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El Paso Diary: The Sound and Fury of Otto Reich

José Pertierra — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:51:05 +0000

El Paso Diary: Day 38 of the Posada Carriles Trial

By José Pertierra

Portada de Newsweek. Foto: Página web de Otto Reich www.ottoreich.com

The defendant’s name was barely mentioned in court in today. Instead, Judge Kathleen Cardone allowed the defense attorney to put the New York Times, its journalist Ann Louise Bardach and the Republic of Cuba on trial.

Last week, after 11 grueling weeks and 23 witnesses, the Government rested. The prosecution’s final witness was Ann Louise Bardach. Now it is the defense’s turn to present its case-in-chief.

A brief biography of the witness

Luis Posada Carriles’ first witness was Otto Reich. He came to court dressed like a banker, wearing a tailored dark blue suit with a light blue tie that stood out from his starched white shirt.

Reich told the jurors that he was born in Havana in 1945 and immigrated to the United States in 1960. “I was 14 years old. My father decided to make our home in North Carolina, because he couldn’t find work in New York,” he said.

“Did you perform military service for our country?” asked defense attorney Arturo Hernández.

“Yes. From July of 1966 to November of 1969,” answered Reich. He did not say and was not asked if he’d served in Vietnam during that period. With evident pride in his voice, Reich told the jurors that he’d worked for President Ronald Reagan and also for both Presidents Bush.

Some pearls of wisdom from Otto

After Reich testified that his duties under Reagan included matters relating to Cuba, Judge Cardone ruled that he could testify as an expert witness. As such, he need not limit his testimony to facts he has witnessed. He may testify about what he thinks, rather than only what he knows.

As an “expert on Cuba,” Reich offered these pearls of wisdom to the jury:

• There are 50,000 soldiers being held prisoner in Cuba and not for insubordination.
• The rafter crisis of 1994 occurred because burly construction workers on Havana’s seaside Malecón hit people over the head during an uprising.
• Our FBI and CIA agents are decent people who obey the laws and rules of humane conduct, whereas their counterparts in Cuba’s intelligence service do not and even kidnap people and kill them.

Since he had been declared an expert, there was no need to establish a foundation for his opinions. Reich’s putative gnosis carries a weight all its own.

His expert opinions, however, fly in the face of well-established wisdom.

According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London—hardly a lefty think tank—Cuba’s troop strength is believed to be somewhere between 50,000 to 60,000. To posit that 50,000 of those troops are in prison, as Reich maintains, means that hardly anyone in the Cuban armed forces has escaped incarceration to defend the country from invasion. Moreover, neither the CIA, the State Department or human rights groups remotely suggest a thing. Only Otto Reich is out on a limb on this issue.

According to Amnesty International, the 1994 rafter crisis was caused by a combination of events—notably the downturn in the island’s economic conditions due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, Cuba’s long-time trading partners. The U.S. embargo, coupled with laws that virtually guaranteed the legalization of Cubans who took to the seas to illegally immigrate to the United States also fueled the exodus, said Amnesty International. To allege that “burly construction workers” precipitated a mass exodus because they allegedly hit some people over the head at a demonstration is naïve—at best—and irresponsible.

Hasty generalizations are never recommended and ought to be avoided by expert witnesses. Otto Reich’s expert opinion that U.S. intelligence officers “are people who obey the law and the rules of human behavior… whereas Cuban intelligence officers do not” also flies in the face of established fact. According to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, army soldiers as well as American intelligence officers and contractors were responsible for physical, psychological and sexual abuse of prisoners, including torture, rape and sodomy.

Prosecutor Reardon objected vigorously, throughout Reich’s direct examination. “Objection, relevance!” he said repeatedly. Curiously, the prosecutor did not object that the statements were wrong, naïve and without any foundation—nor did he point out that any one of Aesop’s Fables contains more truth than all of Otto Reich’s testimony today.

Judge Cardone overruled virtually all of Reardon’s objections, because she found Reich’s statements relevant for the purpose of impeaching previous witnesses.

It is curious, however, that to impeach the testimony of the two Cuban witnesses, Reich directed his testimony against the country of Cuba. He has no personal knowledge of either the Cuban investigator or the Cuban forensics specialist who testified previously, so he could make no reference to them. But Judge Cardone, by allowing Reich to attack Cuba, allowed him to attack them vicariously.

The Office of Disinformation and Propaganda

Among the posts that Reich held under President Ronald Reagan was Director of the so-called Office of Public Diplomacy, from 1983 to 1986. “It was the first time that the State Department created an office to get ahead of the critics of our foreign policy,” said Reich.

An investigation by the U.S. Comptroller General found that at the end of the 1980s, the office headed by Reich had tried to influence public opinion in favor of the Nicaraguan Contras using “prohibited, covert propaganda.”

Here in El Paso, the Government passed on the opportunity to ask him about a report, dated September 7,1988, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which evaluated the work of the office directed by Reich and concluded:

“…[S]enior CIA officials with backgrounds in covert operations, as well as military intelligence and psychological operations specialists from the Department of Defense, were deeply involved in establishing and participating in a domestic political and propaganda operation run through an obscure bureau in the Department of State which reported directly to the National Security Council rather than through the normal State Department channels.”

The report added that “…the Department of State was used, and perhaps compromised, by the CIA and the NSC to establish, sustain and manage a domestic covert operation designed to lobby the Congress, manipulate the media and influence domestic public opinion.”

“My office was investigated and they didn’t find anything,” Reich stated today. However, in his first speech as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs at the State Department, Reich joked about the controversy and greeted his “former colleagues” and “unindicted co-conspirators.”

The alleged biases of the New York Times and Ann Louise Bardach

Perhaps because of Reich’s extensive knowledge about how to misinform and manipulate the media, the defense attorney wanted to bring him to El Paso. Attorney Hernández asked him to give the ladies and gentlemen of the jury his evaluation of the pre-eminent newspaper in the United States, the New York Times.

“The New York Times is biased against Cuban Americans in general and against anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in particular,” the expert testified. He also offered an opinion about Ann Louise Bardach, the journalist who wrote for the New York Times and to whom Posada Carriles had confessed to being the mastermind behind the 1997 bombings in Havana.

Using the phrase made famous by Fox News, the rightwing news channel, Attorney Hernández asked, “In your opinion, is Ms. Bardach fair and balanced?”

“She is anything but fair and balanced,” answered Reich.

Hernández then read aloud—in a mocking tone—various phrases from one of Bardach’s books, where the author mentions Reich. Without asking for explanations, he asked Reich if Bardach’s information was correct. “No, it isn’t,” Reich answered tersely.

None of the cited passages had to do with the indictment against Luis Posada Carriles. The essential point of Reich’s testimony consisted of character assassinations of the New York Times and Bardach. “She manipulates information and falsifies things,” stated Reich with the same self-assured tone he used earlier to opine about Cuba.

Eileen Murphy, the vice president of corporate communications for the New York Times, responded this afternoon to the witness’s opinions: “Otto Reich has not demonstrated any factual errors in the [Bardach] stories, nor has anyone else in the 13 years since their publication,” she said.

From Santa Barbara, California, Bardach also responded to Reich’s statements. “Reporters with bias against exiles are not granted interviews with Orlando Bosch, Antonio Veciana, Salvador Lew, Juanita Castro, Angel Alfonso, Raúl Masvidal—and literally scores of Cuban-Americans in Miami I have been granted. The well-deserved criticism of Otto Reich—known for his vendettas with journalists and his perceived critics—by myself and many other reporters is not a reflection on any other Cuban-American,” she said.

It is noteworthy that Judge Cardone would not allow Otto Reich to share his opinion about Luis Posada Carriles with the jurors, yet she permitted him to render vacuous opinions about Cuba, Venezuela, Latin America, the New York Times and Ann Louise Bardach.

No mention of the Venezuelan coup d’état or of Orlando Bosch

In El Paso, no one touched on Otto Reich’s role in the coup d’état in Venezuela in 2002, his criticism of the Venezuelan democratic process and his immediate support for the coup plotters when he was working in the State Department of George W. Bush.

In April of 2002 The Guardian revealed that sources in the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed that during the months immediately preceding the coup, Reich had a series of meetings with the principal organizers of the coup, where details of the coup were discussed, including its timing and chances for success, which they believed to be excellent.

The day of the coup, according to the Guardian, “Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chávez was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was ‘responsible for his fate.’ He said the U.S. would support the Carmona government.”

Prosecutor Reardon also did not ask the witness about the cables from the State Department in 1986 and 1987, which confirm that Reich, then the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, asked Washington repeatedly for information about the possibility that Orlando Bosch might enter the United States, despite his long history of terrorism and his having been a co-conspirator with Posada Carriles in blowing up a passenger airliner.

Cuban culture

Reardon did ask the witness about the bombings in Havana in 1997. Despite considering himself an expert on Cuba, Otto Reich admitted that the only thing he knew about that terrorist campaign is what he had read in the papers. “I haven’t studied the incident of the bombs,” he said.

“Do you believe that the bombs in Havana in 1997 affected tourism on the island?” Reardon asked the expert. “Mr. Reardon,” explained Reich, as though he was teaching a course on international relations to high school sophomores, “violence is part of Cuban culture.”

Macbeth

What did the jurors think of Otto Reich’s testimony in El Paso? It’s impossible to tell, although he did communicate an allegiance to the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. It was also evident that Reich doesn’t care for communists or for the New York Times. And it was obvious that he personally detests Ann Louise Bardach.

Yet it was also plain that Reich had absolutely nothing to say about the bombings in Havana in 1997 or about Posada Carriles’ voyage on the Santrina in March of 2005. He was not in Havana in 1997 nor in Isla Mujeres in 2005. He said that he met Posada Carriles for the first time last night in El Paso.

Reich’s testimony in El Paso recalls Macbeth’s speech at Dunsinane Castle:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Sidebar

I first met Otto Reich in December of 1999, when we both appeared on PBS’s NewsHour, in one of the first televised debates about the Elián González case.

