The Hindu : International : Cuban plane bomber "was CIA agent"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 12, 2005

International

International

Cuban plane bomber "was CIA agent"

MIAMI: Declassified documents made public link a Cuban exile seeking U.S. asylum — long regarded as a violent opponent of Fidel Castro — to a plot to bomb a Cuban airliner in 1976 and indicate he was on the CIA's payroll for years. One FBI document dated Nov. 3, 1976, quotes a confidential informant saying Luis Posada Carriles was among a group that discussed ``the bombing of a Cubana Airlines airplane'' before an attack at a hotel bar in Caracas, Venezuela. Mr. Posada, a former senior officer of the Venezuelan intelligence service, denies involvement in the bombing, which killed 73 persons, including 24 members of Cuba's national fencing team, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Soto. Other documents say Mr. Posada was also a CIA agent in the 1960s and that he was paid about $300 by the CIA while working with an alliance of several groups based in the Dominican Republic that sought Mr. Castro's overthrow. Still another FBI document quoted an unnamed Cuban refugee as saying Mr. Posada was paid $5,000 in 1965 by a prominent Cuban exile in Miami to finance an attempt to attach explosive mines to Cuban or Soviet ships in the port of Veracruz, Mexico.

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