C.I.A. BACKED SPY MASTER AS VALUABLE ALLY IN PERU

U.S. Policy Makers Were Uneasy About Reports Of Abuses

WASHINGTON -- Vladimiro Montesinos, the intelligence chief at the center of
a volatile confrontation in Peru, has also been the source of friction
inside the U.S. government over the past decade.

While many officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations opposed any
relationship with him, the CIA repeatedly argued successfully that
Montesinos was a valuable and cooperative U.S. ally inside the government
of President Alberto Fujimori.

In discussions within the U.S. Embassy in Lima, between the embassy and
Washington, and in at least two full-scale interagency reviews, the CIA
defended Montesinos and dismissed as unproven and irrelevant reports that
he orchestrated human rights abuses as part of counterterrorism operations
under the Fujimori government during the early 1990s.

By 1995, when the government had vanquished Shining Path guerrillas and
turned to the fight against cocaine exports, Montesinos had come to be seen
by many U.S. officials, even outside the CIA, as indispensable to U.S.
counternarcotics efforts and Washington's overall relationship with Peru.

Confronted with bureaucratic roadblocks or squabbles among officials, U.S.
officials would ask the CIA station in Lima to seek the assistance of the
man they called ``the doctor,'' and the problem would disappear, current
and former U.S. officials said.

The success of the drug war in Peru, where cocaine exports dropped nearly
two-thirds during the late 1990s, gradually reduced resistance to reliance
on Montesinos, despite reports that the National Intelligence Service (SIN)
he controlled was responsible for growing repression against Fujimori's
political and media opponents.

More than a dozen U.S. officials in several government agencies interviewed
this week on the subject -- all of whom declined to be identified --
disagreed sharply over the wisdom of the longstanding relationship with
Montesinos. But all agreed that well into 2000, he served Washington as the
all-around ``Mr. Fixit,'' as several said.

It was not until spring that the official U.S. tide, despite CIA
resistance, turned against him. After an interagency review concluded that
Montesinos had directed efforts to subvert Peruvian democracy and elect
Fujimori to a third term, national security adviser Samuel ``Sandy'' Berger
and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright signed off on a directive to
sharply reduce U.S. ties with him.

The internal U.S. dispute became moot Saturday night, when the Peruvian
president suddenly called for new elections, in which he said he would not
be a candidate, and vowed to dismantle Montesinos' intelligence operation.
He acted after a videotape was leaked that showed Montesinos buying off a
lawmaker and amid allegations that the security chief was involved in an
illegal sale of AK-47 assault rifles to rebels in Colombia.

``The doctor'' has disappeared from sight and, while it remains uncertain
in the current Peruvian upheaval what will happen to him, it seems clear
that his days of maximum power are over.

Diplomats who said they repeatedly asked if Montesinos was on the CIA
payroll were told that he was not.

Montesinos' power began to fall apart in Lima and in Washington last
spring. When Fujimori flouted the Peruvian Constitution by announcing he
would run for a third term, it appeared Montesinos was behind a
dirty-tricks campaign against the president's political opponents. When
allegations flew that SIN had somehow interfered with ballot-counting
computer programs during the second round of voting, and other governments
arose in outrage, influential players within the Clinton administration
reconsidered the relationship with Montesinos.