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in October
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Today's
Stories
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
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September
20, 2003
The Assassination
Geezers
Guillermo
Novo and Me
By SAUL LANDAU
Twenty two years ago, in the hallway of the Washington
DC Federal Court Building, Guillermo Novo threatened me. So,
when I read that on November 18, 2000 Panamanian cops had arrested
him on an assassination charge, I felt the pleasant tingle of
relief. Novo has reached the age--mid sixties--where his back
goes out more than he does. Yet, instead of starting their own
anti-Castro AARP chapter, he and three other rabidly Cuban geriatrics
went to Panama to whack Cuba's president. The Cuban leader went
to Panama for an Iberian Summit in the Fall of 2000 and Cuban
security agents tipped off the Panamanians to search the car
the group had rented. It contained 30 pounds of explosives and
appropriate detonating material plus fingerprints that matched
some of the defendants.
The four men (Guillermo, Luis Posada
Carriles, Pedro Remon and Gaspar Jimenez) claim that Fidel had
set them up for a frame. Their lawyers argued that the ever wily
Fidel lured them to Panama because he knew that these old geezers
shared common obsessions: they had all sworn to kill him and
had participated in previous assassinations. They justified their
lethal deeds as necessary steps in their holy war against the
Caribbean demon.
Guillermo Novo reminds me of Jason or
Freddy, except that his violence took place in real life and
not in movies. I remember the cold chill of that morning in the
courthouse hall in 1981. An appeals court had reversed on procedural
grounds his conviction for eight counts of conspiracy to assassinate
Orlando Letelier. At the new trial, the jury had just acquitted
him and co-defendant Alvin Ross of conspiracy charges  (Letelier, a former Ambassador and Cabinet
Minister in the government of Salvador Allende, died along with
Ronni Moffitt, his colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies,
when a bomb planted under his car exploded on September 21, 1976).
The jury had also acquitted Ignacio Novo,
Guillermo's younger brother, of aiding and abetting the conspiracy.
The panel did convict Guillermo of lying to the grand jury about
his knowledge of the murder plot. The judge ruled, however, that
he had already served the time he would have been given.
As the courtroom emptied, the two Novo
brothers, Ross, their families and supporters used the hallway
to continue their buoyant celebration. Then Guillermo saw me
staring at them--in dismay, since I could not understand how
the jury could have come to such a verdict in light of the overwhelming
evidence presented.
Looking at me murderously, he hissed
and then, as if continuing his conversation with Ignacio, said
in Spanish "Now we can finish off the rest of these communist
pigs."
I responded maturely by sticking out
my tongue and blowing a loud raspberry.
Guillermo's eyes narrowed, his mouth
opened a fraction of an inch as if fangs might come out and then
he took a few belligerent steps toward me. I instantly wished
I could take back my gesture.
Luckily for me, FBI Special Agent Robert
Scherrer stepped between us and opened his jacket, showing Guillermo
his holstered gun. Novo backed away. Scherrer said some nasty-toned
things I couldn't decipher and Guillermo and company made for
the elevators.
"That was stupid," Scherrer
told me, shaking his head in disbelief. "That man is a murderer."
Scherrer then provided me with what he knew of Novo's life, starting
with his 1964 arrest for firing a bazooka at the United Nations
headquarters in New York City, through a variety of drug arrests--no
convictions -- and finally his role as organizer of the gang
that helped DINA, the Chilean secret police, to assassinate Letelier.
The 1964 bazooka incident exemplifies
Novo's character. According to the December 23, 1964 New York
Times, Guillermo and Ignacio "bought the bazooka, a portable
rocket launcher, for $35 in an Eighth Avenue shop and rebuilt
it."
He waited for the time at which Cuba's
Che Guevara was scheduled to address the UN General Assembly
and then fired the shell "from the East River waterfront"
in Long Island, facing the UN building across the river. The
shell, said the Times "landed in the East River about 200
yards short of the 38-story United Nations Secretariat building,
sending up a 15-foot geyser of water."
Guevara had been verbally attacking US
policy when the incident took place. He laughed it off, saying
"it gave added flavor to his speech." Investigators
said the bazooka "had been elevated to about 20 degrees,
so that the shell had traveled only about 800 yards. If it had
been elevated at a higher angle, it could have carried as far
as 1,300 yards, and shattered the glass and concrete facade of
the United Nations building, causing many casualties among the
5,000 persons there at the time."
