Terrorism organized and directed by the CIA against Cubans

Terrorism organized and directed by the CIA against Cubans

http://www.granma.cu/cubademanda/ingles/demanda9-i.html

ON the seventh day of hearings, Ivonne Pérez, one of the four lawyers
representing the eight Cuban political and social organizations that
have filed suit for human damages against the U.S. government,
introduced the fifth theme covered by the suit, that of terrorism.

A short documentary was shown, detailing the April 13, 1961 fire at El
Encanto department store, which was one of the biggest in Havana. The
documentary included an interview with former CIA agent Philip Agee,
who confirms that the explosives used to start that fire were supplied
by the CIA.

The first witness on this subject was Antonia Panteleón, a colonel in
State Security, who gave a long statement about the forms of terrorism
utilized by the CIA, among them the organization of
counterrevolutionary groups and bands from 1959 to 1961. She explained
that those organizations - and even their leadership - were infiltrated
by Cuban agents, and they were later disbanded at the time of the
mercenary invasion.

She discussed the CIA’s new methods at that time, its recruitment of
individual agents in charge of various actions, among them an attempt
to gather all kinds of information, whether it be economic, on
President Fidel Castro, on health care or on internationalist missions.

The colonel stressed the CIA’s obsession with the idea of eliminating
Fidel and the many attempts on his life. (The lawsuit lists a total of
637.)

She went on to say that the agents were directed in the early years by
the CIA station belonging to the U.S. embassy in Havana, and after
relations were severed they kept in contact with a station in Florida.
In recent years, since the opening of the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana, that coordination is being carried out in the Cuban capital
once again.

She noted that the CIA recruited Cuban officials working abroad to be
agents, but the Company did not realize that these were revolutionary
comrades, and many of them became Cuban State Security agents.

One of the agents who testified was Osvaldo Argudín López, who in 1975
was head of the technical supervision department of the State Committee
for Economic Cooperation. He was recruited in Madrid by a CIA agent
named Colonel Albert Allen.

"When I accepted the recruitment proposal, on orders from Cuban
security," Argudín said, "Allen told me that I had to pass a lie
detector test which he said was impossible to fool. But I passed with
flying colors; the machine said I wasn’t lying."

For 13 years, Argudín passed on "thousands of pieces of totally useless
information," and managed to head off a number of acts of sabotage,
among them the case in which Cuba would have bought tanks of ammonia
from a certain company, and when the tanks reached Cuba they would have
had technical problems and caused serious human and material damage.



OVER 100 DEAD FROM DENGUE EPIDEMIC

In October 1980, the CIA asked Cuban State Security double agent
Eduardo Sagaró González to gather information on the dengue epidemic
which caused the deaths of 158 people on the island, including 101
children.

The request was quite specific: to evaluate the impact of the disease;
the effectiveness of the treatments used; the medications that were
lacking; the hospital care provided. Why? Sagaró González, who was
recruited by the CIA in June 1980 when he was head of the Cuban medical
mission in Mozambique, testified before the court that the Agency’s
interest could only lead to one conclusion: that the CIA was behind the
epidemic, as Fidel had charged.

Sagaró recounted that the CIA agents were also concerned about rare
respiratory diseases which began to appear in Cuban military units near
the Guantánamo naval base. They were also planning to effect a general
deterioration of the Cuban health care system, because of the example
that it provided to the world, and for that reason they asked for a
report on the health situation on the Isle of Youth, where African
students were studying, the diseases they brought in and the public
health measures taken.

The plan consisted of introducing an epidemic into the island and then
blame it on Cuba’s cooperation with African countries.

Sagaró remained linked to the CIA until 1987, when the Cuban government
decided to interrupt his work, bringing into the public eye the
testimonies of 27 double agents which constituted serious charges of
sinister projects carried out by the CIA and the U.S. government.



BOSCH THE TERRORIST

Pedro Escalona Carullo met Orlando Bosch through Ernesto Aviñón, known
as Tato. In 1986 and 1987, he traveled to Venezuela as a liaison for
Alberto Hernández, vice president of the Cuban American National
Foundation, in order to deliver money and documents to Bosch’s lawyer.
That was the first time he conversed with the terrorist, who was in a
Venezuelan prison as a result of the explosion of the Cubana airplane
which had taken off from Barbados.

In his extensive testimony, Pedro Escalona referred to the emergence of
counterrevolutionary organizations in the United States under the aegis
of the CIA, such as the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations
(CORU), established in 1976 and headed by Bosch. That organization
carried out the plan called The War on the Roads of the World for
killing, intimidating and injuring friends of Cuba, and sabotaging
various objectives.

Among the actions carried out were the attack on the Cuban diplomatic
mission in Mexico City; the murder of two guards at the Cuban embassy
in Argentina, who were later buried by terrorists in the foundation of
a building under construction; and the assassination of Félix García, a
Cuban diplomat at the United Nations, on the streets of New York.



THE HORROR OF ‘LA COUBRE’

On March 4, 1960, in Havana, the French ship La Coubre exploded while
the 76 tons of munitions it carried were being unloaded.

