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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories June 16, 2005 Tom Barry Meet Bolton's Replacement: Robert "First Strike" Joseph June 15, 2005 Stan Goff An Open Letter to US Troops on Loyalty Daniel Wolff The Palace at 4 A.M. Tim Wise Discover the Nutwork: David Horowitz and the Politics of Ad Hominem Distortion Ricardo Alarcón The New CIA Revelations About Posada Joshua Frank House Republicans vs. Bush: "This is Not a Conservative War" John Hilary Bloodsuckers' Summit: Why the Left Should Rendezvous at the G8 Norman Solomon Iran's Reformers: a Threat to Theocrats and Neocons Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair Juries and Lynch Mobs Website of the Day What It Feels Like to be Tasered (Turn Up the Volume) June 14, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners Forrest Hylton Stalemate in Bolivia Richard Gott The Crisis in Bolivia Fred Gardner The Raich Decision: All Power to the Feds Steve Breyman Doing the Right Thing is Also Politically Expedient Dave Zirin Sacred Hoops: Basketball in the Barrio Robert Kent Outsourcing Torture and the Stop-Loss Program Paul Craig Roberts Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners June 13, 2005 Gary Leupp Another Damning Document Dave Lindorff The Inca and Us John Stauber Mad Cow USA: the Cover-Up Begins to Unravel Fred Gardner Supreme Indignity: Medical Pot Doctors Respond to Justice Stevens Evelyn J. Pringle TeenScreen: the Lawsuits Begin Norman Solomon Letter From Tehran Winslow T. Wheeler Neo-Con Unfurls the Big Picture     June 10 / 12, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Thomas Friedman's Imaginary World Sharon Smith Torturers and Liars: Masters of Deception Brian Cloughley "Support Our Torturers!" Chris Kromm Home Cookin': Pentagon's Base Relignment Plan Would Increase South's Share Heather Gray A Day in Mississippi: Some Things Have Changed; Some Remain the Same Kevin Zeese What the Left Must Learn from 2004: an Interview with Josh Frank Mickey Z. The Pentagon Papers, 34 Years Later Gary Leupp A Review of Sison's "At Home in the World" Eli Stephens The Asshole in El Paso: Why Posada Carriles Matters Nick Dearden A Scottish Band in the Occupied Territories Oscar Olivera Recovering Bolivia's Oil and Gas Robert Fisk Screening "Kingdom of Heaven" in Beirut Michael Dickinson Oh My God!: Gunning for Blasphemers Poets' Basement Engel, Albert, Louise, Ford Website of the Weekend Gravity's Rainbow, Illustrated June 9, 2005 Len Colodny Felt Was Asked Under Oath in 1975 If He Was "Deep Throat" Christopher Brauchli From Baseballs to Hand Grenades Ron Jacobs Light a Candle; Curse the Darkness Dave Lindorff US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist Katrina Yeaw / Alex Schmaus Repression 101: Anti-War Students Sanctioned at SFSU Alan Farago Spin Machine Busts a Gasket in the Everglades: Fed Judge Whacks Jeb Saul Landau The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer   June 8, 2005 Jim Hougan Strange Bedfellows Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA Alan Maass Is Bolivia on the Edge of Revolution? an Interview with Tom Lewis Jason Leopold Enron Lives!: Former Army Sec. White Wants Govt. Money for New Energy Scam Niranjan Ramakrishnan Exit Right, Advani: Unpardonable Acts of Statesmanship Dave Zirin The Rotting Soul of the 49ers Derrick O'Keefe Bush's Terrorist: the Case of Posada Carriles Diana Johnstone Non, Neen, Angelene! Why Defenders of the "Oui" are Wrong Website of the Day The Meatrix   June 7, 2005 Forrest Hylton Bolivia's Agony of the Stalement Continues Greg Moses / Susan van Haitsma Pushing Back the Violence Lenni Brenner What Madison Would Think About the Air Force Academy's Offical Fanatics Col. Dan Smith Liberation vs. Survival in Iraq Joshua Frank Dean at the DNC: the Establishment vs. the Elites Dave Lindorff Fair-Weather Allies: US Denies French Fighters Emergency Landing Rights Margot Veranes / Adrian Navarro Xenophobia in the Desert: Racist Fever Becomes Law in Arizona Michael Neumann Sharing Music: Property Gone Wild   June 6, 2005 Stew Albert Everybody Must Get Busted: Supremes Rule Against the Sick Paul Craig Roberts Federal Bureau of Entrapment Nicole Colson Inside Walter Reed Hospital Ali Khan Friendly Renditions to Muslim Torture Chambers Jason Leopold When Will Rumsfeld Be Indicted? Charles Walker Poff Rumsfeld, China and Hypocrisy Ramzy Baroud My Grandpa's Right of Return Rep. John Conyers Did Bush Deliberately Deceive America About Iraq? Evelyn Pringle TeenScreen's Top Pusher Gary Corseri 25 Reasons to Impeach Bush Website of the Day Save This 200 Year Old Burr Oak from Bible Thumpers with Chainsaws   June 4 / 5, 2005 Alexander Cockburn France's Magnificent Non! James Petras The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America Robert Fisk Who Killed Samir? Patrick Cockburn My Father, Claud Cockburn, the MI5 Suspect