BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD (Special for Granma International)

                   THE bloody record of the terrorist gang headed by Orlando Bosch
                   and Luis Posada Carriles includes not only the explosion of a Cuban
                   airliner in mid-flight; more than 50 attacks in the United States,
                   Cuba, other parts of the Americas and Europe; and murderous
                   collaboration with the military regimes in Argentina and Chile: it has
                   also been confirmed that the gang has been extensively involved in
                   the world of drug trafficking.

                   Through the years, the U.S. press has published
                   precious little about this hot topic, and few journalists
                   have been brave enough to delve into these activities, in
                   which the CIA has always played a part in one way or
                   another.

                   But there is at least one exception that proves the rule: that of a
                   professor at Tufts University, also an investigative reporter, who
                   exposed himself to the worst reprisals by revealing previously
                   unpublished information about the "private lives" of the CIA and the
                   Miami mafia.

                   In two alternative Internet publications, Professor Jerry Meldon
                   released a "biography" of the best known Cuban exile drug
                   traffickers, especially the central figure: arch-terrorist Luis Posada
                   Carriles.

                   Basing himself on a series of declassified secret documents, Meldon
                   bravely describes Posada Carriles’ relationship with the late Jorge
                   Mas Canosa, founder and leader of the Cuban American National
                   Foundation (CANF) and frequent guest at the White House under
                   Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton.

                   In an article entitled "The CIA’s Dope Smuggling ‘Freedom Fighters,’"
                   published in December 1998, Meldon explains how the CIA’s ties to
                   the Cuban-American mafia and its drug traffickers originated with the
                   1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, for which the CIA trained hundreds of
                   Cuban exiles in addition to seeking out the worst of Havana’s
                   gangster elements from the ’50s who had taken refuge in the United
                   States.

                   A top-secret element of the invasion plan was Operation 40, whose
                   personnel included Posada Carriles; Felipe de Diego, a former
                   commercial representative in Cuba of Firestone Tire and Rubber and
                   future Watergate burglar; Félix Rodríguez, later head of covert
                   operations and drug trafficker for the Nicaraguan contras; and
                   various henchman identified by the mafia. That parallel force was to
                   enter the island clandestinely as the invasion was under way, in order
                   to carry out various actions aimed at destabilizing the Revolution.

                   After the invasion’s spectacular failure, the CIA continued to utilize
                   elements of Operation 40 for various covert missions, until in 1970 a
                   small aircraft used by the group crashed in Southern California with
                   several kilos of cocaine and heroin on board.

                   The pilot was Juan Restoy, a former congressman during the Batista
                   dictatorship. Restoy’s dope network had grown out of the organized
                   crime empire of Florida godfather Santos Trafficante, who had
                   assisted the CIA in numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel in the
                   early years after the triumph of the Revolution.

                   Operation 40 was disbanded, but the members’ participation in the
                   lucrative smuggling continued. That same year, Meldon notes, the
                   federal government arrested 150 suspects in what was called the
                   largest roundup of major drug traffickers in the history of U.S. federal
                   law enforcement.

                   "President Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, celebrated the
                   destruction of ‘a nationwide ring of wholesalers handling about 30%
                   of all heroin sales and 70 to 80% of all cocaine sales in the United
                   States.’ Mitchell did not mention all the Operation 40 ‘heroes’ who
                   had been netted in this grand operation," Meldon wrote.

                   Among those busted was Juan Restoy.

                   Two of Restoy’s drug runners, Ignacio and Guillermo Novo, belonged
                   to the Cuban Nationalist Movement, an organization on the extreme
                   right with cells in Miami and Union City, New Jersey.

                   Guillermo Novo is one of three individuals currently under arrest
                   along with Luis Posada Carriles in Panama, and also the "concern" of
                   the Miami mafia. His brother Ignacio perpetrated the spectacular
                   bazooka attack on the Cuban pavilion at the 1967 Montreal World’s
                   Fair.

                   Juan Restoy eventually broke out of jail and was slain in a shootout
                   with federal agents, but his narcotics network would remain true to
                   the "cause" – i.e., attempts to topple Fidel.

                   Professor Meldon explains that in June 1976 the most extreme
                   counterrevolutionary elements met in the Dominican Republic and set
                   up the Commando of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), at
                   a time when George Bush Sr. was CIA director and, logically, guided
                   the anti-Cuba organizations’ activities.

                   "Numerous dope-linked terrorists were in attendance – Luis Posada
                   Carriles, Guillermo Novo, and so on – who would later assist the
                   Reagan White House in running its contra re-supply operations in
                   Central America. There was also Frank Castro, the Bay of Pigs vet
                   running the militant Cuban National Liberation Front. Castro would be
                   indicted in 1983 for smuggling over 500 tons of marijuana, and then
                   have the charges magically dropped after setting up a contra training
                   camp in the Florida Everglades."

