The Miami Herald, August 7, 1976, "Bomb Trial: No Witness for Defense" by Joe Crankshaw.

The trial of three men charged with the May 6 attempted bombing of a Little Havana bookstore came to an abrupt end at 1:45 p.m. Friday when state prosecutors announced that they had completed their case.

Assistant Public Defender Mel Black, defending Antonio Rafael de la Cova, and attorney Nathan Kurtz, representing Blas Jesus Corbo, asked Dade Circuit Court Judge Ellen Morphonios for a directed verdict of acquittal on several technical grounds.

Black and Kurtz then announced that they would put up no further defense and offer no witnesses because the state had not provided them with all the available evidence prior to the start of the trial last Monday.

Judge Morphonios then instructed the attorneys for state and defense to prepare their final arguments for delivery to the jury and the charges, which she would read to the jury before it retires to reach a verdict.

Earlier Friday, an FBI informant swore that de la Cova planned the bombing of a Little Havana adult bookstore on May 6 "to keep the town hot."

But Miguel Angel Peraza, 36, father of four, said that de la Cova did not define what "hot" meant.

Peraza, who has been identified by FBI agents as a confidential informant for them, was the main witness in the trial of de la Cova and Corbo, who are charged with attempting to bomb the bookstore, arson, possession of unregistered explosives, transportation of unregistered explosives and possession of an unregistered firearm.

A third defendant in the case, Gary E. Latham, pleaded no contest, was adjudged guilty and faces 35 years in prison on the same charges.

Peraza, a heavy-set, small man with neatly combed hair, maintained a calm composure during more than two hours of questioning by Assistant State Attorney George Yoss, Assistant State Public Defender Mel Black and attorney Nathan Kurtz.

Peraza told the jury that he suggested an April demonstration against Libros Para Adultos, 3458 SW Eight St., an adult bookstore.

Peraza said he and Jim Garland, whom Peraza described as a "so-so anti-Communist," arranged for the demonstration and brought him de la Cova.

The informant also told the jury that that attempt on the bookstore with a bomb first was discussed at his home at 11:30 p.m. May 4. He said de la Cova came to the house, told him of the plan and showed him the bookstore.

Peraza said he informed the FBI the next morning and was told not to touch any evidence that might be handled by Corbo, de la Cova or Latham and to "be careful of myself."

Peraza recounted how he rode with de la Cova to Latham's Boca Raton apartment to watch the manufacture of the bomb by de la Cova, went to Florida Atlantic University and watched de la Cova and Latham prepare proclamations claiming credit for the bombing and went south to pick up Corbo in Miami Beach.

Peraza said that no one spoke to Corbo of the bombing incident until he got into the car.

Asked if Corbo protested the plan, Peraza said the only objection that the defendant made was that the bomb was too small.

Copyright (c) 1976 The Miami Herald

The Miami News, August 4, 1976, "Bombing Trial Defense Keys on Informant" by Hilda Inclan.

At least two of the three men charged with attempting to bomb a Little Havana adult bookstore on May 6 appear to be trying for acquittal by discrediting an FBI informant whose tips led to their arrest.

The trial moves into its third day today with lawyers for all three men - Antonio Rafael de la Cova, Blas Jesus Corbo and Gary Latham - still trying to subpoena the elusive informant, Miguel Angel Peraza.

De la Cova's lawyer, Mel Black - who is basing his client's defense on entrapment by the FBI - blamed Peraza for "fomenting and creating the crime."

After recounting the series of bombings, assassinations and attempted assassinations that have rocked Dade County's Cuban community in the past two years, Black told jurors in his opening statement late yesterday that the defendants were "simple fall guys" of police and the FBI to ease public pressure for arrests.

Black said Peraza had both furnished the dynamite and made the bomb used in the attempted bombing.

Latham, however, in a statement after his arrest, said the explosives were provided by a woman and a black man in the Cuban community. His statement did not mention Peraza, who is white.