Rev. William Alberts When Pride in Power Corrupts: the Story of a Methodist President, His Bishops and an "Incompatible" Lesbian Minister Saul Landau 40 Interns and a Mule: Will the Dems Ever Take Advantage of the Republicans' Blunders? Mario Lamo Jimenez Dante with a Brush: Botero Immortalizes Bush Dave Lindorff What is the Media Running From? Lance Selfa Why Bush is Getting Away with Murder Tom Crumpacker On the Use of State Terrorism: the Posada Precedent Joshua Frank How Beltway Dems Sank Dean for America Fred Gardner Don't Bogart That Taxable Commodity Michael Dickinson Roll Out the Barrel: Blood, Oil and Baku Roger Martin We Can See, But Not Far Enough Reza Fiyouzat Welcome to the Third World Ben Tripp Romance: Advice from a Pro Graeme Greenback Pardon Me, While I Piss on this Bible Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Albert, Engel, Smith       June 3, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Welcome to a Has-Been Country Joseph Massad Witch Hunt at Columbia Jeff Halper The Process of Transfer Continues Tom Barry The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On? Bruce K. Gagnon Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny" Joshua Frank Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter Mickey Z. Deep Throat as Sideshow Gary Leupp "Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated" Website of the Day Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973     June 2, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag Forrest Hylton Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate Mike Whitney Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges Brian Cloughley Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America Mazin Qumsiyeh A Two-State Solution is No Solution Russell D. Hoffman High Tension at San Onofre Norman Madarasz "Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non" Norman Solomon War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq David Price The Shallowness of Deep Throat Website of the Day Fallujah on Film     June 1, 2005 James Petras Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada Justin Delacour Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez Edward Jay Epstein Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid? 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June 16, 2005 The CIA and the Bombing of Cubana Flight 455 Why Bush Wants to Harbor Posada Carriles By TOM CRUMPACKER Recently declassified (partially blacked out) CIA, FBI and State Department reports (see National Security Archive Briefing Book #153, Peter Kornbluh) indicate that former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles had been trained by CIA in demolition and explosives in the early 1960s. He was ostensibly in the US military, February 1963 to March 1964, which was the cover CIA gave its training agents then. During the 1960s, as a salaried agent he ran a school in Florida training others in his trade, financed by CIA. He also did forays to other countries to do covert bombings and assassinations. CIA was using him as an "operative" in Caracas 1976. In 1972 he had listed his permanent residence as Miami. When he left Florida for Caracas to work with the Venezuelan intelligence agency DISIP, he had with him a supply of CIA bomb-making materials and explosive devices. On the date of the bombing of Havana bound Cubana flight 455, October 6, 1976, he had supposedly left DISIP and was operating a private detective agency in Caracas. The reports suggest that the Cubana bombing was a joint DISIP-CIA project and CIA was involved in the planning. They refer to meetings in Santo Domingo in the summer and in Caracas in early September involving agent Posada and his partner Orlando Bosch and top DISIP officials, at which discussions were held about bombing Cubana flights, also the Letelier car bombing which occurred in Washington, DC in mid-September. At the time, Bosch was head of CORU, a new umbrella organization of violent anti-Castro groups in US which CIA had urged them to form. He was also involved with "Condor" operations, a CIA supported super-secret web in South America which exterminated and disappeared many leftists. CIA had been kept informed of previous attempts by its agent Posada to bomb Cubana airliners in the summer. In late September Posada (referred to "informant") reported: "We're going to hit the Cubana airliner." On October 1, our State Department -- at Posada's request and under a special procedure -- issued a US visa for the week of the bombing to one of Posada's two employees who placed the bomb in the plane restroom at the Barbados stop, then left the plane. The other Posada employee-bomb-planter had a secret Caracas CIA telephone number in his belongings when arrested in Trinidad after sending this message to Bosch: "A bus went off the cliff and 73 dogs died." These reports were not made available to the