WHERE WE WENT WRONG

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100630003-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12
NEW REPUBLIC
24 March 1986
Unexpected lessons from Manila.
WHERE WE WENT WRONG
THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S decision to
withdraw its support from Ferdinand E. Marcos has
been almost universally heralded. At home the praise has
been effusive and bipartisan. In the archipelago, Filipinos
celebrating in the streets wrapped themselves in the Amer-
ican flag. But it wasn't long before the enduring prob-
lems in the Philippines resurfaced: the eviscerated econo-
my, the communist-led insurgency, the corrupted demo-
cratic institutions, and so on. The current euphoria
should not obscure America's partial responsibility for
the rubble. Looking back on 20 years of U.S. policy in
the Philippines, we might learn five lessons.
(1) Listen to career foreign service officers at the mid and even Lowe;
levels. When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, foreign
service officers in the State Department's Bureau of Intelli-
gence and Research were virtually the only U.S. officials to
voice any concern. In a secret memorandum for Secretary
of State William Rogers, they expressed prescient "skepti-
cism" about Marcos's commitment to reform, and con-
cluded: "By one means or another, Marcos clearly intends
to control Philippine politics for many more years." Their
advice was ignored. The National Security Council, the
White House, and the Pentagon embraced Marcos.
During the Carter administration, some foreign service
officers in Manila and the human rights bureau at the State
Department believed that the administration ought to
press Marcos to lift martial law. But Carter did little, in
large part because the Pentagon didn't want any talk about
human rights to interfere with negotiations about the leas-
ing of American military bases.
The Reagan administration moved even closer to Mar-
cos, honoring him in 1982 with his first state visit to Wash-
ington in 16 years. This policy began to change only to-
ward the end of Reagan's first term, when mid-level
embassy officers began insisting that there would be no
reform as long as Marcos was in power. It was also an
embassy officer who alerted Washington in the summer of
1984 to the growing threat posed by the New People's
Army. But these views were largely ignored by senior
policymakers until they finally began to realize that Mar-
cos was losing control of the country. In the final days it
was an insistent Secretary of State George Shultz, articu-
lating the views of the foreign service officers, who per-
suaded the president that the United States could no longer
abide Marcos.
(2) Think long term. America's short-term interest in warm
relations with the incumbent government was served
when Nixon acquiesced in Marcos's declaration of martial
law, when Carter said little about Marcos's dictatorial
ways, and when Reagan assiduously courted Marcos. But
the growth of the NPA indicates the damage to our long-
term interest in stability and democracy. When Marcos
declared martial law, there were barely enough NPA guer-
rillas to knock off a bank. Today there are some 15,000
well-armed, well-trained guerrillas, and they.enjoy wide-
spread support.
(3) Remember the opposition. When Reagan declared, during
a 1984 presidential campaign debate, that the communists
were the only alternative to Marcos, he spoke a grain of
truth. There were very few democratically inclined politi-
cians of any stature to replace Marcos. Their ranks had
been thinned by more than a decade of dictatorial rule. The
United States contributed to the shortage of democratic
politicians by doing little to nurture them. During Carter's
first year in office, contacts with the democratic opposition
did increase. But after Vice President Walter Mondale vis-
ited the Marcoses in May 1979, American officials in the
Philippines sharply curtailed their meetings with critics of
Marcos.
The best example of the United States's coolness toward
Filipino democrats was its treatment of Benigno Aquino Jr.
Aquino is now regarded as a democratic martyr in the
United States. Yet while he was alive, he received little
attention or respect from the American government. When
Marcos threw Aquino in jail in 1972, there was no official
Washington protest. In 1975 a retired foreign service offi-
cer, Paul Kattenburg (whose career had suffered when he
had spoken against the Vietnam War), sought to act as an
intermediary in securing Aquino's release. He was unsuc-
cessful. When Aquino was released from prison in 1980,
the Carter administration did help arrange for him to come
to the United States. But when Aquino was invited in
December 1980 to appear at the State Department's Open
Forum (designed to expose foreign service officers to alter-
native policy views), top State Department officials ob-
jected. They feared, correctly, that his presence would
anger the Marcoses and would make the incoming admin-
istration's relations with the Philippine government more
difficult. Aquino was ultimately allowed to speak, but
only to a restricted audience.
A corollary to this lesson is to learn to distinguish be-
tween nationalists and communists. The United States ig-
nored Aquino and accepted Marcos's seizure of power in
1972 in part because they viewed Aquino and other oppo-
sition politicians as strident nationalists. They were, but
they were not therefore anti-American or pro-communist,
as Washington assumed. There is not just a moral impera-
tive behind this lesson. There is also a very practical one:
the opposition might someday become the government.
The goodwill that President Aquino and her Cabinet show
toward the United States may well depend on how willing
they are to forgive the treatment they received when they
were on the outs.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100630003-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100630003-2_L
(4) Don't meddle in another country 5 domestic politics. To some,
the toppling of Marcos proves the opposite: that we should
meddle. Yet our meddling in the Philippines did not begin
last month or last year, but several decades ago, and it did
not serve us well. In the 1950s and 1960s the CIA doled out
hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates, raised even
more funds from American businesses, wrote candidates'
speeches, set up organizations to support them, an or-
chestrated press coverage. According to intelligence
sources, the CIA assisted a presidential candidate named
Diosdado Macapagal in 1961. Macapagal won, but when
he ran for reelection in 1965, Philippine military and intel-
ligence officials who worked with the CIA asked the agen-
cy not to-he-1p him. It is not clear whether the United States
then helped his rival, an ambitious young senator named
Ferdinand Marcos. In any case, Marcos was elected in 1965,
and by the time he declared martial law, he knew he could
count on the support of the United States.
This kind of interference has tended to do us little good
in the long run. We helped depose President Ngo Dinh
Diem of South Vietnam in 1963, only to find ourselves
with Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu. We helped
oust Salvador Allende in Chile, and got Augusto Pinochet.
We clandestinely helped elect Forbes Burnham in Guyana
in 1964, then watched him move closer to the Soviet Union.
We plotted the overthrow and assassination of Patrice
Lumumba in 1961, turning Zaire over to Mobutu Sese
Seko, whose only rival in ostentatious corruption is Imelda
Marcos.
It's disingenuous to counter that our granting or with-
holding of economic or military assistance always affects
domestic politics, that we are always meddling to some
degree. The principle of nonintervention doesn't rule out
normal relations or aid. But it does mean that we don't
clandestinely involve ourselves in elections, and that we
don't go around trying to overthrow governments-of
whatever political orientation. Reagan's call for Marcos's
resignation, though perhaps justified by our long support
for the dictator, went too far. Reagan should have said only
that the U.S. wouldn't supply military or economic aid to a
Marcos government. The rest was up to the Filipinos.
(5) Banish the fear of being charged with being soft on communism.
This lesson is primarily for Democrats. What the Reagan
administration finally did two weeks ago, the Carter ad-
ministration could have done eight years ago. The problem
was its excessive fear that by speaking out against Marcos
in the Philippines it would be criticized by conservatives in
the United States for somehow playing into communist
hands. The triumph of Corazon Aquino has proved how
foolish that fear was.
-J RAYMOND BONNER
Raymond Bonner is working on a book about the U.S.
relations with the Marcos government, to be published by
Times Books.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100630003-2