THREE JOURNALISTS REPORT ON POLITICAL LEADERS AND ISSUES IN THE PHILIPPINES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740077-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 77
• Publication Date: May 14, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740077-9
ARTICLE APP ff' CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
ON PAGE
14 May 1987
Three journalists report on political leaders
and issues in the Philippines
Wa zIng with a Dictator, by Ray-
mond Bonner. New York: Time
Books. 512 pp. $19.95.
The Four Day. of Courage, by Bryan
Johnson. New York: The Free Press:
284 pp. $19.95.
Corason Aquino, by Lucy Komisar.
New York: George Braziller, Inc. 290
pp. $16.95.
Books by political journalists
are a special genre. Sometimes
full of sound and fury, some-
times cool and analytical, they
are often polemical. Their writ-
ers take sides. Not surprisingly,
the most convincing cases are
made by those who combine
homework and field-
work, the careful mar-
shaling of information
vulnerability of that front-line
state in the crusade against com-
munism). Again and again, Bon-
ner shows how, to gain Washing-
ton's backing, all the Marcoses
had to do was raise the specter
of the red menace and the most
powerful movers and shakers in
every administration from Lyn-
don Johnson's to Ronald Rea-
gan's would fall in line.
In addition to consideration
of the behavior of the main
American players and of the
Marcoses themselves, Bonner
discusses the roles of such criti-
cal $g= as George Kennan,
the shaper of American policy
toward the poet-independent
Philippines; Edward Lansdale,
BOOKS
the legendary Ugly
American; Henry Al-
fred Byroade, the
tough ambassador;
about the subject, com-
plemented and embellished by
eyewitness reportage.
These three new volumes on
the Philippines, while different
in scope and style, are all repre-
sentative of the form. The first -
and best - is an assessment of
the United States' longtime sup-
port of Ferdinand Marcos; the
second is an account of the mu-
tiny of reformists in the mili-
tary, which assured the succes.
sion of Corazon Aquino; the
third is a portrait of the widow
who would be president.
Raymond Bonner's book is a
superb piece of foreign policy
analysis based on investigative
reporting and the examination
of thousands of documents. The
former New York Times corre-
spondent offers a detailed ex-
pose of America's protracted
"waltz" with Ferdinand Marcos,
a dance poluique in which he (or
his "first lady," Imelda) did
most of the leading. For more
comprehensive than the other
books, Bonner's examines the to-
tality of the Janus-faced United
States policy toward the Philip.
pines (one side touting the coun-
try as a showcase of V. stern-
style democracy in East Asia,
the other worrying about the
CIA agent D who
posed as a Journalist and
free-land contributor to this
newspNM for many Yean Juan
nce Enrile, the once-and-fu-
ture defense minister; Benigno
(Ninoy) Aquino, the principal
catalyst for the chanfes that
were finally to come; 'suspect
Carterites" such as Morton Ab-
ramowitz, Leslie Gelb, and Rich-
ard Holbrooke; and a number of
American congressmen, includ-
ing Rep. Stephen Solarz and Sen.
Paul Laxalt, who, each in his
own way played a crucial part in
bringing down the final curtain
on the Marcos era.
Bryan Johnson's purview is
far more limited: His principal
time frame is not measured in
decades but in days, four crucial
days. His objective is to tell the
story of the revolt against the
Marcoses' "kleptocracy" that
led to the Filipinos' own disen-
gagement from the embrace of
the dictator, a move made possi-
ble, he argues, because of the
mass defection of the military.
Johnson, a correspondent for
the Toronto Globe and Mail, has
a special fascination for his wife's homeland, its spirit
and its spirituality, its politics and its people. His book,
an almost play-bY-plaY account of the final showdown,
does not focus on the principal protagonists in the
disputed presidential election of 1986 but on their gener-
als, the "honorable" Fidel Ramos (a defector who was to
lead the Reform the Armed Forces Now Movement) and
the "sinister" Flabian Ver, their side-switching minions,
and Jaime Cardinal Sin, the prelate who gave the revolu-
tion his blessing and encouraged the campaign of believ-
ers in what, Johnson suggests, he came to see as inspired
insurrection against the forces of evil.
Vivid characterizations persist throughout this, the
most unabashedly partisan of the three volumes. It is full
of breathless, of hyperbolic prose, and colorful word por-
8cod guys and bad guys, often using biblical
imagery. Whether describing the revolt; the imminent
onslaught of the Loyalists with their formidable armor
and bristling artillery; the one woman, June Keithley,
controling the airwaves on Radio Bandido; or the
capitulation itself, there is a constant evocation of 91d
T ent struggles being waged with 20th century
vices. Reading "The Fbur Days of Courage" is like
watching a Hollywood film - which, I suspect, it will
soon become.
Lucy Komisar, a free-lance journalist and sensitive
writer whose articles have appeared in many newspa,
pers, including the Monitor, covered the 1986 elections the Philippines and the peaceful revolution that fol-
lowed. She returned to write her "unauthorized biogra
a ..... A
nhv" of C
-
o
quin
. Despite her obvious affection for the aewi? resident? .
Komisar does not refrain from pointing out her foibles-
and those of her family and others in her entourage.
Writing about the life and times of Mrs. Aquino, her
background, her years in the US, her subordinate role as
the self-effacing wife of a prominent and flamboyant
political figure, her reluctant involvement to become a
stand-in candidate for her assassinated husband, and
her manner of rising to meet the challenge and to mobi-
lize a nation against the entrenched oligarchy, Komisar
conveys a clear sense of both the inner strength and
political metamorphosis of a remarkable woman "Cory
was a phenomenon. A charismatic leader who spoke in a
monotone, she aroused trust, love, even adulation among
the masses. She was not simply [Roman] Catholic, utt
spiritual to the core.... She was also a fatalist. Death
would come at the appointed time. Those who tried to
scare her have realized that her faith and fatalism would
make her a willing martyr."
As Komisar shows in her review of the trials and
tribulations of President Aquino's AM year in office,
despite attempted coups and challenges to force her out
- including one led by the enigmatic Emile - none
succeeded. She remained in control, trying to set a new
course through a quagmire created, in large part, by her
predecessor and his American supporters.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740077-9