Fujimori, Spy Chief Did Business in the Shadows

The relationship between Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos was a Latin American archetype: the political strongman and his sinister spy chief.

Fujimori--pragmatic, militaristic, charming in his offbeat way--was an unlikely strongman who brought order to a tough society.

Montesinos--wary, restless, reclusive--became a kind of Peruvian J. Edgar Hoover. He built an empire based on secrets and surveillance, paranoia and fear.

The two men did business in the shadows, meeting in the hours after midnight when a coastal mist fills the stark, shuttered streets of this capital.

Their night-owl partnership inspired various theories: That the two shared power. That Montesinos, as Fujimori insists, was just a “super-efficient” right-hand man. That Fujimori was a puppet.

In any case, it seems they needed each other to survive. When the spy chief finally fell last week, the president fell with him.

Their alliance tells the story of power in Peru in the 1990s. And it has regional implications: The Fujimori government has become a model of the kind of semi-authoritarian, civilian-military regimes that could further weaken Latin America’s troubled democracies.

The crisis here results partly from changing and contradictory U.S. policy. The State Department has pushed for democratic reform in recent months. But Montesinos’ espionage apparatus, the most effective on the continent, made him a treasured ally of U.S. intelligence and anti-drug forces during the years he allegedly undermined democratic institutions.

Now opposition leaders want Montesinos arrested and prosecuted. But he still exerts ominous influence, according to many observers.

“Who’s going to arrest him?” said a former U.S. Embassy official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named. “He owns everyone. If it came close, he’d flee the country.”

And Montesinos did just that over the weekend. He left Peru on a private jet and arrived in Panama early Sunday, according to the Panamanian government. Panama had initially refused a Peruvian request to grant asylum to Montesinos, but Panamanian officials said they would reconsider that decision to reduce political tension in Peru.

‘There Was Always a Symbiosis’

For years, Fujimori stuck by Montesinos while discarding other confidants. The spy chief withstood allegations that he had ordered killings and torture, protected drug lords and amassed an illicit fortune. But the relationship became strained during turmoil over recent elections in which Fujimori won a third five-year term.

After the public broadcast of a video that showed the spymaster apparently bribing a congressman, Fujimori took his family’s advice and fired Montesinos. The spy chief and his handpicked military commanders reacted defiantly, according to observers, so the president announced that he would hold new elections in which he would not run.

“There was always a symbiosis between the president and Montesinos,” said Daniel Mora, a former army general who retired last year. “The president found himself in the dilemma of how to cut this umbilical cord that joined them. And he made a tremendously difficult decision because of the international and internal pressure.”

Spy chiefs are classic figures in the history of Latin American authoritarianism. Argentine President Juan Peron, an elected strongman, had the murderous Jose Lopez Rega, known as “The Wizard” for his dabbling in the occult.

Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, had Johnny Abbes, a pudgy sadist who died an exile in Haiti, slaughtered by Haitian government thugs along with his family and pets.

Montesinos Called Himself an Advisor

Fujimori had Montesinos, known as “El Doctor,” the title for attorneys in many Latin countries. He preferred to stay out of sight, calling himself an advisor rather than the formal chief of the National Intelligence Service, or SIN.

Other officials wanted Montesinos “to gain legitimacy in a more overt position, but it never materialized,” the former U.S. Embassy official said. “He likes to be the puppeteer.”

Montesinos cultivated an aura of omniscience. “The Fujimori File,” a book by British journalist Sally Bowen, describes a meeting with business leaders to discuss a wave of kidnappings in 1998.

“Flashing his Rolex watch and an enormous jeweled ring and ordering the deployment of fighter planes from a red telephone on his desk, he . . . demonstrated he was in total command of the security forces,” she wrote. Montesinos promised to capture the kidnappers with an army of “600 prostitutes he had deployed in flashy discotheques” frequented by hoodlums, according to the book.

Prominent Peruvians and foreigners here assume that they are being spied on at any given moment. Former U.S Embassy officials say that the embassy phones were tapped and that Montesinos had vast resources and few scruples.

