Bosch: I Gave Cannon But Didn’t Attack Ship

By Margaret Caroll

Herald Staff Writer

Dr. Orlando Bosch testified Wednesday that although he supplied a 57mm recoilless rifle for an attack on a Polish ship docked at Dodge Island it was the Cuban Power mysteryman “Ernesto,” who squeezed the trigger.

Dr. Bosch, on trial with eight other anti-Castro activists on charges of conspiring to shell the freighter SS Polanica, also reluctantly identified Ernesto as a man named “Pablo Vega.”

The 42-year-old baby doctor said he met Vega two years ago in the Bahamas. He said he believed that Ernesto, who wore a Ku Klux Klan-type hood at a press conference in Miami some weeks ago, left the country after the ship was hit Sept. 16. He said Vega is a short, dark, muscular man. No other details of his identity were given.

However, during another press conference prior to his indictment, Bosch, who then said he was acting only as a spokesman for Cuban Power, said the leader of the secret terrorist group had once been an officer in the Cuban army.

The government, on the other hand, says the bespectacled doctor is Ernesto, the man who has taken credit for a series of explosions on foreign ships trading with Castro.

Dr. Bosch was among the first of 12 witnesses that defense attorney Melvyn Greenspahn expects to call. The government rested its case Wednesday after putting 52 persons on the stand. The case may go to the jury Friday.

The exile leader’s testimony matched that of a co-defendant, Jose Diaz Morejon, who said he and another defendant, Barbaro Balan Garcia, accused with Bosch in the actual shelling, watched Ernesto take aim on the ship.

Morejon said Bosch had instructed them to tell Ricardo Morales Navarette, a paid government informant who had infiltrated their little group, that they shot the rifle.

This, Morejon said, was to protect Ernesto and also because they were suspicious of Morales – who eventually turned out to be a key prosecution witness in their federal court trial.

Bosch also admitted that he took dummy dynamite from Morales and said he believed it to be the real thing, not knowing that Morales’ “black market” source was really the FBI.

He testified that Morales, himself facing a state trial in the bombing of a Miami store, had approached him months ago and asked if he was “short on explosives.”

Bosch, who is leader of the MIRR, a long-time anti-Castro group in Miami, replied “in this fight, we are always short of something until we win.”

The dynamite, Bosch testified, was intended for delivery to insurgents in Cuba via Ernesto. But, he said, when he had Morales test the explosives and got a fizzle instead of a blast, he tossed the remainder of the three cases into a canal near the airport. He said the 150 pounds of dynamite cost $300.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Donald Bierman and Ted Klein contended that the FBI provided four cases and that some of the stick turned up as “bombs” on foreign vessels.

During cross-examination, Bosch denied that he got the dynamite because he needed a ship explosion for a “grand entrance” as a Cuban Power delegate in Miami.

Although Dr. Bosch contended that he deplores any terrorist acts on U.S. soil, during Bierman’s questioning he said he approved of Ernesto’s attacks on foreign ships dealing with Cuba.

As for the Polanica, he said he “didn’t approve,” but that he had no control over the triggerman.

Bosch said Ernesto wanted to lob a shell at the Soviet bloc freighter because he was bitter over the Czech invasion. Bosch said the single shell used was not armor piercing and was just a “propaganda” shot.

When attorney Greenspahn opened his case before Judge William Mehrtens Wednesday, he also tried to break down a Western Union employee’s identification of Bosch as the person who sent three threatening wires to leaders of countries dealing with Cuba.

Greenspahn produced Evelio Bosch, a Miami Cuban exile, who testified that he sent a telegram to Cuba last June with 40 minutes of the time Dr. Bosch was to have wired Mexico, Spain and England. (Neither Bosch is related.)

He also had Dr. Bosch stand in front of the jury and told the panel that Bosch always had a mustache and a facial birthmark – items not mentioned in the Western Union man’s testimony.

Meanwhile, H. L. Hunt, the Texas oil billionaire, called The Herald Wednesday to change an earlier statement regarding a possible contribution of $15,000 to the Cuban Power movement in his name.

“Please change my qualified no to a categorical no,” Hunt said. “I have checked my entire organization within the past 24 hours and can say positively no such donation was made.”