In focusing solely on Hugo Chavez's characterization of Bush as the devil, the mainstream media have succeeded in aiming attention away from the Venezuelan President's most salient point made during his UN speech - CIA control of terror cells around the world and their protection of plane bomber Luis Posada.

According to documents released by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, and verified by the BBC, Luis Posada Carriles was a CIA agent and on the payroll from the 1960s until mid-1976.

Posada was part of an anti-Cuban terror cell called Commanders of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), led by another CIA operative Orlando Bosch. From the mid-1970's Posada and Bosch instigated a reign of terror that spanned seven countries, carrying out over 50 bombings and political assassinations - including the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane as it took off from Barbados, killing 73 innocent people on board.

All at the behest of the current President's father and then CIA Director George H.W. Bush.

Posada and Bosch were arrested and jailed in Venezuela but promptly escaped in 1985 when money from Miami, funneled in by fellow terrorist Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, was used to bribe prison guards.

The two were then transported by terrorist handler and Cuban expatriate Felix Rodriguez to El Salvador to link up with Oliver North and the Iran-Contra conspiracy, supplying Contras against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Two years later Senator Tom Harkin stated the American people "deserve a full accounting of [then Vice President] Bush and the vice president's office and its knowledge of Luis Posada's role in the secret contra supply operation."

Posada's terrorist accomplice Rodriguez, pictured above with Che Guevara in the hours before Guevara's assassination, bragged during his Iran-Contra congressional testimony of having personally met with George H.W. Bush.

After El Salvador, Posada was given safe passage by the U.S. government and allowed to continue to carry out terrorist atrocities, including a wave of tourist industry bombings in Havana during the 1990's.

Posada was finally arrested by federal agents in Miami in May of 2005, but a recent ruling by US magistrate Norbert Garney in El Paso, Texas, will pave the way for the CIA asset and mass murderer to be released once again.

Whether or not you agree with the politics of trying to undermine Communist regimes during the Cold War - the fact remains that the U.S. government has historically created and hired terrorist organizations to carry out acts of mass murder of innocent people to further geopolitical agendas - and has then deliberately protected terrorists from arrest or prosecution.

The hypocrisy of a government and a Bush dynasty supposedly engaged in a war on terror and yet concurrently the biggest sponsor of global terror was made plain by Chavez during his speech yesterday.

"And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner," said Chavez.

"And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government."

"And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to," said the Venezuelan President.

"I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse."

Subsequent media response to Chavez's speech framed the debate to only include discussion of his "devil" reference - an almost offhand joke at the start of the talk - and completely ignored the detailed enunciation of the U.S. government's protection of the CIA's terrorist operatives.

Fox News (see above) seized upon the "devil" quote and used it to demonize Chavez as having lost his mind - absent any mention of the Posada topic.

Chavez again alluded to U.S. government complicity in 9/11, a subject he had raised in a previous speech.

"And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists."

Amid the difficult translation, Chavez is clearly making reference to elements of the CIA being behind 9/11.

The media is complicit, acting as gatekeepers in a desperate attempt to edit and obfuscate the hard-hitting and increasingly revealing speeches given by Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan President's bold intention to rip away the veil of deceit in exposing western state sponsored terror should be applauded and given as much play as possible by the alternative media.