40 years ago a group of terrorists, assassins and drug dealers met in a small town called Bonao in the Dominican Republic to organize ways to murder and terrorize innocent civilians to further their cause; on June 29th of 1976. Their cause was not Islamic extremism and their enemy was not the United States, their cause was anti-Communism and a hatred for Fidel Castro, and the United States was their friend and not their enemy.
CIA: neighborhood terrorist |
While researching for my book “Inside The CIA’s Secret War In Jamaica,” I found out that Jamaica was just a part of the CIA’s war in Latin America and the Caribbean, a war that not only involved propaganda and economic sabotage, but also drugs, organized crime and terrorism.
The men who met in Bonao, were not only bonded together by their common cause, they also were all trained by and worked with the American Central Intelligence Agency. These men included Orlando Bosch, a fugitive from justice who was deported to the DR after America refused to take him at the request of CIA Director George HW Bush, and Luis Posada Carilles whose acts of terrorism would later give him the nickname, “The Bin Laden Of The Americas.”
Bosch and Posada along with other notorious terrorists, assassins and criminals, many from the CIA sponsored anti-Castro Cuban militia Brigade 2506, would form an organization dedicated to violence extortion and intimidation. Other members would include cocaine trafficker and later Contra asset Frank Castro, money launderer Guillermo Hernández Cartaya and two notorious assassins, Guilermo Novo and his brother Ignacio.
They would unite under one common group name: CORU, Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, and embark on a terror spree that would devastate Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States. A little over a week after their meeting, CORU would take credit for bombing a plane in Kingston, Jamaica. Although there were no injuries or casualties, if the plane had not been late the bomb would’ve killed 30 people.
Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and the Jamaican government would alert American authorities to the culprits of the bombing, but they would be ignored. At the time, the CIA was launching a massive destabilization campaign against Michael Manley due to his progressive polices, ties to Cuba and Fidel Castro and his opposition to Apartheid. The CIA’s campaign against Manley would lead to an assassination attempt on Bob Marley and the creation of the Jamaican Shower Posse drug cartel, which I detail in my book.
The CORU terrorists would continue their terrorism spree all over Latin America and the Caribbean and eventually to the USA. They would take credit for bombings in Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados and the attempted kidnapping of the Cuban ambassador to Mexico; in which his chauffeur was murdered.
On the 21st of September, 1976, CORU terrorists would bring their devastation to the United States. While driving down Embassy Row in Washington DC, Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean ambassador to the US, was murdered by a car-bomb along with his 25-year-old American assistant Roni Moffit in an incident that would inspire a scene in “Scarface.”
Letelier was a supporter of former Chilean president Salvador Allende, who was killed after the CIA-backed coup that brought the infamous dictator Augusto Pinochet to power. Pincochet would go on to harbor Orlando Bosch and other CIA-trained anti-Castro terrorists. Michael Townley, an agent for Pinochet’s secret service, would claim that he organized the murder along with Bosch and Posada; and delegated the Novo brothers and two other anti-Castro Cuban assassins.
One month after the CORU public execution of a diplomat and his American female assistant on Embassy Row, the anti-Castro terrorists would up the ante even further by killing 73 civilians; bombing an airplane in the biggest act of terrorism in the air of the time.
The same plane that CORU had bombed in Jamaica in July was flying to Barbados on the 6th of October, 1976, when an explosion sent it to the sea, killing all 5 crew members and 68 passengers, including the members of the Cuban fencing team.
Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano were caught in Trinidad and quickly told authorities they were ordered to bomb the plane by Bosch and Posada, who were later arrested in Venezuela. Both of them would admit to planning the bombing in interviews and in books several times.
Posada would escape from jail to Chile with Freddy Lugo in 1977 only to be extradited back to Venezuela, where he would stay in jail for another eight years. In 1985 he would once again break out of jail -- with the help of Jorge Mas Canosa, a good friend of George HW Bush -- to start working with another anti-Castro Cuban CIA agent -- Felix Rodriguez, another close friend of Bush -- training the Contras and assisting in their plan to arm them through the cocaine trade.
Posada would continue acts of terrorism against Cuba and assassination plots against Castro for the next 30 years and was recently charged with being behind a plot that would send 400 mercenaries to Venezuela to assassinate their President in 2013. Posada is still alive and living in Miami today, where he is considered a hero by many in the Cuban community there.
Orlando Bosch would be freed from Venezuela in 1987 with help from the American government. In 1990, he would be pardoned by President George HW Bush, who oversaw his terror spree while he was Director Of The CIA in 1976. Orlando Bosch would die a free man in 2011 after 50 years of terrorism, extortion, and assassination attempts.
Both Bosch and Posada were terrorists trained by the CIA who received the protection and support of the Bush family and their allies for their murderous careers. It is naïve to write them off as “rogue agents” when they served the same goal as the CIA and were protected and supported by that organization.
Several documents, pictures, and eyewitness accounts also trace Bosch and Posada along with George HW Bush to the JFK assassination. Maybe that can explain their license to kill and immunity and protection from justice their whole careers.
The events that happened 40 years ago are still very important to what goes on today. With many countries in the Caribbean affected by corruption, drugs, and violence, one has to examine the effect that CIA’s terrorism, propaganda, economic-sabotage and involvement in the drug trade has had on the region and what exactly their role in these countries is today.
I highly recommend everyone read my book “Inside The CIA’s Secret War In Jamaica” to get a better understanding of the history of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean in the past 50 years, a history that is often manipulated into propaganda and untold by the media and school system.
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