DOCUMENTS LINKED TO CUBAN EXILE LUIS POSADA

[Lee Forman]

Posted as a favor for someone who believes Posada was in DP.

National Security Archive Update, May 3, 2007

DOCUMENTS LINKED TO CUBAN EXILE LUIS POSADA HIGHLIGHTED TARGETS FOR TERRORISM

Bomber's Confessions Point to Explosives Hidden in Toothpaste Tube that Brought

Down Civilian Airliner in 1976

Former CIA Agent Posada Goes to Trial May 11

For more information contact:

Peter Kornbluh - 202/994-7116

Marian Schlotterbeck - 202/994-7000

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington DC, May 3, 2007 - Former CIA operative and indicted terrorist Luis

Posada Carriles, who goes on trial for immigration fraud on May 11, reportedly

kept a detailed list of targets for terrorism in the Caribbean "with a link to

Cuba" -- four of which were bombed in the summer of 1976 -- in his Caracas

office. The National Security Archive posted the surveillance target list on its

Web site today, among other investigative records relating to the bombing of

Cubana flight 455 in October 1976.

A Venezuelan employee of Posada conducted the surveillance on the targets and

drafted the report that included information on Cubana Aviacion flights in and

out of Barbados, according to a document posted today. At least four targets

identified in the surveillance report -- including the Guyanese Embassy in

Port-of-Spain, Trinidad -- were subsequently bombed, and the Cubana jet was

blown up in mid-air on October 6, 1976, after taking off from Seawell airport in

Barbados, killing all 73 passengers.

Posada faced charges in Venezuela for the airplane bombing, but escaped from

prison th ere in 1985, participated in the White House- and CIA-sponsored

Iran-contra covert operations in Central America in the 1980s, and illegally

entered the U.S. in March 2005. He is currently out on bail in Miami, albeit

under house detention, awaiting trial on immigration fraud next week.

Additional investigative records generated by police authorities in Trinidad

following the bombing, and posted today for the first time, include handwritten

confessions by a second Venezuelan, Freddy Lugo, that describe how Ricardo

molded plastic explosive into a Colgate toothpaste tube to destroy the plane, as

well as his attempts to reach Posada via telephone after the plane went down.

Thirty years after one of the most infamous attacks on a civilian plane in the

Western Hemisphere, officials at the National Security Archive noted that this

historical documentation remains relevant for current efforts to detect and

deter aviation terrorism us ing explosives disguised as gels and liquids. "These

documents provide the true historical backdrop for the legal proceedings against

Luis Posada Carriles," said Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive's Cuba

Documentation Project. "They are a critical part of the documentary record of

Posada's long career as one of the world's most prolific international

terrorists."

For more information, see today's posting on the Archive's Web site:

http://www.nsarchive.org