Imelda Bought Combat Boots but Marcos Didn’t March

The day before an attempted military coup back home in the Philippines, Imelda Marcos--who left 3,000 pairs of shoes behind when she fled last year--went shopping.

Among her $2,000 worth of purchases from an army surplus store: combat boots, camouflage outfits and belts.

This, according to government officials in the Philippines, was the gear she bought for what she and her husband, Ferdinand, president for 20 years until his overthrow last February, planned as a “glorious homecoming.”

It was timed, the officials said, to coincide with an abortive army coup that finally collapsed today.

On Monday, Imelda Marcos bought about $2,000 worth of camouflage military pants, U.S.- and Israeli-made combat boots, olive-drab T-shirts, flight jackets and a couple of heavyweight Navy jackets with fur linings at the Military Shop of Hawaii Inc., said the store’s co-owner, Douglas Boyer.

Boyer said his wife, Norene, was at the store when the cash purchases were made by Mrs. Marcos and about eight other people.

“It was a rushed sort of thing,” Boyer said, adding that the former first lady was at the store for about 20 minutes. He said the group carried away a variety of sizes.

“They weren’t absolutely sure of what sizes to get,” Boyer said. “It didn’t look like she was buying for an army.”

Asked about the purchases, Philippine Consul-General Tomas Gomez said: “I’m flabbergasted, I’m laughing. They’ve gone bananas.”

Philippine officials said the plan, which Marcos has denied, was to fly home aboard a chartered Boeing 707 piloted by American mercenaries. The officials said the plan was abandoned when news of it leaked to Philippine and U.S. officials in Honolulu, where the Marcoses live in exile.

The consul-general in Honolulu described the alleged plan as an “impossible caper from the very beginning.”

President Corazon Aquino’s spokesman, Teodoro Benigno, told a Manila news conference that Gomez said the 707 had been leased from a Miami-based company, Pan Aviation, and had been at Honolulu airport for the last 72 hours.

This company, the spokesman reported, was “linked to a Lebanese named Sarkis Soghanalian, who is an arms dealer. . . . Soghanalian is closely linked with Mr. Khashoggi, who as you all know is a friend of Imelda Marcos.”

Adnan Khashoggi is a Saudi Arabian businessman who has been implicated in arranging financing for the Iran- contra affair now rocking the Reagan Administration.

Marcos denied any knowledge of the chartered 707 at Honolulu airport and Soghanalian, who is in Honolulu, told reporters he was planning to fly out Friday and would not take Marcos with him. “Do you think I am crazy?” he said.

Marcos said the combat boots and camouflage clothing were purchased for their house guards in Hawaii.