Niggling worries about an American-backed assassination plot, looming local economic problems, and the sudden bombing of the country’s Consulate in Trinidad, plagued Guyana’s troubled leader, at the time doomed Cubana Airliner Flight 455 went down in 1976, American diplomatic cables reveal.
“Grown men were in this office this morning – crying – demanding that I do something about the deaths of their children” an upset Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, declared in one memorable conversation with a top United States (US) Embassy official. Within hours of the terrorist twin assault of the plane and its fiery end in the Caribbean Sea off Barbados’ beautiful west coast, killing all 73 passengers, he was “visibly” and “emotionally shaken.”
Eleven “Guyanese died in that crash, six of them were students, one was a nine-year-old child,” Burnham lamented, referring to little Sabrina Harripaul, and teenaged medical scholars, Harold Eric Norton, Ann Nelson, Rawle Thomas, Jacqueline Williams, Seshnarine Ramkumar and Raymond Persaud. Economist Gordon Sobha, young mother Margaret Bradshaw and Sabrina’s grandmother Violet Thomas and aunt Rita Thomas were other victims.
“Burnham summoned me to his office October 7 to express concern over Cuban exile activity,” Chargé d’Affaires of the United States Embassy, in Georgetown, John D. Blacken reported hours after in a late night missive to the State Department. “He had a Reuters wire service item indicating a Cuban exile group called ‘El Condor’ in Miami had claimed credit for causing the crash of the Cubana airliner yesterday. He had been visited by relatives of Guyanese victims of the crash and was visibly shaken.”
Blacken added, “He appealed to the U.S to do what it could to repress terrorists operating out of the U.S. He also said the Castro Cubans were talking of reprisals” but “as we talked he calmed down somewhat. Unfortunately the incident appears to have stimulated again his fears that he and Guyana might be the target of violent attacks.” On the morning of the disaster, Blacken discussed “allegations of an U.S-inspired assassination plot” and sought to reassure Burnham about good intentions towards the Government when the calamity appeared “to have stimulated his suspicions anew.”
Then the deadliest airline attack in the western hemisphere, Burnham argued that the plane was targeted by Cuban exiles who “apparently wanted to attack Guyana because his Government had friendly relations with Cuba” the diplomat said. He was the most senior American Embassy officer stationed in the capital and worked hard to reduce the Guyanese leader’s suspicions. Deeming the initial impact of the crash “a setback” Blacken stressed to his superiors, “but assuming again nothing links the U.S to the crash, the dialogue we have been maintaining over this matter will strengthen our credibility and reduce Burnham’s concerns.”
Declassified records indicate that the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) big four, including Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica were indeed on the hit list of the vindictive right-wing extremists and masterminds, the pair of prominent exiles Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles who were raving mad that in December 1972 – urged by Guyana – the countries had courageously established full diplomatic relations with Communist Cuba bringing it in from the cold.
Suspended from the Organisation of American States (OAS), isolated and considered a pariah in the region, Cuba was invited to and welcomed at the Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) Foreign Ministers meeting in Georgetown that year.
“We were already skating on thin diplomatic ice” then Foreign Affairs Minister, Shridath Ramphal would admit afterwards. Burnham deduced it was better to get the other three major states on board and directly approached Prime Ministers Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Errol Barrow of Barbados and Michael Manley of Jamaica about jointly breaking the English-speaking regional diplomatic embargo against Cuba, which led to the historic agreement and its signing in December 1972. This angered the exiles because it started the process towards lifting the 11-year OAS blockade of the island in 1975.
In fact, Guyana had just opened an Embassy in Havana, in February 1976 while Barbados had granted Cuba stopover rights for the first direct regular passenger route to Africa, where the Communist state was busy in Angola with the Anglo-Caribbean nations’ support and help, further incensing the rabid anti-Castro groups, the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper recounted in an October 8 1976 article.
