Marcos Showing Strain of Exile, Lawsuits Over Wealth, Abuses

Ferdinand E. Marcos was about to explode. He had lost his nation, his closest friends were shunning him, his personal assets had been frozen, and now this.

For more than four hours Tuesday, lawyers representing the new Philippine government were in the dining room of the $1.5-million Marcos residence in Honolulu, assailing him with questions that Marcos said later had “humiliated,” “denigrated” and “degraded” him.

The questions were about how Marcos and his wife, Imelda, had allegedly amassed a personal fortune of more than $2 billion in the 20 years they ran the Philippines, about how they had used hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. and Japanese aid money, about gold holdings, about documents, about the luggage they had brought to Hawaii with them in February, about a nuclear power plant near Manila, about Swiss bank accounts, about California banks--question after question after question.

To each of them, Marcos pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

Exactly 197 times, Marcos intoned, “I claim the right against self-incrimination and the right to remain silent.”

At one point, after Marcos cried out that “This is ridiculous,” his attorney, Richard Hibey of Washington, said gently: “Please be patient, Mr. President. We have to do this.”

Questioning ‘Outrageous’

Finally, as the attorneys completed the court-ordered deposition, Marcos blew up. He attacked the government of President Corazon Aquino, who helped overthrow him, as “the revolutionary government headed by Madame Aquino.” He called the questioning “outrageous,” and he shouted hoarsely that “the questions are inclined to denigrate the witness, degrade him, humiliate him, and are not proper.” “I therefore pray to the court,” he went on, apparently forgetting that he was not in a courtroom but in his own dining room, “that this humiliating and degrading testimony in this witch hunt be stopped.”

When his rage had subsided, Marcos turned to his lawyer apologetically, almost sheepishly, and said: “OK. OK. OK. I have had my say. I am sorry. Sorry. I just couldn’t . . . couldn’t control myself.”

Seven months after Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos fled the Philippines, the former president was showing signs that the strain of exile and the weight of half a dozen major lawsuits, demanding tens of billions of dollars, are taking their toll on him.

Behind 8-Foot Wall

Marcos’ residence here is surrounded by an eight-foot-high cement wall and dense palm trees. He has appeared in public only a few times since his arrival, but the depositions were publicly recorded by a video crew. Marcos seemed angry and derisive over having lost control of his own life.

Aside from his closing outburst, the transcript of the deposition shows that every word he spoke was measured against strict instructions from his attorney.

Friends who have visited the Marcoses here say that the former president almost never ventures out of the house, that he meets almost daily with his doctors and lawyers.

They say he appears to have become obsessed with the legal cases against him. Several times during the questioning, he told the lawyers examining him, two Americans and two Filipinos, that he is convinced that Aquino’s top priority is to put him in jail.

“What was the parting statement of Mme. Aquino?” he asked. “The objective of this . . . administration was to prosecute Marcos and to see that he goes to jail, and to recover supposed hidden wealth.”

At times, he showed flashes of his early years as a criminal lawyer.

Knows Lawyers’ Ways

“I know the way of lawyers,” he said early in the questioning. “Lawyers have a way of using anything to link and accuse anybody charged in a criminal complaint to an allegation of conspiracy. I have seen this happen many times, and it is not going to happen to me.”

Marcos lashed out at Ron Olson of Los Angeles, one of the lawyers representing the Philippine government.

“You are repetitious and dumb,” Marcos lashed out. “I think you are fishing for evidence, and I think I stand on my rights.”

There was one brief glimpse of the impish humor that Marcos often showed in the presidential palace back in Manila. Midway through the questioning, Olson asked Marcos whether he personally, “in your own free time and by yourself, reviewed any documents in preparation for this deposition.”

“No,” Marcos shot back, smiling. “I glanced over a Playboy magazine.”

“You thought that Playboy magazine would be good preparation for this deposition?” Olson asked.

