Wrong Number BBS FILE NAME: BUSHBOMB.TXT
[Reproduced with permission from _The Spotlight_, June 22, 1992
The Spotlight 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003
Free use of this material is permitted provided that _The Spotlight_ is credited, including publisher's address]
BUSH LINKED TO TERROR BOMBING;
WILL U.N. ASK FOR EXTRADITION?:
Shocking Evidence Revealed
The evidence pointing to President Bush's role in the terrorist bombing of a Cuban airliner grows stronger with new revelations. Will the UN Security Council demand his extradition to Cuba or the World Court, as Bush and the UN have done in the case of Libyan suspects in a similar crime?
By Warren Hough Exclusive to The Spotlight
Washington, DC, 6/12/92 -- Long-suppressed records have turned up "shattering" new evidence of the role played by President George Bush in the midair bombing of a Cuban airliner and in its subsequent cover-up, Latin American officials conducting a "preliminary review" of the tragic incident have told the UN Security Council. The secret files reportedly confirm that in mid-1976, while serving as CIA chief, Bush was in "overall command" of a botched sabotage operation that ended in the crash of a Cuban passenger jet, killing all 73 aboard, The SPOTLIGHT has learned from diplomatic sources close to the investigation. A CIA agent identified as Luis Posada was arrested by Venezuelan authorities shortly after the Cuban plane exploded in midair during its takeoff from a Caribbean stopover, these sources say. Posada, a member of a sizable CIA contingent conducting covert operations from Venezuelan bases at the time, was charged with having smuggled an explosive device aboard the flight, and held for trial. Bush, anxious to disclaim all responsibility for such an atrocious terrorist outrage, ordered a "no-holds-barred" cover-up of the crime, the record suggests. "In order to take the heat off Posada, the CIA targeted another suspect, Dr. Orlando Bosch, a militant Cuban exile activist who advocated 'armed action' against the Castro dictatorship," recounted Felipe Rivero, the popular Miami broadcaster who is The SPOTLIGHT's correspondent in the region." Venezuela's secret police, known after its Spanish initials as DISIP, maintained close relations with the CIA and followed its lead. Bosch was imprisoned and charged with complicity in the bombing in Venezuela.
BUSH ORCHESTRATION
The next move in the cover-up reportedly orchestrated by Bush was to "recover" Posada, these sources day. In a well-organized and lavishly financed jailbreak, the alleged aerial bomber was spirited from Venezuela to Panama, where the CIA issued him a new set of identity documents under the name of Ramon Medina, a Guatemalan businessman. In the concluding move of the cover-up, Posada, now known as "Medina," was handed over to Felix Rodriguez, a senior CIA field agent with whom Bush had a personal working relationship, the record shows. Rodriguez gave Posada a series of covert jobs with CIA teams stationed in Central America, largely in order to protect him and "keep him happy," these sources related. "I, for my part, spent 11 years in various maximum security Venezuelan prisons," Bosch told a SPOTLIGHT reporter during a recent telephone interview. "During those years, I was put on trial four times for that airplane bombing. My case was heard by military, civilian and appellate courts. I was found innocent each time. But after each acquittal, the CIA came up with new 'suggestions' about my guilt."
PALE AND FRAIL
Finally the Venezuelan government told Washington it could no longer hold Bosch. Pale and in frail health, the falsely accused "terrorist" was flown back to Miami. "Here I could hope for no acquittal," recounted Bosch. "At the airport, immigration officials threw me into chains. I was held in solitary confinement for 29 months." Finally granted a provisional release after leading Cuban-American Republicans pressed his cause without letup, Bosch now lives in seclusion near Miami. "My status is that of a 'deportable' alien," he told The SPOTLIGHT. "If I engage in any political activity, or even if I talk too much, I can be tossed back into jail. I am in no position to comment on controversial questions -- not even in my own cause." Living under the assumed name and a small CIA paycheck in Central America also proved difficult for Posada, SPOTLIGHT correspondent Rivero reports. "A couple of years ago, two men walked up to Posada in a Guatemalan restaurant and shot him five times," Rivero related. "He survived the shooting by a sheer miracle. Badly injured -- he lives largely on liquefied food and walks with a crutch, I hear -- he has vanished into the 'protective custody' of the CIA." The reason for Posada's attempted assassination is known, however. He "drank a bit and began to talk too much," U.N. sources said. "The CIA needed an airtight cover-up of that airline bombing. When Posada turned talkative, his usefulness to Bush was at an end -- and, but for an iron physique and that miraculous survival, he would have been, too." Now the U.N. Security Council, having assumed jurisdiction over such international terrorist crimes when it clamped harsh sanctions on Libya last April, faces a tougher challenge: How to deal with a case of aerial mass murder in which the principal suspect happens to be THE INCUMBENT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.