Castro and Che’s Foiled (and Forgotten) 9/11

Posted By Humberto Fontova On May 6, 2011 

“I’m proud of the path of Osama bin Laden,” gushed Ilich Ramírez Sánchez
from a French prison in 2002. Ramirez was also known during the 1970’s as
“Carlos the Jackal,” and “The World’s Most Wanted Terrorist.” In 1967,
Ramirez-Sanchez was an eager recruit into Cuba’s “guerrilla” (terror)
training camps started by Che Guevara in 1959. “Bin Laden has followed a
trail I myself blazed,” he continued during an interview with the
London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. “I followed news of the September 11
attacks on the United States non-stop from the beginning. I can’t describe
that wonderful feeling of relief!”

“We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ very home,” raved Carlos
the Jackal’s idol and spiritual mentor (Che Guevara) in his Message to the
Tri-Continental Conference in 1966, “to his places of work and recreation.
The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus
we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination. We must keep
our hatred (against the U.S.) alive and fan it to paroxysm!”

Fortunately, on Nov. 17 1962, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI foiled the “war” Castro
and Che had planned for us “hyenas,” in some of our favorite “places of
recreation.”  On Saturday morning, November 17th, 1962, FBI headquarters in
Washington D.C. took on “all the trappings of a military command post,”
according to historian William Breuer.

As well it might. The night before an intelligence puzzle had finally come
together. The resulting picture staggered the FBI men. And these had served
at their posts during WWII and the height of the Cold War. They’d seen
plenty. Now they had mere days to foil a crime against their nation to rival
Hideki Tojo’s, including the Bataan Death March.

The agents and officers were haggard and red-eyed –but seriously wired. Like
hawks on a perch they’d been watching the plot unfold, sweating bullets the
whole time. It was nearing time to swoop down on Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara’s agents, busy with a terror plot that would have made Bin Laden
drool decades later.

Alan Belmont was second to J Edgar Hoover at the time. Raymond Wannall
headed the Bureau’s Intelligence Division. That nerve-jangling morning both
were in Belmont’s office just down the hall from Hoover’s. Both were burning
up the telephone lines to their agents in New York. On one phone they had
Special Agent John Malone who ran the New York field office. On other lines
they talked with several carloads of FBI agents slinking around Manhattan.
These were keeping a touch-and-go, but more or less constant, surveillance
on the ringleaders of the Cuban terror plot. 

Castro’s agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s
Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT.
The holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after
Thanksgiving.

  _____  

  _____  

A little perspective: For their March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of
them, that killed and maimed almost 2,000 people, al-Qaeda used a grand
total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che’s agents planned to set off five
times that explosive power <http://www.hfontova.com/fidel.html>  in the
three biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and
pulsing with holiday cheer on the year’s biggest shopping day. Macy’s get’s
50,000 shoppers that one day. Thousands of New Yorkers, including women and
children—actually, given the date and targets, probably mostly women and
children—were to be incinerated and entombed.

At the time, the FBI relied heavily on “HUMINT” (Human Intelligence.) So
they’d expertly penetrated the plot. One by one the ringleaders were
ambushed. The first and most important  was named Roberto Santiesteban and
he was nabbed while walking down Riverside Drive. As the agents closed in,
Santiesteban saw them and –took off!  And as he ran, Santiesteban was
jamming paper in his mouth and chewing furiously.

But six FBI agents were after him, all fleet of foot themselves. Finally
they closed the ring and “triangulated” the suspect. Santiesteban fell,
raging and cursing, flailing his arms and jabbing his elbows like a maniac.
They grabbed his arm and bent it behind his back just as he was reaching for
his pistol.

While this group got their man (and a vigorous workout), another FBI squad
had the much easier task of arresting a couple named Jose and Elsa
Gomez-Abad  as they left their apartment on West 71st Street. These two gave
in without a struggle. The FBI speculated that as many as 30 others might
have been in on the plot, but these were the head honchos. Had those
detonators gone off, 9/11 might be remembered as the SECOND deadliest
terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Santiesteban and the Gomezes
<http://babalublog.com/2010/03/cuba-experts-in-mighty-fine-company/>
belonged to the Castro-Cuban Mission to the U.N., and plead “diplomatic
immunity.”  Other plotters belonged to the New York Chapter of the Fair Play
for Cuba Committee, an outfit that became MUCH better known a year later on
that very week.

“We greeted each other as old friends!” (Jimmy Carter describing his visit
with Fidel Castro last month.)

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/06/castro-and-che%e2%80%99s-foiled-and-forgo
tten-911/

 



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