Frank Castro

[John Simkin]

According to Peter Dale Scott (Cocaine Politics) On Dec. 16, 1980, Cuban-American intelligence operative Ricardo Morales told a Florida prosecutor that he had become an informer in Operation Tick-Talks, a Miami-based investigation that implicated Frank Castro and other Bay of Pigs veterans in a conspiracy to import cocaine from the new military rulers of Bolivia.

Anybody got anymore information on Frank Castro?

[James Richards]

According to Peter Dale Scott (Cocaine Politics) On Dec. 16, 1980, Cuban-American intelligence operative Ricardo Morales told a Florida prosecutor that he had become an informer in Operation Tick-Talks, a Miami-based investigation that implicated Frank Castro and other Bay of Pigs veterans in a conspiracy to import cocaine from the new military rulers of Bolivia.

Anybody got anymore information on Frank Castro?

John,

Briefly, his real name is Eulalio Francisco Castro Paz. Born in Cuba in 1942, entered the United States in 1961 and served in the U.S. Army from November 1962 until December 1963. He was said the have been a member of Brigade 2506 but I don't believe he was even though he was close to Manuel Artime.

For a time, Castro was running the Cuban National Liberation Front and was behind a training camp in the Florida Everglades. An associate of John Hull and Rene Corvo; and was decribed in official communication as a Medellin cartel representative.

FWIW.

James

[John Simkin]

Briefly, his real name is Eulalio Francisco Castro Paz. Born in Cuba in 1942, entered the United States in 1961 and served in the U.S. Army from November 1962 until December 1963. He was said the have been a member of Brigade 2506 but I don't believe he was even though he was close to Manuel Artime.

For a time, Castro was running the Cuban National Liberation Front and was behind a training camp in the Florida Everglades. An associate of John Hull and Rene Corvo; and was decribed in official communication as a Medellin cartel representative.

Do you have a photograph? Is he still alive?

[James Richards]

John,

I have a photograph of Frank Castro which is attached to a newspaper clipping hidden away somewhere. I will try to dig it up. I do believe he is still alive. If you are willing, you may wish to contact Miami solicitor Kirk Munroe. He knows all about Frank Castro.

FWIW.

James

[John Simkin]

Namebase entry for Frank Castro:

http://www.namebase.org/main2/Frank-_28eul..._29-Castro.html

CASTRO FRANK (EULALIO FRANCISCO)

Dominican Rep 1976 Costa Rica 1984 Suriname 1991

Bainerman,J. The Crimes of a President. 1992 (281)

Branch,T. Propper,E. Labyrinth. 1983 (131, 149, 163)

Brewton,P. The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush. 1992 (303-5, 320)

CIA. Hitz Report on Contras and Cocaine. Volume II. 1998-04-27 (429, 431, 434, 759-61, 781, 788, B1, 2-22)

Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1987-01-31 (24)

Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (98, 103)

CounterSpy 1976-12 (11)

Covert Action Information Bulletin 1990-#35 (47)

Dinges,J. Landau,S. Assassination on Embassy Row. 1981 (250-1)

EIR. Dope, Inc. 1992 (16-7)

Freed,D. Death in Washington. 1980 (177)

Houston Post 1990-02-18 (A24)

Intelligence Newsletter (Paris) 1992-02-12 (4-5)

Marshall,J... The Iran-Contra Connection. 1987 (47, 134-6)

National Reporter 1986-F (34)

Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (28)

Scott,P.D. Marshall,J. Cocaine Politics. 1991 (14, 25-6, 29-30, 32, 86, 88, 112-3, 118-21)

[John Simkin]

Briefly, his real name is Eulalio Francisco Castro Paz. Born in Cuba in 1942, entered the United States in 1961 and served in the U.S. Army from November 1962 until December 1963. He was said the have been a member of Brigade 2506 but I don't believe he was even though he was close to Manuel Artime.

For a time, Castro was running the Cuban National Liberation Front and was behind a training camp in the Florida Everglades. An associate of John Hull and Rene Corvo; and was decribed in official communication as a Medellin cartel representative.

According to Peter Dale Scott, Frank Castro was involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. On his return he was recruited by the CIA and was later trained at Fort Jackson.

