Cubana Flight 455: An Act of Aviation Terrorism 50 Years Later

Cubana Flight 455: An Act of Aviation Terrorism 50 Years Later Barbados Monument On the 50th Anniversary of Plane Bombing, National Security Archive Posts Most Revealing U.S. Intelligence Records on Atrocity Anti-Castro Terrorism Took Lives of all Men, Women, and Children on Board FBI Report on Terrorist Message: “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed” Published: Oct 8, 2026 Briefing Book # 932 Edited by Peter Kornbluh For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Subjects Human Rights and Genocide Regions Cuba and Caribbean Project Cuba RELATED LINKS Luis Posada Carriles, CIA-created "Frankenstein", Dies at 90 Bombing of Cuban Jetliner 40 Years Later: Colgate Toothpaste Disguised Plastic Explosives in 1976 Terrorist Attack The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles: A Former Agency Asset Goes on Trial in the U.S. Posada Carriles Built Bombs for, and Informed on, Jorge Mas Canosa, CIA Records Reveal Terrorism Case of Luis Posada Debated on Capitol Hill: Archive Analyst Peter Kornbluh Shares Declassified CIA and FBI Intelligence Reports with House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Documents Linked to Cuban Exile Luis Posada Highlighted Targets for Terrorism: Bomber's Confessions Point to Explosives Hidden in Toothpaste Tube that Brought Down Civilian Airliner in 1976 The Posada File: Part II - Posada Boasted of Plans to "Hit" Cuban Plane, CIA Document States Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record Washington, D.C., October 8, 2026 - Fifty years ago this week, a small bomb of plastic explosives hidden inside a tube of Colgate toothpaste destroyed a civilian Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados. The mid-air terrorist attack on Cubana flight 455 killed everyone on board, including the entire Cuban national fencing team returning with gold medals from a Panamerican competition. CIA and FBI intelligence reports soon identified the masterminds of the atrocity as Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime CIA asset/informant, and Orlando Bosch, considered to be the godfathers of terrorist violence against Cuba. After the airliner plunged into the ocean, according to one FBI informant, a Posada employee who had planted the bomb on the plane telephoned Bosch with this chilling message: “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.” In commemoration of the victims of the Cubana 455 bombing, the National Security Archive today is posting ten of the most revealing intelligence records on this atrocity and those who perpetrated it. Since the mid-1990s, the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project has been pursuing and disseminating declassified records on the case. “This infamous act of aviation terrorism, the worst in the Western Hemisphere before 9/11, must never be forgotten,” noted Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba project. “The declassified record reminds us of what happened and who did it.” Orlando and Posada Orlando Bosch Avila Luis Posada Carriles Only days after the October 6, 1976, plane bombing, both Posada and Bosch were arrested in Venezuela, which had become a base for violent operations against Cuba. Bosch was released in 1987 and came to Florida the next year, illegally entering the country. He was detained by immigration authorities for almost two years. But in 1990, President George H.W. Bush—ignoring the objections of his own Attorney General, who labeled Bosch a “terrorist” and a threat to U.S. security—made a political decision to protect Bosch from further legal accountability and granted him permanent residency in the United States. Posada bribed his way out of a Venezuelan prison in 1985 using funds secretly supplied by wealthy Cuban American benefactors and escaped to Central America. He then joined the Reagan administration’s covert operations, run by Oliver North out of El Salvador’s Ilopango airbase, to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. (Today’s posting includes Posada’s interrogation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.) Posada stayed in Central America working in Guatemala and Honduras but continued his terrorist operations targeting Cuba. To deter tourism to Cuba, in the mid-1990s, he orchestrated a series of bombings in prominent Havana hotels that killed one Italian businessman and wounded numerous others. “That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Posada proudly confessed in an interview with the New York Times, “but I sleep like a baby.” document2 The first FBI report on the Cubana 455 bombing In November 2000, Posada was detained in Panama as Fidel Castro arrived to attend the Ibero-American summit in Panama City. Posada was charged with plotting to assassinate the Cuban leader with a 200-pound bomb planted in the auditorium where the Latin American leaders were meeting. In 2004, he was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. But Panama’s president, Mireya Moscoso, inexplicably pardoned him in August 2004, and he was freed. With the assistance of a network of Cuban American supporters in Florida, in early 2005, Posada illegally entered the United States and openly took