CORU
Umbrella of five Cuban exile organizations formed under Orlando Bosch in the Dominican Republic on June 11, 1976, whose members bombed a Cubana airliner that October and lent DINA the men who killed Orlando Letelier.
CORU was "integrated by 5 anti-Castro groups which united in the Dominican Republic on June 11, 1976, under the leadership of Dr. Orlando Bosch": Bosch's Acción Cubana; the Cuban Nationalist Movement, "a right wing organization which claimed credit for acts of violence in the United States and Canada during the mid-1960s"; the Cuban National Liberation Front, formed in October 1973 and credited with about 25 acts; the veterans' association of Brigade 2506; and the 17th of April Movement. Bosch told an interviewer from prison: "We were conspiring there. Planning bombings and killings. Everything was planned there."12
1976
In September Bosch reached Caracas under Venezuelan protection. On October 6 two employees of Luis Posada Carriles blew up a Cubana airliner off Barbados. Ricardo Morales Navarrete of DISIP named Frank Castro, "a leader of CORU," among those who planned it at the Anauco Hilton, and said Castro had wanted his own front to claim it and then, after the deaths, did not. Members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement had meanwhile gone to Washington with Michael Townley of DINA and killed Orlando Letelier on September 21.3
After Bosch
With Bosch in a Caracas prison the leadership passed to Frank Castro, "CORU Chief from Miami." Informants reported him reorganizing cells, planning to sabotage a Mexican airliner on the Mérida-Havana route while insisting "that all operations must be outside of the boundaries of the United States," raising money among exile doctors for a jailbreak in the Dominican Republic, and running a "young action oriented cell" of Alvin Ross and Raciel Rodríguez that bombed the Viasa Airlines office in Miami Beach on December 23, 1977. In January 1977 a CORU member came to Miami on the instructions of Venezuela's Orlando García Vásquez to arrange "a dramatic mission that would cause maximum publicity," a naval attack on Cuban shipping, and a lesser bombing, to "take away the 'pressure' from Orlando Bosch." In January 1978 Guillermo Novo was organizing cells in Union City, New Jersey "for military action in the U.S. and against the country of Venezuela." Bosch wanted "war declared against Venezuela." In July 1978 Bosch, from prison, removed Castro and named Dr. Carlos Dominicis interim head. An informant reported an offer of money from the Unification Church to a Chicago federation of which CORU was proposed as the military arm.14
The Justice Department wrote in 1989 that CORU "has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings in Miami, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere."5
Sources
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13. ↩
- Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. Assassination on Embassy Row. McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 250, quoting Bosch to Blake Fleetwood, New Times, May 13, 1977. ↩
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, teletype to Director, "Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976," November 2, 1976, JFK Assassination Records Collection. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 10. ↩
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)," January 24, 1977. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 12. ↩
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Associate Attorney General, In the Matter of Orlando Bosch-Avila, decision of Acting Associate Attorney General Joe D. Whitley in exclusion proceedings, January 23, 1989. ↩
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