In 1963 Manuel Artime obtained funds from the CIA via Ted Shackley head of the JM/WAVE station in Florida. Artime moved to Nicaragua where he formed a 300 man army. Artime was joined by several other anti-Castro Cubans including Castro, Rafael Quintero and Felix Rodriguez.

Artime also covertly acquired arms, supplies and boats for an invasion of Cuba. According to David Corn (Blond Ghost): "The CIA trained Artime's men as Artime pulled together a small navy, obtained several planes, and collected over 200 tons of American-made arms. The CIA budget for Artime's war would come to total $7 million." The invasion of Cuba never took place. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson cancelled what had become known as the Second Naval Guerrilla operation.

Frank Castro eventually became head of the Cuban National Liberation Front. During this period he ran a training camp in the Florida Everglades. According to Peter Dale Scott (Cocaine Politics) "Castro became one of the most militant of the exile terrorists." Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel J. Cassidy who prosecuted some of his associates remarked "Frank Castro is a very dangerous individual. He's CIA trained." A CIA report claims that by the 1970s Frank Castro had developed a reputation as an important Florida drug dealer.

In 1976 Castro helped to establish Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Other members included Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch and Guillermo Novo. CORU was partly financed by Guillermo Hernández Cartaya, another Bay of Pigs veteran closely linked to the CIA. He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and embezzlement. The federal prosecutor told Pete Brewton that he had been approached by a CIA officer who explained that "Cartaya had done a bunch of things that the government was indebted to him for, and he asked me to drop the charges against him."

One Miami police veteran told the authors of Assassination on Embassy Row (1980): "The Cubans held the CORU meeting at the request of the CIA. The Cuban groups... were running amok in the mid-1970s, and the United States had lost control of them. So the United States backed the meeting to get them all going in the same direction again, under United States control." It has been pointed out that George H. W. Bush was director of the CIA when this meeting took place.

Castro told the Miami Herald why he had helped establish CORU: "I believe that the United States has betrayed freedom fighters around the world. They trained us to fight, brainwashed us how to fight and now they put Cuban exiles in jail for what they had been taught to do in the early years."

In October, 1976, Cubana Flight 455 exploded in midair, killing all 73 people aboard. This included all 24 young athletes on Cuba's gold-medal fencing team. Police in Trinidad arrested two Venezuelans, Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Ricardo worked for Posada's security agency in Venezuela and admitted that he and Lugo had planted two bombs on the plane. Ricardo claimed the bombing had been organized by Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch. When Posada was arrested he was found with a map of Washington showing the daily route of to work of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Foreign Minister, who had been assassinated on 21st September, 1976. Ricardo Morales Navarrete later admitted that he was part of this bomb plot.

CORU took credit for fifty bombings in Miami, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico and Argentina in the first ten months after it was established. In a CBS interview on 10th June, 1977, Armando Lopez Estrada, a member of CORU, claimed: "We use the tactics that we learned from the CIA... We were trained to set off a bomb, we were trained to kill."

In April, 1978, the Miami Police Department arrested Ricardo Morales Navarrete and he was charged with possession of marijuana. The following year he was arrested once again and charged with carrying a concealed firearm. He was soon released and it appears that at this point he agreed to work as a FBI informer. He infiltrated a Miami based group that were importing cocaine from the new military rulers of Bolivia (Operation Tick-Talks). The group included Frank Castro, Rafael Villaverde, Jorge Villaverde and 50 other right-wing anti-Castro Cubans. In an interview with Jim Hougan, CIA agent Frank Terpil claimed that Ted Shackley, Thomas G. Clines and Richard Secord were also involved in this drug operation.

Rafael Villaverde vanished on a fishing trip after bonding out after his arrest in 1982. According to Edward Jay Epstein, Villaverde's "speedboat exploded off the coast of Florida". His body has never been found. Soon afterwards Ricardo Morales Navarrete was killed in a bar in Key Biscayne.

Frank Castro, charged with four counts of importing, delivering and selling marijuana. However, as a result of the death of the key witness, the case was dismissed in a plea bargain in which Castro pled guilty to a weapons charge and was fined $500. It is the only time Castro has ever been convicted of a crime.

