CANF’s President Admits Having Carried Out CIA Missions

Francisco José “Pepe” Hernández, president of the Cuban American National Foundation, reiterates that “just like me,” his friend Luis Posada Carriles is no terrorist

Jean-Guy Allard

Translation: Machetera

For Francisco José “Pepe” Hernández, the head of the Cuban American National Foundation, Luis Posada Carriles is not a terrorist.  The terrorist Hernández, who strives to advise President Obama, made this statement in an extremely long interview distributed from Miami by the Associated Press, in which he also admitted to having worked in different parts of the world on behalf of the CIA.

Pepe Hernández directly arranged the plans to assassinate Cuba’s president in Panama, in the year 2000.

It’s the second time this year that Hernández has acknowledged his links with the torturer, murderer and drug trafficker who, along with Orlando Bosch, planned and ordered the mid-flight destruction of a Cuban airliner in 1976, causing the death of 73 people.

“Public opinion presents him [Posada Carriles] as a terrorist, and he isn’t one,” said Hernández.  “Just like me, I always wanted to topple the Cuban government, but not terrorize the Cuban people,” he said.

Stating that he’s changed, “Pepe” Hernández says in a conversation with the journalist Laura Wides-Muñoz, that the current U.S. president, Barack Obama, canceled the restrictions on Cuban-American travel to Cuba, because the “Foundation” recommended it.

The current CANF president was one of the organization’s first directors, created at the beginning of the 1980’s by Jorge Mas Canosa, under arrangements made by the Central Intelligence Agency, which wanted to create a Cuban-American lobby capable of buying space for itself with Washington politicians.

He Was Never Accused of Being the Owner of a 50-Caliber Weapon on La Esperanza

According to Antonio “Toñín” Llama, a dissident ex-CANF director, “Pepe” Hernández was named the head of his paramilitary group at the annual meeting of the organization in June of 1992.

In 1997, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped the La Esperanza yacht in Puerto Rican waters.  The yacht, belonging to Llama, with its six crewmembers, was headed for Isla Margarita, with the intention of assassinating the Cuban President, Fidel Castro, at the Ibero-American Summit.  One of the 50-caliber weapons found on board belonged to Hernández, who was never accused thanks to his CIA connections.

At 73 years of age, in an AP interview, he tells, as though it was something courageous, how he worked as a CIA agent in the first years of the Cuban revolution, with the mercenary troops who were operating then in Cuba on the agency’s behalf.

Taken prisoner during the failed invasion at Playa Girón, Hernández joined the U.S. Army where, the text of the interview says enigmatically, he “worked with espionage services during the Vietnam war.”

“He also carried out missions for the CIA in the Middle East and Africa,” revealed the source without further details.  “He says that on one occasion he spent six hours hidden in a closet at the Hilton hotel in Nairobi, during a failed coup d’etat in Kenya in 1982.” (Coincidentally, Kenya is the country President Obama’s father came from.  He died in Nairobi that same year, 1982, in an automobile accident.)

Hernández “trained people at Fort Benning, the CIA’s terror academy in Georgia, along with Jorge Mas Canosa and Luis Posada Carriles,” according to the article.

The CANF Distributed “Millions of Dollars to Politicians”

In a clear confirmation of the corrupt procedures dominant in the country of Uncle Sam, which likes to lecture others about its form of “democracy,” the interview indicates how the Foundation “came to be one of the strongest lobbying groups in Washington and distributed millions of dollars to politicians from all around the country.”

On the other hand, the CIA-CANF mafia boss confirmed that this satellite of Yankee intelligence “convinced Congress to cancel its prohibition on aid to paramilitary organizations in Angola,” and that it was acting on the behalf of Mas Canosa “and other exiles,” who set up a “rebel radio” station for the mercenary forces at the service of the South Africans and the CIA itself.

The current CANF president avoids answering questions about the financial support and other arrangements it made for Posada during his terror campaign in Cuba, which in 1997 caused the death of a young Italian-Canadian, Fabio Di Celmo.

Nor does he speak of the presence of CANF directors in the plot to assassinate the Cuban president in 2000, in Panama, where Posada was taken prisoner and sentenced for his terrorist activities.