During our several debates over the course of the next several months, Reich defended the proposition that the child should remain in Miami with distant relatives, and I argued that it was up to the father to decide where his son should live. “Elián is not your son, Otto,” I told him many times. I was part of the legal team that represented Elián’s father. I’ve not seen Reich since we won Elián’s case. The little boy returned to Cuba to live with his father 11 years ago. When we saw each other last night at the hotel, Reich mentioned our debates, “Pertierra, I haven’t seen you since the Elián case.”

“Otto, that case we won,” I reminded him.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.
Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version: http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/26/diario-de-el-paso-el-cuento-de-otto-reich

El Paso Diary: Swinging Doors

José Pertierra — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:17:28 +0000

El Paso Diary: Day 37 of the Posada Carriles Trial

Ann Louise Bardach

A pair of swinging doors separates the well of the court from the seating area for the press and invited guests. They swing four or five times every time someone pushes on them to pass through. This afternoon, after the defense attorney for Luis Posada Carriles finished his cross-examination of the journalist Ann Louise Bardach, he barreled through the doors with such force that they swung 12 times altogether. I know because I counted.

Hernández knew that he did not succeed in discrediting the journalist, despite his desperate effort to accomplish that. Bardach left the stand, having firmly established that the recording of her 1998 interview of Posada Carriles, which the jurors heard, was authentic. She also evidenced that the Solo fax was written and signed by the defendant.

The jurors listened to the recording and heard Posada Carriles confess to being the mastermind behind the bombings in Havana, and they read the Solo fax, which revealed that the money trail for the bombings began in New Jersey and led directly to Posada Carriles in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Last chance

Today was the last chance for the defense attorney to impeach Bardach. After watching him in action for the past two and a half months, the jurors have learned to gauge the defense attorney’s temperament. For one thing, his ears give him away. The redder they get, the nastier his demeanor. This afternoon they were the color of ripe tomatoes.

Hernández opened fire with a statement, rather than a question. “Ms. Bardach, each time I ask you about the conversation that you had with Mr. Posada after you turned off the tape recorder, you take advantage and add or subtract whatever occurs to you.”

Bardach responded defiantly, “You want to ask and answer your own question, and you are making wild accusations against me. It’s too bad you’re doing this.”

Posada’s pride

Hernández then focused on an article that Bardach and her colleague Larry Rohter had written for the New York Times and which the Times published on the front page of its Sunday edition on July 12, 1998. The defense attorney read aloud from Bardach’s article, “Mr. Posada proudly admitted authorship of the hotel bomb attacks last year. He described them as acts of war intended to cripple a totalitarian regime by depriving it of foreign tourism and investment.”

Hernández followed that question with this one, “Where in the transcript—out of Mr. Posada’s mouth—did he tell you that he ‘proudly admitted’ to the bombings?”. “I asked him and he told me ‘yes,’” answered Bardach. “I took that as an affirmative response. We journalists are in the information collection business, and you lawyers in the deletion business.”

Cherry picking

One way of twisting the meaning of the compromising statements Posada Carriles made to Bardach is to try to take them out of context, something that on the stand she repeatedly called cherry picking. That is, selecting the most desirable phrases.

This exchange between the attorney and the witness is an excellent example of Hernandez’s cherry picking today. He read a portion of the Bardach interview out loud, in a voice that was alternately monotonous and derisive:

Bardach: Okay…then, the part about Colombia is … true. He conspired to move plastic explosives from Guatemala to Cuba last fall, hiding them in diapers, shampoo bottles and…you know, Guatemalans can pass as tourists.

Posada: True, more or less.

Bardach: True, more or less.

Posada: It’s not … it’s not …

Bardach: Not completely.

Referring only to that portion of the transcript, Hernández asked Bardach, “Mr. Posada denied there having introduced explosives into Cuba from Guatemala, but you say ‘not completely.’ Isn’t it true that you are putting words in my client’s mouth?”

“Wrong!” said Bardach, at the same time mimicking the sound of a bell. “What you’re doing is shameful.” She pointed out to the defense attorney that in the part of the interview he selected, Posada was talking about an article that appeared in the Miami Herald the previous month, which alleged that Posada had planted bombs in Guatemala.

“In the part of the interview you cherry picked, I was reading to him the Miami Herald article, and he responded by telling me that no bombs went off in Guatemala,” said Bardach. “He was telling me that the Miami Herald is wrong, that the bombs went off in Cuba—not in Guatemala.”

In apparent exasperation, she added, “Let the jurors read the entire interview, including the parts you censored. Let them also read my three articles from the New York Times, as well as my books (Cuba Confidential and Without Fidel). It would be much better for them.”

You don’t want to hear the truth

The exchanges between Posada Carriles´lawyer and the journalist got testier. Hernández’s face reddened and he raised his voice at the witness. “How can you, with God as your witness, say that my client was proud [of what he’d done]?” he bellowed.

Bardach didn’t flinch. She said, “Would you stop yelling at me and using that tone of voice?”. She added, “You don’t want to hear the truth. Posada was proud of what he’d done, and he got to be on the cover of the Sunday New York Times. That’s as good as it gets!”

The purpose of cross-examination is to suggest to the jurors that the witness is lying. There is a danger, though. If the jurors believe that the cross-examiner has become abusive, is playing tricks or manipulating the evidence, then it’s the attorney—not the witness—whose credibility is undone.

During cross-examination, attorney Hernández insulted Bardach. He mocked and tried to ridicule her. When he couldn’t make any headway with his aggressive questions, he lost his temper and shouted at her.

Had he bothered to look at the jurors, he would have observed that they were enjoying Bardach. They liked her idiosyncrasies and her quick retorts.

But it was a rough cross-examination. When Hernández finally finished, Bardach left the stand, walked directly into the arms of her husband Bob and burst into tears.

The King of Hearts, the Unhappy Lizard and Arturo Hernández

The defense attorney’s questions were reminiscent of the cross-examination by the King of Hearts at the trial of the Knave of Hearts in the Lewis Carroll story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As the White Rabbit announced in open court, the Knave was indicted for stealing the Queen of Hearts’ tarts. The King cross-examined the witness:

What are tarts made of?”

“Pepper, mostly,” said the cook.

“Treacle,” said a sleepy voice behind her.

“Collar that Dormouse,” the Queen shrieked out. “Behead that Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers!”
The King’s questions in Wonderland made no sense. They were pure gibberish. Bill, the unhappy Lizard in the jury box, tried to take notes but soon realized that his scratches made no marks on the slate.

Here in El Paso, the jurors’ notepads were also blank. They stopped taking notes because they had come to realize that Hernández’s questions were no more than nonsensical wordplay. At the end, the defense attorney looked like he, too, wanted to behead the witness, but he had to confine the unleashing of his frustration to the courtroom’s swinging doors.

Sidebar

This afternoon a giant of the legal profession, Leonard Weinglass, passed away at the age of 78. He was the attorney for the Cuban Five, a fighter for justice.

Weinglass did not become a lawyer to make money or to run for office. His clients weren’t bankers or drug-traffickers. He chose to defend los pobres de la tierra (the poor people of the earth) and those who struggled for a better world.

Weinglass’ life taught us that justice is not the law we find in books. He showed us that the finest advocacy is not merely interpreting the law but striving for justice.

Leonard Weinglass, ¡Presente!

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.
Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/24/el-diario-de-el-paso-puertas-batientes

El Paso Diary: Posada Tango

José Pertierra — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:53:27 +0000

By José Pertierra

Posada y su abogado Arturo Hernández

It’s one thing for an attorney to zealously defend his client’s interests and quite another for him to embrace the defendant’s premises. An attorney is most effective, when he keeps a certain critical distance.

Here in El Paso, Luis Posada Carriles’ attorney has adopted his client’s cause as his own—thus coloring his cross-examination to the point of silliness. His nutty questions about Cuba are pregnant with the false postulates of certain exiles in Little Havana who haven’t set foot on Cuban soil in more than five decades. It’s evident that the Miami defense attorney hasn’t done his research.

The art of cross-examination

A good defense attorney takes charge during cross-examination, but he should be careful that the jurors do not perceive him as abusive of the witness. The secret is in being able to develop a narrative for the jury, through skillful questions, that is convincing yet different from the story the witness wants to tell.

But if the jurors feel that the attorney is bullying the witness, the cross-examination backfires. And if the questions are fraught with dubious assumptions, the witness can easily disarm them and expose the attorney’s theory of the case as sheer fantasy.

Many of the questions posed today by defense attorney Arturo Hernández to Ann Louise Bardach revealed more about the attorney, than the witness.

The attack begins

Hernández arrived this morning in a dark grey suit, white shirt and purple tie. With a furrowed brow and reddened ears, he adjusted his spectacles on the tip of his nose and began firing away at the witness.

“Having established, Ms. Bardach, that you have been in Cuba 10 times and that you have interviewed Fidel Castro on two occasions, isn’t it true that only people who are trusted by the Comandante manage to obtain an interview?” Hernández asked.

With that question, the hand-to-hand combat that began yesterday between the Miami attorney and the journalist from California, resumed. “That’s not true,” answered Bardach.

“Isn’t it true that only journalists favored by the regime are granted the privilege of interviewing theComandante?”

Annoyed by his cynicism, Bardach raised her voice and said, “That’s not true, Mr. Hernández. The correspondents Maria Shriver, Ted Koppel, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings have also interviewed him. Do you think that they’re all agents of the Cuban Revolution?”

Attorney Hernández then showed a photograph to the witness for identification. “It’s a photograph that shows me with Fidel Castro,” said Bardach.

“The photograph shows you in close proximity to theComandante,” said Hernández, sneering each time he said Fidel Castro’s rank. Without knowing where Hernández was headed with this question, Bardach answered, “Yes. This is our sit-down interview,” and shrugged her shoulders.

“Is that a pen in your hand?” asked the defense attorney? Without waiting for the answer to the question, Hernández asked another, “Isn’t it true that journalists are not allowed to interview Fidel Castro with a pen in their hand?” “I’ve never heard such a thing,” answered Bardach.

“Isn’t it true that journalists are forbidden to sit so close to Fidel Castro?” inquired the Miami attorney. Incredulous, Bardach answered, “No, that’s not true.”

