CAPTURE OF PERUVIAN SPY CHIEF PROMISES GLOBAL REPERCUSSIONS

Montesinos Returns Home To Face A List Of Criminal Charges

LIMA, Peru -- Vladimiro Montesinos, Latin America's most-wanted fugitive
and the shadowy Peruvian spy chief, came home in handcuffs Monday to face a
slew of charges ranging from drug and arms trafficking to leading death squads.

Montesinos, 56, who was captured in Venezuela on Saturday night reportedly
with crucial help from the FBI, returned in a Peruvian police plane Monday
morning. Hundreds of heavily armed security personnel shielded Montesinos
from a crush of media photographers and prevented Peruvians from getting a
view of the man many believed the real and unelected ruler of Peru from
1990 to 2000.

Peruvians celebrated his arrest. "He needs to be locked away forever. He
caused this country so much suffering," said Carlos Gutierrez, a store
clerk in the middle-class neighborhood of Lince.

Bush administration officials said that the United States played a pivotal
role in the capture of Montesinos, once a close U.S. ally. The key break
came when the FBI began monitoring a former Venezuelan intelligence officer
who reportedly was trying to obtain funds from a $38 million account
allegedly held secretly by Montesinos at the Pacific Industrial Bank in
Miami. The former officer was arrested Saturday after the bank said that he
was trying to extort the funds with threats. He reportedly gave U.S.
authorities information about Montesinos' whereabouts, which reportedly was
passed to the Peruvian government.

The capture of Montesinos in Venezuela has global repercussions. Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez must answer how his police forces were unable to
capture the high-profile fugitive for months. Japan will be under intense
pressure to extradite Montesinos' boss, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who
fled to Japan last year to escape corruption charges at home.

The United States may also face embarrassment if Montesinos is aggressively
prosecuted, because of his long and close relationship with the CIA and
Drug Enforcement Administration. Montesinos was cashiered from the Peruvian
army in the 1970s for selling secrets to the CIA and worked with the CIA
during his decade as Fujimori's intelligence chief and closest adviser.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former drug czar Gen.
Barry McCaffrey have both said they sought to distance U.S. policy from
Montesinos during the Clinton administration but the CIA and Drug
Enforcement Administration won out in internal debate.

"From the start, it was widely understood by most of us that Montesinos had
a dark past," held no elected position and was a threat to human rights,
McCaffrey said Monday. "Secretary Albright and I were probably more leery
of dealing with the guy" than officials in some other U.S. agencies,
McCaffrey said.

Late Monday, a U.S. embassy official in Lima, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said that Peruvian officials, using the FBI's information,
planned to snatch Montesinos Saturday night, without the knowledge of
Venezuelan authorities. For six months, Montesinos had been reported to be
enjoying sanctuary from Chavez, and neither the United States nor Peru
trusted Venezuela to give Montesinos up.

Before they could capture him, the U.S. official said, associates of the
arrested Venezuelan in Miami turned Montesinos over to Venezuelan
authorities. With the United States and Peru hot on the trail, Venezuela
extradited him.