| | Anti-Cuban 'terrorists' find refuge in Florida 
US shouldn't discount 'heavily armed' groups training in Florida
The "Global War on Terror" has been a primary concern of the US government in recent years, but a new exposé reveals a network of international "terrorists" have trained and apparently found refuge in America for decades.
Tristam Korten and Kirk Nielsen, writing for Salon.com, profile a group of Cuban exiles who are believed to have plotted attacks against Cuba and continue to operate in Florida with virtual impunity.
"[O]ther than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country's government," they write.
"In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora, Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups -- Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana -- are so common they've taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons."
However benign the groups may appear, they are packing some serious firepower, a Cuba expert tells RAW STORY.
"The fact that they have significant weapons caches means that you can't discount them," Steve Clemons, director of the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program.
Clemons said he has been told that the military has "war-gamed" scenarios in which the Florida-based militants attempt an invasion of Cuba, perhaps following Castro's death.
Former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson shared some of his recollections about such scenarios from his 31 years in the military, much of it served during the Cold War.
"In exercises, I recall vividly that when we wargamed 'the Cuba scenario' what happened was that the U.S. Navy, the FBI, the Florida State Police, the Coast Guard, and a host of other folks got involved not in invading Cuba, but in preventing a group of Cuban-Americans in Florida from doing so," Wilkerson writes at The Havana Note. "I might add that such actions violated U.S. law and so, in the exercises—which were in my view very realistic—we spent our time attempting to stop several hundred small boats, loaded with automatic weapons, explosives, and lots of Cuban-Americans, from getting to Cuba."
But, he said, the groups' influence has diminished greatly in recent years.
"The question is, 'Should we take it seriously,'" Clemons said. "Yes, they are dangerous, but I think they are contained by our own federal government."
Indeed, many of the members of Alpha 66, the Cuban militant group featured in Salon, are senior citizens now. The men may be part of a dying breed. Clemons says attitudes in the US seem to be taking small steps away from a reflexive fealty to anti-Castro sentiment in Florida. But most presidential candidates, in his estimation, still pander to that old-school sentiment in search of politically important Florida voters.
"What's most disconcerting about the political gamesmanship of political candidates [is] you're seeing the bloc of anti-Castro crazies eroding," Clemons said, a sentiment that was echoed on his blog.
For their part, the anti-Castro militias tell Salon terrorism is not their goal.
"Our goal is to free our country for our children and grandchildren," Al Bacallao says. The 61-year-old Bacallao was raised in Georgia after arriving from Cuba at age 8. "The United States fought for its liberty, why can't we?"
"But Alpha members may have a fluid definition of what a civilian is," observe Korten and Nielsen. "Raking the coast with .50-caliber machine-gun fire certainly does not exclude civilian casualties, nor does attacking tourist spots. By his own admission, Bacallao, who joined Alpha 66 23 years ago, has gone on several missions to Cuba. In 1993 U.S. authorities arrested him and a boatload of other men setting out for the island."
Perhaps the most notorious alleged Cuban terrorist finding refuge in the US is Luis Posada Carriles. He is suspected of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban flight that killed 73 people.
Korten and Nielsen outline the alleged crimes in his past:
The Cuban government has implicated Posada in a series of 1997 Havana hotel bombings, which killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 people. In 1998 Posada, a former CIA and Venezuelan intelligence operative, told the New York Times that he was responsible for the bombings. The Venezuelan government wants Posada for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner, which killed 73 people. Although Havana-bound Cubana Flight 455 originated in Trinidad and Tobago, the plot was allegedly hatched by Posada in Caracas. Two men who worked for Posada admitted to the crime, but Posada has repeatedly denied any involvement in that attack.
Venezuelan authorities arrested Posada and Orlando Bosch in 1976 for planning the bombing. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, in an operation allegedly funded by Jorge Mas Canosa, and fled to El Salvador. He then began working for a CIA-led gun-running operation. Posada was paid $3,000 per month by Oliver North deputy Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to funnel guns to the Nicaraguan Contras. After the Iran-Contra debacle, he remained in Central America as an advisor to the Guatemalan government.
In 2000 Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and three Miami Cubans for a plot to bomb a Panamanian auditorium where Castro was scheduled to give a speech. Posada was in possession of a gym bag full of C4 explosives. The four men were convicted on related charges in 2004; one was a CANF employee, another was Pedro Remon. Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, a close U.S. ally, pardoned all four men that same year just before she left office. All of them returned to Miami except Posada.
In 2005 Posada entered the U.S illegally; he was later arrested with a false passport and jailed. He requested political asylum in April and the Venezuelan government requested his extradition in May. A U.S. immigration judge in Texas rejected Venezuela's request when prosecutors did not challenge Posada's assertion he'd be tortured if sent back. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said publicly in 2005 that the Cuban and Venezuelan charges against Posada "may be a completely manufactured issue." Posada was held by U.S. immigration authorities from May 2005 to April 2007, when he was released on bail. In May 2007, a U.S. district judge tossed out all charges of immigration fraud against him.
Clemons says the Posada case deserves to be an issue in the upcoming presidential elections.
"Knowing any of the political candidates and what they might or might not do cannot come from asking them about the comfortable issues of the day -- it comes from seeing them under stress and when challenged to confront issues such as this Posada case," he writes on The Washington Note. "Will John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama admit that our justice system in Florida that protects these thugs like Posada is broken?"
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