Orlando Bosch

Orlando Bosch was a Cuban pediatrician, trained in Toledo, Ohio, who fought briefly against Fulgencio Batista in the Escambray and then left Cuba. "In 1960 the CIA had placed him and his followers in the Everglades for training." After the Bay of Pigs he denounced the agency. "We have a right to work for Cuba here or anywhere in the world," he said in 1966. "If the CIA breaks the laws, and Kennedy broke the laws, why can't we do the same?"¹

Miami and Caracas

In the summer of 1967 federal officers caught Bosch and his men firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter in Miami harbor. He served four years and was paroled in 1972. His next organization, Cuban Action, set out to raise ten million dollars, three of them for the killing of Fidel Castro. Arrested in Caracas in November 1974 and linked to two bombings, he was offered to the United States, which "declined Venezuela's offer to expel him to serve the rest of his sentence." The Venezuelan secret police, DISIP, was then headed by his friend Orlando Garcia, with Rafael Rivas Vasquez as deputy and Luis Posada Carriles as chief of operations. "All had received CIA training."¹

Chile

In December 1974 Bosch entered Chile with Guillermo Novo and Jose Dionisio Suarez of the Cuban Nationalist Movement, who had come "to pay homage to Pinochet." He lived there for more than a year, and was reported to have met General Augusto Pinochet. In February 1976 he was arrested in Costa Rica on "a false Chilean official passport in the name of Hector Davanzo Cintolesi," with a mission to kill Andrés Pascal Allende of the Chilean MIR. That June he and Frank Castro brought some twenty men to Bonao in the Dominican Republic and formed the Commando of United Revolutionary Organizations, CORU. "We were conspiring there. Planning bombings and killings," he told an interviewer from prison. "Everything was planned there."¹

Caracas

In August 1976 Bosch passed through Maiquetía airport from Curaçao on his way to Chile. There José Figueres Ferrer, the former president of Costa Rica, got him a false passport as "Hector Emilio Balango"; arrested in Costa Rica, he was freed with another as "Luis Paniagua." Called to Caracas by telephone, he landed on September 8 and was met by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando García Vásquez, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete, "all members of the Presidential Police Security Organization in Venezuela." From the Caracas Hilton he was offered protection, a weapon, leave to raise funds, and an interview with "a top level person in the Venezuelan government," and "promised to stop terrorism by his group in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but not Panama." A CIA source at a fund-raising dinner in his honor at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, attended by Venezuelan officials, heard him ask in effect for payment to refrain from violence during the United Nations meeting of November, and say that his group had done "a great job" in killing Orlando Letelier and would "try something else." "After that," the FBI's narrative continued, "the Cuban plane was sabotaged, and seventy-some people were killed. Dr. Bosch was arrested and charged with the crime."²³

Caracas

In August 1976 Bosch passed through Maiquetía airport from Curaçao on his way to Chile. There José Figueres Ferrer, the former president of Costa Rica, got him a false passport as "Hector Emilio Balango"; arrested in Costa Rica, he was freed with another as "Luis Paniagua." Called to Caracas by telephone, he landed on September 8 and was met by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando García Vásquez, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete, "all members of the Presidential Police Security Organization in Venezuela." From the Caracas Hilton he was offered protection, a weapon, leave to raise funds, and an interview with "a top level person in the Venezuelan government," and "promised to stop terrorism by his group in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but not Panama." A CIA source at a fund-raising dinner in his honor at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, attended by Venezuelan officials, heard him ask in effect for payment to refrain from violence during the United Nations meeting of November, and say that his group had done "a great job" in killing Orlando Letelier and would "try something else." "After that," the FBI's narrative continued, "the Cuban plane was sabotaged, and seventy-some people were killed. Dr. Bosch was arrested and charged with the crime."²³

October 1976

Two Venezuelans arrested after the bombing of a Cubana airliner off Barbados on October 6, 1976, "named Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carrilles as part of the conspiracy," and DISIP arrested both. On October 11 the Justice Department asked Venezuela to make Bosch available for questioning in the murder of Orlando Letelier, committed three weeks earlier by DINA with members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Cuban exiles had complained that Chile gave haven to Bosch and Rolando Otero, "both fugitives from the FBI, only to betray them."¹

Exclusion and Release

Acquitted in Venezuela after eleven years, Bosch entered the United States without papers on February 18, 1988, and was held on his 1974 parole violation. On January 23, 1989, the acting associate attorney general, Joe D. Whitley, ordered him excluded. "For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence. He has threatened and undertaken violent terrorist acts against numerous targets, including nations friendly toward the United States and their highest officials." The decision recited his leadership of the MIRR from 1960 to 1968, the recoilless rifle fired at the freighter Polanica on September 16, 1968, telegraphed threats to the presidents of Mexico, Spain, and Britain, his founding of CORU, and evidence at his Venezuelan trial "that the two men convicted of homicide in connection with the bombing were in contact with Bosch both before and after the bombing." "Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed more terrorists." In 1990, over the department's objection, the White House of George H.W. Bush released him.⁴⁵