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CIA KNEW IN ADVANCE THAT POSADA CARRILES PLANNED BOMBING OF CUBAN AIRLINER, SAY NEW DOCUMENTS.

Article Excerpt
As Cubans gathered in Havana's Karl Marx theater to commemorate the30th anniversary of the bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner that killed all 73 people aboard, new evidence was released in the US showing that the government had information linking Luis Posada Carriles to the crime, and had that information even before it was committed. Posada is being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in El Paso, Texas (see NotiCen, 2006-01-26 and NotiSur, 2005-06-10). An immigration judge ordered his release, but the US quickly appealed the decision and the accused terrorist remains locked up while an embarrassed Justice Department decides what to do with him. Venezuela, where the flight originated, has demanded his extradition, but in a highly political decision, extradition has been denied on the premise that Posada would be tortured if returned to the scene of his alleged crime.

What the documents reveal

On Oct. 5, the National Security Archive (NSA) posted on the Web new documentation implicating Posada in the bombing. Among the documents is an annotated list of four volumes of still-secret records of Posada's career with the CIA, his acts of violence, and his suspected involvement in the downing of Cubana flight 455 on Oct. 6, 1976.

The NSA, which is not a government agency, and has long sought declassification of the Posada files through the Freedom of Information Act, renewed its call for the complete record. "Now is the time for the government to come clean on Posada's covert past and his involvement in international terrorism. His victims, the public, and the courts have a right to know," said Peter Kornbluh, director of the NSA's Cuba Documentation Project.

What the NSA does...

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