Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record // nsarchive2.gwu.edu

25.5.18

Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record:

Update

- May 18, 2005 - Documents featured on May 17, 2005 edition of

ABC's Nightline



Washington D.C. May 18, 2005 - The National Security

Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA

had concrete advance

intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by

Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive

also posted another

document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas

had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the

bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five

days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged

in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.



Both documents were featured last night on ABC Nightline's program

on Luis Posada Carriles, who was detained in Miami yesterday by

Homeland Security.



In addition, the Archive posted the first

report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State

Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing

of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard

Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that,

"We are going to hit a Cuban airliner." This information

was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went

down.



There is no indication in the declassified files that indicates

that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist

threat against Cubana planes. Still classified CIA records indicate

that the informant might actually have been Posada himself who

at that time was in periodic contact with both CIA and FBI agents

in Venezuela.

CIA,

June 22, 1976, Report, "Possible Plans of Cuban Exile Extremists

to Blow Up a Cubana Airliner"



FBI,

October 9, 1976, "Unknown Subjects; Suspected Bombing of

Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6,

1976"



State

Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, October 18,

1976, Memorandum, "Castro's Allegations"