REAGAN NOMINATION FOR FRANK ORTIZ SPARKS CRITICISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404800004-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: September 13, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404800004-3
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THE WASHINGTON POST
13 September 1981
eaaan nu .~ O O
By Cynthia- Gorney
W%shingon Poet Pbrelgn sale.
LIMA, Peru, Sept. 12 The
Reagan administration has caused a
minor outcry in the Peruvian press,
by nominating as ambassador jo
.Lima a diplomat who reportedly cut
short an earlier tour, of duty here
after allegations linking him to the
Central Intelligence Agency.
Frank Ortiz, the. proposed new
ambassador to. Peru, is a 30-year,
veteran of the Foreign Service who
served as chief political officer at the-
-U.S. Embassy here from 1967 to
1970. In.October 1968, the Peruvian
military overthrew the government
and began what was portrayed at the
time as a social and economic rev-
olution, including the much-
publicized expropriation of a major
U.S.-owned oil company.
A year later, according to two for-
mer government officials who were
close confidants of the then-
president, Gen. Juan Velasco Al-
varado, certain rumors and observa-
tions involving the oil company ex-
propriation and other politically sen-
sitive issues led Velasco to believe
that Ortiz was working with the CIA.
As a result, these officials say, Ve-
lasco called the U.S. Embassy to ask
that Ortiz be removed from his po-
sition.
' Diplomatic officials in the U.S.
Embassy, according to these former
Peruvian officials and versions of the
story that circulated at the time,
asked that Ortiz's departure be de-
layed long enough to. allow him to
Jeave quietly, with no international:
fuss. Three months later, Ortiz left
his Peru post and became deputy
chief of mission in Uruguay. The.
CIA allegations were, never proved,
and both Peruvian Foreign Ministry
officials and some U.S. diplomats
now say there was nothing irregular.
about Ortiz'sdepaiture.
"Frank ended his normal tour of
duty as assigned by the Department
of State," said a U.S. diplomat in a
recent interview. "He did not leave.
here early.:. Before he left, he was
included in, I don't remember if it
was a lunch or dinner or what, and,
more or less apologized to."
Ortiz also had trouble during the
Carter administration, when it was
reported that he' had been trans-
ferred from ambassadorial posts in
Barbados and Guatemala, in part'.-
because of 'disagreements. with ad-
ministration policy. Ortiz is close to
Reagan foreign policy advisers.
But for critics of the Ortiz nom-
ination--some - of whom disagree
with the official. version of Ortiz's
final weeks here--it is both haughty
and insensitive to send back as am-
basador a man who became identi-
fied with some of a previous era's
most volatile U.S.-Peruvian conflicts.
. "It's just asking for trouble," said
Enrique Zileri, editor of the influen-
tial and generally progovernment
news magazine Caretas, which has
run several editorials attacking the
nomination. - "It's a show of arro-
gance, I think ... saying, 'You
kicked this guy out, more- or less.'.
Now he comes back as ambassador.".
The newspaper Correo, saying ,
that it was irrelevant whether Ortiz
belonged to the CIA, called his nom-
ination "a dispiriting example of how
out of touch the Reagan administra
tion is with Latin America." Current
U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr, the
newspaper said, has worked comfort-
ably with the government here and
avoided conflicts with the substan-
tial Peruvian left. Now he is to be re-
-placed "with a diplomat who even
;before arriving has rekindled anti-,
American passions.... This is an
arrogant vision of foreign policy that
has brought a .lot of headaches to the
United States.
El Diario, the most widely read
newspaper of the Peruvian left, has !
declared outright that Ortiz was "ex-
pelled from Peru years ago for being
a CIA agent." The leftist newspaper
Kausachum, which is edited by Ve-
lasco's former press secretary, Au-
!gusto Zimmerman, has made similar
statements, and has taken advantage
Hof the nomination to reprint old al-
Ilegations that President Fernando
Belaunde Terry directly asked for
CIA counterinsurgency aid when he
was president in the mid-1960s. Be-
launde's first government was over-
thrown by the coup that brought Ve-
lasco to power. -
In one issue, Kausachum re-
printed in English a page from Vic-
tor Marchetti's and John D. Marks'
book "The CIA and the Cult of In-
telligence." The reprinted page says
the CIA secretly sent Green Berets
and combat equipment into eastern
Peru in the mid-1960s to help the
Peruvian government fight guerril-
las. I I
Velasco died in 1977, and most of
the few men closest to him in the
Ortiz matter are out of the country
or unwilling to discum it publicly.
But roughly the same version of
-events was described recently in in-
terviews with Zimmerman, who was
presidential press secretary in Octo-
ber 1969, and retired Gen. Jose Gra-1
-ham Hurtado, who-was chief of the,,
president's advisory committee an&
a close associate of Velasco.
According to their stories, Velasco
became concerned about Ortiz dur-
ing negotiations over the Interne--I
tional Petroleum Co., an American,-"
owned enterprise that became a kind,
of nationalistic revolutionary symbol
when Velasco expropriated it shortly
after taking power. Velasco was un. ,,
willing to pay the company - the-1
money it claimed; and in the course
of the protracted U.S.-Peruvian ne-
gotiations, Zimmerman and Grahame
said. Velaecn. berm to min of Oz
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