I feel slandered

“But isn’t it true that you have a history of writing articles critical of the Cuban American community in Miami?” asked Hernández.

Bardach, who has earned numerous prizes and recognition for excellence in journalism—including a place on a Miami Herald top ten books list—reacted sharply. “That’s not true, sir, and you know it.” “I don’t demonize anyone in my stories. I feel as if I am being slandered here.”

Hernández then asked Bardach several more times why hadn’t she interviewed or written previously about dissidents in Cuba. In vain Bardach tried to explain to the Miami attorney that she had spoken with dissidents in Cuba and even spent quite a bit of time with General Patricio de la Guardia, the twin brother of Colonel Tony de la Guardia, who was executed in Cuba along with General Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989 for drug-trafficking and treason. Patricio de la Guardia received a 30-year prison sentence. He is now serving the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.

“Are you referring to the Patricio de la Guardia who is the paid assassin of Fidel Castro?” asked Hernández, looking toward the jury. “I’ve never heard that,” said Bardach. “Look, Mr. Hernández, you know that Mr. Posada’s sister is a colonel in the Cuban army. Let’s not criminalize everybody who lives in that country,” the thoroughly irritated Bardach answered.

Hernández is known to ask the same question in a variety of ways during cross-examination, and so he asked again, “You think that you haven’t written critically about the Cuban-American community?”

“Look, Mr. Hernández,” answered Bardach. “The truth is that there are people in that community that have broken the law.” She offered the example of David Rivera, a Cuban American congressman from Miami who is under investigation for financial irregularities, as well as Jorge Mas Canosa, linked to, “That funny business with Miami County. The entire community is not tarnished simply because of the mistakes of certain individuals,” stated Bardach.

Hernández: “Are you mocking me?”

Hernández directed Bardach’s attention to Cuba once again. “The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) are instruments used by the Castro regime to maintain control of the country, isn’t that true?” asked the attorney.

“They also distribute food and help neighbors resolve certain daily problems,” she said.

The vein on the Miami attorney’s neck bulged and his face reddened. “Are you mocking me?” he demanded. “Fifty years of exile and you are telling me …?”

He didn’t finish the question. Prosecutor Timothy J. Reardon rose and made an objection, which Judge Kathleen Cardone immediately sustained. “Move on,” she said. Hernández changed the subject, but only slightly.

“Didn’t you write in your book that the Miami community is a mirror image of the CDRs in Cuba?” he asked.

“Look, Mr. Hernández, the idea you are presenting here—that I have a dog in this fight—is a lie—sir,” Bardach answered.

The gap

There is a four-minutes-and-twenty-seconds gap within the more than six hours of tape recordings that Bardach made during her interview of Posada Carriles in June of 1998.

The defense attorney directed Bardach’s attention to it, “I want you to listen to the gap.”

A perplexed Bardach responded, “Mr. Hernández, I’m confused. You want me to listen to a gap?”

That was exactly what attorney Hernández wanted. For more than four long minutes, the judge, the attorneys, the prosecutors, the witness, the interpreters, the bailiffs, the clerks, the assistants, the jurors and the journalists listened to the gap in the tape. “A dramatic pause,” as the prosecutor later referred to it.

At the end of the sound of silence, Hernández drew his finger across his throat and his colleague, Rhonda Anderson, switched off the recording. “Ms. Bardach, now that we’ve heard a gap of four minutes and twenty seconds, you may explain to us what may have caused that.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps someone pressed the wrong button when the transcript was made. That sometimes happens. But if anything significant had happened during that brief time, it would be in my notes—and there’s no indication of that,” answered Bardach.

“You erased that part of the recording?” Hernández asked accusingly.

“Please! That’s absurd,” answered Bardach. “I am in the information collecting—not the destroying—business. I’m a journalist,” answered Bardach.

The size of the recorder

The defense attorney also accused Bardach of recording the interview without having sought his client’s permission. “That’s almost funny. The tape recorder was practically on Posada’s lap many times. He himself turned it off when he didn’t want something recorded. It’s huge. It’s more than six inches high,” answered the journalist, mouthing an audible “duuuh.”

The jurors will remember the answers, not the questions

Hernández failed to impeach Bardach’s testimony. He knew it. He looked deflated. Tomorrow he will have another opportunity, but today his questions didn’t hurt her.

Bardach proved to be difficult to cross-examine. She is a brilliant and eccentric witness. Hernández could not box her in. She turned the tables on him, giving the jurors lengthy explanations that put Hernández’s questions into a context that suited her.

While on the stand, Bardach nearly drove the judge, the prosecutors and the defense attorney over the edge. The jurors, however, clearly enjoyed her. Bardach gave them a lesson on the role of Posada Carriles in the 1997 bombing campaign in Havana, as well as a history of the terrorism Cuba has faced over five decades, including the role played by the Cuban American National Foundation.

Today the jurors will remember Bardach’s stories, not Hernández’s questions.

The tango and the confession

The day ended with a clip from the interview. The jurors heard the unmistakable voice of Posada Carriles, but in the background they also heard a trio singing one of Carlos Gardel’s most famous tangos:

El día que me quieras
no habrá más que armonía.
Será clara la aurora
y alegre el manantial.
Traerá quieta la brisa
rumor de melodía.
Y nos darán las fuentes
su canto de cristal.
El día que me quieras
endulzará sus cuerdas
el pájaro cantor.
Florecerá la vida
no existirá el dolor.

(The day that you love me/There’ll be only harmony/The dawn will be clear/and the spring joyful./The breeze will carry a quiet/hint of melody./And the fountains will give us/their crystal song./The day that you love me,/the songbird’s call/will be sweetened./Life will blossom,/there will be no pain.)

In the foreground, Posada was singing a different sort of tango, one about being the mastermind behind the bombings in Havana and the murder of Fabio Di Celmo in the Copacabana Hotel.

Bardach: So, you’re like … “el jefe.”
Posada: Sí.
Bardach: The mastermind …
Posada: Compartmentalized … I know everybody but they don’t know [me] …”
Bardach: So you were saying … the intention was to scare off the tourists, not to kill the tourists.
Posada: Yeah. Sure.
Bardach: But one, you know, one person was killed.
Posada: Yeah. But you know what happened?
Bardach: No.
Posada: Sixty feet away … here was this poor guy … in the chair …
Bardach: Yeah.
Posada: … and the bits … small …
Bardach: Shrapnel …
Posada: … ahhh … and took the jugular. This was the unluckiest guy in the world … because it took the jugular … It’s sad … because it is not our intention … But we can’t stop because … eh … that Italian was sit down … at the wrong time … at the wrong place.

El Paso Diary: Bardach in Wonderland

José Pertierra — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:17:05 +0000

By José Pertierra

Winter said its goodbyes to El Paso last night. Spring is here. But the equinox doesn’t bring flowers to El Paso: only dust, lots of dust. Forty-mile-an-hour winds blew through this border town this afternoon. Leaving the courthouse exhausted from an afternoon of cross-examination by Luis Posada Carriles’ attorney, Ann Louise Bardach confronted the storms from the Chihuahuan Desert that blew sand in her eyes as she leaned into the wind to return to her hotel.

This is her fourth day on the stand. Bardach is now confident and self-assured as a witness. Her husband Bob gave her a kiss on the cheek, and with a brisk step she took her place, ready for battle.

Her testimony today established that Posada Carriles admitted to her 13 years ago that he was the mastermind of the bombing campaign in Havana in 1997. She also testified that Raúl Cruz León, the Salvadoran who was tried and sentenced in Cuba for having placed several of the bombs—one of which killed the Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo—worked for Posada Carriles. Under grueling cross-examination, Bardach defended the articles she had written for theNew York Times in July 1998 as faithful to the statements that Posada Carriles had given during the interview in Aruba a month before.

The censored version of the interview

The interview lasted more than 13 hours and took place over three days. But only six and a half hours were recorded, because every time they touched on details about what Posada Carriles called “delicate” matters, he asked Bardach to turn the tape off. Sometimes, said Bardach, Posada himself turned it off.

Before trial, the defense attorneys negotiated with the prosecutors over the censoring of certain parts of the interview that had nothing to do with the El Paso trial against Posada Carriles.

Posada Carriles is not on trial for terrorism or murder. This means the jury is not allowed to learn about the downing of a passenger plane in 1976 that killed all 73 persons on board. They are not permitted to hear of Posada Carriles’ service to the CIA that lasted more than three decades, nor of the era at the beginning of the 1970s when he was chief of special operations for the Venezuelan intelligence service (DISIP), nor of the violent operations he carried out for Jorge Mas Canosa in the organization called the Representación Cubana en el Exilio—with the training and support of the CIA—in the 1960s.

The jurors will also not learn here that Posada Carriles was a key player in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, nor of his secret relationships with the paramilitary organizations of El Salvador and Guatemala, also in the 1980s. The details of the assassination attempt on Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1997 at Isla Margarita are also beyond the scope of what the jury may be told.

To keep the jury members in the dark, the court edited the recordings from six and a half hours to two hours and forty minutes.

The charges

Three of the charges against Posada Carriles in El Paso have to do with the bombings in Havana. One charge of perjury accuses him of having lied under oath when he said that he had not solicited the assistance of other people to place bombs in Cuba. Another charge, also perjury related, alleges that he lied when under oath in saying that he had not made arrangements to send Raúl Cruz León to Cuba with explosives. The third count is for having obstructed a federal investigation into international terrorism by denying the statements he’d previously made to the New York Times in 1998.

The three charges are closely tied to the interview by Ann Louise Bardach in Aruba.

The confession

The jury clearly heard Posada Carriles’ voice admitting to involvement with the bombings in Havana hotels. The exchange went like this:
Luis Posada Carriles: In the … bombs in the … hotels …
Ann Louise Bardach: hm mmm.
LPC: …we tried … to put small explosives … We didn’t want … because we didn’t want to hurt anybody.

