Havana, October 6 (RHC)-- Today, October 6, Cuba commemorates the 47th anniversary of sabotage bombing of Cubana airlines flight 455 -- killing all on board the commercial flight.
On October 6, 1976, Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, bound for Havana from Barbados, was destroyed in mid-flight with a death toll of 73, an action orchestrated by Orlando Bosch, together with the notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, in the service of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
In Havana, it was called that a recently-declassified U.S. State Department document acknowledges that Washington's intelligence agencies knew that Cuban-born terrorist Orlando Bosch was planning to bomb a Cubana de Aviación plane.
The document, classified as highly confidential and issued on June 22, 1976, refers to "possible plans by Cuban exile extremists to place two bombs on the Cuban airline."
It recognizes Orlando Bosch (1926-2011), who at that time resided in the Dominican Republic, as the leader, and notes his intentions to originally attack an aircraft covering the Panama-Havana route. According to the text, both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. Navy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were notified of this memorandum.
However, none of these authorities, knowing of the terrorist plans, prevented the attack that in October of that year cut short the lives of so many young Cubans, Guyanese and Koreans.
Almost 40 years after the event, in 2015, the complicity of the United States in that terrorist action was exposed when documents were declassified where the then Secretary Henry Kissinger showed his concern about the links between the CIA and extremist groups of Cuban emigrants in South Florida.
According to the memorandum, that agency had links with three of the people involved in the attack, "but any role these people may have had in the demolition was carried out without the CIA's knowledge".
The document states that the agency had only had contact with Posada, Bosch and Félix Martínez Suárez. Martínez Suárez was not involved in the attack, according to the report.
Cuba has denounced on multiple occasions the participation of the United States in the downing of the Cubana flight, identifying as CIA agents the two Venezuelans, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who placed the bombs inside the aircraft, by order of Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch.
The new disqualified document now shows that the U.S. agencies knew about the plans long before and yet did not take any preventive action.
