Cuban Exile Who Worked for the CIA Accuses Reporter of Distortion

Here's the score in America; if you've ever "waged a violent campaign" against a communist leader, then you're a "cold-war veteran" and totally not a terrorist. And if you've publicly admitted that you "organized a wave of bombings" in that communist country, that's cool; just don't lie to a judge during an immigration hearing about your involvement in those attacks.

And that's all according to our paper of record, the New York Times. The Times is so damned objective that even though its own reporter recorded Luis Posada Carriles admitting that he planned a string of 1997 bombing at tourist spots in Havana, Cuba, it won't call Posada a terrorist. It'll just quote anonymous Cuban officials who accused the United States of harboring "the bin Laden of this hemisphere."

The 83-year-old Posada is currently on trial for lying to an immigration judge about his role in the 1997 bombings that killed an Italian tourist and wounded dozens of other people. Perjury, not terrorism. A former contract reporter for the NYT, Ann Louise Bardach, had interviewed Posada in Aruba in 1998, during which she recorded his confession. At the trial this week, Posada's attorney tried to accuse Bardach of distorting the tape. It was a weak argument, easily refuted by Bardach, but it was this week's highlight of a trial with one of the most interesting backstories in U.S. history. A hilarious tale of hubris and hypocrisy.      

In 2005, an immigration judge ordered Posada deported. But the U.S. can't send him to his native Cuba or Venezuela for fear that he'll face torture. So he lives in Miami, where in 1967 he began spying on Cuban exile groups for the CIA. His involvement in U.S. foreign policy stretches back to 1961, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In the 1980s, Posada worked for the U.S. government, aiding Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries in that silly little Iran-Contra affair.

So, if your bombings violent campaigns maintain consistent anticommunist undertones, you're good. But never lie to immigration judges.