Another of Posada’s accomplices carries secrets to the grave
César Vallejo | 03.11.2006 15:34 | Social Struggles
RAFAEL "Chi Chi" Quintero Ibarbía, one of Luis Posada Carriles’ closest henchmen in the Ilopango scandal and also a CIA agent of Cuban origin, drew his last breath on October 1 in Baltimore (Maryland), aged 66.
1 November, 2006
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—
RAFAEL "Chi Chi" Quintero Ibarbía, one of Luis Posada Carriles’ closest henchmen in the Ilopango scandal and also a CIA agent of Cuban origin, drew his last breath on October 1 in Baltimore (Maryland), aged 66.
So great was his complicity with Posada, the Bush family and the terrorist mafia, that it was a CIA agent, Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía - the same degenerate who ordered the assassination of Che – who took personal responsibility for the eulogy at the funeral ceremony in Miami.
Born in the city of Camagüey on September 16, 1940, "Chi Chi" Quintero was recruited by the CIA at the age of 20 when he was a regular at meetings of the nascent terrorist groups the Agency was creating in Havana and where elements from the annexationist right congregated. Just like Carlos Alberto Montaner, he joined the CIA through his links with the so-called Revolutionary Recuperation Movement (MRR).
Quintero was one of the first snipers contracted by Robert Maheu and Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli in 1960 to try and assassinate the Cuban president.
He was then recruited by George Bush Sr., at that time an official with the CIA, to join the troops of hired killers for Operation 40, developed at the same time and as part of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
He thus took part in attacks alongside a number of criminals whose names today are synonymous with terror: Orlando Bosch, Virgilio Paz, José Dionisio Suárez, Antonio Veciana, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Gaspar "Gasparito" Jiménez Escobedo, Nazario Sargent and José Basulto.
From 1962 to 1965, Quintero was one of the most active agents at the JM/WAVE CIA station when, under the direction of Theodore Shackley, he developed a million-dollar plan of aggression against Cuba from Miami itself. There, he organized infiltration and sabotage operations with Thomas Clines, Frank Sturgis and Porter Goss, who was until recently head of that same U.S. intelligence agency.
Several experts place him in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. During the war in Vietnam, Quintero was, with Shackley and Rodríguez, a member of the team of assassins who carried out Operation Phoenix, under which some 20,000 Vietnamese people were tortured and murdered. The trio then moved on to Laos where they developed a prosperous business in opium-trafficking.
Years later, Quintero reappeared alongside retired Air Force Lieutenant General Richard Secord, who assisted Colonel North in what would become the drugs for arms scandal in Central America against the Sandinistas. In a lengthy confession to the FBI, the existence of which was revealed by U.S. journalist Robert Parry, Posada recalls how he was contracted by Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero to work with Félix Rodríguez at the Ilopango base in El Salvador.
The terrorist, whom the CIA broke out of his cell in a Venezuelan jail, explained how Quintero paid him $3,000 per month as well as all his expenses and provided him with false identity documents in the name of Ramón Medina.
According to his confessions to the FBI, when the plot was discovered the fugitive terrorist communicated directly with Colonel James Steele, the highest-ranking U.S. military official in El Salvador. Soon after, Rafael Quintero arrived in El Salvador to determine the measures that needed to be taken in order to erase traces of the plot.
It is worth noting that Quintero announced some years ago that he had indeed been awarded immunity and if they asked for his account "about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would unleash the biggest scandal in the history of the United States."
It is not known whether he has left his written memoirs, an unfinished book or any secret recordings, as Posada and Orlando Bosch are attempting to do.
The conspiratorial inertia of the FBI in the face of such an enormous scandal such as the Bush family’s links with a long chain of terrorist activities demonstrates how great is the weight of the CIA within the U.S. political and judicial system.
If the Bush clan is hoping for the physical disappearance of the witnesses so as to avoid surrendering accounts of its actions, it will definitely be feeling a certain sense of relief with the death of "Chi Chi" Quintero, another one of the principal actors in the U.S. terrorist plot against Cuba.
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—
RAFAEL "Chi Chi" Quintero Ibarbía, one of Luis Posada Carriles’ closest henchmen in the Ilopango scandal and also a CIA agent of Cuban origin, drew his last breath on October 1 in Baltimore (Maryland), aged 66.
So great was his complicity with Posada, the Bush family and the terrorist mafia, that it was a CIA agent, Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía - the same degenerate who ordered the assassination of Che – who took personal responsibility for the eulogy at the funeral ceremony in Miami.
Born in the city of Camagüey on September 16, 1940, "Chi Chi" Quintero was recruited by the CIA at the age of 20 when he was a regular at meetings of the nascent terrorist groups the Agency was creating in Havana and where elements from the annexationist right congregated. Just like Carlos Alberto Montaner, he joined the CIA through his links with the so-called Revolutionary Recuperation Movement (MRR).
Quintero was one of the first snipers contracted by Robert Maheu and Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli in 1960 to try and assassinate the Cuban president.
He was then recruited by George Bush Sr., at that time an official with the CIA, to join the troops of hired killers for Operation 40, developed at the same time and as part of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
He thus took part in attacks alongside a number of criminals whose names today are synonymous with terror: Orlando Bosch, Virgilio Paz, José Dionisio Suárez, Antonio Veciana, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Gaspar "Gasparito" Jiménez Escobedo, Nazario Sargent and José Basulto.
From 1962 to 1965, Quintero was one of the most active agents at the JM/WAVE CIA station when, under the direction of Theodore Shackley, he developed a million-dollar plan of aggression against Cuba from Miami itself. There, he organized infiltration and sabotage operations with Thomas Clines, Frank Sturgis and Porter Goss, who was until recently head of that same U.S. intelligence agency.
Several experts place him in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. During the war in Vietnam, Quintero was, with Shackley and Rodríguez, a member of the team of assassins who carried out Operation Phoenix, under which some 20,000 Vietnamese people were tortured and murdered. The trio then moved on to Laos where they developed a prosperous business in opium-trafficking.
Years later, Quintero reappeared alongside retired Air Force Lieutenant General Richard Secord, who assisted Colonel North in what would become the drugs for arms scandal in Central America against the Sandinistas. In a lengthy confession to the FBI, the existence of which was revealed by U.S. journalist Robert Parry, Posada recalls how he was contracted by Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero to work with Félix Rodríguez at the Ilopango base in El Salvador.
The terrorist, whom the CIA broke out of his cell in a Venezuelan jail, explained how Quintero paid him $3,000 per month as well as all his expenses and provided him with false identity documents in the name of Ramón Medina.
According to his confessions to the FBI, when the plot was discovered the fugitive terrorist communicated directly with Colonel James Steele, the highest-ranking U.S. military official in El Salvador. Soon after, Rafael Quintero arrived in El Salvador to determine the measures that needed to be taken in order to erase traces of the plot.
It is worth noting that Quintero announced some years ago that he had indeed been awarded immunity and if they asked for his account "about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would unleash the biggest scandal in the history of the United States."
It is not known whether he has left his written memoirs, an unfinished book or any secret recordings, as Posada and Orlando Bosch are attempting to do.
The conspiratorial inertia of the FBI in the face of such an enormous scandal such as the Bush family’s links with a long chain of terrorist activities demonstrates how great is the weight of the CIA within the U.S. political and judicial system.
If the Bush clan is hoping for the physical disappearance of the witnesses so as to avoid surrendering accounts of its actions, it will definitely be feeling a certain sense of relief with the death of "Chi Chi" Quintero, another one of the principal actors in the U.S. terrorist plot against Cuba.
César Vallejo
