A decade ago, Luis Posada Carriles might have been treated as a hero in the U.S. The anti-Castro militant has been on the run since escaping a Venezuelan prison where he was held in connection with a 1976 airline bombing.
This week, after Posada held a press conference in Miami announcing that he is seeking political asylum in the U.S., but Immigration and Customs agents arrested him. Now the trick is deciding what to do with him. Fidel Castro and others are calling on the U.S. to extradite the man they say is a terrorist. But some Cuban exiles in Miami want the Bay of Pigs veteran to stay.
So Posada becomes something of a test case for deciding how Cold War relics fit into a post 9/11 world. President Bush has said that any country that harbors a terrorist, is itself a terrorist state, so what is America to do?
Guests:
Ann Louise Bardach, author of “Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana”
Gary Marx, Havana Correspondent for The Chicago Tribune
Dennis Hays, Managing Director at Tew Cardenas law firm and former Coordinator for Cuban Affairs at the U.S. State Department
Larry Birns, Director of Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal research group
Peter Kornbluh, Director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive