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The Meaning of Montesinos
Gustavo Gorriti, Peruvian Journalist
Monday, December 18, 2000 at 1 p.m. EST
Vladimir Montesinos, ousted as chief Peru's intelligence service in September, spent 10 years
wielding enormous power behind the scenes in Peru and winning praise of U.S. officials. Now he is a
virtual fugitive under investigation for selling guns to leftist rebels and laundering $58 million in Swiss
bank accounts.
Gustavo Gorriti, now a journalist in Panama, has followed Montesinos's remarkable career for more
than a decade. He will talk about the man, the source of his power in Peru, the allegations of murder and drug trafficking that shadow him, and his future.
Gorritti is the author of "The Shining Path: a History of the Millenarian War in Peru" (University of
North
Carolina Press.) He was the 1992 winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize awarded by the Columbia
School of Journalism. He won the King of Spain Journalism Prize in 1996. In 1998, the Committee to
Protect Journalists gave him its International Press Freedom Award.
Submit your questions for Gustavo Gorriti now.
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washingtonpost.com:
There were news reports over the weekend suggesting that Vladimir Montesinos had been seen in Costa Rica and the Carribean. So let us begin our discussion of Montesinos by asking Gustavo Gorriti: Can you tell us the latest on what is known about his whereabouts?
washingtonpost.com:
There were news reports over the weekend suggesting that Vladimir Montesinos had been seen in Costa Rica and the Carribean. So let us begin our discussion by asking Gustavo Gorriti: Can you tell
us the latest on what is known about Montesinos and his future?
Gustavo Gorriti: According to the testimony of some of his bodyguards, Montesinos was last seen when he left the yacht that brought him from Peru and the Galapagos to Coco island, off Costa Rica. His yacht met another at night, somewhere in between Coco and mainland Costa Rica. According to a Costa Rica minister, he left that country headed for Aruba. Aruban officials, though, have denied that Montesinos ever entered their territory. Most versions concur that he was headed towards Venezuela, whose government, as was to be expected, has also denied having him.
washingtonpost.com:
Do you think that he is still shopping for political asylum?
Gustavo Gorriti: I think he's shopping for a safer status than political asylum. It's either a protected life under an assumed identity or the possibility of assuming the role of, say, president Chavez's advisor. He is also thinking hard, without a doubt, about his coming back to Peru.
washingtonpost.com:
Can Montesinos realistically think that he would be safe from prosecution in Peru? For example, does he have enough parliamentary allies to secure amnesty?
Gustavo Gorriti: Not now. Not in the current political climate. The members of parliament he bought would be extremely afraid of giving him overt support. The same goes for prosecutors. Covertly, though, he might still have ample room for maneuvering.
Washington D.C.:
Montesinos as President Chavez's adviser? You've gotta be kidding.
Gustavo Gorriti: Some people thought the same when rumors had him as president Fujimori's adviser in 1990. I am not saying he is Chavez's adviser now, but Chavez fits perfectly well the profile of somebody Montesinos would want to advise, and would find the way, if given the opportunity, of making himself indispensable
Washington D.C.:
What was the exact relationship between Fujimori and Montesinos? Is Fujimori a willing accomplice, or did he just look the other way?
Gustavo Gorriti: To call it complex would be almost an understatement. Fujimori was so thoroughly bamboozled by Montesinos that it is sometimes hard to decide on whether he was a willing accomplice all the way or whether he was consistently fooled throughout his periods. In the end, of course, Fujimori emerges as an accomplice, sometimes pathetic but an accomplice anyway.
Washington D.C.:
1 - How can Peru get Alberto Fujimori back for questioning?
2 - Is there any chance that Fujimori and / or Vladimiro Montesinos can be brought to justice in another country, like Pinochet?
3 - Many people in Peru seem to fear the return of former president Alan Garcia. Is he as dangerous as people make him out to be?
4 - Why are Peru's political parties so disorganized? Why are they having so much difficulty forming a united front to govern the country?
Gustavo Gorriti: That's a very difficult proposition now. Japan does not give up on its citizens very easily, and Fujimori-san is, it's official now, a Japanese citizen
washingtonpost.com:
To follow up on the last questioners second query: What do you see as the chances of Montesinos and/or Fujimori being prosecuted in another country?
Gustavo Gorriti: As for Fujimori, he probably won't risk meeting Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon if he can help it. So I don't see him getting a lot of frequent flyer miles in the near future, barring some short visits to his pal, Muhatir Muhammad in Malaysia. With Montesinos, hopes are brigther, due to the fortunate circumstance of his not being a Japanese citizen.
Panama, Rep. of Panama:
Why [did it take] so long for the world to realise who Montesinos really was? Do you think the "marcha de los cuatro suyos" and Toledo´s campaign contributed in any way to Montesinos´ downfall?[edited]
Gustavo Gorriti: a) Because very few people or institutions, including those that should have been concerned, wanted to know Montesinos's dark background. Fujimori's regime was seen as a success story (free markets, defeat of the Shining Path, etc.) and therefore any substantial information that would disfigure that stereotype was ignored or dismissed. Montesinos's very close relationship with the CIA also played a major role.
b) Yes. I believe that Toledo's campaign brought to light a national mood of rejection of the dictatorship. It was seen clearly that the majority of the people stood strongly against Fujimori; and the Marcha de los 4 Suyos also demonstrated that Toledo movilized the fervor of the people and that Fujimori's regime had no other protection than sheer military force and the extremely dirty tricks of Montesinos's intelligence service.
