Posada Carriles: The declassified files
Campaign News | Saturday, 21 May 2005
CIA and FBI documents detail career in international terrorism and connection to US
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm
Washington D.C. May 18, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.
Both documents were featured last night on ABC Nightline's program on Luis Posada Carriles, who was detained in Miami yesterday by Homeland Security.
In addition, the Archive posted the first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner." This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down.
There is no indication in the declassified files that indicates that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist threat against Cubana planes. Still classified CIA records indicate that the informant might actually have been Posada himself who at that time was in periodic contact with both CIA and FBI agents in Venezuela.
CIA, June 22, 1976, Report, "Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists to Blow Up a Cubana Airliner" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/19760622.pdf
FBI, October 9, 1976, "Unknown Subjects; Suspected Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/19761009.pdf
State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, October 18, 1976, Memorandum, "Castro's Allegations" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/19761018.pdf
