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38 Years Ago Cubana Flight 455 Downed by CIA-Linked Terrorists

RIA Novosti | October 6, 2014

MOSCOW – Ekaterina Blinova – 38 years ago, on October 6, 1976, Cubana Airlines Flight 455 was downed by terrorists, only now known to be CIA operatives; experts further claim it was not the only case when CIA was sponsoring terrorists.

“The US Government, being consistent with its stated commitment to fight terrorism, should act without double standards against those who, from US soil, have carried out terrorist acts against Cuba,” said Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Barbados Lisette Perez, as cited by the Barbados Advocate, during the ceremony of commemorating the victims at the Cubana Monument at Paynes Bay, Barbados.

The sudden explosion of two bombs onboard Cubana Flight 455, traveling between Havana and Panama, led to the plane’s crash, killing all 73 passengers and five crew members.

“For the past three months, Dr. Castro’s opponents in the US have waged a terrorist campaign in the Caribbean against those who break bread with the Cuban leader,” the Guardian wrote on October 8, 1976, reporting on the tragic accident. The media source noted that a previous attempt to place explosives on the plane was carried out in July, 1976, when a suitcase bomb exploded just before it was loaded onto the plane. In the same month the “office of a Trinidad airline was bombed in Barbados and a mysterious fire in Guyana destroyed a large quantity of Cuban-supplied fishing equipment,” the Guardian wrote.

According to the media outlet, the terror acts were presumably conducted by right-wing Cuban exiles and were aimed at states with political and economic ties with Cuba. Four suspects, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano were arrested. In August 1985, Bosch was acquitted because of the lack of evidence, while Posada fled from prison under mysterious circumstances on the eve of the announcement of his verdict. Both Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch later ended up in the US.

Remarkably, in May 2005 the National Security Archive, an independent non-profit organization at George Washington University, released declassified CIA and FBI documents,  indicating Cuban exile Luis Posada was a former CIA agent and a mastermind of the terror attack on Cubana Airlines flight 455. It was also revealed Posada was linked to a series of bombing in Barbados in 1976. Additional CIA records confirmed Posada indeed served as an agent in the 1960s and early 1970s and worked as an informant until June 1976. Posada was on a payroll, “receiving approximately $300.00 per month from CIA,” according to the FBI’s Memorandum, written on July 14, 1966. In that period, Posada was involved in military activities directed against Fidel Castro. Particularly, under the guidance of the US intelligence services he  organized a military base in the Dominican Republic, drawing in fighters from different anti-Castro organizations.

According to the declassified CIA report, dated June 21, 1976, the US intelligence service was informed by Posada, allegedly, that  Orlando Bosch, the leader of extremist Cuban exile group was planning to place two bombs on a board of a Cubana Airlines Flight, traveling between Havana and Panama. The US security agency did not inform the authorities of Barbados, which in 1970s granted Cuba stopover rights for its passenger planes flying to Africa, nor did they warned Havana about the preplanned terrorist act.

Furthermore, in July of 1990, US President George H.W. Bush pardoned Orlando Bosch of all American charges and rejected an extradition request to those seeking to arrest Bosch for his terrorist activities. Interestingly enough, the Cuban terrorist was exempted from charges at the request of Jeb Bush, a Potential 2016 Republican Presidential Candidate. Washington had also refused to extradite Luis Posada to Venezuela, under the pretext that he could face torture and mistreatment there.

The National Security Archive cited Peter Kornbluh, the Director of the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project, who warned in 2005 that Posada’s presence in the US “poses a direct challenge to the Bush administration’s terrorism policy.” Although Bush claimed that no nation should shelter terrorists, surprisingly, the White House provided asylum to the murderers responsible for terrorist crimes against peaceful civilians.

Experts assert that the policy is mutable when Washington and its intelligence services use their own terrorists in order to threaten and undermine “disagreeable regimes.” For instance, political analysts point to the fact that ISIL fighters were trained in NATO camps located in Jordan and Turkey. The assistance, provided by the US to the so-called “Syrian opposition,” was aimed to oust Syria’s President al-Assad. In fact the Islamic State “was actually an integrated part of the ‘opposition movement’ supported, trained and financed by the West and its regional allies,” notes Andre Vltchek, an investigative journalist. Former CIA analyst Kenneth M. Pollack confirms that the US was carrying out military training of anti-Assad rebels in Jordan and Turkey in his article “An Army to Defeat Assad,” published in August 2014 in Foreign Affairs magazine. Some experts insist that the IS plot is a pretext for a large-scale military operation against Syria and Bashar al-Assad.

October 7, 2014 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Cuba, Syria, United States