The AP appears not to know it, but the CIA and even the FBI knew very well that this assassination plan was arranged directly by Francisco “Pepe” Hernández, and Alberto Hernández, and how the terrorists Gaspar Jiménez and Antonio Iglesias delivered CANF money in Central America for the purchase of weapons and explosives.

The news agency did not question him about his role in Posada’s escape from prison in Venezuela, where he was awaiting trial for the destruction of the Cuban civilian airliner.

Frayle: He’ll Never Take Off the Wolf’s Clothing

For Percy Alvarado Godoy, Cuban Security’s Agent Frayle, whom Posada taught how to make bombs, at the request of the Cuban American National Foundation, Hernández’s testimony, distributed by the AP, is a long succession of lies.

“It’s clear that Pepe Hernández will never shed his wolf’s clothing, although to the [AP] journalist apparently, he came across as a sheep.  I know very well, because he was the one who dealt with me as a member of the Cuban National Front, CANF’s paramilitary cell, in order to carry out a series of studies on the vulnerability of various social, economic and political objectives on the island, which included GPS mapping, filming, designing plans and photography, with a view toward carrying out later attempts on the same.

“Many of them, such as the CIMEQ hospital and the International Cira García clinic were not objectives of a military type.

“Pepe Hernández pressured me on repeated occasions to put a powerful explosive device in the Tropicana cabaret, on November 24, 1994, when there would have been 1,150 Cubans and tourists.  His objective was to thwart tourism, even if it meant causing mourning in hundreds of homes around the world,” recalled Agent Frayle.

“An action such as this is the product of a sick and murderous mind, not of a supposed freedom fighter for his people,” he concluded.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

Reflections by Comrade Fidel

CUBA:  A TERRORIST COUNTRY?

Thursday, April 30 was unlucky for the United States. On that day it occurred to them to include Cuba yet again on the list of terrorist countries. Committed as they are to their own crimes and lies, perhaps even Obama himself was unable to untangle himself from that mess. A man whose talent nobody denies must feel ashamed about the empire’s cult of lie. Fifty years of terrorism against our Homeland come to light in an instant.

What can one explain to those who know about the horrific event of a
plane blown up in mid-flight, with its passengers and crew, about the
participation of the United States in the events, the recruiting of
Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles, and the supplying of explosives,
funds and the complicity of the intelligence agencies and the
authorities of that country? How can one explain the campaign of
terror that preceded and followed the mercenary invasion of the Bay
of Pigs, the attacks on our coasts, towns, transport and fishing
vessels, the terrorist actions inside and outside of the United
States? How can one explain the hundreds of frustrated assassination
plots on the lives of Cuban leaders? What can one say about the
introduction of viruses such as hemorrhagic dengue and swine fever
that genetically had never even existed in the hemisphere? I am
merely mentioning some of the acts of terror in which the United
States has played a part, the ones recorded in their own declassified
documents. Don’t these events embarrass the current administration?

I could put together an endless list of abhorrent activities.

At our request, Bruno Rodríguez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent me
the exact words used by a France-Presse reporter to ask him a
question on April 30, along with his compelling answer.

Rigoberto Díaz, of AFP: “Coinciding with the final moments of this
meeting and also on a subject that has been dealt with during this
event, the US government has once more included Cuba on the list of
countries sponsors of terrorism along with Sudan, Iran and Syria.
I would like to hear your opinion on this.”

Bruno’s reply:

“We do not recognize any political or moral authority to the US
government to make any list on any subject, or to “certify” good or
bad behavior.

The Bush government was “certified” by world public opinion as a
government violating international law; as being aggressive and
war-mongering; as a government that tortures and that is responsible
for extrajudicial executions.

“Bush has been the only president who has boasted in public, in the
US Congress, about having carried out extrajudicial executions. That
is a government which kidnapped people and transported them
illegally, created secret prisons that nobody knows whether they are
still in existence, and a concentration camp where torturing is going
on in the part of territory usurped from the Republic of Cuba.

“In the matter of terrorism, the US government has historically held
a long record of State terrorism acts, not only against Cuba.

“In the US, Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles are free to come and
go; these two who are responsible for numerous terrorist acts
including the blowing up of a civilian Cuban plane in mid-flight.
There is no answer to Venezuela’s official request for the
extradition of Posada Carriles who is being tried for various
charges, but not as a notorious international terrorist.

“The US government held a travesty of a trial against the five young
Cuban anti-terrorist activists who are today being held as political
prisoners in its jails.