up residence in Miami. Despite a post-9/11 policy of penalizing nations that harbored international terrorists, the George W. Bush administration allowed Posada to live freely in Florida and even to apply to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Only after the New York Times and the Miami Herald ran front page articles on Posada’s responsibility for the plane bombing—based on CIA and FBI intelligence reports provided by the National Security Archive (and posted today)—did authorities move to arrest him on May 17, 2005. He was eventually charged not with committing acts of terrorism but rather of committing perjury and immigration fraud when applying to become a citizen. For his trial in El Paso, the CIA submitted a short summary of his longstanding ties to the agency, dating back to the early 1960s and ending in the early 1990s when CIA officials warned Posada in Honduras that they had uncovered a plot to assassinate him. The three-month-long trial ended when the jury found Posada, by then 83 years old, innocent of all charges after just three hours of deliberations. Document Hand-drawn diagram of bomb detonator Both Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada lived out their lives as free men in Florida. Bosch died at age 84 on April 27, 2011, in a Miami hospital; Posada died at age 90 in May 2018. “Given the travesty of justice for the 73 victims of Cubana flight 455 over the last half century,” according to Kornbluh, “the declassified documents on Posada’s and Bosch’s role provide the only possible verdict—the verdict of history.” This history remains relevant to the current crisis in U.S.-Cuba relations, Kornbluh noted. “At a time when the Trump administration has sought to justify its regime change operations by accusing Cuba of terrorist efforts against the United States, the documents demonstrate that Cuba has for decades been the target of terrorism committed by violent individuals long associated with the United States.” The Documents d1 Document 1 FBI, Intelligence Cable, “Suspected Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados,” Secret, October 7, 1976 Oct 7, 1976 Only one day after the bombing of Cubana flight 455, sources in Caracas are already sharing intelligence that Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch masterminded the terrorist attack and were getting ready to flee Venezuela. “The confidential source further advised,” the FBI reported, that “[deleted reference to DISIP, Venezuela’s intelligence service] was arranging for Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch Avila to leave Venezuela as soon as possible. The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airplane.” d2 Document 2 CIA, Secret Intelligence Report, “Activities of Cuban Exile Leader Orlando Bosch During his Stay in Venezuela,” Secret, October 14, 1976 Oct 14, 1976 A source in Venezuela supplied the CIA with detailed intelligence on a fundraiser held for Orlando Bosch and his organization CORU after he arrived in Caracas in September 1976. The source described the dinner at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, Hildo Folgar, which included Venezuelan government officials. Bosch was said to have demanded a bribe to refrain from acts of violence during the United Nations meeting in November 1976, which would be attended by Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. He was also quoted as saying that his group had done a “great job” in assassinating former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., on September 21 and now was going to “try something else.” A few days later, according to this intelligence report, Luis Posada Carriles was overheard to say that “we are going to hit a Cuban airplane” and “Orlando has the details.” d3 Document 3 State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Memorandum, “Castro’s Allegations,” October 18, 1976 Oct 18, 1976 The first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 details Cuba’s allegation that the CIA was involved in the bombing and provides an outline of the suspects’ relationship to the U.S. The report notes that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, “We are going to hit a Cuban airliner.” This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down. d4 Document 4 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Special Agent Leo], October 20, 1976 Oct 20, 1976 This report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence M. Kelly, director of the FBI, explains the association between Joseph S. Leo, Special Agent and Legal Attaché in Caracas, to the suspects in the Cubana Airlines Flight 455 bombing. Investigators found Leo’s name among the possessions of Hernan Ricardo Lozano, one of the two Posada employees who planted the explosive device on the plane. The report notes that there were at least two contacts between Lozano and Leo in the weeks leading up to the bombing. d5 Document 5 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Contact with Bombing Suspects], October 29, 1976 Oct 29, 1976 The second report to Secretary of State Kissinger from FBI director Clarence M. Kelly provides additional information regarding the relationship between Special Agent Leo and the Cubana Airlines bombing