It is expected that the leading FBI agent on the case, George Kiszynski, will testify this week and clarify the informant's role in the case.

Attorneys and prosecutors, meanwhile, agreed yesterday on a jury panel of four men and two women after two days of challenges and deliberations. Witnesses for the state were expected to start testifying today.

Circuit Court Judge Ellen Morphonios denied a motion by the defense attorneys to have the trial moved to a different county because of what they claimed has been "excessive pre-trial publicity prejudicial" to their clients.

Assistant State Attorney George Yoss told the newly impaneled jurors that the dynamite found inside the pipe bomb allegedly dropped by de la Cova in front of the bookstore matched that found in the refrigerator of Latham's Fort Lauderdale apartment the day after their arrest.

Yoss said the informant made it possible for police and FBI agents to move in on the three men, preventing "what would have been a terrorist act."

"These three men acted in a clandestine, calculated planned effort to eradicate from the Cuban community an adult bookstore," Yoss said. "They took it upon their own hands to do so with a pipe bomb."

He said evidence would show that Latham signed out a typewriter at Florida Atlantic University - where he was an A-student in physics - the evening of May 5. It was used to write communiques - each to be called "proclamation of resistance" - were to be mailed after the bombing took place, he said.

He said police found numerous items used to make bombs as well as books on how to make them in Latham's apartment.

Nathan Kurtz, the attorney for Corbo, who was arrested with Latham inside a car near the bookstore, claimed that his client was picked up that night by the other two defendants and Peraza.

Corbo, he said, could not have seen the package de la Cova was carrying under his coat allegedly containing the bomb or a concealed .38-caliber gun because de la Cova sat in the front seat while Corbo sat in the rear of the car.

Copyright (c) 1976 The Miami News

The Miami Herald, May 8, 1976, "Contrasting Bomb Suspects: 'Braggadocious,' 'Hermitish'" by Edna Buchanan.

A pro-Arab, anti-Castro militant who wore knee-high boots and a beret on the Florida Atlantic University campus where he penned "violent oriented" letters to the school newspaper, Antonio de la Cova, 25, used to brag that he knew a lot about violence in Miami.

Thursday, de la Cova was one of three college students charged with the attempted bombing of an adult bookstore in Miami.

De la Cova once claimed he was shot at in an FIU [Florida International University] campus parking lot.

He was wearing a Palestine Liberation Organization armband at the time, he said in his complaint to campus police. He said he shot back four times with a .22-caliber pistol he kept in his car. Campus Security Lt. George Harper said no arrests were made in the May, 1974 incident and no evidence was ever found to substantiate the report.

A masters candidate in history at the University of Miami, de la cova was fired from a teaching job at Miami's Inter-American Military Academy last January for failure to keep control of his eighth-grade students.

He sometimes wrote for Libertad, the Spanish-language newspaper whose editor, Rolando Masferrer was killed by a car bomb last Oct. 31.

His most recent effort, an article in issue No. 180, dated Jan. 2, 1976, was a chronological account of terrorist violence, including Miami's 47 bombings and 33 attempted bombings since January, 1975. Federal agents now say de la Cova had first-hand knowledge of some of those bombings.

Lucila Masferrer, widow of the slain editor, said the slightly built De la Cova who was an admirer of her husband: "Was constantly asking questions and carrying notes and clippings. It never occurred to me that he could be violent..."

A different viewpoint came from FAU history professor Dale Hoak who taught de la Cova, admired his intellect but wrote the University of Miami recommending against de la Cova's acceptance into the master's program because of his penchant for violence.

"I told them I would be apprehensive about admitting him," professor Hoak said Thursday. "We had meetings in our department trying to seek his expulsion from campus, but we had problems, legally, about getting evidence. Some of my colleagues felt personally threatened. I tried to completely separate his politics from his academic performance, but at the same time, his political activities seemed to border on the violent."

