Accusing the Military

By Pico Iyer

Investigators find a high-level conspiracy in the death of Benigno Aquino

As the news spread through the 7,100-island archipelago, it was greeted first with incredulity--and then with joy. After more than a year of suspense, the 54.5 million people of the Philippines had at last received an authoritative confirmation of their deepest suspicion: the military did it. Specifically, a fact-finding board appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos concluded that Benigno Aquino, the exiled opposition leader assassinated at Manila International Airport on Aug. 21, 1983, only moments after his return to the Philippines, was not killed by Rolando Galman, the alleged Communist gunman who was identified by the military as the murderer. Instead, the board had come to another conclusion: both Aquino and Galman, who was gunned down seconds later on the airport tarmac, were victims of a carefully plotted military conspiracy. The question that remained: How high did the conspiracy reach?

The national ordeal that began 14 months ago reached a turning point last week, when Corazon Agrava, 69, chairman of the investigating panel, entered the Spanish-style Malacanang Palace for an audience with Marcos. She was immediately ushered into the presidential study. After a 15-minute discussion behind closed doors, Agrava and the President emerged together and walked to the palace's Ceremonial Hall. There, they sat in high, stiff-backed chairs before the blinding glare of television lights, until Agrava handed the President her own 121-page minority report on the killing. Said she: "Your Excellency, I have now the honor to present to you my report." Replied Marcos: "I hereby formally receive the report."

Later that afternoon, Agrava traveled to Magsaysay Hall in Quezon City, where her panel had held most of its 120 open sessions, to announce her conclusions. Yet the crowd of some 500 that had gathered in the hall seemed disappointed at her report. Greeted by a sprinkling of applause and a blast of boos, the retired appeals-court judge reacted defensively. Said she, struggling to fight back tears: "Because I can face myself and in all conscience say that whatever I have placed in my report is what I believe in, I could hardly care whether you people who are booing out there should pelt me with tomatoes or slander me. If my best does not satisfy you, I am sorry."

Why was a report that implicated the military in Aquino's death so graciously received by Marcos and so tepidly greeted by the public? Chiefly because Agrava failed to include one important name among the alleged conspirators: Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver, 64, Marcos' cousin, close confidant and most powerful protector.

Ver was, however, named in a competing report issued by the four other members of the Agrava panel. The day after the chairman presented her document to the public, her male colleagues--Amado Dizon, Luciano Salazar, Ernesto Herrera and Dante Santos--visited Marcos to give him a copy of their version. They were coldly received. For an hour they were kept waiting in the dining room of the presidential palace. Then a grim and unsmiling Marcos saw the four "Agravatars," as members of the panel are known, just long enough to bid them a chilly thank-you. He remained seated behind his desk when they rose to leave his study. "I hope you can live with your conscience," he told his visitors as they walked out. Unlike Agrava, the men were not treated to any ceremonial joint meeting with the press.

Shortly after that audience, the four panel members arrived at Magsaysay Hall to announce their findings to the public. They were met with wild cheering and applause. The mood in the room soured as Chairman Agrava formally closed the board's hearings. But when Deputy Counsel Bienvenido Tan began reciting the list of suspected conspirators that the majority of the board was recommending for indictment, there was pandemonium in the wood-paneled hall. Friends and strangers alike hugged one another, tossed flowers into the air and struck up a chorus of the once outlawed nationalist anthem Ang Bayan Ko (My Country). The first name on Tan's list was General Ver.

There was ample reason for exhilaration. After poring over towers of evidence, the board had confounded widespread skepticism by daring to challenge the powerful Philippine military Establishment. Still, the failure of the panel to reach unanimous agreement in the majority report's conclusions--especially regarding Ver's possible involvement--inevitably disappointed many Filipinos. Indeed, the sharpest disagreement between Chairman Agrava and her colleagues came in their assessments of the evidence that the Chief of Staff was involved in the murders.

In her report, Agrava implicated seven military men, including Brigadier General Luther Custodio, who was in charge of the 1,199-member security force deployed to protect Aquino at the airport. In the 457-page majority report, supported by a 481-page memorandum prepared by the board's legal panel and leaked to the press two weeks earlier, the other four board members went much further than Agrava. By naming Ver, they in effect struck at the very heart of the Marcos regime. The majority report named, in addition to the seven suspects mentioned by Agrava, 18 other military men, among them Major General Prospero Olivas, the Metro-Manila commander of the Philippine constabulary.

In the eyes of many Filipinos, the majority of the panel in fingering Ver had also impugned the President's integrity. Once Marcos' chauffeur and bodyguard, the ultraloyal Chief of Staff and the President have become increasingly dependent on each other, at least until the majority report broke. Says Charito Planas, a U.S.-based opposition leader: "Marcos and Ver are like Siamese twins. One can't do anything without the other knowing about it." The closeness of the bond has made it all the more difficult for the President to extricate himself from the Aquino affair. The U.S. Government, Marcos' main foreign supporter and benefactor, reacted to the board's reports last week by reminding him that it expected the investigation to be vigorously pursued. Meanwhile, some 5,000 protesting citizens took to the streets of Manila calling for the President to resign.

