BYJEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—

THE order to destroy Luis Posada Carriles’ file, kept under lock and key in the FBI’s evidence room in Miami, was given by its agent Ed Pesquera, the son of Héctor Pesquera, the former chief of the FBI in South Florida who arrested the Five.

The information was revealed this Sunday in The Washington Post by Ann Louise Bardach, the U.S. journalist who, some years ago, published an interview with Posada in which he confessed his links with the Cuban American National Foundation.

In an article entitled "Why the FBI Is Coming After Me," the reporter recounts how Homeland Security agents turned up at her home while she was absent with a warrant to revise the documents she possessed relating to the terrorist’s case. Alerted to what was occurring, Bardach advised the investigators to speak to lawyers at the newspaper, who immediately intervened in the case.

The reporter had already revealed during an interview with Amy Goodman on her radio show "Democracy Now!" how the file had suddenly been thrown into the paper shredder "in 2003." This time, she prints additional details in which she specifies that the destruction of the dossier, which brings together a variety of original documents, took place in August of that year. The date is important: Posada was at that time in Panama, where the district attorney tried to obtain documents from U.S. authorities that certified his criminal past.

Although they were forced to cooperate fully in this way with the Panamanian judicial system, in virtue of an agreement signed between the two countries, the U.S. embassy in Panama only handed over photocopies of obsolete declassified reports on the case.

Among the documents that were destroyed in Miami was a fax that Posada had sent to certain accomplices located in Guatemala in 1997, complaining that the U.S. media was reluctant to believe reports about the attacks he was planning to carry out in Havana.

"I had shown him a copy of that fax during my interviews with him," revealed Bardach, recalling her meeting with Posada on the Caribbean island of Aruba. "The fax had been intercepted by Antonio Álvarez, a Cuban exile and businessman, who shared office space with Posada in Guatemala in 1997. Alarmed, Alvarez had advised agents at the FBI’s office in Miami, but when they took no action, he sent it to the (New York) Times."

In his fax, Posada asked his interlocutors for "all the information about (the bombing of) the discotheque in order to try to confirm it." He then signed the name "Solo," another one of his nicknames.

"ED PESQUERA, SON OF HÉCTOR"

Bardach reminds her readers how – according to her sources - Héctor Pesquera, then chief of the FBI’s office in Miami, showed little interest in the Posada case. "He enjoyed socializing with Miami's hard-line exile politicians, and denied agents’ requests for wiretaps on Bosch, known as the godfather of the paramilitary groups, as well as other militants suspected of ongoing criminal activity."

According to agents, reveals The Washington Post article, Pesquera "shuttered investigations" into Cuban-American terrorists before retiring in December 2003.

Héctor Pesquera is the same FBI agent from Miami who, in September 1998, brought about the arrest of the five anti-terrorist fighters who were falsely accused of "espionage" and sentenced to exceptionally long jail sentences after a trial which the same investigator and mafia accomplice made sure was rigged.

Bardach then indicated that FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela confirmed to her that "the approval to dispose of the evidence was given by the case agent on Posada, who happened to be Ed Pesquera -- Hector's son."

THE "POLITICAL" OFFICIALS DECIDE

In her article, the journalist comments that "The FBI and the Justice Department are filled with dedicated public servants, but it is the political appointees who make the final decisions. And for them, Posada may be a man who knows too much."

Other "thorny" details appear in this case, confesses Bardach. "The Miami-Dade Police Department's liaison to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been a well-regarded detective named Luis Crespo Jr. -- who is the son of Luis Crespo, one of the most famous anti-Castro militants, known as El Gancho, or The Hook, because of the hand he lost to an ill-timed bomb."

She then reveals that one of Crespo’s assistants is Detective Héctor Alfonso, whose father is another anti-Cuba terrorist by the name of Héctor Fabián. "Assigned to the MDPD intelligence unit, Alfonso's son has access to the most sensitive information on homeland defense, including on Cuban exile militants."

"Before the government starts tampering with the Constitution's protections of the press, it needs to do some housecleaning," concludes Bardach. "A good start would be a special prosecutor to look into who ordered the removal of the Posada evidence, and why. If it then decides that it wants to go further, it might peruse the 45 years' worth of CIA and FBI files on Posada that detail his paramilitary career. And there are a dozen or so comrades of Posada's in Miami and New Jersey who know a great deal more than I do," writes the reporter.

Besides showing that, although informed by Álvarez, the FBI did not act when Posada led the attacks on Havana and that he sabotaged legitimate events by the Panamanian judicial system to incriminate him and his accomplices in Miami, the revelations by Ann Louise Bardach published in The Washington Post confirm the direct link between the Posada case and the arrest of the Five.

By persecuting the Cubans who had infiltrated terrorist groups, Héctor Pesquera gave cover and protection to his friends in the terrorist mafia who were financing and directing Posada, such as has been confessed by the terrorist himself and also recent statements by Antonio "Toñin" Llama.

More than ever before, with these revelations from the influential Washington daily, the innocence of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States, whose liberation has been demanded by a panel of UN jurists, remains proven.

(Translated by Granma International)