Luis Posada was born in Cuba in 1928. He became a pediatrician in Havana. An opponent of Fidel Castro, Posada was a leading figure in JURE, a political party led by Manolo Rey. He took part in the Bay of Pigs. According to Gaeton Fonzi (The Last Investigation), Posada was a former lieutenant in the United States Army, where he took an intelligence staff officer course.

Posada worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until 1967. He then moved to Venezuela where he became chief of security and counterintelligence in the secret police, DISIP. In 1971 Posada worked with William C. Bishop and Antonio Veciana in the plot to assassinate Fidel Castro on a visit to Caracas on 31st November. As well as providing all the credentials necessary to get the assassins into Venezuela, Posada also planted phony documents so that if the two men were killed, the trail would lead to two Russian agents in Caracas. After the fall of President Carlos Andre Perez, Posada started his own private security agency.

In October, 1976, the midair explosion of Cubana Airlines plane flying out of Barbados killed all 73 people aboard. This included all 24 young athletes on Cuba's gold-medal fencing team. Police in Trinidad arrested two Venezuelans, Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Ricardo worked for Posada's security agency in Venezuela and admitted that he and Lugo had planted two bombs on the plane. Ricardo claimed the bombing had been organized by Posada and Orlando Bosch. When Posada was arrested he was found with a map of Washington showing the daily route of to work of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Foreign Minister, who had been assassinated on 21st September, 1976.

Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were both sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. He escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 as a result of a bribe from Jorge Mas Canosa, the head of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), an organization created under Ronald Reagan. The organization received substantial federal funds for running Radio and TV Marti, in order to transmit propaganda to Cuba.

In the 1980s Posada was accused of being involved in importing large quantities of cocaine into the US in support of the Contras in Nicaragua. According to Peter Dale Scott (Cocaine Politics) Posada was second in charge of a major Contra resupply operation at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. He was recruited by Felix Rodriguez, a long-time CIA operative who was with the Bolivian forces that captured and executed Che Guevera.

Posada gave an interview to the New York Times (July 12th, 1998), where he admitted to planning a series of bombings in Cuba. He also revealed that he had received $200,000 in US government funding via the Cuban American National Foundation for these attacks.

Posada continued to take part in terrorist attacks on Cuba. In November 2000 Posada and three colleagues, Guillermo Novo, Gaspar Jiménez and Pedro Remón, were arrested and imprisoned after trying to assassinate Fidel Castro at the University of Panama.

In August, 2004, President Mireyas Moscoso of Panama, pardoned Posada, Novo, Jiménez and Remón for their role in attempting to assassinate Castro.

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