A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Ernest Hemingway

50 years after his death the mysteries surrounding the writer’s relations with the FBI and the possible connections of the federal agency with his suicide are still being unveiled.

Those who have held in their hands the famous FBI file on Ernest Hemingway affirm it contains 124 pages, 15 of which even today are still held back “in the interest of national defense”. Of the remaining pages, 40 are covered with black ink except for their greetings and signatures, and several more are practically illegible. Between the readable and those crossed out in black, it is possible to determine that the file holds information on Hemingway gathered between 1942, during the 2nd World War and 1974, almost 15 years after his death.

The existence of 15 censored and 40 carefully crossed-out pages, the permanence of others which barely repeat innocuous information about the days when Hemingway chased German submarines along Cuban coasts, and finally the fact that the writer was a subject of interest for FBI investigations even after his death, at least suggest how problematic the relationship must have been.

The legible documents imply that Hemingway, who in the years of the Spanish Civil War had harshly criticized the federal agency, decided to collaborate with what he would call “the American Gestapo” from September 1942 (while he was already residing in Cuba) with two main objectives: to inform on the activities of the members of the Spanish Falange and Nazi followers on the island, and to launch a search for German submarines to discover where and, above all, who was providing the fuel they needed to sail the Caribbean waters.

The connection is established through the US Embassy in Havana and the person who would receive the information was the “Legal Attaché” R.G. Leddy, an FBI man with little sympathy for Hemingway as reflected in the comments with which he sprinkled his reports. For example, one where he remembers the writer “was actively linked to the Republic during the Spanish Civil War” and another where he jots down the fact that in 1940 he had joined “a general campaign to slander the FBI after the arrest of certain individuals in Detroit for their alleged violations of the Neutrality Act due to their activities in the Spanish Civil War”, and he goes on to affirm that “he has been accused of sympathizing with communism.”

Under the wing of the FBI, Hemingway, with his protagonist mania, organized and directed a network of “amateur” informants, but this collaboration would last for only seven months until the 1st of April 1943 when the Ambassador cancelled it on the grounds that the information provided by the writer had been “in almost all cases worthless”. In fact, the reason for laying off Hemingway as a spy must have been the fact that his activities had become dangerous, because they included spying on General Manuel Benítez, Chief of the Cuban Policía Nacional, a man who enjoyed the complete trust of the then constitutional President Fulgencio Batista, “Cuba’s strong man”.

Hemingway had crossed the line and the Director of the Agency, Hoover himself, tried to set matters straight and wrote in 1942, “Any information you have related to lack of trust in Ernest Hemingway as an informant must be discreetly reported to the Ambassador. In this sense it must be remembered that Hemingway recently provided information related to the refueling of submarines in Caribbean waters which turned out to be unreliable.” Hoover also dropped within his comments, political judgments on the writer and others of a personal nature referring to his addiction to alcohol, in a typical operation to undermine Hemingway’s credibility.

A hypothesis that could explain these reactions of the FBI would be that the hunting operation for German submarines would have placed Hemingway on the road to a dangerous revelation. Although there are still no documents as evidence, the suspicion that General Manuel Benítez, from his position of Chief of Police, could have been in charge of selling fuel to the Germans is quite feasible. It is a fact that the Nazis were refueling their submarines in several Cuban ports and there is no doubt that an operation of such magnitude could not have been carried out without the acquiescence of the army (Batista) and the police (Benítez)…

On May 30, 1960, Hemingway was admitted to the Mayo Brothers Clinic, as recommended by a New York psychiatrist. Hemingway had been compelled by his friends to see the psychiatrist, mainly because he had complained that the “Feds” were following him. Seemingly this “persecution mania” had reached its peak during his visit to Spain in 1959, but then when he reached New York, he again started feeling that the eyes of the Feds were on him. His wife Mary Welsh and some friends believed such feelings were a symptom of the writer’s paranoia.

The treatment prescribed at the famous clinic was to subject him to a series of between 15 and 20 electroshocks which wiped out his capacity to write. This procedure known as electro-convulsive therapy was reserved for hopeless patients. A few days after being discharged, in a deep depression, he committed suicide on July 2, 1961 in his Idaho cottage. He was 62, but was so devastated he looked like a very old man… The fact that his widow, the only person with him in his Idaho house when he died, has for years denied the fact that her husband committed suicide is at least unsettling.

Documents released in 1984, revealed that in fact the writer was being followed and watched by agents acting on orders of Hoover who a few years before had considered Hemingway as “Public Enemy #1”. What was the reason for the preeminence granted to the writer by the FBI?

In the 50’s the FBI learned that Hemingway was planning to write a book about the agency. Documents of the Bureau reveal the fear, particularly Hoover’s, that the book could have damaged the image of his agency, and most of all expressed judgments about his person. The existing animosity against Hemingway was then increased and the Director of the FBI spread the image of a drunk and pathetic Hemingway, with communist-leaning ideas. Perhaps we’ll never know if Hemingway actually began that book. What is certain is that as he made Finca Vigía his residence for 20 years, the house was full of papers belonging to the writer. A few months after the suicide, his widow travelled to Havana and took away the most valuable paintings and the documents she considered important. During her stay she made a bonfire with a huge amount of papers. What did Mary Welsh burn? Only she herself knew. Maybe some of the clues to the persistent FBI surveillance of Hemingway went up in smoke among the trees of Finca Vigía.

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition – except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence – which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the US invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the US and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

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.

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

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/

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.