CIA AND DRUGS, OUR MAN IN PERU

In late October, while the CIA was vigorously denying complicity with
narcotraffickers here at home, drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey traveled to
Peru and met with Vladimiro Montesinos, the head of that country's National
Intelligence Service (SIN, in its ironic Spanish initials). Montesinos has
links to both the CIA and international drug traffickers, as well as a
history of human rights abuses. McCaffrey went not to bury Montesinos but,
according the Peruvian press, to praise him as an "outstanding and
knowledgeable strategist." It was the first time in six years that
Montesinos, the second most powerful man in Peru after President Fujimori,
was seen in public. He had been forced into a shadow role because of a
particularly unsavory past: While in the army during the 1970s, he was
caught spying and passing state secrets to the US and was convicted of
desertion. After being released from prison, he became the lawyerofchoice
for Peru's drug kingpins, and used his army and political connections to
work his way back to the back rooms of power.

It is widely assumed that he maintains a relationship with both the CIA and
drug traffickers. Human Rights Watch/Americas and the Washington Office on
Latin America also charge him with human rights abuses: "A death squad
composed of members of the SIN and military agents and organized under
Montesinos' direction has been responsible for some of the most serious
rights violations attributed to the armed forces under Fujimori's
administration, including disappearances, torture and illegal executions."

McCaffrey's public endorsement of Montesinos came at a crucial time: New
allegations against Peru's "Rasputin" were prompting demands for a public
inquiry. On trial for cocaine trafficking, drug lord Demetrio Chavez
Penaherrera testified in August that he paid Montesinos $50,000 a month
during 1991 for unhampered use of a clandestine airstrip to export drugs to
Colombia. Chavez also said Montesinos had communicated with him by radio at
his remote hideout, had warned him when counternarcotics operations were
scheduled for the Huallaga valley, and once attended a payoff in person. "I
saw him; his group arrived in two black cars," Chavez said. "I saw how they
gave him the money."

The drug lord said that he left Peru for Colombia soon after Montesinos
demanded that he double the monthly bribe to $100,000. When Chavez was
finally arrested, it was not for trafficking, but for collaborating with
terrorists. This charge pushed his case into the secretive military justice
system, which was able to hold him in isolation, thus spurring complaints
that the military was trying to shut him up.

When he finally appeared at the trial, Chavez dropped the bombshell
kickback charges against Montesinos. A week later, in a barely coherent
statement, Chavez recanted, saying he had been "confused." His lawyer,
Pablo Castro, suspected that the retraction and the quick deterioration in
his client's mental and physical health were the result of mistreatment by
SIN.

The Chavez affair is the latest in a series of drugrelated incidents that
have embarrassed the Peruvian government but done nothing to dampen US
enthusiasm and support. In one incident, more than 380 pounds of coca paste
were found in a former presidential plane. Soon after, more than 200 pounds
were found onboard two navy ships, one in the Canadian port of Vancouver.

Officially, the police are in charge of antidrug operations. In fact, it is
the military that plays the key role, blending counterinsurgency and
counternarcotics in a potent cocktail of corruption. Up to 300 military
personnel have been investigated or charged in connection with drugs since
1990. Regional commanders overseeing clandestine airstrips allegedly got a
$10,000 kickback per shipment of drugs loaded by soldiers under their
command onto Colombiabound planes. The airstrip from which Chavez's drug
cargoes were flown to Colombia was only a few kilometers from a
counterinsurgency base in the upper Huallaga Valley.

In this case of military involvement in narcotrafficking, as in many
others, the runway leads to Montesinos.According to Ricardo Soberon, a
narcotics expert at the Andean Commission of Jurists, "He controls the
military establishment for Fujimori."

McCaffrey's visit to bestow Washington's seal of approval on Fujimori and
Montesinos was preceded by US praise for Peru's human rights record and by
a personal letter to Fujimori from Pres. Clinton, praising Peru's admirable
progress in the war on drugs. While the two top Peruvians basked in
McCaffrey and Clinton's warm approval, some Peruvian officials suggest that
US leniency reflects the fact that Montesinos may still be on the US payroll.

Meanwhile, CIA Director John Deutch continues to deny US complicity in
narcotrafficking.