On November 23, 1997, Jorge Mas Canosa, the most powerful anti-Castro exile leader in America, died.

Mas Canosa with Bill Clinton

Though he didn’t accomplish his ambition of returning to Havana in triumph as its new American-backed, post-Castro leader, Mas Canosa’s public creation—the Cuban American National Foundation—did become one of the most effective lobbying machines in Washington and helped influence the anti-Cuba policies of every American administration since Ronald Reagan.

Just as important, Mas Canosa’s CANF spawned a secret paramilitary wing in 1992 that set out to undermine Cuba’s fledgling tourist economy by bombing tourist hotels and resorts… one of the reasons Cuba dispatched intelligence agents—including the members of the Cuban Five—to Miami to infiltrate the organization in the early 1990s.

For more on Jorge Mas Canosa:

• Check out this excerpt: Truth, Lies and the Cuban American National Foundation
• In 2009, the National Security Archive released another treasure trove of now de-classified CIA material, including documents that not only connect Mas Canosa and Luis Posada but also show Mas Canosa’s role as a CIA-sponsored terrorist during the sixties.
• A famous 1993 profile of Canosa by Miami journalist Gaetan Fonzi: Jorge Who?, part of which appeared in Esquire Magazine
• From the Miami New Times, October 7, 2009: The truth at last: Jorge Mas Canosa sponsored terrorism