GAETON FONZI The arrogance of the Bush government matches Posada’s

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International

 “THE arrogance of power the Bush administration is now exhibiting regarding inquiries about Luis Posada Carriles having been illegally infiltrated back into Miami is the same sort of arrogance I saw in the man on a personal level when I first met him,” says Gaeton Fonzi, when asked about his thoughts on the asylum request the Cuban American terrorist has made in the U.S.

Fonzi is a former House Select Committee on Assassinations investigator, famous for having told the truth about the assassination conspiracy of President John F. Kennedy. His book on the subject, The Last Investigation, is considered by many specialists on this controversial subject to be their most respected reference.

Posada's lawyer filed his petition last week with Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the Department of Homeland Security, but remained hidden in an unknown location in South Florida.

A Cuban native who also has Venezuelan citizenship, the 77-year-old terrorist entered the United States illegally through Mexico about one month ago. Por Esto!, Yucatan's main daily newspaper, reported that a Miami shrimp boat, "La Santrina," owned by Cuban-American developer Santiago Alvarez,  picked up Luis Posada Carriles from Isla Mujeres on March 14 to secretly take him to Miami.

In an interview from Havana by e-mail, Fonzi recalled how he met Posada in the Venezuelan jail where he was imprisoned for the 1976 Cubana Airlines bombing in which 73 people died.

“I was then an investigator for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations and my immediate interest in Posada revolved around something Antonio Veciana had told me.”

Cuban American terrorist Antonio Veciana was the founder of Alpha 66 and was involved in a number of assassination attempts on Cuban President Fidel Castro, including one in Chile in 1971.

“The seed of that plan, Veciana said, was planted by his secret 'advisor,' an American he knew only as Maurice Bishop — that was the name, we later would learn, used by David Atlee Phillips before he became head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division.

“The Chile plan involved using two assassins credentialed as legitimate television reporters from Venezuela, their weapons hidden in their TV camera.” Veciana said that among those involved in setting up the scheme, obtaining press credentials and authentic documents from Caracas, was Luis Posada, Fonzi remembers. “ It was an easy task for Posada because at the time, although still on the CIA payroll, he was working for DISIP, the Venezuelan secret police.”

But something more than this plot was intriguing the Kennedy assassination investigator:  “Not the main plan but a subplot which Veciana said was the brainchild of Posada.

“Just as Oswald was set up to be the 'patsy' in the Kennedy conspiracy, Posada had devised a scheme where an unsuspecting co-conspirator was set up to be the 'patsy' in the Castro assassination plan. Where an Oswald imposter was sent to be photographed entering the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, thereby linking him to Castro, Posada had an individual resembling one of the gunmen photographed while approaching and speaking with Russian intelligence agents in Caracas, while actually only asking for a light for his cigarette.

“Counter-intelligence expert David Phillips would, of course, make sure those photographs would get world-wide distribution after Castro was assassinated. The whole plan collapsed, of course, when the gunmen froze into inaction at the last moment.”

When released, the House Select Committee’s report on the Kennedy assassination was described as "a full and complete investigation," as mandated by law when Congress established the committee.

But Mr Fonzi has a very different opinion: “In fact, the investigation was mostly a farce, stunted by political and bureaucratic restraints and sabotaged from within by the CIA. Time and again leashes were put on committee investigators who wanted to dig deeper into what looked like crucial areas to explore or important suspects to interview. That happened a lot to me and my investigative partner in Miami, Al Gonzales, a former ace homicide detective in New York.”

They had long pressed unsuccessfully for permission to interview both Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch under oath.

“Our request kept getting deferred for various reasons, not the least of which was chief counsel Robert Blakey’s strong insistence that organized crime killed JFK. However, as the committee’s time was running out it became apparent that its final report might reveal a few gaping holes in the committee’s 'full and complete' investigative effort.

“The depth of the effort or lack of follow-up didn’t matter, as long as the base was touched. It became obvious even to Blakey that not touching base with Posada and Bosch would result in a much too apparent omission in the final report.”

By that time, Posada and Bosch were in jail in Venezuela.

“Both Gonzales and I were pleased when Blakey gave us permission to go to Venezuela to interview them, even though they would not be under oath and the threat of possible additional charges for perjury.

“To arrange our interviews with Posada and Bosch we had to first meet with the Venezuelan chief of state security, Orlando García Vásquez whom, we later learned, was another Cuban exile on the CIA’s payroll. García was very cordial and cooperative and arranged for us to interview Posada and Bosch individually in a small visiting room in the Cuartel San Carlos, a prison that seemed to be run rather casually by the Venezuelan air force.

"In retrospect, what struck me most about the interviews with Posada and Bosch was the contrast in the degree of candor and, I believe, honesty. With his broad, dark brows and thick glasses, Bosch bore a prison pallor, a heavy weariness and air of dishevelment. He was cordial, expressed no reluctance to cooperate and, in the end, said he would be willing to sign a deposition or sworn statement to everything he had told us.”

Bosch’s assessment of the Kennedy assassination surprised the two U.S. investigators, although it was the same as Antonio Veciana’s. 

“Bosch said he had never studied the details but, unlike many of his fellow Miami exiles eager to stir up a U.S. reaction against Fidel, Bosch said he didn’t believe that Castro was involved. "What could Castro gain by doing that?" Bosch asked.

Bosch admitted he was "a good friend" of Veciana and was aware of his plot against Castro in Chile in 1971.

“He said, however, he did not learn of the details of the plan from Veciana but from an associate. That "associate," from other points Bosch revealed, was obviously his prison pal and co-conspirator in the airline bombing, Luis Posada. Bosch expressed deep anger that the two gunmen in the plot failed in their mission. He called them cowardly bastards.

The candid assessments offered by Bosch were in striking contrast to what they got from Luis Posada, says Fonzi.

“He strolled into the room casually self-assured, then a good-looking guy in his late forties, tanned and with no hint of prison pallor. His brown hair was trimmed and styled, his shirt tailored, his trousers sharply creased. Prison life in Venezuela seemed to agree with him.

“Posada put his feet up on his desk, smiled and admitted to very little. He said he did not know Veciana well, may have met him once or twice and was not involved with him in a Castro assassination plot. Posada was deliberately vague about the chronology of his association with the CIA. He said he did not remember when he left the agency’s employ. He also said he did not know David Atlee Phillips, the agency’s key figure in its secret war against Castro."

Posada did not know then that Phillips himself, aware that the committee had access to some agency records, had admitted that Posada was one of his operatives and worked with him closely on Chilean activities.

“The arrogance and disdain with which Posada treated official investigators sent by a U.S. congressional committee representing the people of the United States reflects the power of a secret government within the U.S. government.

"For at least a few decades now, a key part of that secret government’s power core has involved the political and financial influence of the anti-Castro Cuban community in Miami.

”From this community also came the secret government’s most effective covert action elements, including men like Luis Posada. It is no wonder now that men like Posada should return to their home base of Miami and seek, in their last years, solace and acceptance for their life-long dedication to terrorism as a political weapon,” concludes the investigator, who adds ironically, “Only in Miami.”

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