Baltimore, Maryland:
I would like to know just why so much fuss is being made over this Montesinos. He is being made to sound like some sort of super-sleuth who has the secrets on lots of people and is poised to bring a lot of them down with him. I say he's more like Luis Roldan, the first civilian head of the Spansh Civil Guard who absconded secret funds and vanished until he was found hiding out in Southeast Asia. Roldan turned out to be nothng more than a banal, petty thief, a chorizo, as they say in Spain. Isn't Montesinos of the same ilk?
Gustavo Gorriti: I wish he was like Roldan. Roldan never ruled a country behind the scenes, as Montesinos did; and the amount of funds he absconded with, really makes him a petty thief compared with Montesinos's kleptocracy.
And the fact is, yes, that he has the dirty secrets of just too many politicians and business people in Peru. Most of those embarrasing secrets were on tape. I am told they are on DVD now.
Sacramento, California:
Do you feel safe from Montesinos now in Panama, or do you still worry he can send someone to harm you?
Did you know the torture took place in the Peruvian Pentagon in downtown Lima? If you were a woman, the military would line up and sexually abuse you, putting a magnum to your head and then insist you perform oral sex on them. Then they would torture you using a variety of techniques: electric shocks, the submarino, threatening to sear your eyeballs with a molten hot knife. Finally, they would leave you for dead, if you weren't already, on the beach. Will you write about this horrible chapter in Peruvian history in your next book? [edited]
Gustavo Gorriti: I was held in the "Pentagonito" after being seized and "disappeared" in the aftermath of the April 5, 1992 coup. I wasn't tortured, maybe because the international outcry brought about by ny detention forced them to release me. But a few years later, former intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa was held in the same place and brutally tortured. A colleague of hers, Mariella Barreto, was murdered and beheaded. In both cases, Montesinos and his people wanted to stop the information leaks from their service to investigative journalists
Arlington, VA:
What's it like being a journalist covering such a dangerous beat? Does your life ever get threatened?
Gustavo Gorriti: It was threatened often. Threats by themselves do not harm you, but can make life pretty difficult, especially when they extend to your family. Which was my case.
As a journalist, I felt that I had no choice but to continue investigating these people and never showing any fear. After all, I knew that my being a journalist entailed a certain form of protection, in the sense that they would have to think hard before committing themselves to actual action. And I saw people who risked everything to let facts be known, who had no protection at all. They continued taking risks even after the horror of the La Rosa and Barreto's cases. How could a journalist not do his work under those circumstances?
Near Waco, Texas:
I read that Fujimori's daughter had an American Express credit card paid for by a fraudulent Montesinos company based in Panama. Did La Prensa uncover that information?
I was informed that when narcotrafficers were caught by Montesinos and the military, it was often an elaborate performance (worked out between the military and the drug traffikers) for the United States to demonstrate success and guarantee that US "combating drug" funds would continue to flow ... ultimately, into Montesinos pockets. Do you have any information regarding this and who will take Montesinos place in this complex nexus of drugs, military and the CIA?
As you know, Montesinos was courted by the CIA for quite some time. Do you have any more information about the nature of their relationship? Did Montesinos attend our School of Americas? [edited]
Gustavo Gorriti: a) That information was first uncovered in a television news program in Lima. We reproduced it at La Prensa.
b) Montesinos, as Panama's Noriega in the past, could provide performances to satisfy all sides. On the one hand, they had an aerial interdiction program that brought quite good results in interdicting the aerial cocaine bridge between Peru and Colombia. On the other hand, he could protect, with precise tactical information, those traffickers willing to pay the steep protection fees he charged. For those American officials supporting the relationship with Montesinos, there were always the right statistics at hand, with numbers impressive enough to dismiss the other side of the coin as unproved allegations.
Montesinos was not just courted by the CIA. He worked closely with American intelligence since the 1970's. In the 1990's the relationship was reassumed and promptly he wasn't anymore just a highly placed "asset" but "Mr. Fixit" himself.
washingtonpost.com:
Will U.S policymakers pay a price for their support of Montesinos? Specifically, how do you think future Peruvian governments will respond to U.S.-sponsored war on drug producers in Colombia?
Gustavo Gorriti: Unfortunately, I think that most hard-earned lessons in the relationship between Montesinos and the US government will be unheeded. Peru's new government (not the present caretaker regime, but the one that will take office on July 28 next year) will face so many urgent chores and tasks to solve and will need so desperately the United States' support that I don't think it will have the will to bring Montesinos's issue to the fore. As for the U.S., if experience shows us anything, is that American policymakers, and certainly American spooks, will always seek expediency, without great regard for other considerations. Noriega, Cedras and many others in the recent past, can attest to that. So, it is for us Peruvians, I think, to never let this issue go until Montesinos is brought to justice.
washingtonpost.com:
Unfortunately, our time is up. Many thanks to Gustavo Gorriti for his insights and to everybody who sent in questions.
A transcript of this discussion will be posted shortly in the World section of washingtonpost.com
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