Two charges of TNT, placed in the boxes of grenades, caused the deaths
of 101 persons, most of them port workers. Estanislao Figuera, who
belonged to the war materiel section, told the court that the second
explosion led to the largest number of deaths, because of the number of
workers who had gone to the aid of those wounded in the first blast.

"It’s impossible to think that the explosives were planted in Havana,"
the witness stated, giving the following arguments: there is a security
corps at the port which prohibits access to all except the personnel
unloading the ships; and one would have to enter the hold and lift off
a large number of boxes in order to plant the explosives in the place
where they were found. Another witness, Alfredo Vidal, explained that
the latter would have been impossible, because the whole unloading crew
enters the hold at the same time and, in addition, the boxes are very
securely sealed.

Vidal said that afterwards, two boxes of munitions were thrown from a
helicopter and neither of them exploded. In other words, La Coubre’s
explosion was not the result of improper handling of the cargo during
the unloading operation.

Zenaida Capetillo, who lost a brother in the incident, gave a moving
description of the desperate and fruitless search for her brother in
all the hospitals in Havana. His body was never found after the
explosion.

Likewise, Juan Luis Rodríguez, captain of Havana’s 14th Police Unit at
the time of the La Coubre explosion, told the court that he was injured
in both legs when he tried to push a burning truck into the sea. After
several operations he asked the doctors to amputate one of his legs,
because the treatment was affecting him psychologically.

Another nine witnesses described pirate attacks on fishing boats,
merchant marine ships and Revolutionary Navy units; acts of sabotage;
killings; and illegal landings.

José Castillo, the second-in-command for State Security in Villas Clara
province in 1994, described to the court the landing of a terrorist
group on October 15 of that year at Kilometer 7½ on the Caibarién-Cayo
Santa María causeway.

He explained that seven men, wearing camouflage and heavily armed, had
arrived from Florida in a speedboat. Their weaponry included Chinese
rifles, U.S. pistols and other war materiel, along with subversive
propaganda.

Headed by Humberto Real, the terrorists came in the name of the
Democratic National Unity Party, affiliated with the Cuban American
National Foundation, Castillo indicated. He went on to say that Real
shot Arcilio García with a burst from his AR-15, killing him instantly,
in order to take his car. García was in the area with some friends
fishing for pleasure.

The whole group was arrested and in the interrogation all the members
said they had been trained in southern Florida, from which they had
taken off for the island, with the objective of setting themselves up
in the Escambray mountains.

Enoel Salas Santos, who in 1962 infiltrated the counterrevolutionary
organization Alpha-66, created by Andrés Nazario Sargent and Eloy
Gutiérrez Menoyo, gave exceptional testimony.

Salas Santos told of his training by CIA agents on bases in Florida,
Puerto Rico and Punta Caleta, in the Dominican Republic, with a group
of 30 men, with the objective of landing in Cuba and creating a
guerrilla front.

In 1964 he landed with Gutiérrez Menoyo at Baracoa, in a speedboat
supplied by the CIA, with heavy armament, but they were discovered
almost immediately by the campesinos in the area and captured by the
militia.

"I was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and I served 13 of those years.
In all, I infiltrated the organization for 26 years."
Tomás Hernández, of State Security in Las Villas, testified about the
pirate attacks on Cuban fishermen, especially in the Bahamas area.

He explained that in the 1960s, first they attempted to approach the
fishermen in a friendly manner, trying to convince them to defect, but
when that effort failed, Alpha-66 moved on to attack. "In the Bahamas
they committed atrocities: they machine-gunned, killed and sunk boats."

Emigdio Báez Vigo, who was the head of the General Staff of the
Revolutionary Navy in the years 1962-66 and 1969-80, gave a detailed
description of the pirate attacks by CIA-trained bands on objectives on
the island’s northern coast, launched from Florida and its keys.
Attacks along the southern coast were launched from flagships like the
Rex and the Barbara J.

Some of the incidents were the machine-gunning of a sentry boat in Boca
de Canasí, Matanzas province, and the sinking of a torpedo boat in
Siguanea dock, on the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth), during
which officers and sailors died.

Captain Pedro Román testified about the capture in 1974 of a group from
Alpha-66 headed by Luis Manuel Zúñiga, which tried to infiltrate the
island at a spot near Boca Ciega beach, on the outskirts of Havana. He
stated that they arrived in a speedboat from Florida with a large cache
of arms (AR-15 rifles from the U.S. army, grenades and bowie knives).



THE SEA: PATHWAY AND SCENE OF THE CRIME

Those who committed acts of terrorism against the island did not spare
any resources. Since the 1960s, Cuban territorial waters have been
constantly violated by vessels coming from the United States, with the
objective of carrying out macabre plans.

On May 7, 1961, among the sailors who went out to search for the vessel
R-43, which had disappeared the afternoon before, was Silvano Milián,
who is now a naval captain. The R-43 had left the Casablanca station in
the morning, and its first SOS was received at 10 a.m.; it was sinking.
There was communication with the boat three times, and then nothing
more. Silvano Milián recalls that when they arrived at the spot where
the boat should have sunk, there was no sign of it.