Hoak said de la Cova "would flaunt, he would imply he was either involved or had direct knowledge of some of the right wing anti-Castroites in Miami - destructive activities. He said he had participated in a raid on some Cuban ships at sea. He was braggadocious..."

Fellow students say de la Cova's FAU friends were mostly Arab students in the chemistry department.

In one letter to the school newspaper he wrote: "I believe everyone has a right to his own homeland."

Friends say de la Cova had visited Northern Ireland several years ago, witnessed a fatal bombing and had expressed a "fear of bombs" since.

He played the guitar and harmonica at a campus coffee house following his trip - singing a song he wrote condemning such violence.

"I'm baffled," Mrs. John Latham said softly. Her straight-A, college student son, a 1972 graduate of Fort Lauderdale's Stranahan High School, was being held in lieu of $200,000 bond on bomb charges.

The slightly built, bespectacled 22-year-old lived quietly in a small ground-floor apartment at 1721 NW 15th Vista in Boca Raton for nearly two years.

Neighbors described him as quiet, "straight-looking" and almost "hermitish."

A physics student, young Latham has 50 credit hours accumulated at Florida Atlantic University where he carries a perfect 4.0 average.

FAU declined to discuss Latham's scholastic achievements further, based on his right to privacy under the Buckley Amendment. School officials sent letters to all 4,000 FAU students advising them of their rights to privacy. Only 27 said they wanted privacy protection. Latham was one of them.

FAU physics department chairman James B. McGuire called Latham a good student and echoed Mrs. Latham's bafflement.

"This simply doesn't fit with anything he did in class."

Little is known about Blas Jesus Corbo, 21, student at the north campus of Miami-Dade Community College, except that he swore under questioning Thursday that he was unaware of any bomb plans, that attempts had been made to recruit him into an activist group, but that he was only along for the ride that ended in his arrest.

Corbo told U.S. Attorney Robert Rust that he was returning home from a date Wednesday night when Antonio de la Cova met him near his apartment and invited him for a drive.

"Ride where?" Corbo said he asked.

"Around."

"What's that mean?" Corbo said he answered.

"You know, around. We do it a lot," he quoted de la Cova. "You know, we get something to eat and things."

He knew nothing of the bomb, he says, until he saw them take it out of the Ford Pinto and go to the adult book store.

He was in the car when police closed in.

Havana-born Corbo has lived in Dade County for 10 years. Persons at the 660 Collins Ave. address he gave say they never heard of him.


Copyright (c) 1976 The Miami Herald

The Miami Herald, May 8, 1976, "Recalling the 'Intellectual' and the 'Radical'" by Dorothy Gaiter.

Antonio de la Cova and Gary E. Latham were as different as night and day to the friends and professors who knew them as students at Florida Atlantic University.

De la Cova, 25, was "unstable, braggadocious," feared by some of the professors in the history department. He carried a gun on campus which frightened students so badly that none would testify to police that he had it, one professor said. He was "a dangerous element."

Latham, 27, was remembered Friday as a "quiet, withdrawn methodical student who kept to himself." He was a very intelligent and maintained a straight-A average, earning a place on the President's Honor List.

Those that saw them together wondered what they had in common. Several people who knew one had never heard of the other.

And yet something during their time together at FAU - before de la Cova withdrew from the University "voluntarily" according to school records - the two became friends, accomplices in some shadowy radical bond that led to their arrest Thursday morning for planting a bomb at an adult book store in Miami's Little Havana.

Undercover police, waiting for them, at the store while de la Cova took a potentially fatal pipe bomb wrapped in a brown paper bag toward the building.

The two were taken into custody on a string of federal and state bomb and-or conspiracy charges. Blas Jesus Corbo, a student at Miami-Dade Community College, was with them and shares the charges.

Friday, U.S. Magistrate J.V. Eskenazi reduced the bond for Latham from $200,000 to $100,000 in cash or securities and Corbo from $200,000 to $50,000 in cash or securities.

