Gov't Wants More Of Anti-Castro Agent's Past Exposed At Trial

EL PASO, Texas (CBS4) – An unusual admission from a U.S. attorney may indicate that prosecutors do not believe their case against Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles is going well.

A U.S. attorney said Friday that he believes a West Texas jury has the impression an elderly ex-CIA operative was "taken advantage of" by government authorities during immigration hearings that prompted the perjury and immigration fraud charges he is facing.

Posada faces 11 federal counts for lying during citizenship hearings in 2005 and 2006 in El Paso. Prosecutors say Posada, 82, made false statements back then about how he sneaked into the U.S., and also did not acknowledge planning a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded about a dozen others.

His defense team maintains that Posada's violent past made him ineligible for citizenship from the start -- and that authorities only held the hearings to get him to lie under oath and build a criminal case against him.

Posada is nearly the same age as former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and spent his life as anti-communist militant operating across Latin America. While little known in the U.S., he is public enemy No. 1 in Cuba, even featured on propaganda billboards.

The trial's first two weeks have featured testimony from Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials who interviewed Posada during citizenship hearings in August 2005 and April 2006. Some of what was said in those sessions has been excluded from evidence, however, to protect Posada's rights, or for security reasons.

Before the jury was seated to start the Friday session, however, Jerome Teresinski, one of three prosecutors sent from Washington to argue the case, told District Judge Kathleen Cardone that during previous testimony, defense attorneys had claimed a government conspiracy against Posada that was misleading jurors.

"Right now there is an impression in this jury that this defendant was taken advantage of," he said.

In order to rectify that, he asked that more of Posada's answers during the immigration hearings be entered into evidence -- including times when Posada asked to take the Fifth Amendment. Teresinski said doing so would damper the impression that Posada "could not function and that he was ambushed."

Among the sections of tape he wanted to introduce were Posada refusing to answer questions about a plot to kill Castro during a visit to Colombia in 1994. Teresinski said hearing that, and also hearing Posada evoking his right against self-incrimination, would prove he had not been strong-armed by U.S. authorities.

Posada attorney Arturo Hernandez called the argument "ridiculous."

He said that if more portions of Posada's answers from the immigration hearings were allowed, it would open a "Pandora's Box" and force both sides to go over the almost 57,000 questions Posada was asked in the 2005 and 2006 hearings to agree what was admissible and what wasn't.

Cardone denied Teresinski's request and the jury was seated without having heard what happened.

But then while questioning Susana Bolanos, one of the immigration officials who questioned Posada during the 2006 hearing, Teresinski tried indirectly to raise some of the excluded issues from Posada's past.

Hernandez asked for a mistrial, saying Teresinski's comments tainted the jury. Cardone wouldn't grant one, but said more transgressions like that in the future could force her to declare one.

Teresinski's request indicated he is worried about how the case is going -- especially since both sides have been down this road before.

Posada faced similar charges in 2007, but Cardone threw out the case, criticizing the government's tactics and concluding that it used Posada's naturalization interviews as a pretext to build a criminal case.

An appeals court in New Orleans ruled in 2008, however, that Posada should again stand trial, and the case went back to Cardone.

Posada worked for the CIA in the early 1960s and was involved in the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion, then went to Venezuela and became head of that country's intelligence service. From El Salvador he helped further U.S. efforts to back the "contra" rebels in Nicaragua.

He was arrested and imprisoned in Panama in 2000 in connection with another plot to kill Castro during a visit to that country. He received a presidential pardon that was later overturned, then surfaced in the United States in March 2005 and sought political asylum.

That request prompted the first round of immigration hearings. Posada eventually withdrew it, however, and then reapplied for U.S. citizenship -- this time citing the about one year he spent in the U.S. army after the Bay of Pigs. His second application led to more immigration hearings and the second set of recordings now being played for the jury.

When asked on tape from the 2006 hearing why he wanted to become an American, Posada said, "the United States is my second homeland," adding "I want to die here or I want to die in Cuba."

Cuba and Venezuela accuse Posada not only of the 1997 Cuban hotel bombings, but also of organizing an explosion aboard a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people. A U.S. immigration judge has previously ruled he can't be deported to either country because of fears of torture.

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