The Cia In Manila Covert Operations and the CIAs Hidden History in the Philippines By Roland G. Simbulan, Convenor/ Coordinator, Manila Studies Program University of the Philippines (Lecture at the University of the Philippines-Manila, Rizal Hall, Padre Faura, Manila, August 18, 2000.) For a long time, Manila has been the main station, if not the regional headquarters, of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for Southeast Asia. This is perhaps so because the Philippines has always been regarded as a stronghold of US imperial power in Asia. Since the Americanized Filipinos were under the spell of American culture, they were easy to recruit without realizing they were committing treason to their own people and country. And from the beginning of the 20th century to 1992, there were the US military bases, the mighty symbols and infrastructure of American power. CIA human intelligence assets in Manila are said to have provided vital information at crucial times. According to declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act, on Sept. 17, 1972, a CIA asset in the Philippines who was in the inner circle of Marcos informed the CIA station in Manila that Ferdinand Marcos was planning to proclaim martial law on Sept. 21,1972. The CIA station in Manila was also provided in advance a copy of Proclamation 1081--the proclamation that declared martial law in the country--and a list of the individuals whom Marcos planned to arrest and imprison upon the declaration of military rule. I would like to mention --without going into any conclusions--that, so accurate was the CIAs assessment about the Sept. 21, 1972 declaration of martial rule that it boosted the prestige of the CIA station in Manila. Upon his retirement a few years later, Henry Byroade, the American ambassador to Manila when martial law was declared, was honored by the CIA headquarters in Langley,Virginia--a tribute that is said to be very rarely given to any retiring ambassador. Also, in 1982, the CIA was able to verify from a high-ranking Philippine immigration officer the names of the two doctors who visited the Philippines to treat Marcos for kidney failure, giving the CIA a clear picture of Marcoss health problems.(Richelson, 1999). It is important to expose US imperialisms clandestine apparatus in the Philippines. If the activities of this sinister agency are not meticulously documented, there is a tendency to mythologize, or even Hollywood-ize, its notoriety and crimes against the Filipino people and Philippine national sovereignty. The CIA is the covert overseas intelligence agency of the United States government and is likewise an action-oriented vehicle of American foreign and military policy. The 1975 Church Committee Report of the US congressional investigations into the CIAs covert activities abroad revealed how countless foreign governments were overthrown by the CIA; how the CIA instigated a military coup detat and assassinated foreign political leaders like Chilean President Salvador Allende, who merely tried to safeguard the interests of their own country; and how special ops and paramilitary campaigns contributed to the death, directly or indirectly, of millions of people, as a result of those actions. The 1974-75 US congressional investigations also uncovered CIA intervention in the domestic politics of target countries--from the overthrow of governments, attempted assassinations, to subsidies and financial support for the media, political parties, trade unions, universities and business associations--all designed to clandestinely influence foreign governments, events, organizations or persons in support of US foreign policy. (Robinson, 1996; Richelson,1999). The CIA has gone beyond its original mission of gathering intelligence and was conducting Mafia-type operations not only in its own territory but against foreign governments and their leaders. Doing covert action that undermines Philippine national sovereignty and genuine democracy in order to prop up the tiny pro-US oligarchical minority that has cornered most of the wealth in their poor country is what the CIA is all about and is the real reason for its existence. It is no longer just the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence which is officially its mandate under the US National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA. The CIA in the Philippines has engaged in countless covert operations for intervention and dirty tricks particularly in Philippine domestic politics. On top of all this is the US diplomatic mission, especially the political section that is a favorite cover for many CIA operatives. CIA front companies also provide an additional but convenient layer of cover for operatives assigned overseas. In general, wherever you find US big business interests (like Coca-Cola, Ford, Citicorp, United Fruit, Nike, etc.), you also find a very active CIA. But the covers often used are diversified. Desmond Fitzgerald, for instance, a former CIA chief of station in Manila was said to have fronted as a legitimate businessman of an American multinational company. Joseph Smith, a top CIA agent assigned to the Philippines in the early 1960s, posed as a civilian employee of the Clark Airforce Bases 13th Air Force Southeast Asia Regional Survey Unit .On the other hand, CIA operative Gabriel Kaplans initial cover was really more civilian--with the CIA-created Asia Foundation (formerly the Committee for a Free Asia), then later as resident director of another CIA creation, the COMPADRE both of which we shall be dealing with more extensively later. On the other hand, CIA operative David Sternberg fronted as a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper based in Boston, the Christian Science Monitor, when he assisted Gabriel Kaplan in managing the presidential campaign of Ramon Magsaysay in the 50s. The Agencys assets and technical infrastructure in Manila have been drastically affected by the withdrawal of the bases by 1992 because, before this, the CIA operated jointly with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) major listening posts into most of Indochina and southern China. The joint CIA/DIA structure called the Strategic Warning Staff, is headquartered in the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) and operated a number of similar posts as the one in Manila. The Manila station includes very sizeable logistical capabilities for a wide range of clandestine operations against Asian governments. The loss of the bases in the Philippines was a tremendous blow to the CIAs Asian infrastructure, if not a major setback. From the mid-50s, the US bases in the Philippines served as operational headquarters for Operation Brotherhood which operated in Indochina under the direct supervision of the CIAs Col. