N.Y. Times admits error in exile story

In an Editors' Note on page 2, the newspaper blamed ``an editing oversight for allowing that wording in a July 12 article that unleashed an uproar among supporters and foes of the Cuban American National Foundation.

``The wording was not intended to mean that Mr. Posada said the foundation leaders had paid specifically for the hotel bombings, The Times said.

``In the interviews [with the Times], Mr. Posada acknowledged having organized the bombing campaign. He also noted that leaders of the foundation had publicly expressed support for the bombings, which they characterized as an act of internal rebellion.

``But, as was made clear elsewhere in the article, Mr. Posada said Mr. Mas and other leaders of the foundation did not earmark money for specific operations, and asked not to be told how he used their funds, the note added.

The note made no reference to the rest of the story, which most significantly alleged that the late Mas Canosa had ``personally supervised the flow of financial support to Posada for his anti-Castro attacks.

Posada, a CIA-trained veteran of the exile war on Cuba's communist government, has acknowledged telling The New York Times in a tape-recorded interview that Mas Canosa was his main financial supporter.

But in three interviews after The Times published its article, Posada has claimed that he lied to the newspaper about Mas to lead its reporters away from the real source of his finances.

Posada has also claimed he was misquoted in other parts of the New York Times story.

In interviews with The Herald, Posada and his friends have always sought to separate the source of the money he used for anti-Castro operations from those exile donations he received for living expenses.

In a 1994 autobiography, for example, Posada thanked Foundation Chairman Alberto Hernandez and others for paying his medical bills after he was shot 12 times in an assassination attempt in Guatemala City.