                   Also present at the meeting, according to other sources, were the
                   leaders of Alpha 66 and the former president of the Bay of Pigs
                   veterans, Roberto Carballo.

                   "At this June 1976 convention in Santo Domingo, the CORU mob laid
                   out a plan for major bloodshed, and that fall its myrmidons carried
                   out two of the most sensational terrorist acts ever witnessed in the
                   Western hemisphere."

                   On September 21, 1976, a car-bomb exploded in broad daylight in
                   Washington, D.C., killing Orlando Letelier, formerly foreign minister of
                   Chile, and human rights pioneer Ronnie Moffitt.

                   Meldon continues, "Two of the CORU thugs on Pinochet’s terror
                   budget turned out to be the Novo brothers. Though then-CIA
                   director George Bush stonewalled the investigation to the best of his
                   patriotic ability, Guillermo was eventually busted in Miami with a
                   pound of coke; he was ultimately found guilty of the Letelier-Moffitt
                   terror homicides, but the conviction was overturned on appeal when
                   his confession was thrown out."

                   Later, on October 6, 1976, the monstrous explosion of the Cubana
                   passenger plane occurred, killing all 73 people on board. Four of the
                   crime’s authors were arrested and charged in Venezuela: "Dr. Death"
                   Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and two of their henchmen. Bosch and
                   Posada Carriles managed to escape Venezuelan justice, thanks to
                   the collusion of the State Department, the CIA and the Miami mafia.

                   Meldon also reveals that Jorge Mas Canosa, the multimillionaire
                   leader of the CANF, bought Posada’s escape from Venezuelan prison
                   with $26,000 and underwrote the defense costs of José Dionisio
                   Suárez, a codefendant with the Novo brothers in the Letelier
                   case. "Suárez pled guilty to killing Letelier, but jumped bail and
                   continued with what he knew best, blowing up a TWA airliner and
                   firebombing Moscow’s UN mission, before becoming the contras’
                   instructor in sabotage and demolition techniques. At last report,
                   Suárez was a hit man for Colombian dope cartels."

                   Immediately after his escape, Posada Carriles reappeared in El
                   Salvador, supervising the contra resupply flights under the direction
                   of his old comrade-in-arms Felix "Max Gómez" Rodríguez, until
                   October 1986, when an old plane from the CIA fleet was downed
                   over Nicaragua, exposing the Reagan White House and its whole
                   Iran-Contra operation.

                   When the scandal broke out, Luis Posada Carriles disappeared in
                   Guatemala and was seriously wounded by gunfire. He later explained
                   that the CANF paid $22,000 USD for his hospital expenses.

                   In 1994 the terrorist, who enjoyed multiple benefits from the mafia
                   elements in El Salvador, failed in an attempt to kill Fidel Castro during
                   a trip to Colombia.

                   Meldon states that even after Mas Canosa died from cancer in 1998,
                   Posada Carriles remained active, as he demonstrated publicly when
                   he confessed to The New York Times that he had organized the
                   bombings in Havana hotels.

                   Meldon concludes, "Pretty impressive loyalty for someone who,
                   according to a CIA report, was investigated by them in 1967 for
                   supplying explosives, silencers and grenades to Santos Trafficante’s
                   organized-crime hoods. And not bad considering that the Agency six
                   years later supposedly warned that ‘Posada may be involved in
                   smuggling cocaine from Colombia through Venezuela to Miami.’"

                   Beneath all this information exposed by Meldon lies the incredible
                   tolerance of the U.S. judicial system in regard to the terrorism and
                   drug trafficking carried out by enemies of Cuba who benefit from a
                   very specific piece of legislation.

                   Other analysts state that CORU’s activities over several years,
                   totaling more than 50 attacks, were almost exclusively financed by
                   drug money.

                   It’s interesting to note that Orlando Bosch, a CIA agent and founder
                   of the terrorist CORU, was "liberated" in 1988 from a Venezuelan
                   prison by the then U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and now the State
                   Department’s liaison with Latin America – Otto Reich – who also
                   secured Bosch’s pardon, without much difficulty, from President
                   George Bush Sr., a former CIA director.

                   In the midst of the "war on terrorism" proclaimed by the current
                   administration, a Florida court has handed down very harsh
                   sentences to five young Cubans with absolutely no record of
                   violence, who are dedicated to the fight against terrorism.
                   Meanwhile, a Panamanian court hasn’t been able to find "sufficient
                   proof" to try Luis Posada Carriles, a well-known terrorist with four
                   decades of bloody actions and now accused of trying to kill a head of
                   state in a building full of students.