De la Cova was not present in the Miami courtroom because he has not hired an attorney and cannot represent himself at a bond reduction hearing.

All that led to the arrest Thursday will unfold in time as the police investigation continues and when the fear of talking about them leaves the hearts of some of those who know them - especially de la Cova.

"Tony" was well known on campus as an anti-Semite who was the information spokesman for the Arab and American Student Organization which in his words, "tenaciously professed a strong anti-Zionist platforms,"

Although he was known to sometimes wear a full army fatigue outfit, complete with boots and a hat, students remember that he participated in an Arab-Israeli debate in 1974 wearing a "very chic pin-striped suit and he tore them (the pro-Israeli speakers) apart." Latham, on the other hand, shunned public attention and kept to himself.

"Tony" often sang at the campus' coffeehouses playing his guitar or harmonica, singing songs he'd written that were patterned after Bob Dylan's style, said G. Beppo, a student who used to operate the coffeehouse. Beppo said the only time he saw de la Cova lose his temper was "when he was being heckled by Israeli students."

Academically, he was a "pretty good student," said Dale Hoak who taught him in four courses before taking another job in Virginia last year. De la Cova "raised a lot of questions about his political activities and there was his attitude towards some of his professors.

"Some of my colleagues (in the history department - Tony was a history major) felt personally threatened and they expressed this. I was also very upset by it and I knew that there was a tension about it," Hoak said.

The "tension was so great, that de la Cova once wrote a letter printed in the student paper, the Atlantic Sun, accusing Dr. Boyd Breslow of grading an exam with "undo influence because of my personal beliefs."

According to the letter, Breslow reconsidered the D he gave de la Cova and "re-evaluated the paper to a C-plus." Breslow refused to talk about the disagreement when questioned by Miami Herald Correspondent C.L. Steele.

An acquaintance of de la Cova who asked not to be identified said he had both a "running dislike and respect for Boyd Breslow."

The "tension" grew, professor Hoak said, with members of the History Department meeting occasionally to "seek his expulsion from campus. But we had problems," Hoak said, "because we couldn't get any evidence that we could use.

"He was not a bad student, but he seemed to be disruptive to campus life to such an extraordinary degree that some of my colleagues actually felt threatened by him. I tried to completely separate his politics from his academic performance, but at the same time, his political activities seemed to border on the violent."

When he sought admission to the school's graduate department, the history department rejected his application and he applied to the University of Miami which accepted him even though Hoak wrote a letter suggesting that they evaluate his extracurricular leanings.

Whether de la Cova did half the "violent" things he boasted of is unknown at this time. Hoak said his accounts of various "escapades with anti-Castro ties in Miami" bordered on being braggadocious, "and one tended not to believe him for that reason."

Barbara Rice, a friend and former editor of the Sun when Tony was on campus, said he became disenchanted with the United States because he felt this country had "betrayed Cuban refugees. The State Department had sold them out and they couldn't get any sympathy from the press. He felt that the only thing left was violence," she said.

She said he talked about carrying out attacks on businesses that had ties with Cuba. However, federal agents late Thursday were trying to link the alleged aborted bomb attempt with bombings of the Miami FBI building, Social Security office, two post offices and a bank.

If Latham had any political philosophy, his professors and friends never heard him talk about it.

One student told Miss Steele that Gary "often talked about having radical friends," but he had "always assumed that they were left wing."

James McGuire, chairman of the Physics Department, said Latham was in class as ususal Wednesday, the day before the bombing attempt and he was "withdrawn."

Other professors told Miss Steele that they were shocked that police had confiscated explosive devices and a shotgun from Latham's apartment.

One teacher of the "straight," bespectacled student said Latham was so smart that, "I'd expect him to build a better bomb" than the contraption de la Cova had Thursday.

But still these were the two students arrested together Thursday. A flamboyant radical and a studious "straight" intellectual - an unlikely couple to be planting a bomb together.

Copyright (c) 1976 The Miami Herald