The wife of Andrés González Lines, the commander of the boat that
disappeared 10 miles north of Mariel (a port located 40 kilometers west
of Havana), was summoned to testify before the court. Gladys Planas
remembers everything. She says that Andrés’ fellow crew members were
mostly fishermen, men of the sea, and for that reason they were very
hearty. They all knew how to swim very well and could have reached the
coast easily. But they didn’t. Gladys says that no signs of any of them
were found. The investigations concluded that a torpedo had penetrated
the vessel, leaving no traces.

Nancy Pavón was 15 years old when she lost her leg. Heavy gunfire woke
her up on the night of December 19, 1971, in the coastal town of Boca
de Samá. A single bullet shot through her feet and those of her sister.

Nancy underwent several operation in Havana and was hospitalized for
over 19 months. She lost her right foot, and her left foot was left
heavily scarred.

The enemy attack on Boca de Samá injured others as well as Nancy and
her sister Angela. A speedboat coming from the United States landed
with 14 men. The mother ship stayed close by, to fire on the town.
Everything was shot up, recalls Carlos Andrés Escalante, head of the
Boca de Samá border post.

"The bullets killed two persons [Lidio Rivaflecha, officer of the
Ministry of the Interior, and militiaman Ramón Siam] and wounded four
others," explained Escalante, who himself received five shots in the
leg during the confrontation. The terrorist who landed went to several
houses looking for a guide to accompany them to the border post, and
beat up an old man in the first house they entered. But no one helped
the counterrevolutionaries, who were members of Alpha-66.

Ramón Siam was only 24 years old when he died in that attack. His
mother, Josefa Caridad Portellez, also spoke to the court, accusing the
killers and saying that they must "pay in some way for all the damage
that they have done to innocent people."

Another witness, Pedro Goizueta, described the act of sabotage on
December 23, 1963, in Siguanea Bay, on the Isle of Youth (then the Isle
of Pines), south of the main island of Cuba.

A group of frogmen appeared on the dock at night near the Colony Hotel
and placed two explosive charges. The first was aimed at damaging of
hull of an LT-85 speedboat, and the other set to go off when there was
a large number of people gathered trying to help the wounded from the
first blast. At the entrance to the bay, they placed a mine to aid them
in their withdrawal.

According to Goizueta, who was the political leader on the torpedo
boats, he was the oldest in the group, at age 24. When the second
explosion went off, the men were propelled into the air. Some landed in
the sea, others on land. Twenty men were seriously injured and three
died.

The authors of the sabotage were a squadron from the Alpha-66 terrorist
organization, based in Florida.



UNFORTUNATE CELEBRITY

Terrorism in one of the most complex portions of the Cuban people’s
lawsuit against the U.S. government, because it has had many
manifestations with varying characteristics, since the beginning of the
Revolution to the current decade, stated lawyer Juan Mendoza when he
asked that the ninth day of the hearings continue with the examination
of this theme.

Three filmed materials and 21 witnesses dealt with attacks on economic
objectives, Cuban diplomatic missions abroad and skyjacking, which has
an unfortunate celebrity of appearing first in Cuba, Mendoza explained.

The first action presented to the court was the March 13, 1961 attack
on the Santiago de Cuba oil refinery previously owned by Texaco, by a
CIA commando, during which 31-year-old sailor René Rodríguez was
killed, as explained in the now declassified report by CIA Inspector
Lyman Kirkpatrick.

Juan Marcos Milá described the incident in great detail, with a diagram
showing the entrance of the speedboat equipped with artillery into
Santiago de Cuba Bay. Dally Rodríguez denounced the death of her son
René, who was 26 years old and left three sons plus a five-month-old
daughter.

Skyjacking was described by Marta Fernández, who on March 10, 1987, was
a simple passenger on a Cubana Airlines flight between Havana and Nuel
Gerona, on the Isle of Youth, until two young men carrying grenades and
a woman tried to take the plane to the United States.

They threw the grenades. One didn’t go off, but the other wounded 13
people, including two children and a pregnant woman," Fernández
explained.

There have also been numerous actions taken against Cuban diplomats.
The first denunciation in this regard was made by Domingo García, whose
brother Félix was murdered by a commando of the Omega-7 terrorist
organization in downtown New York on September 11, 1980.

Another witness was Pilar Ramírez, who are seriously wounded by on
explosion on February 4, 1974, of a package bomb sent to the Cuban
embassy in Lima, where Ramírez was secretary to the ambassador.

Elena Martínez described the events surrounding the death of her friend
Adriana Corcho, resulting for the 1976 explosion of a suitcase placed
in the entrance of the Cuban diplomatic offices in Lisbon. "It was so
powerful that it knocked down the walls, destroyed the reception
office, the elevators, the stairs." Adriana saved the lives of several
of her co-workers, because she discovered the suitcase and warned
everyone before it exploded, explained Alberto Alvarez, another
witness.

This session ended with the testimony of Reinaldo Tápanes,
second-in-command of State Security in Matanzas, about the pirate
attacks in Varadero beach on the Meliá Varadero Hotel (1962), Sol
Palmeras Hotel (1995) and Meliá Las Américas Hotel (1996).