"Amid scandals that have plagued the U.S. Justice Department, the Posada case has drawn little national attention beyond the exile community in Miami. But pressure is mounting, both domestically and abroad, to expose Posada for a lifetime of alleged transgressions, even if some were committed on behalf of or with the full knowledge of U.S. officials."
Luis Posada Carriles plans to return to Miami a free man after an El Paso federal judge dismissed immigration fraud charges against the Cuban exile militant Tuesday. The reason: The government translator botched the English-Spanish interpretation of his citizenship interview.
In her 38-page written order scrapping the indictment, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone accused the United States government of engaging in ''fraud, deceit and trickery'' to indict Posada. She called the government's citizenship interview a ''pretext for a criminal investigation'' so it could charge Posada.
Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles must be released on bond and allowed to live with his family under house arrest in Miami while awaiting trial for allegedly lying to immigration authorities, a federal judge ordered Friday.
Posada was not freed because the federal government quickly filed a motion asking the judge for a seven-day delay to review the ''adequacy'' of her release conditions -- and to decide whether to appeal. It was also possible Posada could be taken into custody by immigration officials as soon as he posts bond.
Nevertheless, the ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso was the first major legal victory for the former CIA operative since immigration agents in May 2005 detained him in Miami-Dade County, charged him with illegally being in the country and flew him to an immigration detention facility in El Paso.
One-time Florida International University Professor Carlos Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, supplied agents in Fidel Castro's government with classic intelligence information that went far beyond the ''harmless gossip'' the convicted couple said they gathered on the Cuban exile community, federal prosecutors said Monday.
On the eve of the couple's sentencings today, the U.S. attorney's office disclosed for the first time that the FBI obtained material from one of the Alvarezes' home computers showing that rather than reducing their illicit operation in the mid-1990s, they were still actively contacting the Cuban Intelligence Service.
An FBI informant who is a key witness against anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles discovered a pipe bomb attached to the bottom of his pickup truck Sunday and drove it to the Hialeah Police Department, law-enforcement authorities say.
Gilberto Abascal -- whose testimony also helped convict anti-Castro activists Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat on weapons charges -- somehow spotted the device strapped to the undercarriage of his red 2005 Ford F-150 truck while he cruised around Hialeah, two federal investigators familiar with the incident said.
PHOTO: ABASCAL
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/16485137.htm
Legendary Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles was charged criminally for the first time in the United States on Thursday, when a federal grand jury in Texas accused him of lying about how he sneaked into the country in 2005.
Also charged Thursday were Posada's chief exile benefactor, Santiago Alvarez, and another supporter -- Osvaldo Mitat -- after they refused to testify before the same grand jury. Both are now serving prison sentences on a weapons case that surfaced just months after Posada was detained in Miami-Dade County.
Posada has long maintained that he came into the United States by crossing the Mexican border with the assistance of a migrant smuggler, not by sea as prosecutors now allege.
A friend of Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles was jailed after refusing to testify in a Texas federal grand jury investigation into Posada's arrival in the U.S. last year. U.S.-born Ernesto Abreu, 43, is being held in New Mexico on contempt charges. Two other Miami exiles may face the same fate if they follow his lead. Photo: Posada.
June 22, 2005: Carlos Alvarez, mild-mannered psychology professor, Catholic volunteer, suspected covert agent for communist Cuba stops at Publix to swig java after Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle. FBI agents confront him. Melodrama dominates the brief exchange. The FBI agents tell him, that "this would be the most important day of his life." It may well have been. The Florida International University professor followed the FBI to a parking lot, ditched his car, and rode with agents to a hotel room.
This story ran on the front page of the Washington Post Saturday:
"HAVANA -- European tourists here send home postcards with stamps bearing the images of five faces, known simply as los muchachos (the young men) or los cinco (the five). The faces, usually surrounded by billowing Cuban flags, stare out, larger than life, from factory walls, apartment buildings, billboards."
"The five are heroes in Cuba, but villains to exiles in the United States, where they are serving long prison terms for espionage-related convictions in 2001.
"Their case, once cheekily cast in the Miami news media as a "spy-vs.-spy," Cold War-era throwback, illuminates the resilience of the complicated, decades-long standoff entangling Cuba, the U.S. government and Cuban exile groups based in Florida. It is now also raising nettlesome questions about the nuances of terrorism and international espionage."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201780.html
The secrets landed on Brian Latell's CIA desk from just about everywhere: spy satellite photos, reports from infiltrators in the Cuban government, communications intercepts, U.S. spies debriefing Cuban intelligence officers begging for asylum. The analyst would weigh each, assign levels of urgency, then pass the scoops up the U.S. chain of command, where top officials from the secretary of state to the president used them for decades to formulate Cuba policy and to try to understand Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Today, eight years into his retirement from his post as a top intelligence official in charge of Latin America and Cuba, Latell is using his analyst skills to decipher another complex place: Miami.
Read more about this Friday in the paper and in this blog.