A few minutes further in the recording Posada Carriles told Bardach that Fabio Di Celmo is the “unluckiest in the world,” because the shrapnel cut his jugular vein. “We can’t stop,” he told Bardach, just “because that Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Alice in Wonderland

The defense attorney, Arturo Hernández, has the difficult task of convincing the jury that during his conversation with Bardach, Posada Carriles said what he meant—but didn’t mean what he said. The defense argument is reminiscent of the conversation between Alice, the March Hare, and the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll wrote that Alice’s solution was “to say what you mean…[or] mean what [you] say—that’s the same thing, you know.”

“Did Posada Carriles explicitly say to you that he had written the Solo fax?” asked Hernández. “Yes,” answered Bardach. “Where in that recording did he say those words?” he asked again. “Where did my client say, ‘I wrote the Solo fax’?” he added. “Isn’t it true that he never uttered those words?”

Bardach answered with irritation: “I asked him if he wrote the Solo fax and he answered ‘yes.’ Afterwards, we talked about that for several hours.”

“Isn’t it possible that he didn’t actually say ‘yes,’ but laughed instead?” asked Hernández.

“He said yes while he laughed. We’d been talking about his use of the alias ‘Solo.’ It was his favorite. That’s why he laughed,” answered the witness. Yesterday she’d explained that Posada’s favorite alias comes from a character in the 1960s TV program, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Hernández tried to plant a seed of doubt in the jurors’ minds concerning Tony Álvarez, the Cuban-American businessman who intercepted the fax from Solo in his office in Guatemala and who heard Posada Carriles say that he knew a mechanic at the Guatemalan airline who could take explosives to Cuba.

“Didn’t you suspect that Tony Álvarez might have been the one who wrote the Solo fax?” Hernández suddenly asked Bardach. “Frankly, no,” Bardach answered bluntly.

Realizing that he was not getting anywhere with this plan of attack, Hernández tried another. “Don’t you think it’s inconsistent that Posada should have written the fax but also told you that he didn’t know the people whose names appeared on the fax?” he asked.

“No. It’s not inconsistent in the least. Mr. Posada protects his collaborators in order not to hurt them,” said Bardach. “Furthermore he told me that he was the boss, the mastermind. It’s in the tapes.”

Raúl Cruz León

Raúl Cruz León is a Salvadoran who was convicted in Cuba for planting the bomb that killed Fabio Di Celmo at the Copacabana Hotel. The defense attorney tried to exploit Posada Carriles’ statement to Bardach that he didn’t know Cruz León personally. “Don’t you believe that it might have been a violation of the journalistic code of ethics to say in the New York Times that Cruz León worked for Mr. Posada?” asked Hernández.

At that, the witness had had enough. Bardach straightened in her chair, raised her voice and answered, “Mr. Hernández, he did work for Posada. Posada told me so himself—‘I’m the boss,’ ‘el jefe,’ ‘the mastermind’—the one ‘in charge of the operation.’” She added, “Lots of CEOs don’t know who their employees are.”

Who is “the guy”?

Hernández was persistent. He began to read the part of the transcript where Posada Carriles said that “another guy” hired Cruz León. “Another guy! It could have been anyone who hired him,” said the lawyer, without following his statement with a question.

Bardach responded with annoyance, “I know who the guy is, you know who the guy is, they [the prosecutors] know who the guy is. Everyone knows who the guy is but we can’t say who the guy is. You don’t want us to say who the guy is,” said Bardach. “Let’s call him Mister X. This guy would never have hired Cruz León without Posada wanting him to hire Cruz León.”

The “guy” is Francisco Chávez Abarca. He was tried, convicted and sentenced in Cuba for terrorist activities. Chávez Abarca confessed to hiring a number of Guatemalans and Salvadorans, including Raúl Cruz León, to carry out terrorist actions in Havana on behalf of Luis Posada Carriles. But last December the judge ruled that she would not allow Chávez Abarca to be deposed in Havana. The jury, therefore, will not learn of the important link between Posada Carriles, Chávez Abarca and Raúl Cruz León.

The defense attorney continued to press Bardach on the subject. “Where did you get that information [about “the guy”]?” he asked. “The entire recording is saturated with it,” answered the witness. “Posada was the boss. Cruz León worked for him. He hired Mister X. This is typical of paramilitary operations and organizations,” said Bardach.

“Play the whole thing”

“It’s not in the transcript and this case has to go strictly by the evidence. Where is it in the transcript?” said the attorney.

“If it’s all about the transcript, then why don’t you play the entire transcript for the jury? All six and a half hours,” answered Bardach. “Play the whole thing, including the parts you censored, and show them the articles from the New York Times as well,” she challenged.

Of course Hernández has no interest in doing any such thing. He prefers to confuse and obfuscate so that the jurors will mistrust their lying ears, and instead think that Posada Carriles didn’t mean what he said or say what he meant during the interview.

The attorney’s espresso maker

The case hasn’t gone well for Art Hernández in recent days. First, Tony Álvarez established that Posada Carriles was involved in the bombing campaign in Havana, and now Ann Louise Bardach has made it clear that Posada Carriles admitted to the New York Timesthat he was the boss and mastermind behind the terrorist campaign against hotels and restaurants in Havana in 1997.

Back at the hotel, things have not been much better. Hernández’s wife sent him a small espresso maker to make Cuban coffee in his room. “I turned it on and went to sleep. When I woke up, the room was filled with smoke. I had to change rooms. I nearly burned down the hotel,” he told prosecutor Timothy J. Reardon this morning.

Spy, lover and …

The cross-examination of Ann Louise Bardach is not yet finished. In her book, Cuba Confidential, she recalled that some radio stations in Miami had attacked her character after her articles about Posada Carriles were published in the New York Times. She said that they had called her a spy, Fidel Castro’s lover and a pot-smoking lesbian. It wouldn’t surprise me if Art Hernández does the same tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s cross-examination will be toxic and virulent. But as a Mexican poet said, “el sabor de la primavera, que es el sabor de la vida, mitiga la amargura de los malos momentos.”

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.
* “The taste of spring, that is the taste of life, softens the bitterness of our worst moments.”
Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version: http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/22/diario-de-el-paso-bardach-en-el-pais-de-las-maravillas

El Paso Diary: The Cross-Examination of Ann Louise Bardach

José Pertierra — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:05:14 +0000

El Paso Diary: Day 34 of the Posada Carriles Trial

By José Pertierra

Ann Louise Bardach. Foto: Archivo de la familia Bardach

The lawyer representing Luis Posada Carriles has a reputation for aggressive and effective cross-examination. Today his job was to question one of the case’s star witnesses: Ann Louise Bardach.

Anticipating the moment, some of the jurors leaned forward when Arturo Hernández approached the witness stand this morning. The African-American in the second row exchanged a knowing look with the Chicano on his right, who was rubbing his hands together with the look of a child about to devour an ice-cream cone.

Annie’s books

Bardach is not an easy witness. She’s eccentric, unpredictable and capable of almost anything on the stand. For example, before the defense attorney’s cross-examination, the prosecutor, Timothy Reardon, questioned her at length. Witnesses are not allowed to have books or other documents on the stand, while they are testifying.

“Did you speak with Luis Posada Carriles in 2005?” asked the prosecutor.

As though direct examination were a television interview in a book promotion tour, Bardach suddenly lifted a book from her lap that no one was aware of her having taken to the witness stand. “Yes. Posada was reading my book. This book, Cuba Confidential!”

Some of the jurors laughed out loud. Witnesses ordinarily never do these kinds of things in court and the jurors knew it. But Bardach wasn’t finished. Still holding the book up, she showed it to the jurors and said, “Posada told me, ‘qué bueno!’”

Prosecutor Reardon’s face flushed. He asked his assistant for a label and hastily marked Bardach’s book with an exhibit number. He had no choice. The rules require it, he said, because the witness had referenced the book while on the stand.

But things didn’t end there. Anything marked as an exhibit becomes part of the case until its conclusion. Therefore Reardon asked Bardach for the book. Annoyed, she handed him Cuba Confidential. Who knows when she’ll see it again.

FBI Agent Jorge Kiszynski

Reardon played parts of the recorded interview between Bardach and the defendant to the jurors. The first part was about FBI Agent Jorge Kiszynski, who worked for the Bureau for 33 years on drug trafficking and international terrorism cases.

Kiszynski had interviewed Posada Carriles in 1992 for a congressional investigation into his activities related to the Iran-Contra scandal, and Posada Carriles considered him a good friend.

“That FBI man is a good friend of mine,” Posada Carriles was heard to say on the tape. “The FBI and the CIA don’t bother me.”

“Whatever they [the FBI agents] ask you, you’d try to do?” asked Bardach. “Of course, why not?” Posada Carriles replied.

“La Cota”

The next clip the prosecutor played for the jury included a conversation about a friend of Posada Carriles known as “La Cota.” The jury doesn’t know it, but “La Cota” is the nickname of Ángel Manuel Alfonso Alemán. He was the vice president of a militant organization in New Jersey called the Coordinate of Former Cuban Political Prisoners.

“La Cota” was arrested aboard the La Esperanza yacht in 1997, on his way to Isla Margarita, allegedly to assassinate Fidel Castro during a presidential summit that was to be held there.

The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted the vessel at sea and discovered several high-powered weapons aboard. “La Cota” told the Coast Guard agents, “These weapons are mine. The others don’t know anything. I put them there myself. They are weapons to kill Fidel Castro!”

Though details about the Esperanza case were kept from the jurors in El Paso, they were allowed to listen to Posada Carriles confirming to Bardach that La Cota had sent him money through Pepe Álvarez.

La Cota worked for Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, one of the principal financiers of the conspiracy to detonate the bombs in Havana. When Bardach mentioned the name La Cota, Posada Carriles remembered his friend and laughed. “La Cota is very brave. He was a prisoner for 18 years.”

The jurors, however, don’t know whether La Cota was a common criminal or a Cuban version of Nelson Mandela. They are also unaware of La Cota’s role in the conspiracy to murder Fidel Castro on Isla Margarita.

What do the jurors make of this name they heard on the recording? Why is Posada Carriles happy to hear his name? Do they think that La Cota is somebody with whom the defendant used to play dominoes or that he is a partner in crime?

The legal system places blinders on jurors, preventing them from seeing, hearing or learning about things that are essential to placing the evidence in context, yet it is the jury who decides the defendant’s guilt or innocence.

