." "This is just astounding. The apathy of the media even more so", he continues, "Why isn't any media source writing that the man was not pardoned from his sentence for killing 73 people, but that he escaped and is still a convicted terrorist on the loose?" Dankbaar, also a Dutch businessman, who has made a documentary on the assassination of Kennedy titled Second Look, has shown how one of the three individuals arrested by Dallas police shortly after the crime placed Luis Posada Carriles in Dealey Square in that same city at the moment of the assassination. He affirms that Chauncey Holt, one of three supposed vagrants arrested - in truth, they were Mafia hitmen in disguise - testified on the facts in a two-hour video recording made shortly before his death and which was never transmitted. "In this recording," said Dankbaar, "Holt names a few Cuban-Americans, including Luis Posada Carriles. "He identifies the other two vagrants as Charles Rogers and Charles Harrelson. Harrelson is a convicted hitman serving life for another murder, and also father of Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson." Chauncey Holt was working for Meyer Lansky, notorious chief of Havana mafia during the 1950s, and Pete Licavoli, another U.S. mafia leader. But Holt, according to the expert, was also a CIA operative. His instructions for Dallas came from his undercover CIA supervisor Philip Twombly of the Fullerton Bank in California. Those instructions were specifically to make and deliver secret service credentials to a rabid anti-Castro militant called Homer Echevarría, who was a close associate of Cuban exile leader Paulino Sierra . Holt further relates that he made ID cards in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. Furthermore he drove to Dallas from Licavoli's Arizona ranch in the company of Leo Moceri and Charles Nicoletti, both hitmen for mafia moguls Giancana and Licavoli. Holt's testimony on the Kennedy plot is therefore clear evidence of collaboration between the CIA, organized crime and the Cuban exile community, with the consent of high-level officials in the US government. Dankbaar points out that mafia boss Sam Giancana's biography - edited by his brother - discloses the role played by two buddies of former Havana chief Santos Trafficante, one of which could perfectly be Posada, according to the description given. The research financed by Dankbaar was led by detective Zack Shelton, who worked for the FBI for 28 years, principally in Chicago and Kansas City. The film entitled Second Look presents the results of his investigation. According to Dankbaar, the presence in Dallas of several small groups of individuals linked both to the Cuban-American leadership of the Batista faction and the Italian mafia could be explained by the CIA's compartmentalization of its operations. In addition to Posada, the film reveals the presence in Dealey Square of other known Cuban-American CIA operatives, such as Frank Sturgis and Orlando Bosch.. Dankbaar does not discount the possibility that Posada may have been one of the snipers who fired at Kennedy. He points out that in one of his recent televised special presentations, President Fidel Castro noted that Posada used the code name Hunter (Cazador) and boasted a certificate as an expert sharpshooter awarded by a U.S. military academy from which he graduated as a lieutenant, according to a declassified document. "Posada was almost killed in Guatemala in 1990. It may have been the work of the CIA. This guy knows too much, and I don't think it is too exaggerated to assume he has communicated some type of "insurance," says Dankbaar. "Remember how CIA drug smuggler and Iran-Contra operative Barry Seal was gunned down? If you believe his lawyer, Seal was in direct contact with George Bush. And the personal telephone number of George H. W. Bush was found in the trunk of Seal's car. They blamed his murder on the Medellin cartel, but he was scheduled to testify and there were a lot of rumors that he had a video tape featuring Jeb and George W. Bush." The expert also cites the case of David Morales: "David Sánchez Morales is another CIA killer involved in the JFK assassination, who died under suspicious circumstances. He had secured his house with double alarm systems, but not against burglars. He confessed to a friend: 'It's my own guys I'm worried about. I know too damned much.' So it's possible that Posada could blackmail the Bush administration... given that fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he gets his asylum." "And does the fact that ex-operative Porter Goss, who admits to having participated in acts of terrorism against Cuba from the JM/WAVE station, facilitate Posada's return?" "Of course. The man that Bush selected has been part of CIA efforts to overthrow the Castro regime and assassinate its leader," Dankbaar confirms. "Goss is the ideal man to keep possible scandals under the carpet for Bush and in particular, for his father. The two of them are both accomplices in the same history. " . BOSCH AND POSADA MEET UP THROUGH THE COMPANY In his book El Complot (The Conspiracy) recently published by Ocean Press, Fabián Escalante, retired general and ex-chief of Cuban Intelligence, notes that a report received from his service in mid-1963 referred to "the presence of a subject subsequently identified as (Lee Harvey) Oswald at a meeting of a group of terrorists of Cuban origin, including the Novo brothers, Orlando Bosch, "Tony" Cuesta and Luis Posada, in a CIA safe house on the outskirts of Miami." Escalante likewise disclosed how Posada Carriles and Guillermo Novo Sampoll, now both back in Miami, as well as Orlando Bosch, released in July 1990 by President George Bush Sr, appear on the list of suspects involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy drawn up by the Cuban state security agencies. Escalante described how in April 1963, Cuban-American capos in Florida and New Jersey created an organization called the Junta of the Cuban Government in Exile (JGCE), involving Carlos Prío Socarrás, an ex-president of Cuba; Felipe Rivero and Paulino Sierra González, a U.S. mafia representative. One month later there was a meeting on Bimini in the Bahamas, in the vicinity of Miami, attended by Carlos Prío, mafioso capo John Roselli; William Carr, the aide of Colonel King, head of the CIA Western Hemisphere Division; and Robert Rogers, the case officer. Subsequently there were meetings to the same end that included terrorists like Frank Sturgis, Howard Hunt, Orlando Piedra, Antonio (Tony) Cuesta, Eladio del Valle, Joaquín Sanjenis, Manuel Artime, Orlando Bosch, Antonio Veciano and... Luis Posada Carriles. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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