INDIGNITIES MOUNT FOR PERU'S EX-SPY CHIEF AFTER LONG MANHUNT

LIMA, Peru, July 11 -- Vladimiro L. Montesinos, the former spy chief who
dominated Peru from the shadows for a decade and lived a life gilded with
beachside mansions and diamond-crusted watches, is now spending his nights
on a skimpy foam mattress over a cold slab of concrete.

Food is delivered to him through a trapdoor in his tiny cell in the prison
block inside the naval base in the port of Callao near Lima. There is a
single spigot of cold water for washing up. He spends his time reading law
books and a dogeared copy of the Peruvian Constitution under a single naked
light bulb and a thin stream of light from a tiny skylight, according to
senior law enforcement officials.

There has been no shortage of indignities for Mr. Montesinos since his
arrest almost three weeks ago in Venezuela after an eight-month manhunt
that ended when the Federal Bureau of Investigation trapped an associate in
Miami and persuaded him to pinpoint the hideout, in Caracas, of Latin
America's most wanted fugitive.

Life is not too likely to improve soon for the former spy who dominated
Peru's extensive intelligence apparatus and armed forces for most of
President Alberto K. Fujimori's tenure, from 1990 to last year. He faces
160 investigations into allegations that he used Mr. Fujimori's personal
jet plane to smuggle drugs, trafficked arms to the largest guerrilla group
in Colombia, laundered money and traded favors and bribes with Peru's most
powerful politicians, executives and military leadership.

It has been another strange turn for a 56-year-old spy whose Marxist father
named him after Vladimir I. Lenin only to see him eventually join the army.
As a young captain, Mr. Montesinos was cashiered in the late 1970's when
his superiors learned that he was handing state secrets to the Central
Intelligence Agency. After a year in jail, he studied law, became a lawyer
for drug dealers and eventually became Mr. Fujimori's own tax and divorce
lawyer.

Mr. Montesinos was the man whom Mr. Fujimori relied on to fix his political
and security problems. The C.I.A. turned to him to run an antidrug
operation that it financed until last year, when reports of his bribing
opposition legislators and smuggling arms to Colombia became widely known
and sent the government into a tailspin.

But since he was brought back to Lima in handcuffs, Mr. Montesinos has been
reduced to complaining that his coat is too thin to keep him warm and that
he has been denied his constitutional rights. For nine days, he went on a
partial hunger strike -- he indulged in crackers, cookies and chocolates
that he had squirreled away in his pockets -- in a vain effort to avoid
incarceration in the high-security prison that he helped design to lock up
Peru's six most notorious terrorists.

He requested a meeting with two of those terrorist leaders, Abimael Guzman
and Victor Polay, in the Callao prison courtyard, an effort, prosecutors
surmise, to form an alliance to cause mischief. Prosecutors said that they
had no intention to grant the request, but that when the two terrorists
heard about the proposal they said they had no interest in the meeting
anyway, prison officials said.

"At first, Montesinos appeared beaten and defeated, but he quickly
recovered to take over his own defense," the director of the prison system,
Gino Costa, said. "Everyone who has met him says their jaws just drop when
they observe his intense intellect and trapdoor memory. He's very
charismatic and simpatico."

Mr. Montesinos is also still cunning.

He has let it be known that he has thousands of videotapes that he says
show the intimacies of Peru's most powerful, including one that he says
shows the top prosecutor investigating him snorting cocaine with a former
justice minister. Law enforcement officials say Mr. Montesinos has tried to
manipulate the 15 judges and prosecutors who are interviewing him with
dissembling narratives that mix half-truths with baldfaced lies and to
charm his guards by recalling their nicknames from the days when he was
their boss.

Several prosecutors and judges who have begun what promises to be months of
interrogations say he is starting to cooperate with the prosecution by
giving vital details on his vast telephone-taping operations and arms
trafficking networks and naming seven senior- and middle-ranking officials
who took part in his schemes. But he has refused to talk about any crimes
punishable by life imprisonment like murder.

"He's named people whom he has bribed," said Jose Carlos Ugaz, the special
prosecutor who is investigating Mr. Montesinos and Mr. Fujimori. "Some of
the things he says are true, and others are not. I think his strategy is to
complicate the lives of his enemies and help those who want to help him
like his family, his lovers and his allies. He wants to invalidate himself
as a witness. But he cannot control his hatred for certain people."

Among those whom Mr. Montesinos apparently hates is Mr. Ugaz, who said Mr.
Montesinos had spoken against him to several judges last week. Mr. Ugaz
said he was accused of using cocaine and requesting from Mr. Montesinos a
$2 million bribe last year in Panama during the preliminary stages of his
investigation.

Mr. Ugaz denied both allegations. He said he had heard that Mr. Montesinos
had also intimated in some interrogations that he has information about the
sexual peccadilloes of several judges.

Prosecutors have hundreds of captured videotapes made by Mr. Montesinos --
many of which have been shown on television -- some made in the
presidential palace without Mr. Fujimori's knowledge.

Officials said that the tapes documented many serious crimes and that since
Mr. Montesinos's capture, several of his aides who are already under
arrest, including members of the so-called Colina Group death squad, have
begun to give important evidence.

Law-enforcement officials said they were still seeking a clearer notion of
how Mr. Montesinos managed his many enterprises, the exact nature of his
relationship with Mr. Fujimori and whether the former spy had more money
stashed abroad beyond the $264 million in bank accounts that they have found.

Prosecutors say Mr. Montesinos will probably face three to four years of
trials. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail unless he
cooperates with prosecutors who are seeking a complete picture of official
crimes in their ultimate objective to extradite and try Mr. Fujimori. The
former president has been living in exile in Japan since fleeing there when
his government collapsed in November.

"It's probable that someone so close to Fujimori could have important
evidence against him, and he could give up that evidence to help himself,"
Justice Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said in an interview. "Sincere
confession can reduce penalties."

Prosecutors said their investigations of Mr. Fujimori focused on his links
to a death squad, his personal corruption and his connections to the
international drug trade. Two members of the death squad, which operated in
Lima in the early 90's, have told prosecutors that Mr. Montesinos had told
them that Mr. Fujimori was aware of their existence, law enforcement
officials said. But the former president's role in planning and controlling
operations is unclear.

Congresswoman Susana Higuchi, Mr. Fujimori's former wife, has accused him
of siphoning $12.5 million in contributions from Japanese for poor Peruvian
children. Mr. Fujimori has denied the allegation. But investigators here
said they were trying to find the money.

Mr. Ugaz said he was trying to confirm accusations by Roberto Escobar that
his brother Carlos, the slain head of the Medellin drug cartel, had spoken
directly with Mr. Fujimori to give him campaign contributions. "Various
jailed capos," Mr. Ugaz said, "have told us that Fujimori and Montesinos
handled all the drug trafficking between Peru and Colombia."

Mr. Ugaz said the government hoped to deliver overwhelming evidence against
Mr. Fujimori to Japan "to show that these accusations are common crimes,
not political persecution." If Japan continues to insist that Mr. Fujimori
is a Japanese citizen who cannot be extradited, Mr. Ugaz said, Peru will
request that he be tried in Japan instead.