Those Bush's just love terrorists …

Posted by Joshua Holland at 8:14 PM on January 7, 2006.

You might recall Joe Conason's piece on Orlando Bosch, a killer who planned the bombing of a Cuban passenger-jet that killed 76 people.

…In 1989, prominent Cuban-Americans in Florida began agitating for the release of Orlando Bosch, a notorious anti-Castro terrorist then serving a prison term for entering the United States illegally. American intelligence and law enforcement authorities firmly believed that Bosch was responsible for far worse actions, including the 1976 explosion that brought down a Cuban airliner, killing all 76 civilians aboard, although Venezuelan prosecutors had failed to convict him of that terrible crime. There was certainly no question that Bosch was an advocate of terror and had been involved in numerous bombings.

The Justice Department wanted to deport Bosch …but Miami's leading Republican contributors and politicians persistently lobbied [the first] Bush to free Bosch, insisting that the former pediatrician was really a noble freedom fighter. And in 1990, when Bosch was eventually released and permitted to reside in Florida under an extraordinary deal with the Bush Justice Department, much of the credit went to the alleged mass murderer's best-connected White House lobbyist -- a budding local politician named Jeb Bush. The Bush son who would be elected governor of Florida eight years later had, by 1990, already become wealthy in real estate and other deals with the same Cuban exile businessmen who wanted Bosch to be freed. Among Jeb's business partners active in the Cuban-American National Foundation, the institutional advocate for Bosch, was one Armando Codina, also a regular GOP donor and activist.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, "In 1984, [Jeb] Bush put just $1,000 in an office building called Museum Tower. By 1990, he sold out for about $346,000. Similar deals followed. Who made it possible? Armando Codina."

Oh, and Jebbie appointed Bosch's lawyer, Raoul Cantero, to the Florida Supreme Court as soon as he got into the Governor's office.

Now, via Firedoglake, we see that the Bush Justice Department might be following little brother's lead with one of Bosch's terrorist brethren:

The U.S. government will decide by Jan. 24 whether to free Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles from an immigration facility in El Paso and allow him to stay in the country under supervision.

For those not familiar with Posada Carriles, he was involved in some of the Reagan-era Iran-Contra and other activities, and was reportedly trained by the CIA to do…erm…things they wish he wouldn't talk about publicly.

Stuff like coordinating a unit that planted bombs in restaurants and other locations around Havana, Cuba -- on one occasion killing an Italian tourist along with a number of Cuban civilians. And planting explosives that downed a Cuban passenger plane, killing 73 passengers on board. (Something that Carilles bragged about in his own book.) And Operation Condor, including the Orlando Letelier murder that occurred in Washington, DC -- you know, a murder on US soil. Among many, many other things.

Carriles was imprisoned in Venezuela, escaped, then ended up in Miami, the reservation for right-wing Latin American terrorists.

I wonder why folks think we're a tad hypocritical?

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.