The CIA Owes One to Peru

To capture Peruvian spy master Vladimiro Montesinos was no easy task. The effort lasted eight months before he was nabbed June 23 in Caracas, Venezuela, with the help of the FBI. The cost of tracking him down included further erosion of Peru’s shaky ties with Venezuela.

However difficult the pursuit, to convict Montesinos on the human rights violations and corruption charges he faces will be even harder. He is a master deceiver and has claimed to possess a sturdy insurance policy--thousands of videos that show him corrupting important people, some of whom surely would do almost anything to avoid being exposed.

For 10 years under President Alberto Fujimori, Montesinos allegedly built and ran an empire of corruption that controlled the military, the legal system, parts of the private sector and much of the media. Last month, Peruvian prosecutor Nelly Calderon Navarro reported that Montesinos had at least $264 million in foreign bank accounts.

Here, once again, the United States could help Peruvian authorities. The Central Intelligence Agency’s file on Montesinos, who is said by the U.S. and international press to have begun a relationship with the CIA in the 1970s, may be a thick one. Whatever the truth, the CIA should be heard from.

Some of Montesinos’ money may have come from U.S. taxpayers. It’s been reported by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity that during the 1990s the CIA gave Montesinos at least $10 million in cash as well as high-tech surveillance equipment. The money, intended to finance intelligence activities against drug dealers, was reportedly delivered to Montesinos’ office. The equipment is the sort that Montesinos is accused of using to spy on people to blackmail or control them.

This sort of link between Washington and the former spy chief should move the U.S. Senate to ensure the cooperation of the CIA with Peru. Together, the authorities in both countries may be capable of untangling the web of corruption, harassment and intimidation that this man is charged with building.

In its 1997 human rights report, the State Department questioned the activities of Montesinos’ intelligence office, stating among other things that Peruvian “security forces officials harassed and intimidated journalists.” In 1999, the Senate Appropriations Committee expressed “concern about U.S. support for the Peruvian National Intelligence Service,” emphasizing that its concern had been “repeatedly expressed.”

The Peruvian justice system, faced for too long with corrupt masters, is now challenged to conduct Montesinos’ trial in an impeccable manner. The least that the United States can do is to assist Peru in sweeping the dirt from its house.