For months before, Bosch and Carriles consequently financed, organized and ordered opponents of Cuban leader, Dr. Fidel Castro to mount a ruthless terror rampage and destabilization campaign in the Caribbean. The Guyana Consulate in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad was blasted on September 1, when an explosive device placed in an innocuous paper bag on the upper floor of the two-story building went off, leaving a six-foot hole and injuring three persons. In July, the offices of the British West Indian Airways (BWIA) in Barbados were hit, and an attempt to sabotage the Cubana Airlines DC-8 connection from Kingston to Havana barely failed when a suitcase bomb accidentally detonated minutes before it was loaded on to the plane in Jamaica. A mysterious fire destroyed a large quantity of Cuban-supplied fishing equipment in Guyana while unfounded rumours ran wild of “thousands of Cuban and Chinese troops being in the country.”
Posada Carriles was thoroughly trained by the U.S Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), being recruited in the 1960s, and the former agent remained an active informant until June 1976. Like Bosch, another leading Agency-backed Cuban exile rogue operative, he at the time lived in Venezuela. The head of the notorious Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) one of them El Condor, Bosch ran the deadly, powerful coalition of anti-Castro groups formed in June 1976 in the Dominican Republic. It is now believed responsible for over 50 significant acts of terrorism, including the blasting of the Alaska oil pipeline, the Cubana crash, the Consulate strike and the stunning September 21 1976 car bomb killing of a leading critic of Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, Orlando Letelier and his employee, American Ronni Karpen Moffitt, right in the heart of Washington, on hallowed U.S soil.
The set of astonishing electronic telegrams show that Burnham questioned Blacken “why we could not locate Juan (Orlando) Bosch and demand his extradition to the U.S since he was a fugitive from U.S justice.” He further sought American assistance to ascertain who was behind the Consulate explosion which the emissary promised the Americans would investigate. Meanwhile the PM “confirmed that Guyana’s economy (would) be under severe pressures early on 1977.” According to the cables, Burnham conferred closely with the influential Blacken often, at the Residence and at his nearby office, openly chatting about many mutual concerns, the Opposition, the Cold War, U.S elections, the Soviets, sharing small talk, soirees and drinks.
“Prime Minister Burnham called me at about 8:30 this morning (October 7) in a somewhat emotional state to complain that the erstwhile ‘allies” of the United States, the Cuban exiles, had sabotaged the Cuban Airlines plane,” and “I firmly rejected any suggestion that the US was linked to or had any sympathy for terrorist actions,” Blacken relayed.
In another session later that day at the PM’s home, the envoy commented in his message that the agitated Burnham greeted him “gravely” “and appeared at a loss to know what to do” even querying rhetorically “What are we going to do?” but “became calmer, however as the conversation went on.”
Burnham mused, “Guyana is a friend of the United States. Guyana is also a friend of Cuba. But if the US continues to host terrorists, our moral sympathy goes to Cuba, we do not want to get mixed up in a U.S/Cuban disagreement. Moral questions do not dictate the decisions of government. If this sort of thing continues, sentiment throughout the Caribbean will turn against the United States.”
“We cannot tell the United States what to do but it would appear that the United States could attempt to deal with these international bandits. We appeal to you to do whatever is possible to prevent them from using the U.S as a refuge. The Cubans are talking of reprisals. We will not be involved in anything like that. But if the United States Government does not take a strong hand, the lives of Americans could be in danger. The reaction in Guyana is strong. I already had to stop a party group from picketing your Embassy this morning,” Burnham warned Blacken. By October 13, he “appeared tired and depressed” but still searching for answers and craving “vengeance on whoever caused the deaths of the 11 Guyanese.”
At a rally on October 17 three days past a grim National Day of Mourning, with hundreds of hostile-American, anti-CIA placards dotting the big crowds, Burnham proclaimed: “I do not know and cannot tell whether the CIA is involved in this murder. But this I know – the friends of the CIA, the people who have been harboured by the CIA, the people who have been encouraged by the CIA, the people who went to invade Cuba in April 1961, at the battle of the Bay of Pigs – are responsible.”
ID retells this story about US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger being so annoyed with Burnham’s CIA remarks that he raged: “We will not tolerate this, pull our Ambassador out!
” But “Mr. Kissinger, we don’t have an Ambassador there!” “Well who do we have there?” he demanded. “We have a Chargé, a FSO-3 (Foreign Service Officer), John Blacken.” Kissinger shot back: “Well, pull the Chargé out!”