“Whatever you needed in Peru could be gotten,” the former U.S. Embassy official said. “He’s a nice enough guy in person. [But] he could blackmail people, terminate people, disappear people.”

As a young army captain, Montesinos was ambitious, shy and a ferret of sensitive information, according to ex-spy Francisco Loayza, a onetime friend.

Montesinos reportedly established his U.S. contacts against a Cold War backdrop: The U.S. worried about the flirtation of Peru’s military regime with the Soviet Union. In 1976, he was accused of passing secrets to the U.S. about acquisitions of Soviet arms and was cashiered for dereliction of duty, according to published accounts and interviews.

Since then, Montesinos has maintained close ties to the CIA and the Pentagon, according to Peruvian and U.S. sources. U.S. officials decline to comment on accusations that he was a CIA agent.

In an interview this year, Fujimori denied that his advisor was a U.S. agent but said he worked well with the CIA and other intelligence services.

Montesinos became a lawyer and specialized in defending drug lords. The expertise later served him well in contacts with U.S. anti-drug forces during Peru’s aggressive campaign to shoot down smuggling planes, break up trafficking operations and eradicate coca. U.S. anti-drug officials consider Peru a success story.

By 1990, Montesinos was a SIN operative and had gained the trust of Fujimori, a neophyte presidential candidate. He provided Fujimori with secret data from SIN campaign polls and helped him resolve personal tax problems, according to Loayza and others.

Some speculate that Montesinos has compromising information about the president. Others believe that he rose with gradual, Machiavellian maneuvers, reinventing himself as the vital intermediary between the president and the powerful military.

“He is not a great strategist,” said Mora, who as army information chief worked with Montesinos during a 1995 conflict with Ecuador. “He is good at creating traps, ambushes, psychological operations. He gained power by projecting the image of power. He weaved it bit by bit.”

After the 1992 “self-coup” in which Fujimori shut down Congress, Montesinos systematically gained control over the security forces, courts, television channels, election agency and other institutions, according to critics.

Fast-forward eight years. During troubled presidential elections this spring, Fujimori continued to reject demands that he dump Montesinos.

But all was not well. Montesinos feuded with Absalon Vasquez, Fujimori’s top political operative. Complaints of governmental dirty tricks in the elections divided Fujimori’s movement. Montesinos’ hard-core faction reportedly prevailed over aides who wanted to delay the May runoff as urged by foreign observers. The opposition boycotted the vote, and another crisis ensued.

On July 28, Fujimori was sworn in amid violent protests. That day, Roman Catholic Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani, a steely conservative admired by the president, gave a stern homily against “a dark power” that had to be removed from the government.

By this time, foreign and Peruvian sources say, Fujimori and his family were growing irritated with the advisor’s encroaching influence.

On Sept. 14 came the bombshell videotape. Recorded by cameras the spy chief uses to document activity in his office, it was copied by disgruntled navy officials and leaked to opposition legislators.

The dialogue was as shocking as the images. Montesinos sounded as if he owned Peru.

“We are thinking about the international image of the country,” he told a legislator before handing him $15,000, according to the transcript. “You win with a strong Congress, a solid majority, a thoughtful majority. . . . I don’t want just a simple majority, I want a majority of 70, 75.”

It is unlikely that Fujimori had no inkling of such conduct. But apparently the crisis made him think hard about his legacy and his political survival.

The president acted two days later after consulting with his family, his only real confidants in the pre-Montesinos days. Montesinos’ refusal to go quietly raised the threat of a military rebellion, according to the most prevalent theory, forcing the president to announce his own departure.

President Betrays Emotion Over Speech

Last week, Fujimori seemed emotional as he recounted how he and his 25-year-old daughter, Keiko, the first lady since his divorce, crafted a speech that he never imagined he would make.

“Two people, my daughter Keiko and myself, wrote the message,” the president said, his voice quavering momentarily.

The story isn’t over. There are persistent allegations that Peru came close to a coup and that the threat of violence continues. Does Fujimori have full control? Are his promises of reform genuine?

The partnership of the shadows has apparently fallen apart. But its psychological and political impact will linger for a long time.