•„ OCTOBER 29,(I 976 $fb FEATU IHTLE HAVANA'S REIGN OF TERROR of Cuban ears. The most recent victim very big and we have more than enough With more than 100 bomb- may well have been Orlando Letelier, time to fill them." ings in the last 18 months the former Chilean Foreign Minister, Within a few days, a second letter and an average of an who was killed by a bomb in Washington. went out. containing the names of ten assassination a week since D.C..last month. Intelligence officials are more well-known exiles marked by investigating several links between the "zero." In Little Havana, where the last April, Miami's 450,000 bombing and extremist Cuban exile majority of Miami's 450.000 Cubans Cuban-6migré community groups. Yet nobody, least of all the ex- make their homes along 600 square is in the throes of civil war iles themselves. is willing to say why the blocks of bodegas and bungalows, the violence has erupted. immediate speculation was that Castro On Good Friday 1974, Jose Elias had to be behind it. His agents, the ru- By Dick Russell dc la Torriente became the first to re- mor went. were simply trying to foment ceive his "zero." He was watching tele- distrust among the exile factions. In vision with his wife when the fatal bullet truth. it had been years since the exiles— The crowds begin to gather at twi- came through his living room window. and their CIA sponsors—had posed light in Miami's Little Havana. They At 69, Torriente had been among a hand- much of a threat to Castro. The prospect gather by the fruit and vegetable stands. ful of veteran leaders in Miami's Cuban of closer U.S.-Cuban relations had rare- and in the sidewalk cafe's over tiny cups exile community. A few years before, ly seemed better since Castro's take- of steaming Cuban coffee. They have al- his intent to mount a major armed offen- over. ways gathered like this at the close of sive against Fidel Castro had briefly But the death list was no fraud. day, mingling amiably, talking in shouted brought him international attention. But By this past summer, four of its ten greetings. But these evenings, the shouts by the time some of his supporters began names had been killed. A fifth lay with- are absent among the Cuban exiles. wondering if Torriente's "Work Plan for out his legs in a Miami hospital. There is a new tension in the faces, aloof Liberation" would ever get off the and wary, as furtive as the steel bulges in ground, they had their answer. On the surface. there has been a the jacket pockets of the men—and as si- Found outside the slain leader's return to normality in Miami. In Key lent us the little displays of crucifixes door was a piece of dark paper, hearing Biscayne, the Richard Nixons have sold proliferating in the storefronts along his initials and the oval symbol of a zero, both their homes and Bebe Rebozo has Southwest Eighth Street. The next day, a lengthy typewritten let- been elected president of the Chamber "Everybody's running around ter in Spanish arrived at various Miami of Commerce. Bernard Barker, who ad- with a new .45 and a new mini-millimeter media. It was addressed to "public opin- dressed a local Kiwanis Club on the with a big clip," as Miami Homicide ion." and signed by something called fourth anniversary of the Watergate Lieutenant Gary Minium describes it. "1 "Zero group." Labeling Torriente "a break-in, is a city sanitation inspector; mean, we're not used to it. This isn't traitor to the Fatherland." the statement Frank Sturgis. a general sales manager what we've had or experienced previ- vowed to eliminate any and all Cuban ex- for Miami Book Manufacturing Compa- ously. It's completely new to us and hard ile leaders who "block this process of ny. What was once the largest CIA sta- to understand." liberating their homeland by working tion in the world is now apparently a sin- On an average of almost one a only to advance their own bastard ambi- gle office in Coral Gables, with a tele- week since April, Cubans are being mur- tions." Torriente was but the first of phone listing conspicuously available dered in Miami's Little Havana. They many such "empty, nothing" Cubans from Information, Even Nelly Hamil- arc dying on Fridays. and holidays, as if marked for execution. ton's boarding house, where the soldiers by some diabolical, catfish force. In ad- "Each in his own time and in a of fortune came to await their next anti- io dition, more than 100 bombs have ex- cool and dispassionate way will start get- Castro expedition, has gone the way of ploded over the past 18 months: bombs ting his zero," the