“The US government covers up acts of State terrorism committed by
Israel against the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples. And, it
kept silent before the crimes taking place in the Gaza Strip.

“Therefore one shouldn’t recognize that the United States has any
moral authority whatsoever, and I, frankly, believe that nobody pays
any attention or reads those documents, among other things, because
the author is an international outlaw in many of the matters which it
criticizes.

“Cuba’s position against all manifestations and forms of terrorism,
wherever they may be committed, against any state that may be
affected, in any form it may be carried out, for whatever purpose, is
clear and consistent with its actions.

“Cuba has been the victim of terrorism for many years and it has a
completely clean record in this matter. Cuban territory has never
been used to organize, fund or execute terrorist acts against the
United States of America. The State Department which issues those
reports cannot say the same.”

This declaration, issued at the ministerial meeting of the
Non-Aligned Countries, is not yet widely known by the population
which in these days has been receiving plenty of news of all kinds.
If the State Department wishes to discuss this with Bruno, there is
sufficient information to bury it in its own lies.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 2, 2009
7:12 p.m.

http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_conten…

Pochi giorni dopo i misteriosi attentati contro gli Stati Uniti dell’11 settembre 2001, il presidente Bush, in un discorso a camere riunite al Congresso a proposito della incombente minaccia del terrorismo internazionale di matrice islamica, ebbe a domandarsi: “Perchè ci odiano?“. A questo quesito, Bush junior, in una sorta di dialogo con se stesso, rispose: “Odiano ciò che vedono in questa camera: un governo democraticamente eletto. I loro leaders si auto-eleggono. Odiano le nostre libertà, la nostra libertà di religione, la nostra libertà di parola, la nostra libertà di votare e di riunirci e di essere in disaccordo gli uni con gli altri”. A bocce ferme e lontano dalle opinioni dal sapore ideologico dei salotti televisivi, Paolo Barnard tenta di rispondere alla domanda di Bush. Lo fa con un saggio che non vuole essere un esercizio della logica e della ragione, uno sfogo ideologico o la mera esposizione di un punto di vista sulla situazione geopolitica internazionale, ma una elencazione di fatti, documenti, citazioni e incontri avvenuti nel corso di incredibili esperienze che hanno visto il reporter freelance sfidare situazioni al limite rischiando più volte la sua incolumità. Sembra quasi di leggere un romanzo d’avventura quando Barnard racconta dell’intervista a Rufina Amaya, unica sopravvissuta di un feroce massacro di 1200 contadini salvadoregni ad opera di terroristi addestrati e armati dagli americani, raggiunta arrampicandosi su una frana sotto un nubifragio. Le innegabili responsabilità dei governi americani degli ultimi sessant’anni vengono incontrastabilmente smascherate citando, tra le altre cose, le vicende di Orlando Bosch e Emmanuel Constant, terroristi sanguinari al soldo della CIA, che negli anni ‘60 e ‘70 trucidarono interi villaggi e comunità, compresi donne e bambini, con l’obiettivo di rovesciare i governi cubani e haitiani e convertirli al cosiddetto Libero Mercato, perseguendo i soliti criminali interessi delle istituzioni finanziarie internazionali, e che oggi trascorrono serenamente i loro giorni in quel di Miami e New York coperti dal governo complice di Washington. Tutto questo mentre Bush annuncia al mondo che, nella sua Guerra al Terrorismo, non farà distinzioni tra i terroristi e chi li ospita. Questo libro si presenta come un diario di bordo in cui l’autore annota i progressi della sua inchiesta sulle nefandezze celate sotto la coperta della bramosia di potere a stelle e strisce. E non solo. Come Barnard scrive nella prima di copertina: “Se vogliamo sconfiggere il terrorismo dobbiamo smettere di essere terroristi. E fermare Stati Uniti, Israele, Gran Bretagna, Russia”. Il reporter ha spulciato decine di archivi segreti portando alla luce numerosi documenti ufficiali che provano i rapporti tra ufficiali britannici e americani, da una parte, e guerriglieri e dittatori sanguinari dall’altra. Documenti ‘Top Secret’ che attestano gli ingenti finanziamenti che permettono