• National chief of action and sabotage for a mercenary CIA group

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma Internacional—

THE December 30, 1960 edition of Hoy newspaper, quoting anti-terrorist investigators of the time, states that the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FRD), a counterrevolutionary organization answering to the CIA led by "Tony" Varona from Miami, "has lost some of its active agents" with the arrest, on the 26th of that month, of terrorist Carlos Alberto Montaner at his home on 309 88th Street, of what used to be the very exclusive Havana neighborhood of Miramar, along with two accomplices, Néstor Manuel Piñango Pérez and Alfredo Carrión Obeso.

Months after he departed Cuba under the protection of his Miami godfathers, Montaner confirmed during an interview with journalist Ángel de Jesús Piñera from Avance magazine, published on April 27, 1962 – and conveniently dug up recently by my colleague Raúl Gómez, of Rebelión website – that he used to belong to Rescate Estudiantil (Student Rescue), defined by experts as the "student wing" of the terrorist FRD.

And he revealed to this journalist that "he shared the national leadership of Action and Sabotage" of that group with the aforementioned Alfredo Carrión Obeso.

In a reply to Granma Internacional, published on August 16 of this year simultaneously in the Miami Herald, the El País of Madrid and the CANF terrorist’s own website, Montaner expands on the information – trying to dilute the gravity of what, during the 1960s, he considered his feats – confirming the name of a third accomplice: Jorge Víctor Fernández. In order to go a little bit deeper, Montaner may be reminded that the second last name of this individual is Romero.

THE FRD, CREATURE OF CIA OFFICIAL E. HOWARD HUNT

The FRD that was overseeing the activities of Carrión’s group and Montaner was created by CIA official E. Howard Hunt (the one from Watergate) and Manuel "Tony" Varona, former prime minister and former senate president of Cuba, in order to carry out terrorist actions against the brand-new Revolution.

Hunt closely collaborated with his buddy David Atlee Philips, who was directing CIA activities in Havana at the time.

Associated with the capos Santos Trafficante and Johnny Roselli, Varona participated in an attempt to poison Cuban President Fidel Castro, with capsules developed by the CIA containing germs for a fatal strain of botulism. And his name appears in the archives of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, along with those of other terrorists, like Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Orlando Bosch.

The FRD would later merge with Manuel Artime Bueza’s Revolutionary Recovery Movement (MRR). Declassified CIA documents and confessions from former mercenaries confirm that both groups were always subordinate to the CIA, its guidance and its financing.

"BOMBS, WEAPONS, DYNAMITE, FUSE AND WHITE PHOSPHORUS"

One thing that is certain is that in the January 18, 1961 edition of Revolución newspaper, the names appear of the four FRD/Rescate Estudiantil appear under the announcement that "in trial No. 6-61, regarding the matter of crimes of destruction and possession of flammable materials in which Carlos Alberto Montaner Suris, Alfredo Carrión Obeso, Néstor Manuel Piñango Pérez and Víctor Jorge Fernández Romero were charged, they were sentenced to 20 years in prison, respectively."

The boastful Montaner, in order to pump up his personal mystique, always refers to a death sentence supposedly meted out to him by the prosecution, and to his "30-year" prison sentence. That is simply false.

The text of the sentence, as it was reported by Hoy, reads: "These terrorists had formed a group of counterrevolutionaries directed from outside the country, dedicated to the terrorist activity of planting bombs in the cities of Marianao and Havana. When these elements were arrested, authorities confiscated from them a large quantity of bombs, weapons, dynamite, fuse and white phosphorous."

Montaner would later remember that, after carrying out their actions, the members of the FRD’s "student wing" would meet at the house of Carrión Obeso, at the corner of 86-A and 3rd in Miramar, just one block from Montaner’s residents, where the explosive materials were confiscated from them.

In its December 30 edition, Hoy was even more specific when it stated that the search of Montaner’s house turned up, in addition, a STAR machine gun, detonators, and two pairs of militia member’s pants and shirts, "surely used to disguise themselves as rebel soldiers."

WHAT DOES ACTION AND SABOTAGE MEAN?

The charges of destruction and possession of flammable materials were part of the anti-terrorist legislation established during that period in response to the dirty war being waged by the United States, which, that same year, reached an extremely high level.

In order to realize the gravity of the events, it must be emphasized that newspaper articles at the time – just two years after the revolutionary victory against the bloody Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and just four months after the Bay of Pigs invasion – were reporting that between the months of September and December of 1960, more than 100 actions of sabotage and other terrorist attacks were carried out against the Cuban people.

Just in the month of December, 1960, in the City of Havana, when Montaner and his accomplices were arrested, there were reports of a fire on the 15th of that month at radio station CMQ in the capital; a bomb that went off in the University of Havana, seriously injuring a student; a fire at the Cándido movie theater in Marianao, with seven young people injured, and the attack on the Flogar department store, where several children were hurt after a bomb went exploded.

When Montaner trumpets that in 1962 he "shared the national leadership of Action and Sabotage for the Rescate Estudiantil group," he is confessing that he participated in terrorist actions, which is what the words "action and sabotage" mean.

On Saturday, December 24 of 1960, a few hours before Christmas, in the popular Flogar department store located on Galiano and San Rafael streets in Havana, 13-year-old Juan René Maragosa was seriously injured, along with his sister Marta and his mother, Alicia, by a strong explosion that threw them to the ground.

Montaner was arrested 48 hours after that terrorist act. Technically a minor at the moment of his arrest – he was born in 1943, and is now 62 – Montaner was taken to the Torrens National Juvenile Detention Center, a low-security site, which allowed him to easily escape a few months later with the help of a mercenary from the Escambray mountains, Rafael Gerada, and then take refuge in the Honduran Embassy. On September 8, 1961, he left Cuba headed for Miami, with a safe-conduct pass granted by the Venezuelan government at the request of his Miami bosses.

The Miami Herald columnist should be reminded that in Cuba, terrorism convictions do not expire. Carlos Alberto Montaner continues to be a fugitive of Cuban justice with a sentence to be carried out.

HE SUPPORTED THE ATROCITIES IN THE ESCAMBRAY

"We were arrested just as we had begun to try to help the campesino guerrillas in the Escambray," Montaner says in his August article. For those who don’t know anything about Cuban history, that little remark by the Miami Herald columnist may seem insignificant but for those who know about the atrocities committed in the Cuban Escambray by CIA mercenaries, the confession is a scandalous one.

In those mountains, located in the country’s central region, mercenary bands organized and financed by the CIA, with the collaboration of organizations like the FRD, MRR and Alpha 66 – well-known by Montaner – that had their base on U.S. territory itself, dedicated themselves to sowing panic and distrust in the countryside by burning schools; robbing; killing teachers, campesinos and agricultural workers, and destroying entire families.

Will Montaner continue lying by denying that he led terrorist operations, when he publicly boasted in 1962 of having led the Action and Sabotage section of Tony Varona’s FRR/Rescate Estudiantil? Will he ever confirm that he participated in supply operations for the mercenary troops of the Escambray, as he openly confessed 43 years ago? Will he admit that he was a terrorist and that he actively collaborated with the CIA?