Bosch Names Cuban Power Leader
By IAN GLASS
Miami News Reporter
Ernesto, the mysterious head of the secret Cuban
Power organization and the man who took the credit for its bombings, was
identified yesterday.
"His name is Pablo Vega," a reluctant Dr. Orlando
Bosch said in federal court here.
Bosch said he originally met Ernesto on Anguilla
Key in the Bahamas two years ago. He described him as about 5-feet,
4-inches, dark, muscular.
He believed Ernesto who, he said, was military chief
of Cuban Power, had left the country after the shelling of the Polish liner
Polancia Sept. 16. He did not know where he was now.
Bosch 42, and eight other Cuban exiles are accused
of plotting to bomb foreign ships.
Bosch's identification of Ernesto was wrung from
him by defense attorney Melvyn Greenspahn, after Greenspahn asked him:
"Dr. Bosch, are you Ernesto?"--which is the government's contention.
The doctor replied in the negative.
Bosch also said it was Ernesto that fired the 57
mm. recoilless rifle at the Polancia, although it was greed another of
the defendants, Jose Diaz Marejon, would take the blame.
This he said, was to protect Ernesto, and also to
confuse Ricardo Morales, the 29-year-old exile who had turned government
informer and infiltrated the organization for the FBI. The group
had become suspicious of Morales.
"Ernesto told me he had to punish the Communists
for what they did to Czechoslovakia, and uphold the dignity of the freedom-loving
world," said Bosch.
Government attorneys Donald Bierman and Theodore
Klein showed earlier that, over the last six months, Morales had been supplying
Bosch with phony dynamite supplied by the FBI.
Bosch admitted he had accepted the dynamite, but
only to be sent to insurgents in Cuba. He paid $300 for three shipments.
He began to get suspicious of Morales when they
tested the dynamite and it was dud. He and Morales threw the shipments
into a canal behind the Miami International Airport.
Greenspahn has said he will call about a dozen witnesses.
The government produced 52 witness who testified over 4 1/2 days.
The case is expected to go to the jury late today
or tomorrow.