all’esercito di Israele di continuare a seminare terrore in Palestina. La storia che Barnard racconta del conflitto in Medioriente stride fortemente con quella narrata dai principali organi di informazione. Da più parti si giustificano gli attacchi israeliani come giusta reazione agli attentati dei palestinesi di Hamas. Ma cosi non è, spiega Barnard. La storia del conflitto israelo-palestinese è infarcita di omissis e falsità. I soprusi degli arabi iniziano un secolo fa, quando Theodor Hertzl teorizzò l’allontanamento dei palestinesi dalle loro terre per consentire la creazione di uno Stato d’Israele che unisse sotto un’unica bandiera gli ebrei sparsi in tutto il mondo, dando origine al movimento del Sionismo con il primo congresso di Basilea del 1897. Molte dichiarazioni sioniste, puntualmente riportate da Barnard, testimoniano che la scelta dei territori occupati dai villaggi palestinesi come sede del nascente Stato ebraico non prende spunto dalle Sacre Scritture, ma è frutto di decisioni dettate dall’opportunità del momento. La Palestina era soltanto una delle opzioni dei sionisti, tra cui vi era anche l’Argentina. L’espropriazione delle terre palestinesi fu condotta da spietate bande armate ebree, come Irgun e Stern, commettendo atrocità di ogni genere nei confronti di un popolo che aveva l’unica colpa di non essere organizzato né politicamente né militarmente per poter organizzare una qualunque resistenza, e che quindi era totalmente inerme. Mi piacerebbe sapere cosa pensano oggi i sostenitori tout court della causa israeliana riguardo alle parole di Aharon Cizling, primo ministro dell’agricoltura dello Stato di Israele, quando disse, il 17 novembre 1948, all’indomani della deportazione dei palestinesi: “Adesso anche gli ebrei si sono comportati come nazisti, e tutta la mia anima ne è scossa”. Barnard tiene a precisare, però, che la sua non vuole essere una difesa o una giustificazione dell’altrettanto criminale terrorismo palestinese a danno della popolazione israeliana degli anni successivi all’occupazione dei Territori del 1948, ma è semplicemente un tentativo di riportare un barlume di verità e obiettività su una storia fin troppo mistificata dalla propaganda mediatica occidentale: in sostanza, il terrorismo palestinese è sbagliato, ma comprensibile. Attraverso le dichiarazioni di chi vive dentro il conflitto in Medioriente e sostenuto da fonti non sospette, quali quelle americane, inglesi e israeliane, Paolo Barnard imbastisce una preziosa lezione di storia contemporanea, che da qualche settimana è possibile anche ascoltare direttamente dalla sua voce in una serie di video pubblicati sul suo canale YouTube. Questi video, insieme alla toccante presentazione del libro a Mezzolara (BO) , da oggi saranno sempre presenti su questo blog. Perchè queste verità siano sempre a portata di mano. Il saggio si conclude con un reportage di Giorgio Fornoni sulla Cecenia devastata dalle pulizie etniche operate dai soldati russi. Anche Fornoni, come Barnard, proviene da Report ed ha realizzato decine di reportage straordinari da ogni angolo del mondo. ‘Perchè ci odiano?’ è un viaggio sconvolgente all’interno della malvagia dell’uomo, della sua spietatezza, della sua ipocrisia. Armato di coraggio, tenacia nella ricerca della verità e giustizia, oltre che di talento giornalistico, Paolo Barnard riesce nell’impresa di descrivere il Male dei nostri tempi, una sorta di (in)cubo dalle infinite facce, un prisma che rifrange la vita in uno spettro colorato di morte, menzogna e disinformazione. Questo lavoro si lega bene al libro di Michel Chossudovsky ‘Globalizzazione della povertà e Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’, arricchendo l’idea di uno scenario internazionale che vede un manipolo di menti criminali annidate a Washington e Londra, che si servono di bracci ‘ufficiali’, come FMI e Banca Mondiale, e bracci ‘non ufficiali’, come le milizie armate addestrate dalla CIA, per diffondere una cultura imperialista su scala globale con il fine occulto di ottenere il controllo mondiale delle risorse e delle politiche. Da ultimo, invito chi legge questo blog a considerare i libri di cui si parla come mattoni di consapevolezza connessi tra loro a formare un grande castello di conoscenza che siamo chiamati a impegnarci nel diffondere.

AMERICAN TERRORISTS: “THIS IS HEZBOLLAH IN FLORIDA”

Think the U.S.’s secret war against Fidel Castro ended 40 years ago? Think again.