Yet another motion for a mistrial

The prosecutor played the jurors another three-and-a-half minute clip from the Bardach interview. This one captured their conversation about passports.

Wanting to put the conversation in context, Bardach turned to the jurors and explained, “He had different passports. He came to the United States under the radar due to the problems he faced in other countries …,” she was cut off by the defense counsel before she could finish.

Attorney Hernández moved for a mistrial: his thirteenth such motion since the trial began. He argued that if the jurors learned that Posada Carriles faced legal troubles abroad it would be prejudicial to his client.

The Judge admonishes Bardach

Judge Kathleen Cardone overruled the motion, but admonished the witness. Looking sternly at Bardach she said, “This is not about telling stories. It is a trial. We want to be sure that the trial is fair under the rules of evidence and procedure. Your background stories are not for this jury. Every time you add things that are not asked, you go into an area that this court and these lawyers have spent years deciding what can come in as evidence. You need to listen to the question and answer the question. You are not to make commentaries.”

Bardach looked embarrassed. She told the judge that it had not been her intention to cause any such problem.

The jury was reconvened and direct examination resumed. Bardach answered the Government attorney’s questions as if in a straitjacket.

Without the benefit of Bardach’s explanations, the brief clips of the interview seemed disjointed. Posada Carriles was heard to say, “One has to be careful with telephones. Look what happened to me with the fax.”

Bardach testified that the fax (without daring to say Posada was referring to the Solo fax) had the phone number the fax had been sent from at the top of the paper: 503-221-9849. But she didn’t know whether 503 was the country code for Guatemala or El Salvador. Maybe the jurors know, but no one told them so in court today.

strong>Advance obituaries

Reardon then asked Bardach if she works as a CBS News consultant. “Well, I’m a consultant with CBS for the day Fidel Castro dies. However, I’ve already done the obituary for many other news organizations beforehand, because the moment that he is confirmed dead I can only talk about it with CBS News,” she answered.

She said she had interviewed Castro twice. “Getting a world leader is very hard,” she said. “It’s called ‘getting a get’. Vanity Fair told me to go down there [Cuba] and get Fidel Castro.”

Bardach provided little detail about the interview. She wanted to follow the judge’s instructions and only answer the questions she was asked, though she showed her frustration by grimacing and rolling her eyes.

Cross

Attorney Hernández approached the witness stand to begin what everyone expected to be an extended cross-examination of one of the Government’s star witnesses. But Bardach seemed preoccupied with having her book returned. She turned to Judge Cardone and said, “Mr. Reardon still has my book and has not returned it to me.” Before the surprised judge could respond, Bardach looked at the prosecutor and said, “I need my book. You have my book.”

“Ms. Bardach,” the judge scolded, “you don’t need to have it up there while you testify.”

The defense attorney didn’t know whether to laugh or complain to the judge about Bardach’s disruptions. He shuffled his papers, adjusted his glasses and tried to continue, “None of Posada Carriles’ answers to your questions in Aruba were under oath, right?”

“Of course not,” snapped Bardach. “It was an interview, not a trial.”

“Yes, he did in a hundred ways”

Attorney Hernández didn’t waste any time in getting to his point. “During your interview, Mr. Posada never admitted explicitly to the bombing campaign. Is that correct?” the defense attorney asked.

“Yes, he did, yes, he did—in a hundred ways. He was very proud of it, of what had been his success, he was proud of everything except the death,” Bardach answered firmly

The relentless defense attorney pressed on. “Isn’t it true that Posada never admitted to you that he was the mastermind of the bombing campaign?”

“Yes, he did,” she said. “Mr. Posada told me, ‘I’m el jefe. I know everybody, but they don’t know me.’” Bardach added, “During this whole process, I have tried to protect your client as much as I could.”

That infuriated Hernández. He turned red, raised his voice and in a threatening tone asked the witness, “Did I hear you correctly?” He then shot off a series of questions premised on the notion that Ms. Bardach had based her entire career as a journalist on the interview she did with Posada Carriles in 1998. She corrected him and recounted several of her many achievements and accolades as a prize-winning journalist.

Finally, she had heard enough from the defense attorney. She said sharply, “Listen, Mr. Hernández, there are many journalists who have written about your client in a much more pejorative and damning way than me and you know it.”

Bardach then took out another of her books, Without Fidel. She’d somehow gotten past the watchful eyes of the marshals. She held it up and tried to say something about it, but Judge Cardone had it taken away before the Court was forced to mark it as an exhibit.

I don’t know who was more frustrated at that point: Bardach for having to answer so many questions without the use of her books or attorney Hernández for having failed to accurately fix her in his sights.

Posada has a very unusual profession

The defense attorney tried another line of attack against Bardach. He pointed out to the witness that Posada Carriles had recanted some of the statements he had made to her and that he denied others.

“Look, your client had to do it. He is in a very unusual profession,” Bardach answered, referring to Posada’s notorious career in the CIA.

The judge announced a brief recess, and Bardach went out to the corridor although not before greeting Posada Carriles who was holding Without Fidel in his hands. “He’s reading my most recent book,” she said proudly. “I autographed it for him, just as I did with the first one.”

The show

When we returned from the break, Posada Carriles’ lawyer changed his routine. He wrote the following words and phrases in large capital letters, each on a separate piece of paper. Then he showed them to the jurors on the projector: “SOLICITATION”; “ARRANGEMENT”; “I WROTE THE SOLO FAX.”

“Ms. Bardach, I am going to play a long section of the recorded interview—not the clips—the one that is two hours long. I want you to tell me when you hear any of those words or phrases.” It was the histrionic attorney’s version of litigation: the courtroom as theater.

Bardach didn’t want to be played for a fool and immediately shot back, “I’ve already told you everything you need. You don’t have to play the whole tape and waste everybody’s time. Posada didn’t use those words. I asked him whether he wrote the Solo fax and he said yes. I don’t use words like solicitation and arrangement. You do. I don’t,” an irritated Bardach told Posada Carriles’ attorney.

Hernández ignored her and asked his colleague Rhonda Anderson to switch on the recorder.

The time passed and my hair whitened

For the next few hours, the jurors listened to the defendant’s conversation with Bardach in June 1998 in Aruba. The interview ranged from the bombings in Havana to the CIA, the Bay of Pigs and the murder of Fabio Di Celmo.

They heard Posada Carriles tell Bardach that it had taken him only “one or two months” to plan the bombings in Havana. That part of the interview was recorded in a crowded restaurant. In the background, if the jurors listened carefully, they could hear a trio singing a famous bolero of days-gone-by.

Mi cabello blanqueó, ya mi vida se va—ya la muerte me llamaaaa. [My hair turned white, my life is leaving me, death is calling meeeee], sang the trio as Posada Carriles recounted the military operations he had carried out against Cuba for the past fifty years.

Before leaving the courtroom at the close of the day’s proceedings, Bardach packed up her books and the transcript of the interview and put them in her purse. She got as far as the first floor, where prosecutor Jerome Teresinski and FBI agent Omar Vega intercepted her.

Vega took out handcuffs and told her to put her hands behind her back. Bardach didn’t know whether to laugh or cry until she realized that it was a joke that contained a not-so-subtle message. Bardach was forced to turn over the book and the manuscript. Teresinski told her she could have them back when the case was over.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.
Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/19/diario-de-el-paso-bardach-vs-hernandez-primer-round

El Paso Diary: How Ann Louise Bardach Helped Win the Second Battle Over the Solo Fax

José Pertierra — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:05:53 +0000

By José Pertierra <

Ann Louise Bardach

Using the testimony of the journalist Ann Louise Bardach, the Government was able to introduce the Solo fax as evidence against Luis Posada Carriles. In the fax, the defendant alerts his co-conspirators to the money orders they would receive from New Jersey to carry out the bombing campaign in Havana in 1997.

The first battle of the fax

Earlier in the case, Judge Cardone excluded the fax, because in her opinion it had not been properly authenticated. She agreed with defense attorney Arturo Hernández who argued that the witness—Tony Álvarez—”can’t testify about who actually wrote the document, and there is no way of assuring that it has not been altered.”

Mr. Voir Dire

Before the judge called in the jury, prosecutor Timothy J. Reardon voir dired Ann Louise Bardach to determine whether she could authenticate the fax. Voir dire is a Latin expression that means “tell the truth.” In this particular instance, it refers to a hearing, outside the presence of the jurors and designed to see if the witness can establish a proper foundation for a document’s admission into evidence.

Though the examination of the witness could have easily been conducted in front of the jury, attorney Hernández asked for a voir dire hearing so that the jurors would not be exposed to the testimony about the fax until the document had been admitted into evidence.

The defense attorney has made multiple voir dire requests, so many that the prosecutor calls him “Mr. Voir Dire.”

The Solo fax

Prosecutor Reardon opened the hearing by asking the witness,“During the interview that you did with Posada Carriles in Aruba in June of 1997, did you talk about the Solo fax?”

“Yes. We spoke about who he suspected might have stolen it from the office in Guatemala. We did a line-by-line analysis of the document to try and understand the names in the fax. He told me that he had signed it ‘Solo’,” testified Bardach. “Solo is one of his most original aliases. He explained to me that it is the name of a television character, Napoleon Solo,” she added.

Bardach didn’t recall the name of the program with the Solo character, broadcast by NBC between 1964 and 1968, but the readers of this Diary know that the show is “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,”a series about the adventures of two spies.

Bardach told the jury that she got the Solo fax from two separate sources: Arnaldo González, a Venezuelan who first tried unsuccessfully to sell her the document at Isla Margarita yet ended up giving it away, and Tony Álvarez, the Cuban American businessman in Guatemala who testified last week in El Paso. Tony Álvarez told Bardach in 1998 that he had also shared the fax with the FBI.

The Solo fax is dated August 25, 1997, ten days before the murder of Fabio Di Celmo in Havana. It is addressed to two of Posada Carriles’ close collaborators: José Burgos and Pepe Álvarez. Burgos is a Guatemalan who had worked as a bodyguard for the former President of Guatemala, Jorge Serrano Elías, and Pepe Álvarez is a Cuban exile who was a subordinate of Posada Carriles for many years. The Government considers both of them to be unindicted co-conspirators of the bombing campaign.