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conien, and it involved several Filipinos who were recruited and trained by the CIA. Lansdale was the classic CIA operative in Southeast Asia who was romanticized in Graham Greenes novel, The Quiet American. Lansdale was even appointed by former President Ramon Magsaysay as his military adviser but was, in fact, his speechwriter as well, who determined Magsaysays foreign and military policy. So successful was the CIA in pulling the strings thru Lansdale that in 1954, a high-level US committee reported that, American policy in Southeast Asia was most effectively represented in the Philippines, where any expanded program of Western influence may best be launched. Examples of such programs were the Freedom Company of the Philippines, Eastern Construction Co. and Operation Brotherhood, which provided a mechanism to permit the deployment of Filipino personnel in other Asian countries, for unconventional operations covertly supported by the Philippines. (Shalom, 1986). The CIA also actively used Philippine territory, particularly Clark Air Base, for the training and launching of operatives and logistics in the late 1950s, where the US covertly supported dissident Indonesian colonels in the failed armed overthrow of Indonesian President Sukarno. The CIA then established supply, training and logistical bases on several islands in the Philippines, including an airstrip in the Tawi-Tawi Island of Sanga- Sanga. A CIA-owned proprietary company, the Civil Air Transport, was actively used by the CIA from Philippine territory to give direct assistance to Indonesian military rebel groups attempting to overthrow Indonesian President Sukarno in the late 1950s. Manila was also the center of operations for the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc., a CIA outfit operating along the Burma-China border against the Peoples Republic of China. Using the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. as a front company, the CIA recruited for this operation in the early 1950s several Filipino aviators who were World War II veterans, including operatives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Military Intelligence Service (MIS) who were still in active service. In his memoirs, former Philippine Ambassador to Burma Narciso G. Reyes narrates that one of these Filipino undercover MIS agents posed as the labor attache at the Philippine embassy in Rangoon even before this was formally established. The Filipino CIA undercover agent was also reporting to the American ambassador to Burma from whom he was also getting paid! (Reyes, 1995). Side by side with CIA proprietary companies Civil Air Transport, Sea Supply Co. and Western Enterprises Co., the agency used Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. in an attempt to invade the Peoples Republic of China in the early 1950s, using the mercenary Chinese warlord Gen. Li Mi as leader of the invasion force. After a few skirmishes with the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), Gen. Li Mi later on retired and pocketed the US financial and military assistance for an invasion against China and concentrated on the lucrative opium trade along the Burmese-Thai border. US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) which was vehemently opposed to the post- war Parity Rights amendment and the onerous military agreements with the United States. The CIAs success in crushing the peasant-based Huk rebellion in the 1950s made this operation the model for future counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam and Latin America. Colonel Lansdale and his Filipino sidekick, Col. Napoleon Valeriano were later to use their counterguerrilla experience in the Philippines for training covert operatives in Vietnam and in the US- administered School of the Americas, which trained counterguerrilla assassins for Latin America. Thus, the Philippines had become the CIAs prototype in successful covert operations and psychological warfare. After his stint in the Philippines using propaganda, psywar and deception against the Huk movement, Lansdale was then assigned in Vietnam to wage military, political and psychological warfare. It was Lansdales view that the tactics that he used to solve the problem in the Philippines were applicable to Vietnam. He was wrong. In 1975, after two decades of protracted warfare, the Vietnamese people defeated the strongest superpower on earth. The CIAs actions and activities in its Manila station have never been limited to information gathering. Information gathering is but a part of an offensive strategy to attack, neutralize and undermine any organization, institution, personality or activity they consider a danger to the stability and power of the United States. The late Senator Claro M. Recto was believed to have been a victim of the CIAs dirty tricks department because of his staunch crusade against the US military bases in the Philippines. It is now a well- documented fact that General Ralph B. Lovett, then the CIA station chief in Manila and the US ambassador, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, had discussed a plan to assassinate Recto using a vial of poison. A few years later, Recto was to die mysteriously of heart attack (though he had no known heart ailment) in Rome after an appointment with two Caucasians in business suits. Before this, the CIA had made every effort to assure the defeat of Recto in the 1957 presidential election wherein the CIA manufactured and distributed defective condoms with a label that said, Courtesy of Claro M. Recto-- the Peoples Friend. Could it be that Recto was a victim of the CIAs covert operations, or what they call executive action against those perceived as dangerous enemies of the United States?
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 23:57:51 +0000
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