Anti-Terrorist Unit ‘Discouraged’ Assassination, Audit Says

Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Anti-Terrorist Division intervened to prevent a possible assassination plot against several witnesses who testified before a visiting fact-finding panel investigating the slaying of Philippine opposition leader Benito G. Aquino Jr., it was disclosed Monday.

A report released by the Police Commission said the detectives “personally sought out the potential assassins and discouraged them from taking any action.”

The report was prepared as part of the first annual audit of the Anti-Terrorist Division, which was created in 1983 after its predecessor, the Public Disorder Intelligence Division, was disbanded amid allegations of improper police spying.

Although the report did not identify the investigation in which the witnesses testified, it said the detectives “received information that witnesses to an infamous foreign assassination . . . were themselves in danger of assassination . . . because of their impending testimony before visiting representatives of the foreign government.”

Official Inquiry

The only foreign government to receive any testimony in Los Angeles last year was a Philippine panel that held a series of hearings at the Sheraton Town House Hotel as part of an official government inquiry into the Aquino assassination.

Aquino, the chief rival to Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was shot to death at the Manila airport when he returned to his native country on Aug. 21, 1983, after he spent three years of exile in the United States. Twenty-five soldiers and high-ranking officials, including Philippine military chief Gen. Fabian Ver, were indicted in connection with the slaying.

Several witnesses, including a man who claimed to be a former hit man for the Philippine government and said he was ordered to kill Aquino, testified at the hearings.

Police Department spokesman Cmdr. William Booth declined to discuss the specifics of the potential assassination attempt, and Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon, who has administrative responsibility for the department’s anti-terrorist unit, also refused comment.

The 14-page report released Monday followed a monthlong Police Commission audit of the Anti-Terrorist Division’s activities. The audit was a requirement under last year’s settlement of the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the department. A more detailed, confidential summary of the audit was not released by the commission.

Commissioner Robert M. Talcott, who, along with Commissioner Samuel L. Williams, oversaw the preparation of the Anti-Terrorist Division review, issued a glowing commendation of the unit’s activities in 1984.

‘A New Breeze’

“We found that the spirit and the letter of the guidelines promulgated by this board have been followed,” Talcott said, referring to procedures adopted last year that are designed to regulate the division. “We found that there was a new breeze that coursed through the offices of the Anti-Terrorist Division,” Talcott added.

Bill Moran, a commission staff member, told the commission that the division needs to “fine tune” its practices to comply with the details of the new guidelines. He said he found no evidence of improper surveillance or undercover activities on the part of the unit’s investigators and no unauthorized dissemination of the division’s materials to outside agencies.

The report released Monday said that the Anti-Terrorist Division initiated 216 preliminary investigations in 1984, four of which developed into full probes. The report said many of the preliminary investigations were “Olympics-related threats” centered on the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.