At Prosecutor Reardon’s request, Bardach read the first paragraph of the fax aloud.

This afternoon via Western Union, you’ll receive four payments of $800 apiece, for a total of $3,200. Western Union will send it to you from New Jersey, in the following manner: in the name of José Álvarez. Pedro Pérez, $800; Abel Hernández, $800; José Gonzalo, $800; Rubén Gonzalo, $800.

FBI Agent Omar Vega previously testified that the names of Pedro Pérez, Abel Hernández, José Gonzalo and Rubén Gonzalo were on money orders that sent from New Jersey to Pepe Álvarez in Guatemala. The dollar amounts that Vega recounted are the same as in the Solo fax.

Reardon asked Bardach to read the last paragraph of the fax aloud, and so she did:

As I already explained to you, if there’s no publicity, the work is useless, the U.S. media do not publish anything that has not been confirmed. I need all the data from the discotheque to try to confirm it; if there’s no publicity there’s no payment. I’m awaiting news today. Tomorrow I will be out for two days. Regards, Solo.

We might also recall that the Cuban inspector, Roberto Hernández Caballero, told the jury that the first bomb exploded in Havana on April 12, 1997, in the Aché discothèque at the Meliá Cohiba. The fax reveals that Posada Carriles needed more information about the attack, so that he could provide details to the press and justify the money from New Jersey.

The Solo fax and the Miami Herald

Two journalists from the Miami Herald, Juan Tamayo and Gerardo Reyes, wrote an article on June 7, 1998, based on the Solo fax. They had obtained it from a source that was unidentified at the time—Tony Álvarez. The Miami Herald article concluded that the Solo fax identified the money trail from New Jersey that Posada Carriles used to finance his terrorist campaign against Cuba in 1997.

The FBI knows that I received money from the United States

During the June 1997 interview, Posada told Bardach, “The FBI knows that I received money from the United States.”

It certainly did. FBI Agent Omar Vega testified in El Paso, a few days ago, that the Bureau became aware that the money had reached Posada Carriles from New Jersey in the form of money orders sent through Western Union.

The verdict on the fax

Bardach testified that Posada Carriles sent the fax to Guatemala from El Salvador. “How do you know?” asked Judge Cardone, one of the few times she has asked a question directly of a witness. “Because of what Mr. Posada told me, and what Tony Álvarez also said to me,” answered Bardach.

Judge Cardone had heard enough. She ruled the fax was admissible as evidence and said that it could be shown to the jury. Attorney Hernández objected, but the judge overruled his objection. The journalist’s testimony had been solid.

The tenth motion for a mistrial

After a brief recess, the judge brought the jury back into the courtroom and Bardach resumed her testimony.

Much of it had to be repeated for the jury’s benefit. Prosecutor Reardon asked Bardach about her conversations with Posada Carriles concerning the Solo fax.

“Mr. Posada told me that he wanted to generate sufficient publicity about the bombs to stop tourism [in Cuba]. However, he was worried, because he’d had problems in other countries and didn’t want any more,” answered Bardach.

Upon hearing this, the defense attorney again moved for a mistrial, alleging that telling the jury that Posada Carriles faced problems in other countries was highly prejudicial.

The judge, accustomed by now to the motions from the Miami attorney, rejected it without a single comment.

The greatest hits from the interview with Posada Carriles

The recording of the interview that Bardach did with Posada Carriles lasted three days in Aruba and is very revealing. This afternoon the Government played several “greatest hits” from it for the jury.

One of the clips was a conversation regarding Raúl Ernesto Cruz León, the Salvadoran who placed a number of explosives in the hotels and restaurants in Havana, one of which killed Fabio Di Celmo at the Copacabana Hotel. “Cruz León did it for money,” Posada Carriles told Bardach.

St. Patrick’s Day and the Cuban American National Foundation

Another of the clips was of Bardach asking Posada Carriles about the relationship between the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and the money to finance military actions against Cuba. “The Foundation is the political arm and you are the military?” Bardach asked Posada Carriles. “Yes.Everything went through Jorge [Mas Canosa]. He’s the one who managed everything,” said Posada Carriles.

Perhaps because she saw eight of the jury members dressed in green—in honor of St. Patrick’s Day—Bardach had Ireland on her mind. She explained to the jury that the relationship between the Foundation and the military actions of Posada Carriles is like the relationship in Northern Ireland between Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Sinn Féin is the political arm and the IRA is the military, Bardach explained. “That’s the analogy to the Foundation and Luis Posada Carriles,” she added.

Prosecutor Reardon then played another clip from the interview. The unmistakable voice of Posada Carriles filled the courtroom, and we heard him say, “Jorge [Mas Canosa] said that any time I needed money—$10,000, $5,000—they’d send it to me.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.<
Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2011/03/18/diario-de-el-paso-la-fiscalia-gana-la-segunda-batalla-del-fax

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El Paso Diary: Tony Álvarez Links Posada Carriles to the Bombings in Havana

José Pertierra — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:26:22 +0000

El Paso Diary: Day 30 of the Posada Carriles Trial

By José Pertierra

Yesterday was a rough day. Today the witness reentered the courtroom with melancholy eyes, a slow step, and his shoulders sagging from the weight of his life’s burdens. But the Government did not have to force Tony Álvarez to come to El Paso to testify against Luis Posada Carriles. He offered of his own free will, just as he did 15 years ago, when he warned Guatemalan intelligence and the FBI that Posada Carriles was involved in a terrorist conspiracy to place bombs in the most famous hotels and restaurants in Cuba.

Limits set on testimony

Yesterday Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled that the jury would not be allowed to see a key document that links Posada Carriles to the bombing campaign in Havana. “It does not contain sufficient characteristics to satisfy the rules of evidence,” she had said tersely.

This morning, prosecutor Jerome Teresinski informed the judge, “Your Honor, we’ve told the witness that he is not allowed to speak of the fax.” And thus, the legal boundaries around what Tony Álvarez could say were drawn.

The first questions posed to him by Teresinski were softballs. They were meant to simply get the witness to recollect things that he had seen or heard in Guatemala in August 1997. But Teresinski’s questioning had to be more delicate the closer he got closer to the forbidden subject matter.

Trying to avoid objections to any questions that would elicit hearsay evidence, Teresinski asked the witness about the things that Álvarez had seen with his own eyes rather than what he had heard someone else say. A difficult task.

“When you returned from your trip, did you see your secretary?” asked Teresinski. “Yes,” said Álvarez hesitantly, not knowing how much more he could say. “How did you interpret the behavior she showed?” asked Teresinski. “I saw that she was worried,” answered the witness. “Did your secretary give you any information that was not related to the business?” asked the prosecutor.

The defense attorney immediately objected. “That question is not appropriate, Your Honor. The prosecutor is leading the witness.” “Don’t lead the witness, Mr. Teresinski,” the judge scolded.

Teresinski reframed the question. “What did you do after speaking with your secretary?” “I spoke to someone in the Guatemalan government,” answered Tony Álvarez.

“Why?” Teresinski asked.

The witness hesitated and gave a vague response, “Because of some suspicious activities that had nothing to do with my business.”

“What else did you do?” asked the prosecutor.

“I wrote a letter to President Arzú,” the witness answered.

“Did you share the letter with anyone else?” asked Teresinski.

“Yes. With the Miami Herald and the New York Times,” said the witness. “I followed the suggestion from Diego Arzú, the president’s son, and spoke with Presidential Intelligence.”

It may be that Álvarez is still not aware that Posada Carriles was working with Guatemalan Presidential Intelligence during the administration of President Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo at the end of the 1980s. Although President Arzú’s was a different era, many of Cerezo’s intelligence officers had remained in place. It is not surprising that the investigation didn’t go anywhere.

Hearsay

Teresinski and his witness were in the legal straightjacket known as hearsay. It restrained their attempts to get the witness to articulate key information for the jury regarding Posada Carriles’ role in the bombing campaign in Havana.

Hearsay is a third-party statement that is introduced for the truth of what it asserts. The rules of evidence render it inadmissible. Although there are some exceptions to it, the hearsay rule is the defense attorney’s best friend—since black-letter law devalues hearsay as nothing more than an unsubstantiated and unreliable rumor.

Teresinski charged ahead. He asked his witness, “Do you recall the contents of the letter?”

“Hearsay!” objected defense attorney Arturo Hernández.

This time the judge overruled the objection. She said that although the witness may not testify about what the letter said, he was allowed to tell the jury that he remembered what it said—but only that he remembered it.

“Do you remember what Posada Carriles told Pepe Álvarez in your office?” asked Teresinski.

“Hearsay!” objected Hernández again, and the judge repeated her ruling. The witness could testify that he remembered someone having said something to him, but could not testify as to what that something was.<

Frustrated by the legal straightjacket, Teresinski then showed the witness—although not the jury—a copy of the letter that Álvarez had said he had drafted and given to President Arzú’s son. He asked the witness to read it to himself. He then asked him to place the letter face down on the desk in front of him.

“Without reading from the letter or looking at it again, can you tell us what you remember you wrote in the letter?” asked Teresinski.

The Chicano juror looked at the African American sitting next to him with a puzzled expression. Both looked confused. It was clear that neither understood what the prosecutor was trying to accomplish. Perhaps they were asking themselves, “What does the secretary have to do with all of this? What suspicious activities are they talking about? Why don’t they tell us what these were? Why can’t we read the letter? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the witness to read the letter instead of turning it face down and then trying to remember what it says?”

The jurors don’t know it, but they will not get to read that letter—nor the Solo fax—because Judge Cardone already ruled those inadmissible.

The judge did leave an opening for Teresinski. “Parts of the letter may be told, but other parts are hearsay,” the judge had said.

Trying to squeeze through the tiny legal opening, Teresinski asked, “What did you do after you wrote the letter?”

It was difficult to see the witness while he testified, because he is very short and the television monitor in front of him covered up his entire face. The plump woman on the first row of the jury box signaled with her hands to the prosecutor that she couldn’t see the witness. She gestured for them to move the monitor. Teresinski called the matter to the attention of the clerk of the court, who walked to the witness stand and adjusted the monitor so that Tony Álvarez could be seen. It was the first time that the jurors had been able to see his face as he testified.

