Major Bush Victory-Liberal Icon GUILTY? or White House Snow JOB !

A recent headline in the US press has been the conviction of Jose Padilla The story reads;

Major Bush Victory-Liberal Icon Padilla GUILTY
Aug 16, 2:37 PM (ET)By CURT ANDERSON, APNews MIAMI (AP)

Curt Anderson the AP flunky from the terrorist haven Miami has done a Tony Snow job par excellence in creating this piece of spin, that people like Rove and Goebbels would be proud of. George Bush as repeatedly opposed international justice, held prisoners incommunicado  without charge, violated the Geneva conventions, opposed civil trials in US courts, appointed bias Judges and is responsible for secret torture prisons from Romania to Somalia. Is it possible to believe any more of this regimes lies who were installed under such dubious elections using the infamous Diebold voting machines with the 'hanging chad'
votes


The US Central Intelligence Agency has recently released some 700 pages of what it called "the family jewels" This May, in Texas, Luis Posada Carriles walked free from a court after US immigration charges against him were dismissed. On the face of it, a fairly unremarkable event, but below its surface is a tale of international intrigue and espionage stretching back for close on five decades. In Latin America, several governments have labelled Posada one of the world's worst terrorists, responsible, they claim, for death and destruction throughout the region. So why, you might ask, is he still free and living in the US?

 JOSE PERTIERRA, LAWYER FOR THE VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENT: If Posada was named Mohammad and if instead of being from Cuba, nationalised Venezuelan citizen was instead from Saudi Arabia, you can bet your bottom dollar that Posada Carriles would have been extradited quicker than you could sneeze. But Posada is not only a Cuban naturalised Venezuelan citizen but he is a CIA operative so it's a much more difficult case.

 JOSE PERIERRA: Posada Carriles is the most notorious terrorist in the western hemisphere. He is responsible for torture and murder in places as far away as Panama, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba. He has participated in terrorist acts since the early 1960s.

  Until the September 11 attacks, the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 was described as the deadliest act of terrorism in the Americas. The pilot's last recorded words were a desperate plea for help.

Flight Recorder CUBANA 455: We have an explosion on board. We are descending immediately. We have a fire on board.

 CONTROL: Flight 455, you are clear to land. Roger.

CUBANA 455: Close the door. Close the door! That's worse. Stick to the water, stick to the water.
 Odalys Perez Rodriguez was 10 years old when her father's last words were recorded.

     In the last day, the US Central Intelligence Agency has released some 700 pages of what it called "the family jewels" secret files detailing, among other things, years of attempts to assassinate the communist Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. And, Dateline can reveal the life and times of a man right at the centre of those attempts. Last month, in Texas, Luis Posada Carriles walked free from a court after US immigration charges against him were dismissed. On the face of it, a fairly unremarkable event, but below its surface is a tale of international intrigue and espionage stretching back for close on five decades.  So why, you might ask, is he still free and living in the US?
At the old American Club in Havana a mock trial is under way. The accused has been the most wanted man in Latin America for over 30 years.

In 2005, the 77-year-old Posada was protesting his innocence in Texas.

LUIS FAUSTINO CLEMENTE POSADA CARRILES, NEWS FILE, (Translation): I want to emphasise that I had nothing to do with the act mentioned.

The governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua all want him to stand trial but when he turned up in the US with a false passport two years ago, he was only charged with immigration offences.

JOSE PERTIERRA, LAWYER FOR THE VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENT: If Posada was named Mohammad and if instead of being from Cuba, nationalised Venezuelan citizen was instead from Saudi Arabia, you can bet your bottom dollar that Posada Carriles would have been extradited quicker than you could sneeze. But Posada is not only a Cuban naturalised Venezuelan citizen but he is a CIA operative so it's a much more difficult case.

In a career spanning almost half a century, Luis Posada Carriles has dedicated his life to a crusade against communism, in particular Fidel Castro. And for much of that time he was working with the CIA.

JOSE PERIERRA: Posada Carriles is the most notorious terrorist in the western hemisphere. He is responsible for torture and murder in places as far away as Panama, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba. He has participated in terrorist acts since the early 1960s.

This Cuban documentary looks at the worst of the crimes blamed on Posada, the blowing up of a Cuban civilian aeroplane in Barbados in 1976. All 73 people on board were killed including the national youth fencing team. Nine days later more than a million Cubans gathered to pay tribute to the dead.

FIDEL CASTRO, NEWS FILE (Translation): We cannot say that the pain is divided among us. It is multiplied among us.

Until the September 11 attacks, the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 was described as the deadliest act of terrorism in the Americas. The pilot's last recorded words were a desperate plea for help.

SEAWELL, CUBANA 455: We have an explosion on board. We are descending immediately. We have a fire on board.

CONTROL: Flight 455, you are clear to land. Roger.

CUBANA 455: Close the door. Close the door! That's worse. Stick to the water, stick to the water.

PROSECUTOR, (Translation): Do you recognise the voices we just heard in the recording?

ODALYS PEREZ RODRIGUEZ, (Translation): Yes.

Odalys Perez Rodriguez was 10 years old when her father's last words were recorded.

