Fifty Years After the Cuban Airliner Bombing in Barbados: Declassified CIA and FBI Documents Implicate Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch

Half a century after a bomb obliterated a Cubana de Aviación aircraft off the coast of Barbados, the National Security Archive at George Washington University has unveiled a collection of ten declassified documents pinpointing those responsible for the attack.

Curated by Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project, Briefing Book No. 932 compiles cables from the FBI and CIA, reports from the State Department, records from Trinidad and Tobago police, and the interrogation led by independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

The tragic event occurred on October 6, 1976, when Flight 455 was destroyed shortly after departing Bridgetown en route to Havana. All 73 individuals on board perished, including 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five North Koreans.

Among the victims were 24 members of the Cuban fencing delegation—16 athletes, four coaches, two technicians, and two officials—returning from Caracas after sweeping gold medals at the IV Central American and Caribbean Championships.

The explosive device was a small charge of plastic explosives hidden in a tube of Colgate toothpaste. The perpetrators, Venezuelans Hernán Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo, were employees of Luis Posada Carriles’ private security agency in Caracas. They disembarked in Barbados after placing the bomb on the plane.

Just a day post-attack, the FBI had evidence pointing to Cubans Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch as the masterminds. A cable dated October 7, 1976, revealed sources in Caracas indicating that both were planning their escape from Venezuela: "The source practically admitted that Posada and Bosch had orchestrated the attack on the plane."

A CIA report from October 12 added that a source heard Posada declare, "We are going to hit a Cuban plane," and that "Bosch has the details." Even more disturbing is a CIA cable from June 22, 1976—four months prior—that already warned of plans to bomb a Cubana flight, which was not acted upon in time.

An FBI informant revealed that after the plane's crash, Ricardo contacted Bosch with a coded message: "A bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all died."

The documents further disclose that the FBI's legal attaché in Caracas granted a U.S. visa to Ricardo Lozano six days before the attack, despite suspicions about him. During a 2011 trial in El Paso, the CIA conceded that Posada had been a paid agent between 1965 and 1974, under the codename "AMCLEVE/15."

This incident marked the beginning of a long history of impunity. Posada escaped a Venezuelan prison in 1985 with the help of Cuban-American benefactors and joined the Reagan administration's clandestine operations in El Salvador to support the Nicaraguan Contras. Bosch was released in Venezuela in 1987, and in 1990, President George H.W. Bush granted him permanent residency in the U.S., disregarding his own Attorney General's recommendation labeling Bosch a "terrorist."

In 1998, Posada confessed to The New York Times about orchestrating hotel bombings in Havana in 1997, which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo. "That Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby," he stated.

Posada was apprehended in the U.S. in 2005, yet authorities only charged him with perjury and immigration fraud, never with terrorism. A jury in El Paso acquitted him of all charges in 2011 after three hours of deliberation.

The case continues to polarize the Cuban-American community, with some viewing them as freedom fighters and others as terrorists who killed innocent civilians. Questions about intellectual authorship remain unresolved: testimonies over the years suggest possible complicity within Venezuelan intelligence.

Bosch passed away in Miami in 2011 at age 84, and Posada died in Florida in 2018 at 90. Both lived and died as free men. Kornbluh concludes that in the face of what he deems a "mockery of justice for the 73 victims," the declassified documents offer "the only possible verdict: the verdict of history."