Most remarkably, Bush is reported to have flown to Miami on November 8 with the
purpose or pretext of taking "a walking tour of little Havana." As author Donald Freed
tells it, "Actually [Bush] met with the Miami FBI Special Agent in Charge Julius Matson
and the chief of the anti-Castro terrorism squad. According to a source close to the
meeting Bush warned the FBI against allowing the investigation to go any further than
the lowest level Cubans." [fn 51]
In a meeting presided over by Pottinger, Propper was only able to get Lapham to agree
that the Justice Department could ask the CIA to report any information on the Letelier
murder that might relate to the security of the United States against foreign intervention.
It was two years before any word of the July-August cables was divulged.
Ultimately some low-level Cubans were convicted in a trial that saw Townley cop a plea
bargain and get off with a lighter sentence than the rest. Material about Townley under
his various aliases strangley disappeared from the INS files, and records of the July-
August cable traffic with Walters (and Bush) was expunged. No doubt that there had
been obstruction of justice, no doubt there had been a cover-up.
On October 6, bombs destroyed a Cubana Airlines DC-8 flying from Kingston, Jamaica
to Havana, killing 73 passangers and crew, including the Cuban national fencing team
which was returning from Venezuela. Anonymous callers to newspapers and radio
stations claimed responsibility for CORU and Operation Condor, while Fidel Castro
immediately blamed the CIA. Venezuelan police arrested CORU leaders Orlando Bosch
(freed from jail in the US) and Luis Posada Carriles, whom we will later see as an
associate of Bush operative Felix Rodriguez in Iran-contra.
During 1976, Ed Wilson, officially retired, had been working with CIA officials on a
project to deliver explosives, timers, weapons, and ultimately Redeye missles to Qaddafi
of Libya. Wilson was receiving assistance from active duty CIA agents, including
William Weisenburger and from Scientific Communications, a CIA front company.
Wilson was working with Clines, who was still on the CIA payroll. CIA man Kevin
Mulcahy had reported to Theodore Shackley about Wilson's activities, and Shackley had
informed deputy director William Wells, who in turned had passed the hot potato on to
Inspector General John Waller. The result of this round was a probe of Mulcahy's report
under Thomas Cox of Wallers' staff, assisted by Thomas Clines, of all people. On the
basis of this in-house investigation, Bush on September 17 decided to pass the entire case
on to the FBI.
Another aspect of Wilson's skullduggery was reported to Clines by Rafael "Chi Chi"
Quintero, another fixture of the Enterprise, who complained that Wilson was trying to
recruit him for an assassination attempt against "Carlos," the fabled international terrorist.
Years later Wilson was given a long jail sentence, while his sidekick Frank Terpil went
underground. What is essential here is that under Bush's administration, the CIA and its
associated Enterprise and other old boys networks began to run amok along paths that
lead us towards the Iran-contra affair and the other great covert action secret wars of the
1980's and 1990's.