Granma on Kennedy

[John Dolva]

Those now protecting Posada also conspired against Kennedy

Jean-Guy Allard

• WHEN asked if those currently protecting the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami belong to the same Cuban-American mafioso family which conspired to assassinate Kennedy in the 1960s, Division General (ret.) Fabián Escalante Font, for years head of Cuban State Security, affirmed, "It’s the same mob."

For the man who has spent years investigating every aspect of the assassination of the former U.S. President, a number of the characters who remain linked to the terrorist mechanism giving support to Posada, were members of Operation 40, mounted by the CIA in parallel with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, to eliminate leaders of the Cuban Revolution and repress its supporters.

And, among these CIA hired killers appear various individuals linked to the assassination of JF Kennedy in Dallas.

"This is the root of all the terrorists," notes Escalante, in reference to that CIA-founded organization which is still active, with offices in downtown Miami, benefiting from FBI complacence and even protection, as well as that of district attorneys.

DEATH SQUAD ALONGSIDE THE INVADERS

Escalante recalled that the individuals selected in Miami by Joaquín Sanjenis, ex-chief of police during the Carlos Prío presidency in Cuba, included a number of people who are still living and active within terrorist circles in Florida.

"When preparations for the Bay of Pigs expedition began at the end of 1960, I think, Operation 40, the police intelligence and counterintelligence apparatus of the mercenaries, of the invasion brigade, was also created. Sanjenis began to bring in former police agents, former repressors, people closely linked to terrorism, who he had used in Cuba in the 50s in acts of repression, assassinations…"

"Operation 40’s mission was to come in behind the invaders and, as these people moved in to take towns, they were going to seize archives, murder officials.

After the Bay of Pigs defeat, Operation 40 initially changed into a security apparatus of the Cuban-American mafia in Miami, "until those people began to acquire economic power in the heat of Operation Mongoose."

"They were going to get a lot of money, the millions of dollars invested in the CIA base known as JM/WAVE. By 1963, those people began to change, at the same time as elements in the Cuban-American mafia did. That’s when they began to lobby, to try and impose a policy toward Cuba."

Escalante recalls that, by the end of 1960, all those aircraft that took weapons, military supplies and food to the mercenaries in Guatemala and then to Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua returned to the United States.

COVER FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD

So it was that, in April 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald – Kennedy’s alleged assassin – turned up in New Orleans "to prepare his cover as a sympathizer with the Revolution, formed a Cuba support committee – with himself as the only member – all in the office building shared by the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the CIA counterrevolutionary organization there. The building was also used by a fascist organization founded by the FBI and called Democratic Cuba."

In New Orleans, the only thing that Oswald did was to act as a sympathizer with the counterrevolution and then a sympathizer of the revolutionary government, Escalante, author of a number of books on this subject, commented.

In addition to Posada, some of those individuals still have a public presence in Miami. They include Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, involved in the assassination of Che Guevara; Antonio Veciana, founder of Alpha 66; Orlando Bosch, Posada’s accomplice in the sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane; Guillermo Novo Sampoll, linked to the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Letelier; Virgilio Paz Romero and José Dionisio Suárez, perpetrators of the crime; Gaspar "Gasparito" Jiménez Escobedo, the murderer of Artagnan Díaz Díaz; Pedro Remón Rodríguez, the murderer of Félix García Rodríguez and Eulalio Negrín in New York; José Basulto and others.

"Alpha 66 is part of what the CIA called autonomous operations that originated a long list of acts of terrorism beginning in the 1960s."

IN VENEZUELA, POSADA ALWAYS WORKED WITH THE CIA AND THE DISIP

In Venezuela, Posada was always linked with the secret police while continuing his work for the CIA, Escalante notes.

Later, when the revolutionary resistance was allegedly ended, in the mid-70s, Posada grew bored of being a repressor, given that he had turned his hand to business operations, and created a private, paramilitary police "which did everything."

"And it was Joaquin Chaffardet, now resident in the United States, who saved Posada in the U.S. immigration court. When Orlando Bosch arrived in Venezuela, he had a support role, but the man established there was Posada Carriles. He was in contact with Carlos Andrés Pérez. It was he who knew Orlando García, Andrés Pérez’ chief bodyguard.

"This Orlando García was a member of Sanjenis’ group, from the Cuban police… he was from the gangster mob of the 1940s…"

Those people included characters as important as Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero, from the U.S. National Security Council. "And it was he who said that if the whole truth of Kennedy’s death were to come out, the United States would discover the greatest scandal in its history."

For Escalante, the characters currently surrounding Luis Posada Carriles in Miami and who are giving him logistical and financial support are from the same mob which, in the 60s, conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

"They are the same people," he commented. "The same ones who went to Chile in the wake of the coup d’état against Salvador Allende and offered themselves to Augusto Pinochet as the thugs of the operation… Orlando Bosch, Dionisio Suárez, Aylwin Ross, the Novo Sampoll brothers, all of that mob from Operation 40.

"The same people… if you look, you’ll find Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, who assassinated Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara; you’ll find Luis Posada Carriles; you’ll find José Dionisio Suárez, one of Letelier’s killers… all of what they called the war on the ways of the world." •

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/21ener-Posada.html

[Bernice Moore]

hi john; b

[Stephen Roy]

Escalante, again. Some thoughts on Escalante:

When I first heard of him in the Furiati book, I thought we might have a good source here, from a Cuban intelligence point of view. But the Furiati book was not strong on useful info. Then came Escalante's first book. Again, notably short on useful info, and written from a strident position. Most of his reference notes were to US assassination books, some good and some not, but very little seems to have come from his own knowledge or DGI files. And certain bits of it were inaccurate. Since that time, Escalante has not yet impressed me as a good source of new information.

Even the article above (which, granted, is filtered through the writer, Allard) contains questionable stuff: He has Oswald at 544 Camp along with the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Rudimentary research would show that we don't know for sure if Oswald had an office there or was pretending that he did. Rudimentary research would show that the Cuban Revolutionary Council occupied that building from October 1961-February 1962. (And despite one person being seen at the office after the CRC left, the group was long gone by August 1963.) And his claim that Friends of Democratic Cuba was formed by the FBI is unsupported by the evidence. These claims are central to Escalante's linkages; how can we have confidence in his historical analysis?