Delahunt Hammers Gonzales on Posada

by emptywheel

In one of the better uses of non-US Attorney purge questioning, Congressman Delahunt confronted Alberto Gonzales on his inconsistent treatment of Luis Posada Carriles.

Posada is, by any standard, a terrorist. He has been tied to a bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. But of course, the US is not going to label him a terrorist, because he's our terrorist, an anti-Castro anti-Chavez terrorist.

As Delahunt pointed out to Gonzales, under the PATRIOT Act the Attorney General retains sole discretion for naming someone a terrorist. Gonzales has sole discretion whether we start treating Posada with the same seriousness with which we treat young men from New Jersey caught training with paint ball guns to attack Fort Dix. Delahunt went further, too, reading the disgust voiced by the judge who dismissed the charges:

In addition to engaging in fraud, deceit and trickery, this Court finds the Government's tactics in this case are so grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice. As a result, this Court is left with no choice but to dismiss the indictment

While he didn't say it specifically, Delahunt seemed to suggest deliberate negligence on the part of the government in drawing its case against Posada.

Delahunt used the oversight hearing as an opportunity to confront Gonzales about why he hadn't considered naming Posada a terrorist. Presumably, Gonzales will be forced to provide an answer to Delahunt in writing. But at least in that hearing, Gonzales made his typical evasions, refusing to commit because of factors that he wouldn't really describe.

I look foward to reading whatever response Gonzales gives to Delahunt.

Update: I wanted to pull out some excerpts from the LAT article linked above because it's rare that such a comprehensive view of Posada makes the big papers. The article starts by listing some of Posada's terrorist acts:

Three months before the 1976 midair explosion of a Cuban plane off the coast of Barbados, CIA covert operative Luis Posada Carriles cabled his U.S. minders from Venezuela to report that the plot was in motion and asked for Washington's "assistance."

Recently declassified CIA communications confirm that a U.S. agent got back to Posada within a few days. Other internal communications obtained by the National Security Archive research project put Posada in regular contact with Washington handlers from the time of his arrival here just before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion through the late 1990s, when he allegedly masterminded a series of Havana hotel bombings in an effort to crush Cuba's budding tourism business.

The 79-year-old anticommunist, who turned up two years ago in Miami, has never been charged by U.S. justice officials with participating in a violent act, not even the hotel bombings purportedly financed by fellow Cuban exiles in New Jersey and about which Posada has boasted.

It includes quotes from an extensive interview with Delahunt, as well as more details of US complicity with Posada's actions (no mention of the Bush family, though). It ends with a review of Posada's involvement in Iran-Contra. And throughout, there are a number of clear arguments that our inability to prosecute Posada gives lie to our claim to be fighting the war on terror:

"After learning that Mr. Luis Posada Carriles, a known terrorist, was released from U.S. custody and allowed to reside in the U.S. as a free man, I have become very concerned about our ability to protect our nation," U.S. Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday.

[snip]

Calls to the Cuban Interests Section and the Venezuela Information Office in Washington were not returned, but Cuban and Venezuelan media have denounced the freeing of Posada as evidence that Washington condones terrorism against innocent citizens of states it considers hostile.

I'm guessing part of the reason such a strong article made a big paper is bc of the Latino community in LA. I wonder if the non-Cuban Latino community in this country can convince AGAG to prosecute a conservative Cuban terrorist.

Comments

[randiego]

I think all of these things - the hearings and questions and the non-answers, are all good. It's important to put it all out there, on the record. Call it the 'drip, drip, drip' theory.

But, I think we can all guess that the response regarding Posada will be a big fat zero, unless this one gets some traction in the media.

this is a juicy one for them, low-hanging fruit. Anybody?

[freepatriot]

I look forward to your excellent rebuttal of gonzo's pathetic answers, but I think we're gonna be dissapointed

I mean, this happened what a half hour back ???

what are the chances that gonzo still recalls remembering he said he would provide an answer

on a similar topic, anybody seen a film called "Children Of The Revolution" ???

part of the plot revolves around a woman was having sex with joe stalin, resulting his death

when her spy-liason escort asked her what she was doing when stalin died, she could only say "I don't know, I don't recall, I don't remember"

life immitates art, or art imitates life

I ain't figured that one out yet

[J. Thomason]

The techniques of the klepto/corprotocracy are in full display. Gonzales has spent his career honing the art of using organizational cover to avoid accountability. Its the tactic that Ken Lay hoped to deploy by foisting accountability off on those he had retaiend to serve the corporation but the little problem of his liquidating his position in the face of the bright prospects he claimed that he held for Enron created a dissonance that a jury could not hold.

The advantage of operating in the context of half truths and plausible deniability in government especially within the confines of Congressional oversite is that there truly is no legal safety net. Impeachment is a political process. And so whereas an advocate in a court of law could not act ethically both as fact witness and an advocate, this ethical prescription is inoperative with respect to Gonzalez testimony. In the business environment the incentive is clearly pecuniary. Political incentive is more difficult to nail down.

The play though really is the passage of the hydrocabon law by the Iraqi legislature. All other features of the current politics are designed to insure this payoff without regard to the crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated against the Iraqi people to extort this result. So we see phrases coming out of the administration like "sometimes money is more important than peace," and "working toward acceptable levels of violence." The truth is in the blood of the casualties. This is a downpayment in violent oppression paid to secure an economic order. The political cost of deploying these domesticaly is too high at this time but the inherent intimidating feature of violence nevertheless cast a shadow upon the political stage. Victory will be acheived in Iraq when the hyrdocabon law is adopted and the "profit sharing" begins. Is this strategy really so hard to discern?

[semiot]

"Victory will be acheived in Iraq when the hyrdocabon law is adopted and the "profit sharing" begins."

I think this reasoning is spot on - from the viewpoint of BushCo and it's base, "the haves and have mores" as our Commander Guy so cat out of the bagged it.

But, I think there is a diminishingly slim chance that the law will pass an Iraqi parliament, and near zero chance that it will prove profitable for BushCo in any case.

I do think the BushCo/GOPper idea is to keep American troops in Iraq "forever" - Hannah Arendt noted that the wave of imperialism that characterized the 19th century was predicated precisely on Western governments dispatching troops and bureaucrats as protective cover in the wake of private capital flows. We see how that turned out - even if the Dick Cheneys and Paul Wolfowitzes and Bill Kristals of the world don't. Of course the real "smart money" here (yah) is short to medium term - shrink wrapped Fed notes and RPGs. The oil will be there. But unless BushCo can pull off a Full Monty genocide in Mesopotamia, with American troops as the noble cause skin in the game, then that oil will run in the long run through national pipelines into Chinese tanks and Bob's yer uncle.

[Basharov]

He has been tied to a bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people.

Posada hasn't just been "tied" to the bombing of the Cuban airplane, he was actually convicted by a Venezuelan court and sentenced to prison there, a prison from which he "escaped," almost certainly with assistance from his employers at the C.I.A. and the complicity of the right-wing government that ran Venezuela at the time. It's probably just a coincidence that in 1976, when Posada (and his buddy Orlando Bosch, presently enjoying a comfortable retirement in Miami) blew up the airplane, Dubya's Daddy was the head of the C.I.A.

[jgju]

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