Venezuelan officials who prosecuting Bosch and Posada in the 1980s. No one warned Cuba or potential passengers of the impending attack. George Bush, Sr. was the CIA Director at the time of the bombing. He was Vice President when Posada was allowed to escape from jail during his trial in Venezuela (CIA bribed his guards when the evidence started to implicate them) and report to Col. Oliver North in El Salvador to work on the Nicaraguan Contra supply operation being run out of the White House. Bush, Sr. was President when he pardoned Bosch against the recommendation of his own Justice Department, thereby harboring him in Miami. In 1976 CIA was aware the Bush family had important connections in the oil business and was dealing with key politicians in Venezuela. Jeb Bush (now governor of Florida) was establishing himself in Caracas with the Commerce Bank of Texas, owned by Bush family friend (later Secretary of State) James Baker. When Bosch arrived in Caracas on September 14, 1976, after a visit with Pinochet officials in Chile, then Venezuelan President Perez allowed Bosch and Posada to conduct fundraising and operate freely in Venezuela, even contributing funds to their projects. In custody after the bombing, Posada threatened that if he were forced to talk, the Venezuelan government would go down the tube and the US would have another Watergate. Indeed, another Watergate type cover-up seems now in progress, spawned by Posada's resurfacing in US and the declassification of some of CIA's reports after 28 years. Homeland Security has charged Posada with not reporting immediately to them, an immigration matter which could be settled by a small fine. However, it's been set for trial on August 29 and Posada's Miami lawyers have filed motions to move the case to Miami (to be ruled on in writing in the next week), bond reduction, and asylum petitions. From State Department's comments, one would think that the Homeland immigration cases will go on for many months and State has no extradition obligation until they're finished. There's no legally valid reason why our State Department should not submit the Venezuelan request to the extradition judge now. Posada is a Venezuelan citizen who committed the Cubana crime there and is a fugitive who escaped from their justice system during trial there for that crime. The present Bush Administration well knows who is responsible for bombing the Cubana flight. It didn't need to wait for Venezuela to produce or translate the evidence, much of which is in still classified or blacked out CIA files. Nor is there any valid reason to wait while lawyers fool around with Homeland's illegal entry claim or Posada's venue and asylum claims. Venezuela and US have had an extradition treaty for 83 years which has always been honored by both countries. Immigration cases concern lawfulness of entry and where an illegal migrant should be sent or deported to. Extradition concerns where an alleged criminal should be tried regardless of his immigration status. It's not a question of policy or discretion, it's a question of law. The ultimate issue here is whether the rule of law still exists in US. In January, Bush, Jr. took an oath as president to faithfully execute the US Constitution, laws and treaties. On May 27 Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said that Venezuela's extradition request for Posada had been rejected as inadequate because unsupported by evidence. But the US Embassy in Caracas had told Venezuela to translate the 700 pages of evidence (without any time limit), and on May 27 said it was still ready to receive it. Venezuela has now filed the translated evidence and complied with all other US procedural requirements. Washington had previously denied Venezuela's request to keep Posada in custody pending extradition. A hearing is set for June 24 to reduce Posada's bond, which will probably be granted because the charge is such a minor one. If he is released on bond, he will probably disappear again. Washington seems to be trying to justify harboring Posada in a country like El Salvador where he presumably could be kept from talking. It has already induced or pressured Salvadoran officials to start preparing their own extradition request. Deft maneuvering by Washington may keep CIA involvement in the bombing under wraps for a while, but eventually the truth will out. So far the damage to our government is primarily in the international arena, where the corporate mass media's are somewhat less under the control of the commercial oligarchies. This Administration obviously cares very little about the rule of law or its image abroad. But more and more American reporters and people are starting to demand that Posada be sent to Venezuela and that CIA open its files on the matter. Tom Crumpacker is a lawyer who works with the Miami Coalition to End the US Embargo of Cuba. He can be reached at: Crump8@aol.com