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“Because they killed Kennedy with a telescopic rifle...”

by Jean-Guy Allard
• Dead before facing Panamanian justice alongside Posada Carriles for the failed assassination attempt on President Fidel Castro what else did Cuban-American José Valladares know?
• INCREDIBLY, it was in direct reference to the assassination of John. F Kennedy that Cuban-American José Valladares confessed to the district attorney in Panama his participation in the conspiracy led by his big buddy international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles suspected by several experts of being involved in the elimination of the U.S. president!
This statement from Valladares – alias Pepe the Cuban, who received Posada at his ranch in Chiriquí province just hours before the police uncovered the plot to kill Fidel – is a basic element of the Panamanian district attorney’s report concerning the guilt of Posada and his accomplices.
Reading the voluminous document – some 175 pages – reveals overwhelming evidence that if it had been successful, the attack on the Cuban president would have led to the deaths of thousands of people, according to the Panamanian police force’s explosives expert.
Questioned by District Attorney Barrera Flores as to who had brought the detonator for the explosive device into Panama, Valladares replied: “In my opinion they were going to kill him but not in that way, because they killed Kennedy with a telescopic rifle. I said that they if they’d brought rifles with telescopic sights they would have killed him and we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
What did Valladares’ enigmatic reference to the assassination of the U.S. president mean? What else did this long-time collaborator with the Miami mafia know? What did Posada tell him that promoted him to refer to the Dallas shooting in this way?
Unfortunately, Pepe the Cuban will never tell. He died on October 7, 2002 from “coronary problems”, in Boquete – the Chiriquí neighborhood where he had lived for many years. He was also formally charged with being an accomplice in the plot masterminded by his buddy Posada.
ORLANDO BOSCH’S GUEST
Valladares’ links with the terrorist gang in Miami goes back three decades, when he lent his support to Cuban-born terrorist Orlando Bosch Avila during preparations for the sabotage of a Cubana Aviation passenger plane in Barbados, in 1976 – an attack that cost the lives of 73 people. Luis Posada Carriles organized and executed the crime along with Bosch and was imprisoned with him in Venezuela.
Later on Valladares offered Bosch one of his houses in Miami when the extremist arrived in the United States after being released thanks to the intervention of Cuban-American Otto Reich, then U.S. ambassador in Caracas and currently one of President George W. Bush’s advisors.
According to reliable sources, Valladares invited Bosch to his Panamanian farm, situated in a remote location some six kilometers from the Costa Rican border.
Orlando Bosch Avila was the founder and head of the murderous United Revolutionary Organizations Committee (CORU) and had links to several different organizations responsible for acts of terrorism against Cuba.
Pepe the Cuban admitted to Barrera that he had been one of the counterrevolutionary mercenaries involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Captured on April 17, 1961, he was released on December 24, 1962.
He then stated that he had joined the U.S. Army in 1963. He revealed that at the beginning of 1964, he was “in a company” in Puerto Cabeza, a base for commandos, guerrillas and frogmen training to land in Cuba and assassinate Fidel Castro.
And who was behind that operation? Valladares spontaneously confessed to the Panamanian district attorney: “I was in the CIA in Nicaragua, they were paying me, I was training in Guatemala,” he said.
Asked about his participation in Posada’s plot to kill the Cuban president, Valladares acknowledged that the four international terrorists -Posada, Pedro Crispín Remón, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampoll had stayed at his mansion. He then elaborated: “They were at my house, they slept at my house, they ate at my house, they used the bathrooms at my house, they’re my friends, they will always be my friends, they’re my brothers.”
Valladares was not incarcerated with Posada and his accomplices because he had had his right foot amputated.
At the start of the interrogation, Valladares refused to cooperate with Judge Barrera, responding to each of his questions by saying “it’s all a lie,” but he ended up offering one of the most incriminating testimonies in the case, clearly revealing the four men’s intentions.
The Panamanian judicial police investigation quickly discovered that Posada and his three hired assassins had stashed the C-4 explosives and Semtex at Valladares’ farm in Boquete, where they were staying three days before being arrested in the capital.
LINKED TO DRUG TRAFFICKING
Born February 7, 1934 in Pinar del Río (Cuba), Valladares was successively known in Panama under the nicknames “Pepe the Long”, “Pepe the Skinny”, “Pepe the Cuban” and “The Lame One. He was a U.S. passport holder (No. 044995338)
In Chiriquí, aside from his function as a host to several members of the Miami fauna, he also associated with Cuban-American Orestes Cossío, who was deported to the United States for drug trafficking and involvement in three homicides on May 22, 2002. Valladares and Cossío – who lived in Chiriquí province under the name of Luis “Mack” Navarro – also associated with Pedro Caridad Gordillo Serrano, a retired Miami police officer also linked to drug trafficking, in a mechanics workshop known as “Big Truck.”
The province of Chiriquí is on the Costa Rican border, some 450 kilometers west of the Panamanian capital.
At the end of October 2001, Miles Burden, FBI chief at the U.S. embassy in Panama, sent a report to Barrera indicating that he had received information that weapons and possibly explosives were concealed at Valladares’ farm in Chiriquí. The District Attorney’s Office then requested FBI support in terms of technical resources – because of the extent of the farmland – to which Miles agreed. However, Miles concluded his mission some days later, which seemingly frustrated efforts to search the property.
THE CHALLENGE FOR PANAMANIAN JUSTICE
In Panama, the trial of Posada and his accomplices has been set for next january, as determined at the end of the preliminary hearing, where it was decided that there was sufficient evidence to bring the terrorists to trial.
Despite all the pressure that the Miami mafia had previously exerted for several weeks, in a veritable propaganda campaign in support of Posada Carriles – the hero of southern Florida’s terrorist clans – the Panamanian magistrate acknowledged the validity of the evidence presented by prosecution lawyer Arquímedes Sáenz during his brilliant summing up.
The facts show that behind this criminal assassination attempt – the consequences of which could have been disastrous – are notorious terrorists who, for the last four decades, have lived off their murderous conspiracies thanks to the constant complicity, encouragement, funding and support of the most fanatical elements of Miami’s terrorist mafia.
The preliminary hearing has demonstrated that Panamanian justice is fulfilling its international commitment in combating terrorism. The trial of Posada and his accomplices, with the presentation of all the compiled evidence, will clearly demonstrate how extremely dangerous those four conspirators are, something that has been acknowledged by the FBI in several reports. It will also spell out the supreme necessity of preventing, with the full weight of the law, four international terrorists from returning to the road that has been sown with the seeds of death for so many years. •


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