letter concluded. "An urban renewal. in the doorways of Cuban shops and infinite zero that will adorn their soon-Lo- So when it comes to the marked newspapers. sometimes under the hoods be-forgotten tomb. Cemeteries are increase in exile terrorism, the FBI, for 22 N4 W !NES example. talks in generalities about per- here, deported there, and still he moves had been on their way to a secret base sonal vendettas, or feuding inside the lo- around the hemisphere, a bespectacled outside Miami, where they planned cal "Cuban Mafia." But since last De- middle-aged man with a light mustache, to launch a bombing attack against Cas- cember. when seven bombs exploded pictured always in suit and tie. Late in tro. Bosch, then the leader of a group within 24 hours at Miami offices and gov- 1974, the U.S. government had its last called Cuban Power, was at the wheel of ernment buildings, the FBI has main- chance to seek his extradition. It re- a Cadillac that carried in its trunk six dy- tained a special unit on exile violence. fused. As if somehow, some way, Dr. namite-stuffed, 100-pound surplus aerial By May, the Justice Department was ac- Bosch had made himself immune. bombs. Mulct was trailing in a station tively involved in 18 cases of bombing For the record, Miami officials wagon. Charged with illegal transporta- and assassination, and considering juris- prefer not to speculate about the power tion and possession of explosives, both diction over many more. Certain exile wielded by Bosch—and where he might men were indicted by a federal grand leaders were even flown to Washington be getting it. jury. Then, as almost always with for a special conference in the Attorney One old friend of Dr. Bosch is Bosch, the eventual verdict was acquit- General's office. Jose Antonio Mulct, a tall, gaunt man of tal. Early last summer, there came a 55 with thin greying hair. He lives on the Today, Jose Mulct is aide-de- flurry of three separate arrests. Since fringes of Little Havana, a fair distance camp for the president of Bacardi distil- then, things have been relatively quiet in from the sidewalk eafis and the door- lery, a target of recent extortion at- Little Havana. If nothing else, this ways where old men toil over dominoes. tempts by unnamed exiles. Mulct is also should have made one thing perfectly His is a serene middle-class neighbor- a close friend of Nino Diaz, the leader of clear: in each instance, the suspects had hood of well-clipped lawns. Not exactly a decoy brigade during the Bay of Pigs one thing in common. At one time or the kind of place you'd expect an at- invasion. A month before the guns another, they were all connected with a tempted gangland-style assassination. blazed in Mulct's backyard, Diaz had man named Orlando Bosch. Jose Mulct is not reluctant to dis- survived a similar assassination attempt. Somewhere in the hinterlands of cuss the details of the shootout that near- Again, their original link was Bosch. Latin America, this single man may hold ly claimed his life last March. He will Diaz, a founder of Bosch's very first rev- the answer. He is a once-prominent pe- show you how the car pulled up to his olutionary movement, had last tried to diatrician and 50-year-old father of five. unite the exiles against Castro in 1970. who has seen neither patients nor family He had stopped when some exiles since he fled Miami two years ago in the "Each in his own time charged he'd used $50,000 in "liberation immediate aftermath of Torriente's mur- and in a cool and funds" to start his own construction der. Today, he is said to control a right- dispassionate way will business. Now Nino Diaz, too, had come wing terrorist network that goes by many start getting his zero," within inches of getting a "zero." And names and may extend from a clandes- Diaz absolutely didn't feel like talking tine hideaway in Chile all the way to the the letter said. "An about it. frightened streets of Little Havana. infinite zero that will For Julius Mattson. the head of Dr. Orlando Bosch is also a sea- adorn their Miami's 173-man FBI, reluctance to talk soned leader of the CIA's undeclared soon-to-be-forgotten has proved the common denominator in war of the 1960s against Castro's Cuba. Little Havana. "It's been tough to get "It was Bosch," says one exile who in- tomb" any cooperation here." he says, four sisted he remain anonymous, "who got a floors above where a bomb in a brown group together at the World Congress of fence as he stood beside his hummock in paper bag last winter blew the doors off Exiles in Puerto Rico in October of 1973.