Miami FBI destroyed Posada’s file in 2003

by JEAN-GUY ALLARD

Hundreds of pieces of evidence disappeared from Héctor Pesquera’s FBI safe, while the Panamanian prosecution was asking the United States for documents to expand its evidence against the terrorist

ALL the original documents in Luis Posada Carriles’ file conserved for years in the Miami FBI safe were destroyed in 2003 on the orders of both Héctor Pesquera, then the FBI capo, and the U.S. attorney for South Florida, while the Panamanian legal authorities were trying to collect evidence of the terrorist’s criminal past with a view to his trial in that country.

This has just been revealed by the U.S. journalist Ann Louse Bardach during an interview with Amy Goodman on the latter’s well-known radio program "Democracy Now!" The author of an important investigation into the Miami mafia, published in 2003 under the title Cuba confidential, Bardach has exclusive sources among the Miami mafiosi and the FBI.

"My sources inside the FBI -- well, actually, I have several sources around this and I want to be a little careful with this situation, but they are certainly firsthand sources -- were very dismayed, because sometime after 2002 the evidence in the evidence room of the Miami FBI was destroyed -- I understand, shredded. And this involved the original Western Union cables, the faxes -- original evidence. And most courts demand original evidence, not, you know, copies or facsimiles. And somebody made the decision to close the case. And this would be 2003, when Posada was, I think, fairly much in the news. That's the year we think this happened.

"But in order to decide to close a case -- because you cannot destroy evidence unless the case is closed -- somebody had to sign off from the U.S. attorney's office, the supervising officer at the FBI had to sign off, and the SAC, the Special Agent in Charge, had to sign off. And then the case is closed, and then you are able to destroy evidence. The files live forever, but the evidence gets destroyed. It's actually called the bulky.

"And we called the FBI for comment, when we were going to press, and I spoke to their spokesperson, and she says… "Look, you know, when we close a case, you know, we're very overcrowded in that room, and we have to make room." Now, we're talking about paperwork. The evidence room also contains, like, machine guns or, you know, drugs that have been confiscated, etc. In the case of Posada, it really was paperwork. So you wonder how much space it was really taking up… I really do think there has to be an investigation into this," she concluded."

A MAFIOSI LIKE THE FBI CHIEF

In her book Cuba Confidential, published in 2003 (Vintage Books), Bardach recounted how Puerto Rican Héctor Pesquera arrived in Miami in 1998 as the new Special Agent in Charge of the South Florida FBI. This is the man who ordered the destruction of the Posada file and savagely persecuted the five Cuban unjustly imprisoned in the United States.

"The hopes of the agents and police officers were quickly extinguished. Pesquera, they said, began to fraternize with key members of the exile leadership, such as Alberto Hernández (formerly of the CANF); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; Domingo Otero (another former CANF hardliner) and Roberto Martín Pérez (...) Pesquera, according to an agent in his office, quickly made a brusque turn toward the right, and all investigations related to terrorism were abandoned," she wrote.

It was precisely in 2003, when that evidence was destroyed in Miami, that the Panamanian prosecution was preparing to try Luis Posada Carriles and his accomplices for the failed attempt on the life of Fidel Castro in the University Amphitheater, an action that would have provoked thousands of deaths.

In virtue of a bilateral treaty, the Panamanian Attorney general’s Office had already asked the U.S. embassy for the files on Posada and the Cuban-Americans involved in the assassination attempt.

After a lengthy wait, it received nothing more than one file of obsolete or insignificant documents without any real impact on the case being prepared.

In relation to the file compiled in Miami by the South Florida FBI, nobody in Panama ever knew of its existence.

BUSH, POWELL AND OTTO REICH, AT THE SERVICE OF THE MAFIA

In 2003, the case of Posada Carriles and his accomplices was the object of an intense campaign organized in Miami by the terrorist mafia with all means available both in the press and in the network of political contacts.

Roberto Martín Pérez, Feliciano Foyo and Horacio García, all former directors of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) whom Posada publicly designated as the "financiers" of his terrorist activities, were received in the state Department by Roger Noriega, assistant secretary on May 2, 2003.

On the 20th of that month, U.S. President George W. Bush invited 11 members of the Southern Florida ultra-right to the White House. Among them was Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez, now chief of the terrorist group Alpha 66.

On September 3 the preliminary hearing of the case opened in Panama.

On Friday, October 10, 2003, George W. Bush, accompanied by his Secretary of State Colin Powell, gave a cocktail party in the White House Rose Garden, attended by Ninoska Pérez-Castellón, diva of the Miami terrorist radio; and Luis Zúñiga Rey, ex-chief of the CANF paramilitary wing, both founder members of the Cuban Liberty Council.

Among other results, the encounter prompted Powell to discuss the issue of Posada Carriles with the mafiosi president Mireya Moscoso during his visit to Panama in December of that year.

On January 21, 2004, Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, met with Moscoso. In the next few days the rumor was circulating in Miami that Otto Reich had "fixed everything."

On March 18 the lightning trial of Posada Carriles and the other accused who received indulgent sentences ended… and the following August 26, just hours before leaving the presidency, Moscoso signed the pardon that allowed the four assassins to flee the country at all speed.

"THEY DIDN’T WANT THEIR FINGERPRINTS TO APPEAR…"

At the end of the interview with "Democracy Now!" Ann Louise Bardach related how Posada’s own lawyers told her that the only thing needed to detain the terrorist "is for Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice to certify him under the Patriot Act and then he can be held as long as they would like to detain him…"

"But Condoleezza Rice and Gonzales are not going to do this, because they’re close to the Bush family… They don't want their fingerprints on this…They told me absolutely nothing will happen before the election, and that -- you know, I’ve heard it from both ends, from all sides, that pretty much politics is determining every element of this case," confirmed the author of Cuba Confidential.

Added to the destruction of the Miami FBI documents is another audacity: a few days ago, the National Security Archives at the George Washington University announced that it has received a list of hundreds of secret documents on Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles from the U.S. government that are not to be declassified.

All of this is compounded by another deed that confirms the extension of that huge criminal network.

That same year of 2003, while the file of the "Bin Laden of the Americas" wound up in the shredder, five anti-terrorist Cubans were trying to prepare their appeal. They did so in solitary confinement in the various prisons in which they are being kept by those same individuals involved in that same Mafioso conspiracy that extends from Hileah to the White House.