On this week’s Ring of Fire radio show, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interviewed Joe Conason of the Nation Institute about an explosive investigative report which recently appeared in Salon on the terrorist training camp in South Florida known as Alpha 66.

Conason (also a longtime friend of Bobby’s) explained how Alpha 66 has been allowed to operate and engage in Operation Mongoose-type mischief against Cuba since 1961, even though the U.S. government supposedly abandoned such activities during the Kennedy administration. The truth of the matter, as this article details, is quite another story.

Here is an excerpt from Salon.com:

(At the entrance to the Alpha 66 training camp outside Miami. Image by Dando Valle.)

The “Terrorists” of South Florida

Anti-Castro Cuban exiles who have been linked to bombings and assassinations are living free in Miami. Does the U.S. government have a double standard when it comes to terror?

Editor’s note: Research support was provided by the Puffin Foundation Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

By Tristram Korten and Kirk Nielsen

Jan. 14, 2008 | OUTSIDE MIAMI, Fla. — On a hot subtropical Sunday, deep in the humid brush bordering the Everglades west of Miami, Osiel Gonzalez squints down the worn barrel of an AK-47 rifle and squeezes the trigger. With a crack and kick the bullet whizzes over a field of neatly trimmed grass and hits a human silhouette on a paper target 40 yards away.

Gonzalez wipes the sweat off his brow and smiles. Perspiration stains the neck and armpits of his camouflage jacket. All around him are men in fatigues, some flat-bellied on the grass shooting rounds, others cleaning their weapons or picking through ammunition boxes. The air is thick with cigar smoke. At age 71, Gonzalez is still one of the best marksmen at this training camp for Alpha 66, the paramilitary Cuban exile group formed in 1961 “with the intention of making commando type attacks on Cuba,” as the organization’s Web site baldly puts it. Gonzalez hopes to put his skills to use when the second revolution comes, the one that will tear his homeland free from the grip of communist dictator Fidel Castro. At that point Gonzalez hopes to have a Cuban soldier in his sights, not a paper silhouette.

Plans to attack Cuba are constantly being hatched in South Florida. Over the years militant exiles have been linked to everything from downing airliners to hit-and-run commando raids on the Cuban coast to hotel bombings in Havana. They’ve killed Cuban diplomats and made numerous attempts on Castro’s life.

But, other than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country’s government. Though separate anti-terror laws passed in 1994 and 1996 would seem to apply directly to their activities, no one has ever been charged for anti-Cuban terrorism under those laws. And 9/11 seems to have changed nothing. In the past few years in South Florida, a newly created local terrorism task force has investigated Jose Padilla and the hapless Seas of David cult, and juries have delivered mixed reviews, but no terrorism charges have been brought against anti-Castro militants. The federal government has even failed to extradite to other countries militants who are credibly accused of acts of murder. Among the most notorious is Luis Posada Carriles, wanted for bombing a Cuban jet in 1976 and Havana hotels in 1997. It is, perhaps, a testament to the power of South Florida’s crucial Cuban-American voting bloc — and the political allegiances of the current president.

In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation’s 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora. Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups — Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana — are so common they’ve taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons.

But Alpha 66 members are eager to remind you that even if they are graying and prosperous they are not toothless old tigers. Their Web site boasts that “in recent years” they’ve sabotaged Cuba’s tourist economy by attacking hotels in the beach resort of Caya Coco. At the group’s headquarters in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, the walls are hung with the portraits of dozens of men who have died on Alpha 66 missions.

To reach Alpha 66’s South Florida camp you have to drive to the farmlands west of Miami’s sprawl, then wait for a guide. You follow the guide down a winding, pitted dirt road for a few miles until you get to a gate and a yellow watchtower hung with an old-fashioned school bell. Behind a wall of trees and shrubs is a compound that looks like a hunting lodge. A low-slung wood-plank bunker with a deck and awning provides refuge from the sun.