In 1983 Castro was indicted for conspiracy and smuggling 425,000 pounds of marijuana into Beaumont, Texas. This was part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Operation Grouper. These charges were also dropped in June 1984. It has been suggested by Pete Brewton (The Mafia, CIA and George Bush) that the reason for this was Castro's involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal. As Brewton pointed out: "From July 1983 to January 1984 - the same period in which he was under indictment for drug smuggling - Castro we was providing food, equipment and weapons for a secret military training camp for Nicaraguan Contras in the Everglades near Naples, Florida."

Key figures in the Iran-Contra activities became concerned about the involvement of people like Frank Castro. In November 1984, Oliver North's emissary Robert Owen wrote a report for his boss in Washington: "Several sources are now saying Pastora is going to be bankrolled by former Bay of Pigs veteran Frank Castro, who is heavily into drugs. The word has it Pastora is going to be given $200,000 a month by Castro."

CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz carried out an investigation into Frank Castro. Hitz discovered that the CIA knew that Castro was implicated in terrorism and drug trafficking, but as Robert Parry pointed out in Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, The Press & Project Truth, this information was withheld from John Kerry and his senate investigation into the Iran-Contra Scandal. According to another CIA document dated 7th March, 1986, Frank Castro was the main liaison between Colombian drug dealers and Miami-based Cubans.

The FBI was also investigating Frank Castro. One report confirmed that Castro had met John Hull concerning the training of the Contras. In another document dated 13th February, 1987, a FBI agent reported that "Castro has very good connections with the Medellin cartel". According to Robert Parry "federal authorities were hesitant to move because of Castro's CIA ties."

In June 1988, Frank Castro and five others were indicted for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act for taking part in a "military expedition and enterprise to be carried on from thence against the territory of Nicaragua, a foreign state with whom the United States, at all times mentioned herein, has been and is now at peace." It was claimed that Castro financed the 60 man training camp in the Everglades. The defendants argued that they had set up the camp and trained the Contras with the approval of the Ronald Reagan administration. Eventually the judge ruled that Castro and his co-defendants had not broken the law as the "United States was not technically at peace with Nicaragua at that time."

[John Simkin]

You can find what I have on Frank Castro here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcastroFr.htm

[Wim Dankbaar]

According to Peter Dale Scott, Frank Castro was involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. On his return he was recruited by the CIA and was later trained at Fort Jackson.

Briefly, his real name is Eulalio Francisco Castro Paz. Born in Cuba in 1942.

That reminds me of someone else Frank Castro was also assisting Ronnie Brunswijk's "Jungle Commando" in Suriname against Desi Bouterse. He introduced himself as a man from the CIA.

Wim

[John Simkin]

It is reported today via U.S. Intelligence and politicos that F. Castro is victim of terminal cancer and therefore a goner. It is sad that anyone suffer such. Once my admirable hero, and since, an enemy. In any case the now 'poor old guy' has run out of steam. Even with his millions in world tourist trade and the total assistance of the various socialist governments of 'canada' {1959/2006} he and his great betrayal will bite the dust.

Harry J. Dean

hjay1212@wmconnect.com

[Wim Dankbaar]

Did Harry not mean Fidel Castro?

Wim

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

Oct 10, 6:59 AM EDT

Documents: CIA warned of plane bomb plot

By ANDREW O. SELSKY

Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- An anti-Castro militant now in a Texas jail warned the CIA months before the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that fellow exiles were planning such an attack, according to a newly released U.S. government document.

The document shows that Luis Posada Carriles - who had worked for the CIA but was cut off by the agency earlier that year - was secretly telling the CIA that his fellow far-right Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro's communist government were plotting to bring down a commercial jet.

The document does not say what the CIA did with Posada's tip. A CIA spokesman said he had no comment on Monday, a federal holiday.

The CIA had extensive contacts with anti-Castro militants and trained some of them, but has denied involvement in the bombing.

The documents were posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute at George Washington University that seeks to declassify government files through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Cubana Airlines plane, on a flight from Venezuela to Cuba, blew up shortly after taking off from a stopover in Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 aboard, including Cuba's Olympic fencing team.

The bombing remains an open wound in Cuba. Weeping relatives of the victims met in a Havana cemetery on Friday, the 30th anniversary of the bombing. They demanded that Posada - who is now 78 and in a Texas detention center on an immigration violation - be put on trial.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is seeking the extradition of Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan who served as the country's counterintelligence chief. He accuses the U.S. government of protecting a terrorist.

