Granma Daily - Nov 1, 2006
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art39.html
Another of Posada's Accomplices Carries Secrets to the Grave
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD
English Translation by 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.
