| http://www.hightimes.com/Magazine/2001/2001_04/article2.tpl
ANATOMY OF A COUP By Peter Gorman For more than 50 years, the history of US involvement in Latin America has been one of often-bloody interference. From installing dictatorships to trafficking drugs, the CIA has been the puppeteer behind the scenes when US interests are at stake. Peru is no exception. CIA Operation in Peru Opens Door for Plan Colombia In what has all the earmarks of a bloodless coup arranged by the US Central Intelligence Agency, Peru's longtime president, Alberto Fujimori, has been forced from office, while his right-hand man, Pentagon-trained CIA informant Vladimiro Montesinos, is in hiding and faces criminal charges. ALBERTO FUJIMORI A little-known lifetime politician, Congressman Valentin Paniagua, after a series of resignations by several people in line for the post, has ascended to Peru's presidency on an interim basis until new elections can be held this April. How and why the popular, if dictatorial, Fujimori so suddenly lost his autocratic grip on the government makes for a scenario straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. Fujimori was forced from office by the CIA in a coup so smoothly arranged that no major Western press outlet has even hinted at it. The reason: Fujimori was vocal in his dislike of the military components in US President Bill Clinton's Plan Colombia, and refused to allow the US to use Peru as a staging ground for the US advisors and Colombian troops needed to make the plan work. PLAN COLOMBIA The plot has roots that go back more than a year, to the time when Plan Colombia was first unveiled. The plan calls for a $1.3 billion effort by the US to rid Colombia of its coca fields--although cynics would say its real purpose is to wrest control of that trade from the Colombian rebels, and return it to the Colombian armed forces and known narcotraffickers who put their proceeds in American banks. Plan Colombia centers on elite US Special Forces training three Colombian military battalions--equipped with more than half a billion dollars in US-made helicopters and arms--in jungle warfare. Once trained, the battalions will move into the vast jungle in southern Colombia controlled by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels, calling for them to lay down their arms while simultaneously destroying the coca fields they tax to generate the funds they need to continue their rebellion. Violence is about to escalate under Plan Colombia. Colombia's civil strife--fueled by cocaine money--has already been raging for 35 years, leaving 30,000 dead and nearly half a million people displaced. So there appears little chance that a new government offensive will end it without further casualties. Tens of thousands--mostly peasants and indigenous peoples--are expected to become refugees, with many seeking asylum in neighboring countries. Which is where Plan Colombia ran into an unexpected stumbling block. To make the plan work, the US needed the approval of at least some of Colombia's neighbors, both to willingly accept the anticipated refugees and to provide a military base for use by the Colombians and the new US-provided fleet of battle-ready Blackhawk and Huey helicopters. Specifically, what was needed was a base outside of Colombia. That would considerably lesson the chance of a rebel strike on those choppers, as the FARC forces are not considered strong enough to fight a war against both their own government and a foreign government (which would surely be the result of an attack on a base in a neighboring country). At the time of the plan's unveiling in early 2000, the US already knew that Venezuela, with a radical populist government, would not play along. Brazil, whose little-populated northwest corner is likely to see an influx of refugees from the fray, was also unwilling to build a base there. Ecuador, a US ally, is neither strong enough nor stable enough to offer much. It has leased a large base to the US at Manta, on the Pacific coast, but to reach it from the expected area of battle, the helicopters would need to fly over the Andes Mountains, an impossible task, particularly if they were hit by enemy fire. Bolivia, under the leadership of newly elected President General Hugo Banzer--a Pentagon-trained former cocaine baron--volunteered to build a large airbase for US use, but Bolivia is too far away from Colombia to be of much assistance. Which left Colombia's immediate neighbor to the south, Peru, as the anticipated key ally of Plan Colombia. President Fujimori, while not always an ally of US policy, was already dependent on the US and the International Monetary Fund to keep Peru's foreign loans floating. Additionally, Fujimori's closest advisor was spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos--like Bolivia's Banzer, a Pentagon-trained School of the Americas graduate--who was widely considered to be a CIA operative. With those two in the primary seats of power, the US expected Peru to herald the plan and volunteer the jungle city of Iquitos and its environs as a staging ground for the coming conflict. Moreover, during 1998 and 1999, the US had helped Peru build a large military post outside Iquitos, near Colombia's southern border--where much of the fighting under Plan Colombia is to take place. But Fujimori threw the US a curve when, after