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Today's Stories

July 2 / 4, 2005

Laura Carlsen
Zapatista's Red Alert

 

July 1, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf

Pat Williams
What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver

Gary Leupp
Summer Surprise?

John Stauber
Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie

John Chuckman
The Blessings of Canada

Justicia y Paz
Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least!

Cockburn / St. Clair
It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court

 

June 30, 2005

Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis

John Stauber
Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America

Virginia Rodino
All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement

Jason Leopold
Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy

Dave Lindorff
What Was Bush Thinking?

Greg Moses
Racism at Cape Cod

Norman Solomon
Memo to the Iraq War

Joshua Frank
Israel's Theocrats

Alexander Cockburn
The Political Function of PBS

 

June 29, 2005

Mike Schaefer
How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll

Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Democrats Shift into Reverse

Sam Husseini
A Quick Way to End the Insurgency

John Stauber
Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton

Ahmad Faruqui
Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan?

Linda S. Heard
Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo

Stew Albert
Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero

Ray McGovern
Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course

June 28, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
A Defeat Bred in Deceit

Landau / Hassen
Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics

John A. Murphy
Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania

Mike Whitney
More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents

CounterPunch News Service
JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook?

Dave Zirin
Pining for the Pistons

Dave Lindorff
Showtime in Washington

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Bloody Mess

 

June 27, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans

Mike Marqusee
G8: Who are the Hijackers?

Mark Scaramella
When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz

Leigh Saavedra
Press Apologists for Torture

Kathy Kelly
Where is the UN?


June 25 / 26, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals

Jennifer Van Bergen
America's Parallel Legal Systems

George Corsetti
This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo

Kevin Zeese
Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids

P. Sainath
Russian Roulette in Vidharbha

John Stauber
How to Bury a Mad Cow

Scott Handleman
Gay in the Third World

Tom Barry
The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists

John Walsh
Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places

Justin E.H. Smith
The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution

Alan Wallis
The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood

Ben Tripp
Negative Space: an Artful Lesson

Frederick B. Hudson
Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock

Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert

 

June 24, 2005

Ray McGovern
The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed"

Jorge Mariscal
"They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq

Desiree Hellegers
Portland vs. the FBI

Zeynep Toufe
What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It?

Joshua Frank
Call Him Senator Con Job

David Lindorff
Which Flag Would Jesus Burn?

Michael Neumann
Victory and Recruitment

Website of the Day
Gagging Dr. Dean

 

June 23, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge

Clay Conrad
Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform

Standard Schaefer
A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism

P. Sainath
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks

Mark Engler
CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death

Norman Solomon
Voluntary Amnesia in America

Cockburn / St. Clair
Frank Calzon

Kathy Kelly
Where You Stand Determines What You See

 

 

June 22, 2005

Kevin Zeese
The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

William S. Lind
Afghanistan: the Other War

Arsalan Iftikhar
Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act

Dan Nagengast
Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas

David Krieger
To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making

 

 

June 21, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Destroy the Unbelievers!

Mike Whitney
President Disconnect

Dave Lindorff
Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway?

Mark Weisbrot
Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez

Matthew R. Simmons
The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis

Dave Zirin
The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man"

Virginia Rodino
The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment

Paul Craig Roberts
A War Waged by Liars and Morons

 

June 20, 2005

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Tariq Ali
To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel!

Mickey Z.
WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo

William Blum
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends

Gary Leupp
Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq

Jason Leopold
Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War

Dave Lindorff
Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Uri Avnery
Condi and Hamas

Website of the Day
Crimes Against Poetry

 

June 18 / 19, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Is the Jury Dead?

Greg Moses
Race Bias and the Death Penalty, One More Time

Benjamin Shepard
Arrested for Stickering, Biking and Other Misadventures: Creative Direct Action in the Era of the PATRIOT Act

Stan Goff
Stuff to Do to Stop the War: 95 Days to Pre-Nixonize George W. Bush

Lee Sustar
Does Iraq's Main Labor Union Support the Occupation?

Jude Wanniski
The Tipping Point: Getting Out of Iraq

Diana Barahona
Librarians as Spooks: the Scheme to Infiltrate Cuba Via Libraries

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Justice Dodge in Haiti, Again: Impunity and the Raboteau Massacre

Fred Gardner
How Many Wins Can We Take?

Mike Whitney
Gen. Tommy Friedman's Plan to "Win" the War in Iraq: Reinstate the Draft

Ahmad Faruqui
Star Wars or Earth Wars?