Before hitting the range, the men — there are no women here today — had done maneuvers, marching in double file around the field, while a short, barrel-chested former Cuban army officer named Ivan Ayala barked directions: “Columna izquierda!” Many of the aging, uniformed men laboring to make it around the field are veterans of the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and alumni of Castro’s jails. Some, like Osiel Gonzalez, even fought alongside Castro against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, before Castro’s turn toward communism. Most, if you believe them, have a “commando” mission or two with Alpha under their belts — landing on a remote beach and burning sugar cane fields, or strafing a shoreline with machine-gun fire. In other words, they’ve walked the walk of counterrevolutionary violence, even if it’s now reduced to a shuffle.

They deny they have anything in common with the militants hiding in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “No, we are not terrorists,” says Gonzalez, the second-in-command and a co-founder of the group who, when he is not donning fatigues and shouldering a rifle, is a financial consultant. “We don’t want to kill civilians.”

“Our goal is to free our country for our children and grandchildren,” drawls Al Bacallao, who has already retreated to the porch’s shade behind Gonzalez and the shooting range. The 61-year-old Bacallao was raised in Georgia after arriving from Cuba at age 8, and is the rare Cuban exile with a Southern twang. “The United States fought for its liberty, why can’t we?”

But Alpha members may have a fluid definition of what a civilian is. Raking the coast with .50-caliber machine-gun fire certainly does not exclude civilian casualties, nor does attacking tourist spots. By his own admission, Bacallao, who joined Alpha 66 23 years ago, has gone on several missions to Cuba. In 1993 U.S. authorities arrested him and a boatload of other men setting out for the island.

…”Let me tell you, we were treated like animals,” he says. “And all we were trying to do was liberate our country.”

But if he was treated like an animal, he is not in a cage. Federal prosecutors charged him and his companions with illegal weapons possession but a judge dismissed the case against most of the men, and a jury found the rest not guilty. Like other anti-Castro exiles before him, despite violent acts he is free to continue reporting to the training camp, and free to continue preparing for counter-revolution.

…Judy Orihuela, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Miami office, insists the agency will investigate any group that intends to violate U.S. law and poses a violent threat. At the Department of Justice in Washington, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the national security division, rejects the notion that federal law enforcement shows leniency toward exile militants. Boyd maintains the DOJ would never attempt to influence a local case for political reasons and is blind to community or political pressure. “We pursue charges based on the evidence, not on other considerations,” he says.

“That’s sheer bullshit,” counters Wayne Smith, who was chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1982, making him the de facto U.S. ambassador to Havana. Smith, who now runs the Cuba Program at the D.C.-based Center for International Policy, invokes the names of two of the most notorious Cuban exiles to argue that the U.S. does, in fact, play favorites. “We are certainly not applying these laws objectively in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and a whole lot of others who have been involved in terrorist activities. We say that countries must take action against terrorists, but we’re clearly not. And I think it’s because we’re sympathetic to their actions.”

At the beginning of Castro’s reign, the U.S. was more than sympathetic to the militant exiles. In the 1960s, the U.S. government actively encouraged and supported anti-Castro violence, including the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. “Throughout most of the 1960s, rolling back the Cuban revolution through violent exile surrogates remained a top U.S. priority,” says Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive and a specialist on U.S. policy toward Cuba. With exile involvement, the U.S. government made numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1961 and 1975, though the number cited in the title of the British documentary “638 Ways to Kill Castro” may be an exaggeration. Many anti-Castro Cubans went to work for U.S. intelligence and compiled long résumés of covert activity. In the 1980s, some assisted with the Reagan administration’s covert effort to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Cuban-American entanglement with the CIA eventually bled into U.S. politics; two of the five “plumbers” who broke into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters at the Watergate in 1972 were Cuban-American. Tolerance for anti-Castro militancy, meanwhile, also had domestic consequences. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s and into the ’80s, exiles carried out dozens of bombings and assassinations in Miami and other American cities, targeting people they deemed too accommodating to the Castro government.

…Still, however, the militants continued to train within the borders of the U.S., and to amass weaponry. Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson remembers attending briefings during Caribbean war game exercises from 1992 to 1997 where he learned of the exiles’ capabilities. “We would always be fed this intelligence and I was astounded at how many suspected caches of arms they had access to not just in Florida, but in California, New Jersey and other places; light machine guns, grenades, C4, dynamite, all manner of side arms and long arms,” recalls Wilkerson, who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. “It was a veritable terrorist haven. This is Hezbollah in Florida, if you’re looking at it through Havana’s eyes.”

Story continues here. Read it and forward the link to your friends.

Copyright 2008 Salon.com.