the base was completed, he announced that it would be utilized exclusively by the Peruvian military. He then further enraged the US when he decried the military component of Plan Colombia last spring. Which meant, in CIA parlance, he had to go. Unfortunately for the US, he was about to be elected to a third term as president. That was illegal under Peruvian law, but didn't seem to matter much to the Peruvian populace, which gave him a 42% approval rating, very high in that country. So any overt attempt to remove him would draw a severe political backlash, just as Clinton was pushing for congressional approval of Plan Colombia. Worse, last April, when Colombian President Andres Pastrana was set to come to the US to push for emergency passage of the plan, many Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, were pressing to postpone allocating emergency funds for the plan. They suggested that it ought to wait until 2001 and the normal federal budgetary timetable. If that happened--if the funding was not approved while Clinton was still in office--it would no longer be considered "Clinton's Plan Colombia," something that would please the piss out of the Republicans. COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT ANDRES PASTRANA WITH DRUG CZAR BARRY MCCAFFREY. But Clinton and his Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey--the former head of the Pentagon Southern Command--would have none of that. And so, just days before Pastrana's visit, the State Department leaked a story to MSNBC that Russian planes were picking up used Kalashnikov rifles in Amman, Jordan, which were being delivered by air drop to the FARC rebels in southern Colombia. After they dropped their cargo, according to MSNBC, the planes were being refueled in Peru, in nearby Iquitos' airport, where they were also being filled with as much as 40 tons at a time of FARC- made cocaine for distribution in Europe. The story was a fake on the face of it for a number of reasons--including the fact that while the FARC rebels are known to tax cocaine producers, they have never been known as traffickers. Too, the airport at Iquitos is in a very public location that borders on a Peruvian Air Force base where several US DEA agents work--which means it would have taken overt complicity by both the DEA and the Peruvian military. Nonetheless, the story had its desired effect: Trent Lott and the other Republicans who just days earlier were saying no to Plan Colombia quickly changed their positions, rather than look soft on drugs. Clinton got his plan and the monies approved. FIRST HOPE TO ELIMINATE FUJIMORI With the monies approved, Plan Colombia went into effect almost immediately. The first battalion of screened elite Colombian soldiers began their training at the hands of Special Forces advisors from Fort Bragg, North Carolina last August, and were expected to begin their first offensive in January 2001. To the White House, that meant Fujimori would either quickly decide to get with the program and let the US use the new base, or he would have to go. Whichever it was, it had to be done by the time the first offensive started. Fujimori wouldn't budge--so he had to go. The first hope to remove Fujimori was to have him simply lose his bid for a third term in office to the previously unknown Alejandro Toledo, a Stanford-trained World Bank official and former Lima shoeshine boy. That failed when the two wound up in an election runoff in which Toledo refused to participate, leaving Fujimori the winner. But the bitter election--with cries that Fujimori stole it through vote-rigging--left the victor politically vulnerable. There was even talk he would be publicly denounced at an August South American presidential summit, leading many political observers to think he might voluntarily step down rather than face international disgrace. Instead of stepping down, however, just prior to the summit meetings, Fujimori cleverly resurrected the State Department story of the Russian guns making their way to the FARC rebels. His version, however, left out the part about the planes loading up with cocaine in Iquitos. It also had his spy-chief, Montesinos, as the one who had discovered and busted the ring of arms dealers. Unlike the State Department story, however, which was invented to get Plan Colombia passed and then quickly died, Fujimori's version made the international wire services: photos of him and Montesinos with part of the arms shipment appeared in every major media outlet. Subsequently, at the August summit, Fujimori was lauded for his work against the FARC, rather than ridiculed for stealing an election. Unfortunately, the story quickly blew up in Fujimori's face when the Amman arms dealers acknowledged the arms sales, but said they'd all occurred a year earlier, that the buyers were Peruvian generals and all the paperwork was in order. Vulnerable again, Fujimori quickly announced that jailed American Lori Berenson--convicted in 1996 in Peru of treason for her association with the Tupac Amaru rebel group--would get a new trial, a story which the Western press jumped on, while all but dropping the fake FARC arms bust. By early September, with Fujimori firmly in place for his third term, the US was getting desperate. The first Plan Colombia offensive into FARC territory was set for early January, and Fujimori