‘A Little Sense of Humor’

“No,” Marcos replied, still smiling. “I was laughing at the absurdity of the charges. I think that occasionally one must look at the most serious matters with a little sense of humor.”

The charges in the Philippine government’s lawsuit against Marcos may, indeed, be among the most serious matters in his life. The government alleges that Marcos and his wife headed a network patterned after an organized-crime syndicate, a network that systematically plundered the Philippines of more than $2 billion, and that this money was secretly deposited in banks in Switzerland and the United States and used to build up vast real estate holdings worldwide.

If the government proves its civil case in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where the government lawyers filed this suit in August, Marcos may be liable to criminal prosecution.

The judge hearing the case in Los Angeles has already struck one blow against Marcos. In issuing a restraining order earlier this year freezing the Marcos assets, he said that the Philippine government “has adduced sufficient evidence that defendants have committed . . . acts of racketeering in the United States. . . . There is a substantial likelihood that the Philippines will prevail in this action.”

As the depositions were being taken, the Philippine government made public a number of documents apparently linking the Marcoses to secret Swiss bank accounts. The government is basing its case on more than 2,700 documents removed from the presidential palace in Manila just after the Marcoses fled and taken from their luggage by U.S. Customs agents when they arrived in Hawaii.

Wary of Criminal Charges

Of even greater concern to Marcos than the civil suit are criminal charges against him in Manila, and the possibility that similar charges will be filed against him in the United States.

“I am now convinced that all the evidence that is being sought to be obtained through this deposition is going to be used in a criminal case in the Philippines,” Marcos said in explaining why he was pleading the Fifth Amendment. Imelda Marcos, questioned Wednesday by government lawyers, also invoked her Fifth Amendment right 200 times.

Asked whether he feared similar prosecution in the United States, he said, “I have apprehension that this may be one of the plans of the witch-hunting that is going on.”

During the questioning of Imelda Marcos, Hibey, the Marcos attorney, declared angrily that the Philippine government is “attempting to use these legal processes to advance not only their political ends over there, but also their criminal prosecutive ends.”

The U.S. District Court in Honolulu is virtually littered with lawsuits against Marcos, members of his family and his former military chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver. They accuse Marcos and Ver of being directly responsible for thousands of killings and other human rights abuses in the years after Marcos declared martial law in 1972, assuming sweeping powers for himself and the military.

One suit, a class action, charges that thousands of Filipinos were “routinely and systematically subjected to torture, including mutilation, electric shock, water torture, live burial, rape, sexual molestation, beating, cigarette burns and solitary confinement.” Thousands of victims, it says, were “routinely and systematically savaged--summarily executed--and placed in mass graves.”

Details on 8 Victims

The lawsuit details the history of eight victims, among them a 30-year-old woman who was beaten and raped by soldiers over a period of six years, who became pregnant and was forced to undergo an abortion. The woman, a political dissident, was shot during interrogation and is permanently disabled, it says.

The suits brought against the Marcoses here include affidavits and statements from Roman Catholic priests and nuns, among them a Jesuit priest named Walter Hogan, who served in the Philippines. Hogan says in a statement, “There is a rather long list of people who are known to have been arrested by the military and who made their next appearances as dead bodies.”

Trial Set for May 12

The court has set next May 12 as the trial date for all the human rights cases brought here against the Marcoses.

Marcos, 70, who suffers from a kidney disorder, was asked at the outset of his questioning Tuesday whether there was anything about his physical condition that could affect his testimony.

“Well,” Marcos said haltingly, “a slight cold and a little hoarse voice. That’s about all.”

“It doesn’t affect your rationality in any way?” the Philippine government attorney asked.

“I don’t think so,” Marcos replied quietly.

In the course of the questioning, though, Marcos appeared uncertain at several points. He was asked whether he had made any other statements under oath since arriving in Hawaii, and he replied:

“I will have to review what I have done since I arrived in American soil on the 26th of February this year. I am not sure.”