Subject: how certain people get away with certain things Date: 13 Feb 2000 08:22:17 GMT From: atlasrecrd@aol.com (Atlasrecrd) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Conspiracies happen all the time. And people get away with it right under your nose. The Miami Herald September 30, 1998 U.S. urges clampdown on Cuban exile's terrorist actions JUAN O. TAMAYO and GLENN GARVIN U.S. diplomats and CIA officials in Central America have been ordered by Washington to prod their host governments to clamp down on a Cuban exile accused of terror attacks on Havana, U.S. officials say. Reinforcing Washington's message, the U.S. officials said, two FBI agents visited Guatemala last month to look into reports that the exile, Luis Posada Carriles, had tried to smuggle bombs from there to Havana. The message was delivered to Central American governments just days before U.S. prosecutors in Puerto Rico charged seven Cuban exiles with plotting to assassinate President Fidel Castro, although U.S. officials insist the two events do not represent any change in policy. Posada has lived almost openly in Central America for 13 years, and even worked for former presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala, even though he is a fugitive wanted in the midair bombing of a jetliner that killed 73 people. He recently admitted organizing a string of bombings in Havana last year. He is not a U.S. protégé, despite his work for the CIA in the 1960s and '70s and for Oliver North's campaign to supply CIA-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels from El Salvador from 1986 to 1988. Security officials in Honduras and El Salvador confirmed that U.S. diplomats and CIA staffers assigned to the local embassies began passing on strong warnings about Posada around the middle of August. ``It was a clear and tough message,'' said one security official in Honduras. Posada, now about 69 years old, has long been one of the Cuban exiles most active in violent attacks against the Castro government. He escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while awaiting trial in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and settled in El Salvador, though he has also lived in Guatemala and Honduras. Recent Herald reports have linked him to attempts to hire Guatemalans to deliver bombs to Cuba last year, and to kill Castro in Colombia in 1994 and the Dominican Republic last month. Few if any problems Yet, despite the charges and allegations against him, Posada appears to have had few if any problems with local security officials throughout his stay in Central America. Posada has often claimed to have friends in the FBI and CIA, as well as the Cuban American National Foundation, among Cuban Americans in the U.S. military and exiles living in the United States and Central America. He is also known to be well connected to conservative Central American military officers, politicians and businessmen who share his deeply anti-communist views and see Castro as a foe of their own nations. Posada worked as a security advisor for the late Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte around 1988, and is known to be close friends with active and retired military officers and some of the country's richest businessmen. Guatemalan security officials also appear to have done little after receiving a report from an informant last fall alleging that Posada was recruiting Guatemalans to deliver bombs to Havana while posing as tourists. Assassination attempt Posada worked as a security advisor to former Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo in 1989 and 1990, when he barely survived an assassination attempt by gunmen who pumped about a dozen bullets into his body. `We do believe that some local officials were basically clueless on Posada,'' said a U.S. official in Central America. ``But there's no question that others knew where he was and what he was up to.'' Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald