US never searched key yacht in ex-CIA agent's case

[Judi Lynn]

US never searched key yacht in ex-CIA agent's case
By Will Weissert
Associated Press / February 8, 2011

EL PASO, Texas—U.S. authorities never searched the yacht they say carried an ex-CIA agent illegally from Mexico to Miami in 2005, and they have no photographs or other physical evidence that he was ever aboard, a federal investigator acknowledged Monday.

Steven Ussher, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement special criminal investor, told a West Texas jury he was in charge of the case against anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles beginning in April 2006. He said investigators never thought to obtain a search warrant so the vessel in question, a converted shrimper called "The Santrina," could undergo forensic analysis.

Posada, 82, is accused of lying under oath to federal officials during immigration hearings in El Paso and faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud. He said under oath that he paid a people smuggler to drive him from Central America over the Texas border and then to Houston. Prosecutors say he actually sailed aboard the Santrina from the Mexican resort of Isla Mujeres to Miami, where he slipped ashore at a waterfront restaurant in March 2005.

While little known in most of the U.S., Posada is considered a hero among some Cuban-American exiles and is public enemy No. 1 in his native Cuba, where he is viewed as former President Fidel Castro's personal nemesis.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/02/08/us_never_searched_key_yacht_in_ex_cia_agents_case/