Rebels Target U.S. Officials in Philippines

In what American officials described as a “very ominous” change in tactics, Communist rebels in the Philippines have decided to target U.S. officials involved in counterinsurgency operations there for assassination, Administration sources said Thursday.

The killing of Army Col. James N. Rowe in Manila last week provided the first firm evidence of the rebel decision, which was made recently, according to U.S. officials speaking on condition that they not be identified by name.

The Communist New People’s Army has drawn up a specific list of American military and civilian targets for assassination, according to U.S. intelligence sources. And it has decided to attack U.S. military installations as part of a larger plan to intimidate the government of President Corazon Aquino and drive Americans from the Philippines, the sources said.

A special team of State Department officials and FBI agents have been sent to Manila to investigate Rowe’s murder, but intelligence sources traced the killing directly to the high-level rebel decision to attack American targets.

The rebels are targeting “not only people but facilities,” one knowledgeable State Department official said.

“It is our belief that they have taken this decision very recently,” declared another Administration official. “It is very ominous.”

U.S. officials called the Rowe killing “part of a carefully conceived plan” timed to coincide with difficult negotiations over leases on two major U.S. military bases in the islands, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. A total of 16,700 U.S. military personnel are stationed in the Philippines.

The 25-year lease on the bases expires in 1991, and renewal talks have stalled over how much the United States should pay to retain rights to the massive facilities. Philippine domestic politics have also slowed the talks as the Aquino government has sought to portray itself as a bulwark against continuing American colonialism.

The new rebel policy sends “a heavy political message to both the Aquino government and the U.S.--they want us out of there,” one senior Administration official said. “They don’t want us to have any bases there.”

Rowe, part of the 46-member Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group, was ambushed a week ago by gunmen who riddled his lightly armored sedan with automatic weapons fire in a traffic circle in Quezon City near Manila.

West Point Graduate

Rowe, 51, was a highly decorated West Point graduate who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was assigned to assist Philippine government troops with training and logistical programs and was not a military counterinsurgency adviser, a Pentagon spokesman said.

According to U.S. estimates, the rebel army numbers about 20,000, with half or more equipped with modern weapons that were captured from Philippine troops, provided by foreign sympathizers or bought on the open market. The Communists control about 20% of the former U.S. colony’s territory.

The last coordinated attack on U.S. targets in the Philippines occurred in October, 1987, when three Americans, two of them in military service and one retired, were shot to death in ambushes outside Clark Air Base.

U.S. analysts at the time suspected that the attacks marked a change in rebel tactics, but there were no further killings. In succeeding months, the rebels issued numerous public threats against Americans and others helping Philippine government counterinsurgency efforts, but the attacks never materialized.

In recent weeks, the New People’s Army has begun a new campaign against Americans installations and officials, U.S. sources said. Early this month, rebels laid a land mine near an American firing range outside of Clark Air Base and attacked a U.S. Navy transmitting station near Manila, damaging an antenna and some power lines.

The rebels, in a statement, said that the raids were in retaliation for “escalating U.S. military intervention in the country.” The rebel statement said that U.S. advisers are directing Philippine troops in the counterinsurgency campaign.

“The NPA has long made public calls for withdrawal of the bases,” a State Department official said Thursday. “The goal appears to be one of two things: either to drive the U.S. out or draw the U.S. into active involvement in the counterinsurgency, which would then arouse nationalist feelings of the Filipino people and lead them to support the NPA rather than the government.”

The State Department has warned Americans against traveling in rebel-held territory, and security has been stepped up for certain U.S. officials.