The National Security Archive's Peter Kornbluh urged the U.S. government to tell everything it knows about Posada.

"Now is the time for the government to come clean on Posada's covert past and his involvement in international terrorism," Kornbluh said. "His victims, the public, and the courts have a right to know."

Separating deception from truth in the intelligence world is notoriously difficult, and the newly released documents contain mixed messages about Posada. Much remains murky.

In a report dated a month after the bombing, then FBI Director Clarence Kelly told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a confidential FBI source ascertained the bombing had been planned in Caracas by Posada, Venezuelan intelligence agency official Ricardo Morales Navarrete and Cuban exile Frank Castro, who is not related to the Cuban leader.

Two Venezuelan employees of Posada's private security agency were arrested in Trinidad the day after the bombing, and one of them - who said he had worked for the CIA - admitted the two had planted the bomb, documents posted by the National Security Archive show.

Posada trained with the CIA for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and served in the U.S. Army in the early 1960s. In 1965, he allegedly plotted to overthrow the Guatemalan government and blow up a Soviet or Cuban freighter in Mexico, according to the FBI. In 1967, he moved to Venezuela, eventually leading its counterintelligence agency, and was running his own security firm in the mid-1970s.

In 1973, Posada was investigated by the CIA for allegedly smuggling cocaine, but was cleared after he convinced interrogators he was "guilty of only having the wrong kind of friends," a declassified document says. The same document says the CIA "formally terminated" its relationship with him on Feb. 13, 1976.

Yet Posada still contacted the agency.

"After 2/76 contacts with (deleted by censors) were at Posada's own initiative to volunteer information in exchange for assistance U.S. visa for self and family," said the document, an annotated list of still-secret records on Posada's CIA career that was marked "sanitized."

It tells how Posada contacted the CIA in February 1976 to describe an assassination plot by Orlando Bosch and Frank Castro, two fellow right-wing Cuban exiles, against leftist Andres Pascal Allende, the nephew of slain Chilean President Salvador Allende. Posada worried that his allies would discover he was giving up their secrets.

"Posada concerned that Bosch will blame Posada for leak of plans," the report says. Andres Allende was not assassinated, and it is unclear whether the Cuban exiles ever made an attempt on his life.

Then, four months later, Posada came back to tell of a sinister plot to blow up an airliner.

On June 22, 1976, "Posada again contacts (deleted by censor) reptd info concerning possible exile plans to blow up Cubana Airliner leaving Panama and requested visa assistacne," read the document, filled with typographical errors.

Shortly after, a bomb aboard a Cubana Airlines plane leaving Panama failed to detonate, and the following month, a bomb in a suitcase exploded before being loaded onto a Cubana plane leaving Jamaica, according to a confidential State Department memo previously posted by the National Security Archive.

The day after the Cubana Airlines flight was bombed near Barbados, the CIA tried unsuccessfully to contact Posada, according to the annotated list. Five days later, Posada was arrested in Venezuela. He denied involvement in the bombing and escaped from prison in 1985 before a civilian trial was completed.

Allegations that he masterminded mass murder did not keep U.S. covert operatives from hiring Posada again. Within months, he was delivering weapons to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in an illegal Reagan administration operation. Posada also acknowledged, and then denied, a role in Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed a tourist.

And in 2000, Posada was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Castro during a summit in Panama. He was pardoned in 2004 by then Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.

Posada was detained in Florida in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. A U.S. immigration judge has ruled that he cannot be sent to Cuba or Venezuela, citing fears that he would be tortured.

[James Richards]

It might also be worth mentioning here that during the early to mid 1960's, Frank Castro was involved with the financial department of a Cuban exile newspaper called the Mundo Americano.

Executive Editor was Rolando Masferrer who also wrote a column under the alias of Policarpo Pineda. It was mostly critical of the CIA.

FWIW.

James

[James Richards]

Sorry this has taken so long.

Frank Castro on the left and Pablo Rodriguez on the right.

James

[James Richards]

For anyone interested, here is a group shot of the Halcones Dorados (Golden Hawks). Sorry about the poor quality.

That is Frank Castro front center on the bottom row and Tony Izquierdo to his right.

James

Edited January 12, 2007 by James Richards

[James Richards]

This is Frank Castro below.

James