Manuel García, Jr.
De-Eichmannizing America

Roger Howard
Leave Iranian Politics to Iranians

Ron Jacobs
Eros and the Grateful Dead

Ben Tripp
Situation Desperate: Why Am I Not Pleased?

Poets' Basement
Louise, Albert and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Christ's Entry into Washington

 

 

June 17, 2005

Ricardo Alarcón
Who Helped Posada Enter the US?

Clay Conrad
Medical Marijuana: Is Jury Nullification the Next Step?

Marc Estrin
Open-Ended Closure: the Death Penalty and the Culture of Victimhood

Colin Brown
Firebombing Fallujah: Pentagon Lied About Use of Napalm in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Pennies for Africa: Bush's Phony Money

Joshua Frank
Blue State Warriors: How Democrats Derailed the Peace Movement

Norman Solomon
The Killing Street Memo

Mary Rizzo
Who's Afraid of Gilad Atzmon?

Bond / Brutus / Setshedi
How Bono and Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against Neoliberalism

 

June 16, 2005

John Walsh
The Iraq War Polls: Dems' Stance Even Less Popular Than Bush's

Dave Lindorff
Work 'Till You Die: the Bush Retirement Plan

Adrian Lomax
Torture in U.S. Prisons: Common, Lethal, Unreported

Tom Crumpacker
The CIA, Posada and the Bombing of Cubana Flight 455

Jeffrey Kolakowski
The Kinsley Paradigm: Downsizing the Downing St. Memo

Julene Bair
Turning Off the Ogallala Spigot: Toward a New Way to Farm on the Great Plains

Michael Dickinson
As We Forgive Our Debtors: the Madness of Money

Francois Houtart / Isabel Parra, et al.
Against Terrorism; In Defense of Humanity: an Appeal

Tom Barry
Meet Bolton's Replacement: Robert "First Strike" Joseph

 

 

June 15, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to US Troops on Loyalty

Daniel Wolff
The Palace at 4 A.M.

Tim Wise
Discover the Nutwork: David Horowitz and the Politics of Ad Hominem Distortion

Ricardo Alarcón
The New CIA Revelations About Posada

Joshua Frank
House Republicans vs. Bush: "This is Not a Conservative War"

John Hilary
Bloodsuckers' Summit: Why the Left Should Rendezvous at the G8

Norman Solomon
Iran's Reformers: a Threat to Theocrats and Neocons

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Juries and Lynch Mobs

Website of the Day
What It Feels Like to be Tasered (Turn Up the Volume)

 

 

June 14, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

Forrest Hylton
Stalemate in Bolivia

Richard Gott
The Crisis in Bolivia

Fred Gardner
The Raich Decision: All Power to the Feds

Steve Breyman
Doing the Right Thing is Also Politically Expedient

Dave Zirin
Sacred Hoops: Basketball in the Barrio

Robert Kent
Outsourcing Torture and the Stop-Loss Program

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

 

June 13, 2005

Gary Leupp
Another Damning Document

Dave Lindorff
The Inca and Us

John Stauber
Mad Cow USA: the Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

Fred Gardner
Supreme Indignity: Medical Pot Doctors Respond to Justice Stevens

Evelyn J. Pringle
TeenScreen: the Lawsuits Begin

Norman Solomon
Letter From Tehran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Neo-Con Unfurls the Big Picture

 

June 10 / 12, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Thomas Friedman's Imaginary World

Sharon Smith
Torturers and Liars: Masters of Deception

Brian Cloughley
"Support Our Torturers!"

Chris Kromm
Home Cookin': Pentagon's Base Relignment Plan Would Increase South's Share

Heather Gray
A Day in Mississippi: Some Things Have Changed; Some Remain the Same

Kevin Zeese
What the Left Must Learn from 2004: an Interview with Josh Frank

Mickey Z.
The Pentagon Papers, 34 Years Later

Gary Leupp
A Review of Sison's "At Home in the World"

Eli Stephens
The Asshole in El Paso: Why Posada Carriles Matters

Nick Dearden
A Scottish Band in the Occupied Territories

Oscar Olivera
Recovering Bolivia's Oil and Gas

Robert Fisk
Screening "Kingdom of Heaven" in Beirut

Michael Dickinson
Oh My God!: Gunning for Blasphemers

Poets' Basement
Engel, Albert, Louise, Ford

Website of the Weekend
Gravity's Rainbow, Illustrated

 


June 9, 2005

Len Colodny
Felt Was Asked Under Oath in 1975 If He Was "Deep Throat"