suspects. The report details Leo’s contacts with Lozano and Posada going back to the summer of 1975 and notes that Leo suspected Posada and Hernan Ricardo Lozano of acts of terrorism but still granted Ricardo’s request for a visa to the United States. d6 Document 6 FBI, Letter to Kissinger, [Regarding Ricardo Morales Navarette], November 5, 1976 Nov 5, 1976 A third report to Secretary of State Kissinger from Clarence M. Kelly, director of the FBI, relays information from a confidential FBI source that the bombing of the Cubana Airlines flight was planned in Caracas, Venezuela, by Luis Posada Carriles, Frank Castro, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete. The source states that the group had made previous unsuccessful attempts to bomb Cuban aircraft in Jamaica and Panama. Shortly after the plane crashed, bombing suspect Hernan Ricardo Lozano telephoned Bosch stating, “a bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.” The source also states that anti-Castro Cuban exiles working with the Chilean National Directorate for Intelligence (DINA) carried out the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1976. d7 Document 7 Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of National Security, October 26, 1976, [Dennis Elliott Ramdwar deposition regarding Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo] Oct 26, 1976 Trinidad and Tobago Deputy Commissioner of Police Dennis Ramdwar led the inquiries regarding the crash of Cubana Airline flight 455. In his written statement, he notes that Freddy Lugo initially denied knowledge of the crash. Eight days later, Lugo tells Ramdwar that he is convinced that Lozano placed the bomb on the aircraft. He states that Ricardo told him twice that he was going to blow up a Cubana aircraft as the two were headed to the airport prior to the bombing. In a separate interview, Lozano gives Ramdwar details of how a “certain chemical is filled in a tube of Colgate toothpaste after the toothpaste is extracted” to construct the bomb. d8 Document 8 CIA, Memorandum, "AMCLEVE /15," July 21, 1966 Jul 21, 1966 This document identifies early CIA ties to Luis Posada Carriles. It includes two parts: a cover letter written by Grover T. Lythcott, Posada’s CIA handler, and an attached request written by Posada to accept a position on a new coordinating Junta composed of several anti-Castro organizations. In the cover letter, Lythcott refers to Posada by his then-codename, AMCLEVE/I5, and discusses his previous involvement with the Agency. He lionizes Posada, writing that his “performance in all assigned tasks has been excellent” and urging that he be permitted to work with the combined anti-Castro exile groups. According to the document, Lythcott suggests that Posada be taken off the CIA payroll to facilitate his joining the anti-Castro militant junta, which will be led by RECE. Lythcott insists that Posada will function as an effective moderating force considering he is “acutely aware of the international implications of ill planned or over enthusiastic activities against Cuba.” In an attached memo, Posada, using the name “Pete,” writes that if he is on the Junta, “they will never do anything to endanger the security of this Country (like blow up Russian ships)” and volunteers to “give the Company all the intelligence that I can collect.” d9 Document 9 CIA, summary, “Unclassified Summary of the CIA’s Relationship With Luis Clemente Posada Carriles,” ca January 2011 Jan 2011 This short, unclassified summary of the relationship between Luis Posada Carriles and the CIA was drafted for Posada’s 2011 El Paso trial on perjury charges related to immigration and naturalization proceedings after he illegally entered the U.S. in 2005. It was provided to the court by the U.S. Justice Department. The summary admits that the CIA first had contact with Posada in connection with planning the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He remained a paid agent of the CIA from 1965-1967 and again from 1968-1974. From 1974-76, Posada provided unsolicited threat reporting on his and other violent exile operations, including an attempt to blow up a Cuban airliner in June 1976. According to this document, the CIA last had contact with Posada in 1993 when they anonymously contacted him in Honduras by telephone to warn him of a threat to his life. d10 Document 10 Office of the Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, “Record of Interview with Luis Posada Carriles,” Secret, February 7, 1992 Feb 7, 1992 Two FBI agents interviewed Posada at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in February 1992. He provided a detailed account of his work for the contra war, which included descriptions of escaping from Venezuela in a private aircraft and being flown to Aruba and then on to El Salvador. The 31-page interview transcript also provides extensive details on his operations in El Salvador and Guatemala after the Iran Contra scandal broke in November 1986 and the contra resupply operation was shut down. Although Posada accumulated $40,000 from the contra work—he and others were paid from profits from the sale of armaments to Iran—he eventually ran out of funds. At one point, Richard Secord sent him $1,000 for one of his paintings.