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----- Subject: Miami Dade reversal - A Cuban terrorist payback to Bush family Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 20:34:03 -0700 12/07/00-Pacific News Service Miami-Dade Reversal -- A Cuban Terrorist Payback To Bush Family? Pacific News Service/ Peter Dale Scott If Governor 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 overt domestic propaganda effort." Certainly the Reagan-Bush Administration showered federal funds on the 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 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 from the era when he himself plotted to blow up a Cuban ship for the CIA. For example, Mas 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 US 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 US 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 Govt 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 Jorge 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, Jorge 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 $1000-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 US government would no longer tolerate anti-Castro terrorism by Miami Cuban extremists. One of the defense attorneys in that case, Juan Masini-Soler, commented that "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, if Governor Bush is elected President, he adopts the anti-Castro policies of his father. --------------------------------------- Courtesy of: The Carlos Balin~o Institute Cubans Abroad in Support of the Homeland and Revolution Jim W. Jaszewski
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