Christopher Brauchli
From Baseballs to Hand Grenades

Ron Jacobs
Light a Candle; Curse the Darkness

Dave Lindorff
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist

Katrina Yeaw / Alex Schmaus
Repression 101: Anti-War Students Sanctioned at SFSU

Alan Farago
Spin Machine Busts a Gasket in the Everglades: Fed Judge Whacks Jeb

Saul Landau
The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

 

June 8, 2005

Jim Hougan
Strange Bedfellows
Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA

Alan Maass
Is Bolivia on the Edge of Revolution? an Interview with Tom Lewis

Jason Leopold
Enron Lives!: Former Army Sec. White Wants Govt. Money for New Energy Scam

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exit Right, Advani: Unpardonable Acts of Statesmanship

Dave Zirin
The Rotting Soul of the 49ers

Derrick O'Keefe
Bush's Terrorist: the Case of Posada Carriles

Diana Johnstone
Non, Neen, Angelene!
Why Defenders of the "Oui" are Wrong

Website of the Day
The Meatrix

 

June 7, 2005

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia's Agony of the Stalement Continues

Greg Moses / Susan van Haitsma
Pushing Back the Violence

Lenni Brenner
What Madison Would Think About the Air Force Academy's Offical Fanatics

Col. Dan Smith
Liberation vs. Survival in Iraq

Joshua Frank
Dean at the DNC: the Establishment vs. the Elites

Dave Lindorff
Fair-Weather Allies: US Denies French Fighters Emergency Landing Rights

Margot Veranes / Adrian Navarro
Xenophobia in the Desert: Racist Fever Becomes Law in Arizona

Michael Neumann
Sharing Music: Property Gone Wild

 

June 6, 2005

Stew Albert
Everybody Must Get Busted: Supremes Rule Against the Sick

Paul Craig Roberts
Federal Bureau of Entrapment

Nicole Colson
Inside Walter Reed Hospital

Ali Khan
Friendly Renditions to Muslim Torture Chambers

Jason Leopold
When Will Rumsfeld Be Indicted?

Charles Walker Poff
Rumsfeld, China and Hypocrisy

Ramzy Baroud
My Grandpa's Right of Return

Rep. John Conyers
Did Bush Deliberately Deceive America About Iraq?

Evelyn Pringle
TeenScreen's Top Pusher

Gary Corseri
25 Reasons to Impeach Bush

Website of the Day
Save This 200 Year Old Burr Oak from Bible Thumpers with Chainsaws

 

June 4 / 5, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
France's Magnificent Non!

James Petras
The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America

Robert Fisk
Who Killed Samir?

Patrick Cockburn
My Father, Claud Cockburn, the MI5 Suspect

Rev. William Alberts
When Pride in Power Corrupts: the Story of a Methodist President, His Bishops and an "Incompatible" Lesbian Minister

Saul Landau
40 Interns and a Mule: Will the Dems Ever Take Advantage of the Republicans' Blunders?

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Dante with a Brush: Botero Immortalizes Bush

Dave Lindorff
What is the Media Running From?

Lance Selfa
Why Bush is Getting Away with Murder

Tom Crumpacker
On the Use of State Terrorism: the Posada Precedent

Joshua Frank
How Beltway Dems Sank Dean for America

Fred Gardner
Don't Bogart That Taxable Commodity

Michael Dickinson
Roll Out the Barrel: Blood, Oil and Baku

Roger Martin
We Can See, But Not Far Enough

Reza Fiyouzat
Welcome to the Third World

Ben Tripp
Romance: Advice from a Pro

Graeme Greenback
Pardon Me, While I Piss on this Bible

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Albert, Engel, Smith

 

 

 

June 3, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Welcome to a Has-Been Country

Joseph Massad
Witch Hunt at Columbia

Jeff Halper
The Process of Transfer Continues

Tom Barry
The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny"

Joshua Frank
Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter

Mickey Z.
Deep Throat as Sideshow

Gary Leupp
"Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated"

Website of the Day
Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973

 

 

June 2, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate

Mike Whitney
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges

Brian Cloughley
Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Two-State Solution is No Solution

Russell D. Hoffman
High Tension at San Onofre

Norman Madarasz
"Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non"

Norman Solomon
War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq

David Price
The Shallowness of Deep Throat

Website of the Day
Fallujah on Film

 

 

June 1, 2005

James Petras
Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada

Justin Delacour
Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez

Edward Jay Epstein
Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid?

Omar Barghouti / Lisa Taraki
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. "Academic" Freedom

Dave Lindorff
When War Goes Off the Script

Kevin Zeese
Reality Check: Who to Believe on Iraq War and Gitmo?

