New police chief in Puerto Rico was controversial figure in Miami
By José A. Delgado
From El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico
WASHINGTON, D.C. – For a good many of his 27 years in the FBI, the appointed police superintendent [of Puerto Rico], Héctor Pesquera, worked for the counterintelligence services of the United States directed at Cuba.
His work as a federal agent began in 1976 in San Juan, but also took him to Montevideo (Uruguay), Tampa and Miami (Florida).
Beginning in November 1984 and for nearly three years, Pesquera, now 65, was in charge of the Cuban affairs section at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The years he headed the FBI office in Miami, February 1998 to December 2003, generated controversy, however.
Writing in the April 12, 2006, issue of The Washington Post, the renowned journalist Ann Louise Bardach maintained that the FBI’s Miami office, under Pesquera’s direction, shut down investigations against the notorious former agent of the CIA and Castro foe Luis Posada Carriles.
While working for The New York Times, Bardach in 1998 interviewed Posada Carriles, who was convicted of being linked to the attack in 1976 against a Cubana Airlines flight from Barbados to Jamaica that killed 78 people.
A document by Posada that had been in the hands of the FBI told how the attacks against the government of Cuba sought to draw media attention and scare away investors. The document was obtained by Bardach.
‘An honest man’
According to Bardach, the spokesman for the FBI office in Miami confirmed to her then that the evidence gathered about Posada Carriles was dismissed by order of Pesquera’s son, Ed, who was also an FBI agent.
The Bardach account adds that FBI agents in Miami were uncomfortable with the fact that Pesquera socialized with hard-line politicians in the Cuban exile community, as in the case of Camilo Padreda, a former agent in the government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, linked to multiple acts of corruption and convicted of defrauding the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Maurice Ferré, former mayor of Miami, who knows both men, confirmed to El Nuevo Dia that Pesquera and Padreda are friends. But he described Pesquera as "an honest man."
Pesquera made a name for himself in Miami, when he began to head the office, through the arrest on 12 September 1998 of five Cubans who were convicted of spying for Cuba.
Puerto Rican lawyer Rafael Anglada, who has served on the defense of the five, said that the arrests came three months after Havana welcomed FBI agents "to provide them with evidence of terrorist activities" within the Cuban exile community in Miami.
"Pesquera was not in the delegation, but evidently did not appreciate the collaboration," said Anglada.
Pesquera’s name also surfaced shortly before the end of the trial for the murder of Venezuelan prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who investigated the 2002 coup against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.
A serious allegation
In November 2005, the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald reported that a witness linked "an FBI director named Pesquera and a CIA officer named Morrison" at a meeting in Panama where allegedly the murder was planned.
The complaint was filed by the prosecution witness Giovani José Vásquez de Armas, a Colombian associated with a paramilitary group, who alleged that the meeting took place in Darién, Panama, between 4 and 6 September 2003.
Anderson died on November 18, 2004, when a bomb exploded in his car at a time when he was investigating politicians, lawyers and businessmen linked to the attempt against Chávez. Three people were convicted in December of 2005 for that event, which shook Venezuela. Apparently, no more was heard about Vásquez de Armas’ allegation.
