Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Justice Department’s main investigative organization, is in theory designed to enforce the law, investigate federal crimes, protect the United States from foreign intelligence operations and terrorist activity and to offer aid to federal, state, local and international agencies in legal matters.

However, the FBI has been involved in a plethora of actions in support of terrorist activity and against anti-terrorist activists.

One of the most despicable actions the FBI has ever been involved in is the sabotage and ultimate midair destruction of a Cuban commercial airplane that departed from the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976. A secret FBI document that was recently made public corroborates that Orlando Bosch, as head of the terrorist organization Coordinator of United Revolutionary Organizations, met with Luis Posada Carriles and other criminals in Caracas on September 8, 1976 to decide on the types of actions they could undertake in Venezuela.

Also according to the declassified documents, an FBI informant in Venezuela identified Bosch and Posada Carriles as the two responsible for the sabotage of the Cuban plane in which 73 people perished, including the members of the Cuban national junior fencing team.

Though no name is mentioned, the declassified document does reveal that one of the two individuals who placed the bomb in the plane, either Freddy Lugo or Hernan Ricardo, both Venezuelan, phoned Bosch immediately after the tragedy to tell him that a “bus with 73 dogs inside careered off a precipice and everyone died.”

No one in the high FBI hierarchy has said a word about this. Not then, not now.

The FBI’s involvement in the case of the five Cuban anti-terrorist activists imprisoned in the United States has also been highly scandalous. In 1998, at the request of Cuban authorities, senior-level FBI officials traveled to Havana where they were shown thousands of pages of documented evidence and hundreds of hours of video footage documenting terrorist activities organized by Florida-based groups.

The FBI responded by arresting those who had procured the information, including the group known as the “Cuban Five.” The arrests were followed by what became a Miami show-trial. The Five were declared guilty and given three life sentences for espionage. The leader, Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

In the meantime, individuals that the FBI and Justice Department consider dangerous terrorists live happily in the United States and continue to plot and execute criminal acts.

The list of terrorists residing in the United States also includes the Haitian Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, a former paramilitary leader from the time of Duvalier. Constant is the founder of FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Development and Progress of Haiti), a paramilitary group responsible for most acts of state terrorism carried out in the early 1990’s under the military junta that overthrew President Aristide.

According to recent reports, Constant is living in Queens, New York.

Internally, in its fight against terrorism the FBI has also shown itself lacking in moral rectitude. On August 18, 2004, the World Socialist Web revealed that the FBI has set in motion a series of broad-reaching measures to intimidate and attack those who oppose the Bush administration’s pro-war policies.

In anticipation of the Democratic National Convention held in Boston at the beginning of August and the imminent Republican Party convention to be held in New York, the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) mobilized agents to spy on, interrogate and threaten anti-war protesters and even interfere in and neutralize their activities.

In flagrant violation of basic democratic and constitutional rights, the JTTF has monitored and, in some cases, interrogated dozens of people in at least six states in search of information about their actions and anti-war opinions. The JTTF has visited the homes and workplaces of people opposed to the war, as well as those of their friends and relatives. In no case has there been evidence of any criminal activity —perpetrated or planned— by the individuals in question.

Sources: www.voltairenet.org, www.antiterroristas.cu, www.rebelion.org