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# 14-00000tor calls the American Embassy in Ca.racas nad lifts it off the ground withrage. The embassy promises to investi-gate immediately. Rothchild begins toreconsider his views on newspaper edi-tors.Camargo comes into the holding roomwearing the look of a man who has justaccomplished something."Your visas have been officially con-fiscated," he announces.The reporters look at him blankly."What's new about that?" asks Inclán."You have had them all day.""Now they are permanently confiscated," says Camargo. He shows thema new Venezuelan seal stamped on eachone. Over the seals, someone hasscrawled, "Visa fue revocada."Before the reporters have time to fig-ure out what this signifies, Camargogives the order to move out. He says theplane is late. The goon squads ma-terialize,.:Inclán explains to Branch that theyare in big trouble. Even if Camargolets them go, she says, they could bestopped ten feet outside the airport andashed for their papers. They could beslapped in prison for the "rovocada" ontheir passports. For the first time they,are not on solid legal ground. Branchshakes his head wearily and tells Inclánthey have lost a round of hardball.They follow a triumphant Camargoto the plane.Epilogue: More Pay PhonesOn October 24, two days after the re-porters left Caracas, Deputy InteriorMinister Marco Tulio Brunicelli talkedwith the press to clear up the matter.Brunicelli. said Hilda Inclán bad arrived carrying documents that "did notconform with national norms," andthat "she was cordially asked to leavethe country because it is necessary tocomply with our laws." As for Branchand Rothchild, he declared that they"expressed solidarity with their col-league and decided to leave the coun-tryThat same day, Branch was checkingwith Cuban sources In Miami to findout why Morales had turned on him,He received worse than a cold shoulder,and some of of his best Cuban friends toldhim to stay out of Miami. The mostloyal veterans of the C.LA.-peoplewho had spent years denouncing andexposing terrorists as a detriment tothe anti-Castro cause now supportedthe terrorists and expected nothing butopposition from the Agency. "If youdon't help the good people fight Castro,"said one old C.I.A. Cuban, "then we have: to help the bad ones do it. There's noth-ing left but terrorism." Branch wasstunned by how rapidly the anti-CIA,pro-terrorist trend: had progressed ineven the two years since he had leftMiami. CIA. loyalists were now in veryshort supply. The last defectors wereCubans whose secret historiés stretchedback to the Fifties and Sixties, whentheir anti-Communist movement was inthe American mainstream. The C.L.A.trained the Cubans to work by stealthto lie, smuggle weapons, move illegally..in and out of countries, make bombsstrike secretly against Castro tarSome of thein were "oficial" ter-rorists, who would stoically accept lungjail sentences rather than reveal aC.I.A. secret, Now they were no longerofficial.Rothchild was back home in the Er-erglades On Monday he received thefirst of several phone calls from a manidentifying himself as a "consultant tothe government of Venezuela." Hewanted to give Rothchild some moneyto write about Rothchild's background.Very weird, thought Rothchild. He began to worry that his trip to Caracaswould follow him.Press reports from Venezuela quotedinterior ministry officials in Venezuelaas saying that Ricardo Morales "didnot cause the expulsion of the Ameri-can journalists:" In an official state-ment on October 26 the ministry saidMorales "does not even work for theDISIP."A few days later, Branch received aletter from someone in Venezüela whowas working on the terrorist network.It came by messenger and read likeSherlock Holmes: "The key to thisthing whatever it is is Morales, andthe key to him is something you alreadyknow. It seems that something he oncetold you or knows you know will clickwith something you would be likely tohear here, or would reveal somethinghere, that he didn't want out. Think."Branch went to see Eugène Propper,the assistant U.S. attorney in chargeof the Letelier investigation. Propperwanted to know about the Venezuelatrip because he was thinking of goingthere himself. The leads pointed there,he said. He asked questions about theCuban terrorists. Branch outlined whathe knew. He took a reading of Propperand was satisfied that he wanted badlyto solve the case. Branch only worriedthat they were both way over theirheads. His worries skyrocketed whenPropper asked to see a copy of TheMiami News, which contained articlesabout Morales and the Venezuela trip.Propper knitted his eyebrows andscrutinized the News as if it were amoon rock. Something gave Branch asinking feeling. "The Neics and theHerald in Miami have an awful lot ofstuff about terrorists," he said. "Youhave all that, don't you?""I don't think we get them," saidPropper."You have to have them," Branchpleaded. Propper made a couple of un-Prer said it could be handled. TheF.B:1. ople on the case would aristtheir own mothers if they had to. Thetettorista had threatened to kill anF.B.I. agent. The Bureau and two hun-.dred agents on the case. It was thebiggest thing in the W..."What about the Agency?" askedBranch, "Look, I don't think the C.LA.had anything to do with these murders,but the terrorists are using their oldC.I.A. connections in more ways thanone. The Agency is in a bind. It hascreated a monster. The whole world ofsecrets in Miami has turned upsidedown. But I'll bet those old pros overat the Agency aren't about to sacrificetheir security and secrecy to help solvea murder."Propper said he was getting coopera-tion, resins of stuff in fact, Branchasked him to test it. "Ask them fortheir file on Luis Posada," he said. "I:know they've got one on him. He cameinto the Agency through the M.R.P.before the Bay of Pigs. Ask the Agencywhat it has about Posada's involvementwith a bootleg assassination attemptagainst Castro in 1965 involving a guynamed-Herminio Díaz. Díaz was caughtand killed in Cuba. Now, if the Agencydoesn't have anything on that, they'rejust giving you a lot of smoke." (Po-sada is the Cuban detective from theDISIP now held by the DISIP for theCubana de Aviación bombing.)Propper agreed. (On a later visit,Propper would say he was gettingAgency cooperation but declined to giveBranch'any details.)On November 4, the State Department responded to Branch's request fora position statement on the Venezuelanexpulsion, which the U.S. Embassy inCaracas had been investigating. AState Department representative read a:portion of a press briefing as follows:Q: What did he (Branch) say andwhat's the State Department going todo about it?A: He described the dealings he andtwo others had with the Venezuelan Venauthorities at Maiquetía Airport whenthey arrived there last week. I'm notgoing to discuss details of what he said.That would be for him to do, if hewishes, Our Embassy has expressed ourconcern over this incident to the appro-priate Government of Venezuela offi-cials.An hour later, an agitated womanfrom the State Department called back."Mr. Branch," she said, "I'm afraidsuccessful phone calls around the Jus-there's been a big mistake. That brief-tice Department and said he would getthese newspapers from the Library ofCongress as soon as possible.Branch knew what it must be like tocall the police station in the middle of arobbery and find its phone disconnected.He recovered and offered to do anything he could to help, even to go backto Venezuelá.ing that was just read to you does notconstitute the department's public posi-tion. It is a guideline.""What is a guideline?""It is a policy draft setting out whatthe people here are authorized to say inresponse to inquiries. What you havethere is what we would have said hadwe been asked. But it is not what wehave said publicly. We have no recordof being asked on the record, althoughsome reporters may have inquired pri-vately, in which case we would haveresponded according to the guideline.".."So what is the State Department's.....position, then?""I've only got one major reservation,"he said, "and that is the informantproblem. You have to rely on the F.B.I.and the C.I.A. to investigate, and thefact is that most of the suspects andlikely witnesses are old CIA, andF.B.I. men of some sort."12continu2