In the 1960s, Guillermo and his brother
had linked their political fortunes with an overtly fascist anti-Castro
group called the Cuban Nationalist Movement. According to FBI
Agents Carter Cornick and Scherrer, whose police work helped
crack the Letelier Moffitt assassination case and point the finger
at the highest levels of the Pinochet government, Novo pursued
his violent anti-Castro activities throughout the 1960s and early
1970s. Scherrer claimed that "he tried to finance through
drug dealing. But we could never make a charge stick." Guillermo's
reputation as a tough guy included an incident where, to show
his courage and machismo, drove his car into a brick wall at
high speed.
In 1975 Guillermo and Ignacio had already
forged links with General Pinochet's secret police. Indeed, FBI
Agents Scherrer and Carter Cornick, who was the point man on
the Letelier case, were convinced that the Novo brothers had
played key roles in the assassination of anti-Castro exile Rolando
Masferrer whose death directly benefited Jorge Mas Canosa, the
man who went on to lead the Cuban American National Foundation,
the most powerful anti-Castro pressure group in the nation.
Masferrer, a Senator in Batista's Cuba,
won his notoriety for leading a small army known as "Masferrer's
Tigers." Prior to Castro's assumption of power in January
1959, these thugs attacked violently factions that opposed the
Batista regime. In exile in Miami, he bought and published a
Spanish language newspaper named Libertad. But he also continued
his better-paying occupation: the extortion of small and easily
intimidated business people in south Florida.
Masferrer, a master of anti-Castro slogans,
supported violence against the Cuban revolution. But his efforts
had brought no results and the more ambitious exiled Cubans began
to think of his rhetoric and his purported militant actions as
a front for his "business" activities. Masferrer stood
as an obstacle to Mas Canosa's plans to forge an effective and
unified counter revolution, which would include meaningful violence
and political pressure.
In the early fall of 1975, Masferrer's
bodyguards discovered Ignacio Novo stooping under Masferrer's
auto. According to Agent Scherrer, "the heavies dragged
Iggy into the office and stuck his head in the toilet. Then they
stripped him and threw him into the street. I guess they figured
they had scared him."
Shortly afterwards, on October 31, 1975,
Masferrer started his car and died as a bomb planted under the
car exploded. The bomb went off under his car--a bomb very similar
to the one that killed Letelier. "So I always figured the
Novos had done that job and maybe gotten Townley." Scherrer
referred to Michael Townley, the Chilean DINA agent who later
recruited the Novos into the Letelier plot. "I thought Townley
did them a favor [making the Masferrer bomb]. Then, about a year
later, he asked them for a favor [helping him assassinate Letelier]."
Shortly after Guillermo Novo left the
courthouse in 1981 he forged official links with the Cuban American
National Foundation, becoming a member of their "Information
Commission."
"What," asked Agent Scherrer
rhetorically, "did Guillermo know about information? Look
at his jobs-- doorman, used car salesman and professional assassin.
How does that qualify someone to hold a post on the information
commission?"
In late 1981, I received a phone call
from Ricardo Canete, a former pal of Guillermo's who had subsequently
testified against him at both trials. He told me that Guillermo
had put out a "hit" on me and to watch my step.
Scherrer verified the information. "Yes,"
he said, "you're a target of convenience." As I broke
out into a cold sweat talking to him on the phone, he explained
that I should not travel to Union City, New Jersey, where Guillermo
and his thugs still lived, and to keep a low profile if I went
to Miami. "I doubt they'll come to Washington just to get
you. You're not that important," he laughed.
I've taken Scherrer's advise. Once, a
few years ago, in a Miami restaurant I thought I saw him and
lost my appetite. The murderous look that he wore on his face
that day in the court house will remain engraved in the fear
section of my brain.
Almost three years after their arrests,
a Panamanian judge ruled that sufficient evidence existed to
bring Guillermo and the other still maturing terrorists to trial.
What ever happened to the saying: "Old daredevils never
die, they just get discouraged." Not these guys. May the
trials begin and justice prevail -- swiftly!
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, will be published
in September by Pluto Books. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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