Jason Leopold
When Presidents Lie

William S. Lind
Wreck It and Run

 

 

May 31, 2005

Sen. Mike Gravel
Thank You, Mark Felt: We Need a New Deep Throat

David Krieger
US Nuclear Hypocrisy

Tad Daley
The Nuclear Me-Too Club

Joshua Frank
Pelosi at AIPAC: Israel Comes First

Richard Gott
Chavez Leads the Way

Norman Solomon
Time to Get Serious About Impeachment

Tom Segev
Our Man in the Territories

Walter Brasch
Killing Americans with Secrecy

Diana Johnstone
The French "Non"

 

 

May 28 / 30, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
There's Their Way or the Galloway

Richard Lichtman
We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff

Sharon Smith
The Road to Abu Ghraib

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party

Ramzy Baroud
Muslims Were Desecrated, Not Just Their Holy Book

Brian Cloughley
Why Are Nukes OK for You, But Not for Us?

Fred Gardner
Advice from a Lawyer About Medical Pot

Lee Sustar
Chavez Gets Proactive

Joshua Frank
Isikoff Comes Clean: "Nobody in the US Said a Word, Until the Riots"

Justin E.H. Smith
What About the People? a Report from Romania

Jackie Corr
A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness

Michael Kimaid
Bush as Ahab

Toufic Haddad
Lessons from the Reversal of the AUC Boycott

Justin Taylor
The Fear of Paul Virilio

Amir Butler
Searching for a Saladin

Ben Tripp
Insomnia and Sarcasm

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Davies and Louise

 

May 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
It Really is a Crusade!

Daniel Estulin
Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005

Kevin Zeese
Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi?

Robert Fisk
Mubarak's Goon Squads

Dave Zirin
Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent

Website of the Day
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Independence Day Weekend Edition
July 2 / 4, 2005

The Terrorist and the CIA's Operation 40

Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles?

By TOM CRUMPACKER

Luis Posada's immigration case is now set for hearing before a Homeland Security judge in Texas on August 29. On May 21 Secretary Rice indicated the Homeland case might go on for many months and his extradition would be determined on its completion. With motions and appeals and paid lawyers, this might mean years. A provision in the US-Venezuela extradition treaty says the custodial state can keep the alleged criminal until its own proceedings against him arising from crimes committed there are completed.

But surely a minor "crime" such as a traffic ticket or a failure to report to Homeland Security on entry is not what was contemplated. And even if Posada could somehow convince the Homeland judges of the validity of his spurious residency and asylum claims (that he is a US resident although he has lived abroad for 30 years; that he is entitled to asylum here although he has murdered hundreds of innocent people), he still should be extradited now to Venezuela because his migration status (whether resident or asylee) has nothing to do with extradition for trial for his alleged crime, murdering 73 people in 1976.

Posada is a Venezuelan citizen by naturalization and a Cuban citizen by birth. As a Cuban he has rights under the Cuban Adjustment Act and its "wet foot, dry foot" policy, which takes precedence over more general laws. On setting foot in US, whether legally or illegally, any Cuban can stay here and apply for residency after a year. In other words, the pending immigration cases against Posada are a farce, a way of making it appear that there's some reason for not extraditing now.

So why not just send him to the extradition judge and be done with it? What's the reason for keeping him here? Delay for delay's sake? Aggravate the Venezuelan government? Weaken the US claim to be the world leader in its "war against terrorism"? None of these seem very convincing as motives, even for this Administration. According to recently declassified CIA reports (National Security Archives, Book 153), in custody after his October 6, 1976 bombing of the Cubana civilian airliner, flight 455, agent Posada threatened CIA that if forced to talk, the Venezuelan government "would go down the tube" and there would be "another Watergate."

George Bush, Sr., CIA Director at the time of the Cubana bombing, had previously appointed Ted Shackley as his Deputy Director for Special Operations. Since Bay of Pigs, Shackley had been in charge of the JM/Wave Miami CIA station which had been training anti-Castro extremists for possible invasion, then demolitions (Posada ran the school), biological warfare and murderous incursions into Cuba. Bush, Sr., and Shackley had urged several violent US anti-Castro groups to join together under one umbrella organization called CORU. It was led by Orlando Bosch and took credit for the Letelier murders in Washington, DC in September.

Bush, Sr., has said he was not with the CIA before being appointed director by President Ford in early 1976. But there's a memo from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department dated November 28, 1963, indicating otherwise. It concerns information developed by the Miami FBI office about groups in Miami seeking to blame the JFK murder on the Cuban government, and it says the information was orally furnished on November 23 to "George Bush of the CIA." Bush was in Dallas then. As was another CIA operative, Chauncey Holt (now deceased), who identified Posada as being in Dealey Plaza at the time of the murder.