An exception to the hearsay rule allows key testimony in

“I installed a hidden intercom between Pepe Álvarez’s office and my own,” the witness stated. “That was how I heard Posada Carriles talk about money.”

After a private sidebar between the prosecutor and defense attorney, Judge Cardone ruled that the witness could talk about the things that he had heard Posada Carriles, Pepe Álvarez and José Burgos say. “They are part of the same conspiracy,” said the judge, “and therefore their declarations are evidence and are exempt from the exclusive limitations of hearsay.”

All right, then! She had finally loosened the legal straightjacket and allowed Tony Álvarez to say something substantive on the stand.

“How did you know that the voice you heard through the intercom was that of Posada Carriles?” asked Teresinski. Álvarez responded instantly, “Because he has a very peculiar way of speaking,” referring to the speech impediment that Posada Carriles acquired when he lost part of his tongue and half of his chin in an attempt on his life in Guatemala in 1990.

The letter from Tony Álvarez to the president of Guatemala remained excluded as evidence but the judge ruled that the witness could testify as to its contents. He was even allowed to look at it “to refresh his memory.”

An odd scene followed. The witness would look at the letter, read it to himself, turn it over and repeat what he remembered from it. This legal make-believe went on for several minutes.

Yet that is how the witness was able to tell the jury that he had heard Posada Carriles, Pepe Álvarez and José Burgos talking about the best way to send explosive materials to Cuba. “Posada said that he knew someone at Aviateca [the former state airline of Guatemala] who could help get the explosives to Cuba,” the witness said.

Tony Álvarez also declared under oath that he found in his office various materials to make bombs, including calculators, funnels and plastic tubes labeled “Mexican military industries, C-4, dangerous explosives.” He added, “I took them outside city limits and buried them for fear of explosive residues.”

The cross-examination

The cross-examination of the witness by Posada Carriles’ attorney, Arturo Hernández, was typical of his aggressive and off-base style.

“The executions at the Cabaña had already begun when you were in the communist army, hadn’t they?” Hernández began.

“Yes,” answered the witness, not knowing where the question was leading.

“500 a week?” snapped Hernández.

“I don’t believe so,” said Álvarez.

“5,000 altogether?” asked the Miami attorney.

“I don’t think so,” responded the bewildered witness.

“Isn’t it true that communist Cuba convicts people in the morning and executes them in the afternoon?”

Teresinski had heard enough. He shot up from his chair with an objection. The judge finally tried to rein in Hernández. She ruled his question inappropriate and ordered him to “move on.”

Attorney Hernández changed the subject, but stayed the course on his tactics.

Without any supporting evidence, Hernández launched into a new set of questions premised on the witness having been a drug trafficker as well as a money launderer for the Colombian cartel of Pablo Escobar, whom he mistakenly referred to several times as “Pedro Escobar.”

Having exhausted that fantastic line of questioning, Hernández changed the subject again and went further afield. This time the premise was that the witness had maintained a bomb-making lab in Guatemala and that the one who had wanted to introduce explosive materials into Cuba had not been Posada Carriles, but Tony Álvarez himself.

But the crowning glory of today’s brutal cross-examination was the defense attorney’s grilling the witness on his current relationship with his common-law wife.

“Let’s see, Mr. Álvarez, how many wives have you had?” And without waiting to hear the answer, Hernández continued, “To whom were you married in 1997?”

“To Ana,” said Álvarez.

“Was Ana with you in Guatemala?” asked Hernández.

“No, we’d been separated for a number of years. She didn’t want a divorce. I remain married to her, but I live with another woman who is also named Ana,” answered the witness.

And with that the attorney who represents Posada Carriles launched the questions he had been saving for the witness all afternoon. “So you were living with somebody else?”

“Yes”, said the witness.

“So you were married to Ana, and yet you decided to live with another woman?” asked Hernández.

The 75-year old man felt the punch. You could see it in his face. He flushed, embarrassed and in pain, trying to hold back his tears. Álvarez made an effort to tell the jury that he’s not a womanizer—but the defense attorney wouldn’t let him. During cross-examination, the attorney calls the shots. He is allowed to attack with impunity and then hide behind his next question. That is how cross-examination works in courtrooms throughout the land.<

Tears

When Hernández was through with the witness, the judge turned him over to the prosecutor for redirect examination. Teresinski knew that the witness had wanted to explain the matter of his relationships, and so he asked, “What is your partner’s name?”

“Ana Graciela Bonilla,” answered Álvarez, still trying to control his tears. “I love her very much. She has cancer. They took out four tumors recently.”

With these words, the man lost all control. The tears flooded his face, and in a halting voice he said, “The cancer has metastasized. She’s very ill—she’s very, very bad, very bad.” Álvarez went on, “I have a son with her who is 15, but I also have two girls with my wife [also named Ana]. I am in touch with them all the time, even though I don’t live with them.”

Yesterday, Álvarez had explained that his wife had asked that he not divorce her—not an unusual request among Roman Catholic couples of their generation—and he had complied with that request. He lives openly with the woman he loves and who is dying of cancer.

Tony Álvarez will leave El Paso without shame. Can the same be said for Posada Carriles’ defense attorney?

Teresinski asked for a short recess, so the witness could compose himself. At first, the judge did not want to grant it. “We just took a recess less than an hour ago,” she told the prosecutor. Teresinski insisted and told her that the witness needed it.

“Do you need a few minutes to compose yourself?” Judge Cardone asked the witness. “If you would be so kind, a few minutes would do me good,” answered Álvarez, still weeping.

The judge granted a recess of 10 minutes, and Tony Álvarez made the long walk from the witness stand to the courtroom door. He drank some water, sat by himself on a hallway chair and collected himself.

The incriminating evidence

Álvarez returned to face the questions and the inquisitive eyes.

In a clearer and stronger voice than before he reiterated, “In August of 1997 I heard through the intercom the voice of Posada Carriles speaking with José Burgos and Pepe Álvarez. I heard them say that they knew an Aviateca airline mechanic that could help introduce explosive materials in Cuba.”

Without being able to show the jury the compromising fax from Posada Carriles or the letter that Álvarez had to President Arzú and his Presidential Intelligence Unit, the prosecution managed to establish that Posada Carriles was a key player in a conspiracy to introduce explosives into Cuba less than a week before the murder of Fabio Di Celmo in Havana’s Copacabana Hotel.

Memory

History has not given Tony Álvarez the recognition he deserves. Battered by an unusually challenging life, he lives on a very limited income in South Carolina, far from Cuba, with his common-law wife and their son. Since leaving Cuba in 1961, he has not returned. He says it is because he does not agree with the Revolution.

His disagreements with the Cuban Revolution do not translate into terrorism. When he learned of Posada Carriles’ connection with the bombings in Havana, he immediately informed the authorities. The jury does not know it, but it was Tony Álvarez who also warned the FBI of the conspiracy to murder President Fidel Castro at the summit on Isla Margarita in Venezuela in 1997.

In a federal courtroom, Posada Carriles’ attorney tried in vain to assassinate Álvarez’s character and destroy his reputation. With no proof, Hernández accused him of being a terrorist, a drug trafficker, a money launderer, a thief and a womanizer. Álvarez responded to it all with dignity.

This 10th of March, the fifty-ninth anniversary of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista’s violent coup that launched a tyranny based on violence and lies, saw a different sort of result in El Paso. A humble Cuban businessman sacrificed time to be with his ailing wife so that he could risk his life to come El Paso alone, lock eyes with Luis Posada Carriles in federal court and peacefully speak the truth.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version: http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/11/diario-de-el-paso-las-razones-de-tony-Álvarez/

El Paso Diary: The Battle Over the Solo Fax

José Pertierra — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:50:07 +0000

El Paso Diary: Day 30 of the Posada Carriles Trial

By José Pertierra

Today the prosecution suffered a profound setback. Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled that a key document that links Luis Posada Carriles to the financing of a series of bombings in Havana in 1997 was inadmissible.

Tony Álvarez

Short of stature and stooped by a lifetime of tribulations, Antonio (Tony) Álvarez looks like a walking question mark. He entered the courtroom dressed like the businessman he once was in a dark blue suit, a white shirt and a light blue tie.

Tony Álvarez told the jurors that he was born in Cuba and is now 75 years old. He said he came to the United States in 1961 and became an American citizen.

Álvarez became a star witness in the case against Luis Posada Carriles only after the Justice Department filed a superseding indictment in March 2009 that added three new counts against the defendant. The additional charges included perjury for the statements the defendant made under oath when he denied his involvement in the conspiracy to set off a series of explosions in Havana in 1997.

Tony Álvarez was the first to notify the FBI about Posada Carriles’ role in the bombing campaign in Havana.

In his opening statement to the jurors more than two months ago, defense attorney Arturo Hernández promised he would show them that Tony Álvarez is a biased witness. He told the jurors that Álvarez had enjoyed an intimate relationship with a member of Fidel Castro’s family. He also alleged that Álvarez was a money launderer and a drug dealer. Would the defense attorney be able to impeach Tony Álvarez?

Marital relations

Anticipating the coming cross-examination, Government attorney Jerome Teresinski asked the witness if he had had any kind of relationship with Fidel Castro’s sister. “Yes. With Lidia Castro. We went out together starting when I was 15, until I was 26,” he said. “I broke off the relationship with Lidia, because I got another girl, Silvia Builla, pregnant. My father made me marry Silvia,” he added.

“But did you love Lidia?” asked Teresinski. Taken aback by the question, Álvarez lowered his voice and replied with his eyes looking into space, “Yes, I did.”

Álvarez went on to explain that soon after their son was born, he separated from his wife. Although Teresinski didn’t inquire about the son’s name, he did ask, “And what—if anything—happened to him?” Álvarez answered that his son died tragically at the age of 19 in an elevator accident in New York.

As if this were a domestic relations case, Teresinski continued to ask the witness about his marital history. “Did you divorce Silvia?” he asked. “Yes, and I married Ana. We have two daughters, Jacqueline and Carolina,” testified Álvarez. “However, we are now separated,” he said.

