[continued from previous message] 
  
 foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, and an American aide, Ronni 
 Moffitt; at the time, it was one of the worst acts of foreign terrorism on 
 American soil. Fifteen days later, a Cubana Airlines flight with 73 people 
 on board was blown out of the sky off the coast of Barbados in the worst 
 terrorist attack in Cuban history. 
  
 Mr. Cornick, the F.B.I. counterterrorism specialist who worked on the 
 Letelier case, said in an interview that both bombings were planned at a 
 June 1976 meeting in Santo Domingo attended by, among others, Mr. Posada. 
  
 "The Cubana bomb went off, the people were killed, and there were tracks 
 leading right back to Disip," said Mr. Cornick, who is now retired. 
  
 "The information was so strong that they locked up Posada as a preventative 
 measure - to prevent him from talking or being killed. They knew that he had 
 been involved," said Mr. Cornick, referring to the Venezuelan authorities. 
 "There was no doubt in anyone's mind, including mine, that he was up to his 
 eyeballs" in the Cubana bombing. 
  
 A November 1976 F.B.I. report, based on the word of a trusted Cuban-American 
 informer, Ricardo Morales, places Mr. Posada at two meetings where the 
 Cubana bombing was plotted. It quotes the informer directly: "If Posada 
 Carriles talks," it says, "the Venezuelan government will 'go down the 
 tube.' " The document was obtained from government files by the National 
 Security Archive, a private research group in Washington. 
  
 Mr. Posada has always denied that he had a role in the bombing. But he was 
 detained by the Venezuelan government for almost nine years in the case - 
 never formally convicted, never fully acquitted. Finally, in 1985, he 
 escaped his minimum-security confines. 
  
 He found work in El Salvador as a quartermaster for the contras, the rebels 
 fighting the Nicaraguan government, whose mission was financed by the C.I.A. 
 and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North of the National Security Council. After that 
 covert operation was exposed in 1986, Mr. Posada landed in Guatemala, 
 working as a government intelligence officer. In 1990, he was nearly killed 
 in Guatemala by gunmen who he has said he suspected were sent by Mr. Castro. 
  
  
 After a slow recovery, Mr. Posada, by his own admission, ran a string of 
 operatives on a series of missions to blow up Cuban people and places. Mr. 
 Posada spoke to The New York Times seven years ago, boasting of what was 
 then his latest exploit, a string of bombings at Havana's hottest tourist 
 spots that terrorized the city and killed an Italian visitor. 
  
 Then in November 2000, he traveled to Panama, accompanied by Guillermo Novo, 
 whose conviction in the Letelier bombing had been overturned on appeal; 
 Gaspar Jim€nez, convicted of trying to kidnap a Cuban diplomat in Mexico in 
 1977; and Pedro Rem€n, convicted of the attempted murder of Cuba's 
 ambassador to the United Nations in 1980. 
  
 The moment Mr. Castro arrived in Panama for an international conference, he 
 accused Mr. Posada of plotting against his life. Mr. Posada was seized, 
 along with his three colleagues and 33 pounds of the plastic explosive C-4. 
 Despite Mr. Posada's protest that the case was a sting set up by the Cuban 
 spy service, he received an eight-year sentence in April 2004 for 
 endangering public safety. 
  
 Eight months ago, in her last week in office, President Mireya Moscoso of 
 Panama pardoned the men. She cited humanitarian grounds. Ms. Moscoso, who 
 has long had a home in Key Biscayne, has strong social ties to Cuban 
 conservatives in South Florida, said Mr. Dur€n, the Bay of Pigs veteran. 
  
 Her successor, Mart€n Torrijos, criticized the pardon at his inauguration, 
 saying, "For me, there are not two classes of terrorism, one that is 
 condemned and another that is pardoned." 
  
 Mr. Posada left Panama City and flew to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, bearing a 
 false American passport, according to President Ricardo Maduro, who publicly 
 denounced him. 
  
 Mr. Posada left Honduras in a hurry. Mr. Castro said in a recent speech that 
 Mr. Posada then went to the Mexican resort Isla Mujeres and arrived in 
 Florida on a boat owned by a Cuban-American developer in Miami. The Cuban 
 leader offered no proof. 
  
 If Mr. Posada wants asylum, "there will come a time when he will have to 
 come out of the dark," Mr. Dur€n said. "At that point, he could be arrested 
 for illegal entry." But in the present political climate, "the only place 
 he's safe is here - even if he's in jail." 
  
 Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company 
  
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