Other sources, among them CIA agent Marita Lorenz, placed Orlando Bosch and Guillermo Novo there. The question arises whether their presence there can be dismissed as coincidence. After all, Bosch, Posada's accomplice in the Cuban airline bombing, was pardoned by President Bush Sr. in 1990 against the strong objection of his own Justice Department, which had implicated Bosch in more than 70 terrorist crimes. And Guillermo Novo and Posada were just last year pardoned on another bombing charge and released by the US-friendly outgoing president of Panama. Yet another anti-Castro extremist, Felix Rodriguez, who killed Ernesto Guevara and worked with Posada in the Iran-Contra supply network, has long been a Bush, Sr. personal friend.

The official versions of Watergate and JFK murder don't make a lot of sense when one considers motivations of the supposed actors. It's now clear that Nixon ordered the burglary of Democratic National Headquarters in 1972. But what was he looking for at such great risk? In his Staff Chief H. R. Haldeman's book on Watergate, he says when Nixon spoke in several places on tape about the risk that a Watergate probe could "blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing," he was actually referring to the JFK murder, not the invasion of Cuba. As Vice President in 1960 (a political protégé of Senator Prescott Bush), Nixon had supervised the preparation of the invasion. It seems odd he would confuse these events if they were unrelated. Moreover, what could be "blown" about the Bay of Pigs that was not already known?

And why did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK? The Warren Commission and the subsequent Congressional committees could not come up with a motive. In an effort at the time of the murder to blame the Cuban government, a photo of Oswald was spread across US newspapers showing him on a New Orleans street holding a "Fair Play for Cuba" sign. But why were there no other members of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee? Why did Oswald give the New Orleans address of the committee as 544 Camp St., which was the side entrance for the offices of Sergio Arcacha Smith and Guy Banister, both rabid anti-Castro extremists? Why were these offices frequented by Cubans? Why did Oswald spend much of his time there? Why was Allen Dulles, the CIA Director who planned the Bay of Pigs and was subsequently fired by JFK, put on the Warren Commission? Why did CIA misinform the Commission on so many key evidentiary matters? The official answers to these questions seem to be "blowin' in the wind." It's like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

In the fall of 1963, JFK was no longer relying on CIA intelligence or opinions regarding either Vietnam or Cuba. Negotiations were about to start between US and Cuba to possibly normalize relations. JFK's conditions were that Cuba distance itself from the Soviet Union and stop aiding revolutionary movements in Latin America, to which Castro seemed amenable. In a private meeting several months after Bay of Pigs, General Douglas MacArthur had warned JFK: "The chickens are coming home to roost and you are living in the chicken house."

A key part of Allen Dulles's Bay of Pigs plan was "Operation 40." They were forty CIA agents, mostly gun men, whose job was to kill the leading members of Cuba's government. Some, like Posada, had previously worked in enforcement for the Batista regime. Prior to the invasion they were waiting in Dominican Republic. Their boat took off for Cuba but turned around when informed the invasion was failing. They returned to US, and unbeknownst to JFK, Operation 40 continued on. For years and decades, with some changes in names and personnel.

Many of the original names kept appearing in connection with subsequent covert, violent CIA projects, such as Operation Mongoose, Operation Phoenix, the JFK murder, the regime changes in Dominican Republic, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Watergate burglary, the bombing of Cubana flight 455, the Iran-Contra war, Operation Condor which exterminated many South American progressives, the Havana tourist hotel bombings. Names like Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Felix Rodriguez, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Antonio Veciana, Guillermo Novo, Eugenio Martinez, Ricardo Morales, David Sanchez Morales, David Phillips, all original members of the forty.

In an oligarchy where the important decisions are made in secret by a power elite, where the mass media is used to manipulate rather than inform, it's often difficult for the public to distinguish actual from virtual reality. It's apparent that Posada could supply many of the missing pieces of the puzzles of the last 45 years. He has friends in Miami and they have brought him here to resurface after 30 years. If he needed money or a place to hide comfortably, they could easily have provided him with such in another country. What we now know about his past is enough to say that he and his friends could be using going public with his knowledge of CIA operations as a threat or extortion chip, perhaps to effect future US policy toward Cuba. This would explain why his legally required extradition is being delayed.

Tom Crumpacker is a lawyer who works with the Miami Coalition to End the US Embargo of Cuba. He can be reached at: Crump8@aol.com