Encouraged by the prosecutor to elaborate on what happened after the separation, the witness said, “Now I’m in another relationship. I live with Ana Graciela Bonilla, and I have a 15-year-old-son with her.” Suddenly, the sullen witness brightened and added, “He is an honor-roll student, you know.”

It may seem strange that a witness should have to talk about the intimate details of his marriages and relationships as a necessary condition for testifying about the issue at hand in a criminal trial, but that’s how things work in the U.S. legal system. When a witness takes the stand, he must be prepared to air the family’s linen before perfect strangers.

Álvarez will probably be on the stand a few more days, and the trial itself will continue for several more weeks. When all is said and done, I don’t know if the jurors will remember his testimony about Posada Carriles. But I’m certain they’ll remember that Tony Álvarez was the guy who said he had a sexual relationship with Fidel Castro’s sister.

Of course, the witness’ past sexual and marital relations have nothing to do with Posada Carriles. They satisfy the appetite for titillating details about the private lives of others, an appetite that criminal defense attorneys rely on to try to influence the jurors.

The prosecutor in this instance seemed to have no choice other than to ask those questions of his witness, because he is certain that Posada Carriles’ attorney will. Therefore it is preferable to preempt defense counsel’s line of inquiry on direct examination than to have those details brought out on cross.

From Cuba to the USA and then to Guatemala

Before getting into what Tony Álvarez knows about Posada Carriles, the Government asked him a few more personal questions.

The jurors learned that Álvarez studied at Belén High School in Havana and later at the University of Havana. He testified that he graduated from the school of engineering in 1959 and from the school of medicine only two years later. He said he was an only child and that his father was a medical doctor.

He recounted his arrival in the United States in 1961 with a fake passport that his father had bought for him. After being interviewed by United States immigration officials at the Opa-Locka detention facility in South Florida, he took a Greyhound bus to Philadelphia and settled there, making a living as a waiter at a local golf club.

Álvarez testified that he landed an engineering job with General Electric in South Carolina in the early 70s. His job took him to many places in Latin America, he said.

“Did there come a time when you went to work for WRB Enterprises?” asked Teresinski. Álvarez said that he began his employment with WRB in Tampa in 1996. “That’s an investment business in Tampa that also had an electrical plant in Guatemala. I was the vice president and Bob Blanchard was the president,” he said.

Tony Álvarez speaks quickly and has a tendency to interrupt Teresinski. Judge Cardone had to ask him to slow down several times, because it was impossible for the court reporter to transcribe two people speaking simultaneously. “Wait until Mr. Teresinski has finished asking you the question before you respond,” she said.

Álvarez testified that on behalf of WRB Enterprises he rented office space in Guatemala. “I then hired José Burgos, because local law requires that only Guatemalan citizens can legally register a business there,” said Álvarez. “Burgos is Guatemalan.”

Álvarez testified that he also hired a Cuban American, José (Pepe) Álvarez, as well as a Guatemalan secretary—Cecilia Canel Peen.

Tony Álvarez meets Posada Carriles

“Pepe was the one who introduced me to Luis Posada Carriles at the Hotel Camino Real in Guatemala,” said the witness. “Posada told me that he was a freedom fighter and that the communists had tried to kill him there.”

“Afterwards, I saw him in my office,” said Álvarez. “When I arrived, I saw an SUV parked there with Salvadoran plates. Then I saw him leave with Pepe and another person.”

Teresinski then asked, “Did your office have a fax machine?”

Hearing this, the defense attorney sprang to his feet. He interrupted the witness before he could answer and asked the judge for a sidebar discussion out of the jurors’ earshot. Hernández knew that Teresinski wanted the witness to testify about an important document, allegedly written and signed by Posada Carriles that had arrived by fax at Álvarez’s office in 1997.

The judge obliged the defense attorney’s request and dismissed the jury so that she could hear the arguments about the document’s admissibility.

The “Solo” fax

The document consists of two pages handwritten in block letters. It is dated August 25, 1997, just 10 days before a series of four bombs exploded in Havana—one of which took the life of Fabio Di Celmo. The fax is addressed to José and Pepe, the two employees of WRB that Tony Álvarez said he hired in Guatemala.

It tells them, “You will receive four payments of $800 a piece via Western Union” and instructs them to distribute the money to Pedro Pérez, Abel Hernández, José Gonzalo and Rubén Gonzalo. The names of the recipients match those on the money orders sent from New Jersey, about which FBI Agent Omar Vega and the accountant Oscar de Rojas testified last week.

The fax ends by saying “as I told you, if there’s no publicity, the work is useless, the American press doesn’t publish anything that has not been confirmed. I need all the data from the nightclub in order to try to confirm it. If there’s no publicity, there’s no payment. I’m awaiting news today, tomorrow I will be out for two days.” It’s signed “Solo.” This is one of Posada Carriles’ aliases, inspired by the television character Napoleon Solo of the 1960s spy series, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”

The Solo fax is the missing link between the New Jersey money orders to Guatemala and El Salvador and Posada Carriles. It shows that the money trail led directly to Posada Carriles and that it was to finance the bombings in Havana.

Posada Carriles admitted to writing and signing the fax in the June 1998 interview he gave to New York Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach.

There is no doubt that the Solo fax is a key piece of evidence against the ex-CIA agent.

The balance of the day’s proceedings was conducted outside the presence of the jury for the limited purpose of determining whether Tony Álvarez could authenticate the Solo fax so that it could be admitted into evidence.

C-4 plus the Solo fax = anxiety

Tony Álvarez told the judge that after seeing the fax, he became so worried that he took it to Diego Arzú, the son of then president Álvaro Arzú.

Adding to his concern was the knowledge that his secretary, Cecilia Canel Penél, had seen José Burgos, Pepe Álvarez and Posada Carriles meeting in the office to which they had brought plastic tubes and calculators. The witness said that he knew those were bomb-making materials. The explosives went into the plastic tubes, and the calculators were the timing mechanisms used to detonate them.

“I saw a package in my office, marked ‘Mexican military industry,’ ‘C-4,’ ‘dangerous explosives,’” said Álvarez. “That’s why the fax caught my attention.”

President Arzú’s son, Diego, advised him to draft a letter about his concerns to Guatemalan Intelligence, Álvarez testified. He said he also gave the letter to the FBI. Neither of the two intelligence agencies followed up on the matter.

The legal battle over the Solo fax

Posada Carriles’ attorney vigorously opposed the admission of the Solo fax. He argued that Álvarez had not marked the document, which made it impossible for him to identify it years later as the one he had seen with his own eyes in August 1997. Moreover, said attorney Hernández, “He can’t testify about who actually wrote the document, there is no way of assuring that it has not been altered, and the prosecutors can’t establish a proper chain of custody.”

Citing the federal rules of evidence, Hernández argued that the contents of the document are filled with hearsay and therefore should be excluded by the Court.

Government prosecutor Teresinski offered a different interpretation. “A defendant’s statements are exempt from the hearsay rule and are admissible in court.” Furthermore, “the contents of the fax match the names on the money orders from New Jersey and the testimony of the Cuban witness about the explosion at the Aché discothèque on April 12, 1997,” Teresinski added trying to explain that the Solo fax reveals Posada Carriles’ concern that the bombing of the Aché had not received sufficient publicity in the weeks following the attack.

As to the authenticity of the fax, Teresinski pointed out, “This document has been authenticated by Tony Álvarez through its contents, its appearance, and its distinctive characteristics. Therefore, it should be recognized as evidence for the jury’s consideration.”

The judge’s ruling

“The document does not have sufficient characteristics to be received as evidence,” said Judge Cardone. With these few words, she rejected one of the key pieces of evidence in the case and did not explain her ruling.

Tomorrow Tony Álvarez will testify again: this time before the jury. He will not, however, testify about the Solo fax.

Without the Solo fax to evaluate, the jurors will remain in the dark about the complicated conspiracy surrounding the campaign of bombings in Havana. It was a big victory for Luis Posada Carriles.

And so ended this Ash Wednesday in El Paso.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/10/diario-de-el-paso-posada-carriles-gana-la-batalla-del-fax

El Paso Diary: How Ann Louise Bardach Helped Win the Second Battle Over the Solo Fax

José Pertierra — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:09:18 +0000

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p>El Paso Diary: Day 33 of the Posada Carriles Trial

By José Pertierra

The first battle of the fax

Mr. Voir Dire

The defense attorney has made multiple voir dire requests, so many that the prosecutor calls him “Mr. Voir Dire.”

The Solo fax

Prosecutor Reardon opened the hearing by asking the witness, “During the interview that you did with Posada Carriles in Aruba in June of 1997, did you talk about the Solo fax?”

At Prosecutor Reardon’s request, Bardach read the first paragraph of the fax aloud.

Reardon asked Bardach to read the last paragraph of the fax aloud, and so she did:

The Solo fax and the Miami Herald

The FBI knows that I received money from the United States

During the June 1997 interview, Posada told Bardach, “The FBI knows that I received money from the United States.”

The verdict on the fax

The tenth motion for a mistrial

After a brief recess, the judge brought the jury back into the courtroom and Bardach resumed her testimony.

Much of it had to be repeated for the jury’s benefit. Prosecutor Reardon asked Bardach about her conversations with Posada Carriles concerning the Solo fax.

Upon hearing this, the defense attorney again moved for a mistrial, alleging that telling the jury that Posada Carriles faced problems in other countries was highly prejudicial.

The judge, accustomed by now to the motions from the Miami attorney, rejected it without a single comment.

The greatest hits from the interview with Posada Carriles

St. Patrick’s Day and the Cuban American National Foundation

Another of the clips was of Bardach asking Posada Carriles about the relationship between the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and the money to finance military actions against Cuba. “The Foundation is the political arm and you are the military?” Bardach asked Posada Carriles. “Yes. Everything went through Jorge [Mas Canosa]. He’s the one who managed everything,” said Posada Carriles.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version: http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2011/03/18/diario-de-el-paso-la-fiscalia-gana-la-segunda-batalla-del-fax

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