was still not going along with the idea of the US using the new military base near Colombia's southern border. THE COUP That is when the CIA stepped in with a classic maneuver. In mid- September, a video was widely released throughout Peru--and subsequently through worldwide media outlets--showing Montesinos giving Peruvian congressman Alberto Kouri US$15,000 the previous April. Shortly after the money exchanged hands, Kouri, from Peru's opposition party, switched allegiances and joined Fujimori's party, one of several congressmen who had done so at that time, giving Fujimori a congressional majority. But while the media went wild over the apparent bribe, none asked the logical question: Who released the tape to the media? Broadcasters acknowledged that Montesinos shot the tape in his own offices, something he apparently did routinely to later use as blackmail. But who could get into the incredibly well-protected offices of the head of Peru's secret police and locate a short segment of tape made months earlier, among the thousands of other hours of tape that Montesinos made of all his office doings? Whoever did it knew it would bring the spy chief down, and with him, eventually Fujimori. Which means, though it is yet to be proven, that someone got to someone close to Montesinos and was promised something big in the new administration that would take over after Fujimori fell. We do know that Alberto Kouri, the receiver of the alleged bribe, fled to Dallas on October 27, where he currently remains. That suggests that Kouri was aware that the tape was going to be released and offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb in exchange for asylum in the US. All of which points to the hand of the CIA. THE COLOMBIAN AIR WAR, CIRCA 2000. The tape of the apparent bribe immediately disgraced Montesinos, who fled to Panama, where he has extensive landholdings, seeking political asylum. That bid failed, and he returned to Peru in late October. It is thought that he has fled to Venezuela since then. Fujimori tried to ride out the tide of public opinion that rose against him by launching a manhunt for Montesinos. But when he couldn't locate him, he announced that he would hold new elections in April 2001, in which he would not participate, and promised to step down when the new president took office on July 28, 2001. Unfortunately, that timetable simply did not work with the US need for a military base near Colombia's southern border by January 1, 2001. Peruvian congressional investigations were started into both Montesinos and Fujimori in early November, and allegations of millions of dollars in secret Swiss bank accounts--alleged to be from illegal arms and drug transactions--immediately surfaced. Those allegations, and the sudden instability of Peru's administration, had an immediate and dire effect on the country's economy. On November 3, Standard and Poor's, the arbiter of international finance, downgraded Peru's long-term credit rating to a level four notches below investment-grade status, leaving the country in the position of not being able to make good on major international loans due at year's end. Again trying to cleverly avoid the Peruvian public reaction to the scandal, Fujimori traveled to Brunei for a Pacific Rim summit meeting, and then on to Japan to try to secure loans desperately needed by year's end to keep Peru's other loans floating. But while he was in Asia, opposition party leaders wrested control of the Congress from his party, leading to Fujimori faxing in a resignation "for the good of the country." The Congress refused Fujimori's resignation, instead choosing to oust him in late November on the grounds that he was "morally unfit" to lead the country. He is currently in Japan, where he has claim to citizenship because both his parents were Japanese. The void in Peru's presidential succession was filled when Congress elected Valentin Paniagua, a political moderate, to take the empty Hildebrandt seat. Shortly thereafter, he was chosen by congressional consensus to take over as interim president until the April elections. Paniagua, 64, is a lawyer with the Popular Action Party who served in Peru's Cabinet twice, as justice minister in the 1960s and as education minister in 1984, during the two administrations of former President Fernando Belaunde Terry. Belaunde was widely loved in Peru, but critics faulted him for being in the pocket of the US. Paniagua is from the same mold. So while Paniagua's accession to the presidency does not automatically mean that Peru will immediately change its position and sign on to Plan Colombia, it probably does. And if Paniagua should decide not to allow the US to use the new military base near Colombia's border, the financial turmoil the country finds itself in makes him vulnerable to fiscal pressure from the US. In fact, a senior finance official at the Peruvian Consulate in Washington told HIGH TIMES in early December--on condition of anonymity--that "the possible US use of the strategic new military base near the Colombian border has come up in early discussions related to the refinancing of Peru's debt structure." If that indeed takes place, then we might well have seen one of the most clever CIA-engineered coups in South America in some time. Bloodless and clean as bone. READ MORE in the APRIL ISSUE of HIGH TIMES! |
