|
Washington and Posada Carriles:
Fighting Terror Selectively
MARJORIE COHN
Counterpunch
Friday May 11, 2007
Since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration has made the "war
on terror" the centerpiece of its domestic and foreign policy.
Bush cries terror where there is none - as in Iraq and in the communications
of ordinary Americans. Meanwhile, he protects the real terrorists
in our midst.
Luis Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born terrorist who has accurately
been called the Osama bin Laden of the Western hemisphere. He boasted
of helping to detonate deadly bombs in Havana hotels 10 years ago.
Declassified FBI and CIA documents at the National Security Archive
reveal that Posada was the mastermind of a 1976 bombing of a civilian
Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. He escaped from a Venezuelan
prison where he was being tried for his role in the first in-air
bombing of a commercial airliner. Posada then played a central role
in the illegal Iran-Contra scandal.
Posada entered the United States in March 2005 using false papers
and was charged in El Paso with lying to Immigration and Customs
officials. FBI agent Thomas Rice swore in a June 2005 affidavit
that "the FBI is unable to rule out the possibility that Posada
Carriles poses a threat to the national security of the United States."
Yet on April 19, 2007 Posada was released on bail despite being
a flight risk.
This stranger-than-fiction story has a logical explanation. Posada
has a long history of ties to the U.S. government. He became a CIA
agent in 1961. The U.S. government claims his CIA service ended
in 1976. But on April 30, Posada filed a motion in federal court
declaring that he continued to work for the CIA for more than 25
years. That puts him on the CIA's payroll when he engineered the
terrorist airline bombing. In his motion, Posada asserted the right
to present evidence of his CIA work as a defense to the perjury
charges. The specter of Posada revealing the dirty deeds committed
by the CIA when George H.W. Bush was director of the CIA was intolerable
to Washington.
The government was caught between a rock and a hard place. There
had been intense pressure to try Posada for his terrorist crimes,
as required by Security Council resolution 1373 and three international
treaties. Resolution 1373, passed in the wake of the September 11,
2001 attacks, mandates that all countries deny safe haven to those
who commit terrorist acts, and ensure that they are brought to justice.
These provisions of resolution 1373 are mandatory, as they were
adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The treaties require
the United States to extradite Posada to Venezuela for trial or
try him in U.S. courts for offenses committed abroad. The Department
of Justice elected instead to charge him with perjury for lying
about how he entered the United States in 2005.
But the government could not take the risk that Posada might sing
like a canary. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone
dismissed all charges against Posada. In her ruling, Cardone wrote
that "the Government engaged in fraud, deceit, and trickery"
by using a "routine" immigration interview to investigate
possible criminal charges against Posada. But questions about Posada's
prior criminal conduct were relevant to the moral character determination
at the immigration interview. Posada is not a "routine"
guy and his lawyer was present throughout the interview to protect
him against self-incrimination. Cardone found the government's tactics
"grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal
sense of justice." She then disingenuously claimed, "This
Court's concern is not politics; it is the preservation of justice."
It is shocking and outrageous that Luis Posada Carriles, whose
crimes rival those of al Qaeda, is now walking free in Miami. And
Cardone's decision is deeply political.
Rep. William Delahunt has called for a congressional hearing to
examine the U.S. government's role in promoting impunity in the
Posada case. Delahunt sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales requesting an explanation as to why the Justice Department
did not invoke the USA Patriot Act to declare Posada a terrorist
and detain him, stating, "The release of Mr. Posada puts into
question our commitment to fight terrorism."
That commitment is also belied by the way Washington has dealt
with the Cuban Five. These men peacefully infiltrated criminal exile
groups in Miami to prevent terrorism against Cuba. The Five turned
over the results of their investigation to the FBI. But instead
of working with Cuba to fight terrorism, the U.S. government arrested
the five Cubans and tried and convicted them of conspiracy-related
offenses. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in Atlanta reversed their convictions, finding they could not receive
a fair trial in Miami. In August 2006, a majority of the full circuit
rejected the earlier ruling and sent the matter back to the panel
where further appeals are pending. The U.S. media has been irresponsibly
silent on the case of the Cuban Five and the irregularities of the
trial.
The Los Angeles Times, however, showed singular insight on April
20 when it said the release of Posada "exposed Washington to
legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the war on terror." The
editorial criticized the U.S. for holding men at Guantánamo
without due process while releasing Posada. "The U.S. government
has done many odd things in 46 years of a largely failed Cuba policy,"
the Times said, "but letting a notorious terrorist walk stands
among the most perverse yet."
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
