Page 9 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 9 of 237

Shortly after 8:00 A.M. the Federal Aviation Agency control tower at Miami International Airport picked up a
mayday distress signal from a B-26 bomber. Mario Zuniga was on the last leg of his cover mission. He called the
tower at a point twenty-five miles south of Homestead, Florida, or about twelve minutes from Miami. At 8:21
A.M. he landed, his right engine feathered as if it had been put out of action by gunfire. Zuniga, wearing a white
T-shirt and green fatigue trousers, climbed out.

Whisked into Immigration Headquarters and "questioned" for four hours, Zuniga was successfully kept from
reporters. Edward Ahrens, the district director of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service,
solemnly announced that the pilot's name was being withheld to prevent reprisals against his family still in Cuba.

But, oddly, in view of the tight security measures that surrounded Zuniga's arrival, photographers were allowed to
take pictures of the unidentified pilot and of his bullet-pocked bomber. Across the nation the next morning,
newspapers carried photographs of the mysterious pilot, a tall, mustached man wearing dark glasses and a
baseball cap.

Ahrens released a statement from the nameless pilot. Now the CIA's cover story was clattering out over the news
wires around the world:

***

"I am one of the twelve B-26 pilots who remained in the Castro air force after the defection of Pedro
Luis Diaz Lanz * and the purges that followed.

"Three of my fellow pilots and I have planned for months how we could escape from Castro's Cuba.

"Day before yesterday I heard that one of the three, Lieutenant Alvara Galo, who is the pilot of the B-26
No. FAR915, had been seen talking to an agent of Ramiro Valdes, the G-2 chief.

"I alerted the other two and we decided that probably Alvara Galo, who had always acted like
somewhat of a coward, had betrayed us. We decided to take action at once.

"Yesterday morning I was assigned the routine patrol from my base, San Antonio de los Banos, over a
section of Pinar del Rio and around the Isle of Pines.

"I told my friends at Campo Libertad and they agreed that we must act. One of them was to fly to
Santiago. The other made the excuse that he wished to check out his altimeter. They were to take off
from Campo Libertad at 06:00. I was airborne at 06:05.

"Because of Alvara Galo's treachery, we had agreed to give him a lesson, so I flew back over San
Antonio, where his plane is stationed, and made two strafing runs at his plane and three others parked
nearby.

"On the way out I was hit by some small-arms fire and took evasive action. My comrades had broken
off earlier, to hit airfields which we agreed they would strike. Then, because I was low on gas, I had to
go into Miami, because I could not reach our agreed destination.

"It may be that they went on to strafe another field before leaving, such as Playa Baracoa, where Fidel
keeps his helicopter."