ODALYS PEREZ RODRIGUEZ, (Translation): Throughout these years the pain my family and I have experienced has become a great sadness. A father's and a grandfather's love, I was unable to experience that.

The co-pilot also left a 10-year-old daughter behind.

AIMER ESPINOSA GOMEZ, (Translation): They have managed to cause my family great sadness. I have had but one single dream since 6 October 1976, I dream only of my father being found alive on some island, maybe as a castaway. I've always had these hopes that I know aren't real. But they've made me suffer for the last 30 years.

JOSE PERTIERRA: From the sea were recovered only 9 of the 73 bodies. And those nine bodies that were recovered were pieces of bodies. You can understand why the family members would want the person responsible for this, the mastermind of this gross murder to be tried for it.

  Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles were both arrested in Venezuela just days after the bombing. But although Bosch and Posada were held in jail for several years, they were never convicted.

ANN LOUISE BARDACH, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: One of the judges, one of the military judges, actually, talked about the pressure that was being put on the government to not to charge them or to absolve them. The pressure was tremendous.

LT COL FRANCISCO ESTRADA, (Translation): This is just the ongoing story of the US Government's protection of Posada Carriles. To charge him has a terrorist would be to charge themselves, as his bosses during all his activities against Cuba. That is all.

 Posada Carriles was a busy man. He ran a private detective agency out of this house in east Caracas. The office became an important front in the clandestine war against Fidel Castro. Among his 36 employees were the two Venezuelans who planted the bomb on Flight 455, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. This was the first time a civilian aircraft had been blown out of the sky in an act of mid-air terrorism. Within a few days Lugo and Ricardo were arrested in Trinidad, they confessed and led investigators straight to Posada.

In 1968 Posada moved from Miami to Caracas where he became chief of operations for Venezuelan intelligence. He has boasted about fighting a very dirty war against Cuban-backed communist guerrillas. In Caracas two women who were prisoners of Posada in 1972. Marlene Esquivel says that Posada - now calling himself Commissioner Basilio - even tortured her 3-week-old baby.

MARLENE ESQUIVEL, (Translation): He burned her several times with a cigarette. And Basilio himself covered the baby's nose. I couldn't... I kept moving her to stop him from... I was trying to but, yes, they tortured her a lot. They'd put a revolver here, and cock the trigger like this, and then they'd make a loud noise like a gunshot. That's how it was.

Eight months pregnant at the time, Marlene's sister Brenda says Posada, AKA Basilio, gave the order to kill her unborn child.

BRENDA, (Translation): They said to Basilio, "The lady is pregnant, she is due in days, what do we do with her?" He said, "Kill the seed before it's born. Destroy it before it's born!" She says they kicked and punched her stomach until she miscarried.

  In fact there are dozens of declassified documents from the CIA and FBI which paint a damning picture of Posada. Until at least June 1976 he worked with the CIA, which was then headed by George Bush, the father of the current President. Back then there were serious concerns about Posada's links to organised crime, as this CIA report shows:

CIA REPORT: "Posada may be involved in smuggling cocaine from Colombia, through Venezuela to Miami, also in counterfeit US money in Venezuela."

 In 1985 Posada escaped from jail, fled Venezuela and went back to work for the Americans. He soon became a key player in the Iran-Contra affair, a covert operation to bring down Nicaragua's government. Ronald Regan was in the White House, and his Vice-President was none other than former CIA chief George Bush.

  When the scandal broke, Colonel Oliver North famously started shredding the evidence, and Posada says he also did his bit covering up for the White House.

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: He said he ferried the American personnel out and that he destroyed very incriminating documents. And he said it to me suggesting that the US government owes him something for having done this.

In 1997, Posada reactivated his war on Cuba. Bombs began exploding in hotels and restaurants in the capital, Havana. In all, seven people were injured and a 32-year-old Italian tourist was killed.

  But it seems he had very little to worry about, as Ann Louise Bardach discovered when she met with a high-level source at the FBI.

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: He said, "You'd better sit down." He said in August 2003 they closed the Posada case and then green-lighted it for destruction. Why did the FBI when it chose to do some house cleaning destroy the files and evidence of the most important case they had in that building?

REPORTER: Why?

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: It's Miami.

 In May Texas the immigration charges against Posada were dismissed by a Federal District Court Judge.

  Since being released Posada has been spending time in Miami's Little Havana where he knows he is safe.

MAN, (Translation): He walks freely around 8th Street. We look after him.

 JOSE PERTIERRA: What makes his release so particularly dangerous is that Posada Carriles has never been the one to actually put bombs in buildings. He has directed others to do so. And now that he is free to roam the streets of Miami where so many of his fellow terrorists seem to be hiding, Posada Carriles is free to direct them to continue their terrorist ways. That's why so many people are concerned. I've spoken to congressmen and their aides who are appalled at the way the White House has protected this terrorist. The scandalous thing here is the way the US Government, in the midst of a so-called war against terrorism, has coddled and protected this particular terrorist.

CAMILLO ROJO, (Translation): If Bin Laden were to be found in some country tomorrow and they released him like they released Posada Carriles, how would the American Government react? How would the American people react? They would be outraged. They would be upset, they would be offended.

Credits; Reporter DAVID O’SHEA