Faced with one of the gravest challenges in his 19-year rule, Marcos, ever the adroit tactician, moved quickly to cut his losses. He began by treating Agrava's minority report as if it were the only finding of the board and promptly turned the milder version over to the Ministry of Justice. Then, seizing the moment between the announcements of the two reports, Marcos appeared on television to address the country. He urged that the case be settled "without letting a day pass." Already the seven men implicated by Agrava had, he explained, been suspended from duty and confined to quarters. In addition, their cases would be sent to the Tanodbayan, a special prosecutorial panel that tries cases against government officials, and then to the special civilian tribunal known as the Sandiganbayan.

By responding with such alacrity, Marcos was limiting the damage from what could have been a devastating blow. He declared, "Our government makes manifest to all its desire and its determination to push this case through to the final resolution." He also urged his countrymen to "put an end to the campaign of intimidation and pressure that during the past year has so heightened tensions, endangered so many lives and besmirched the very reputation of our republic." The following day, the President also handed the explosive majority report over to the Ministry of Justice and authorized the members of the Agrava panel to assist in prosecuting the case. Then Marcos accepted letters from Olivas and Ver requesting permission to take a temporary "leave of absence."

In both letters, the accused military men made it plain how strongly they will contest the findings against them. Insisting on his innocence, Ver charged that the majority report's conclusions were "farfetched" and "no better I than a series of inductive arguments"; he demanded a separate and immediate trial. The embattled suspects did their best to turn the Agravatars' own strength against them. "The board has been waylaid by the enemies of the state," charged Olivas. Ver accused the panel of being "a tool to destroy the protectors of the republic."

As the week progressed, opponents of the government, led by Aquino's widow Corazon, rallied against the President with growing fervor. The thrust of their case against Marcos was two-pronged. First, as Commander in Chief of the country's armed forces, he is ultimately accountable for all military acts. Second, even if Marcos had been seriously ill when Aquino made his tragic return voyage to the Philippines, as was rumored at the time, it seemed remarkable that the military would undertake so elaborate an operation as a conspiracy to kill Aquino without the President's knowledge. Speaking to reporters shortly after the release of the majority report, Member of Parliament Alberto Romulo sounded a rallying cry for the opposition: "President Marcos has two choices: to resign or be impeached."

Inevitably, some observers charged that the chairman had cut a deal with the government. "Agrava rode roughshod over the other members of the board, the majority," complained Salvador Laurel, an opposition leader. "I see the hand of Marcos here." Some demonstrators in Manila last week brandished placards that read AGRAVA LOVES VER. But some of those privy to the board's discussions firmly rejected such allegations. Both of the panel reports, said one source close to the board, "came from the heart." Last August, while the investigators were still deliberating over their findings, another insider predicted that "Agrava would probably go along with the board if there were no doubt about the conclusions. If there is doubt, she will stick with Marcos."

When the President tried to give the impression that Agrava's minority report was the last word on the assassination, Washington, which will send the Philippines $230 million in aid next year, reacted with astonishment. That day State Department Spokesman John Hughes issued an unusually strong public warning to the Philippine President, stressing that the U.S. did not wish to see the majority report ignored. Continued Hughes: "The U.S. trusts that, as President Marcos has promised, those responsible for Senator Aquino's murder, no matter who they may be, will be held accountable for this crime." That amounted to an unambiguous reminder that presidential protection of Ver would not be approved by the U.S.

Washington acclaimed the Philippine President's acceptance of both reports as a "positive development" and hailed the board's findings as "testimony to the vigor of democratic traditions in the Philippines." Nonetheless, U.S. officials intend to monitor carefully the course of the legal proceedings against the alleged military conspirators.

Opposition leaders readily concede that a final decision will be difficult to come by, especially now that the case has left the hands of the Agravatars and returned to the Marcos-run courts. But the opposition has not given up hope. Member of Parliament Concordion Diel pointed out that the Agrava board, though created by Marcos, proved independent and courageous enough to challenge the military. Meanwhile, other members of the opposition promised more and larger anti-Marcos rallies.

Soon after seeing Chairman Agrava's minority report, First Lady Imelda Marcos apparently remarked, "Poor nation. I cry for the nation. The nation is beautiful." That paradoxical lament seemed a perfect summary for the anguishing morality play that had just concluded for most Filipinos. Had justice in the Aquino case finally been served? Yes and no. The Agrava board showed itself to be unswerving, but much of its hard work could yet be overturned in the courts. Could the opposition claim a triumph? In part. It had managed to force the temporary departure of Ver, but the general's guilt was still a matter of divided opinion. Would Marcos eventually be forced to democratize the system of personal authority and privilege that he has set so firmly in place? Perhaps. Though the board certainly had delivered the Marcos regime a stinging rebuke, the President had shown no signs of losing power--or even of losing much political ground. If the frankness of the Agravatars' reports indicated how far Philippine democracy has progressed since Aquino's death, the frustrations that follow may demonstrate all too clearly just how far it still has to go.

--By Pico Iyer.

Reported by Sandra Burton/Manila and Ross H. Munro/Washington

With reporting by Sandra Burton, Ross H. Munro