“Cancellation of passports, revocation of visas, even extradition are…childish threats…ignore them because they are idle.”6He reminded his audience that the United States was a signatory to a United Nations convention that protected political refugees, prohibiting the expulsion or return of refugees to their country if their lives or freedom would be threatened there because of their race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular group or political party. But the fear persevered and posed organizing and recruitment problems.
There was always the lingering suspicion that the opposition groups were being infiltrated by Philippine
government agents. Gillego, a retired army major and military intelligence officer with the Armed Forces of the
Philippines and an MFP officer, cited suspicious incidents directed against MFP officers—the garbage cans at the
San Francisco residence of Steve Psinakis had been ransacked; threats had been made against Dr. Jojo Villalon in
Chicago and Dr. Arturo Taca in St. Louis; the home of Willie Crucillo in New York had been burglarized; and MFP
documents had been stolen during a national convention on the West Coast. Dr. Dante Simbulan, of the Church
Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, said that the day after he testified regarding human rights abuses
in the Philippines before the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs in June 1983, his house was
burglarized. All of these incidents were duly reported to the appropriate U.S. authorities, but none were ever
resolved, according to Gillego.7
A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the FBI had accessed the post office box rented by the MFP at
the Madison Square Postal Station in Manhattan, which received donations from sympathizers. The New York
Timesreported on a plot to assassinate Manglapus. It had been revealed to him by Eduardo Quintero, a former
deputy ambassador to the United States. He identified the would-be assassin as a George Torre, “who told both
Quintero and Manglapus that General Ver had offered to drop a murder charge against him in Manila if he agreed to
kill Mr. Manglapus. Mr. Torre could not be located.” General Fabian Ver was chief of staff of the Philippine
Armed Forces and a close associate of Marcos.8The Timeswent on to report that “two former high ranking Carter Administration officials said the U.S.
interrupted messages from Manila to Philippine agents in this country five years ago ordering them to harass
opponents of Mr. Marcos. At the same time, a 1982 (U.S.) Defense Intelligence Agency report made public last week
indicated that the Pentagon believed the military attaché to the Philippine Embassy Brig. Gen. Angel G. Kanapi
was charged with operating against anti-Marcos dissidents here.”
Evidently, the monitoring had started a year after the imposition of martial law. According to a classified 1979
report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, “the CIA became aware in October 1973 that the
Philippine government had become increasingly concerned that President Marcos's enemies in the U.S. might be
developing, or had already, an influence that would adversely affect the Philippine government.”9Mike Glennon, counsel to the committee, who wrote the report,
mentioned three “threat” groups—the MFP; the former mayor of Manila, Antonio Villegas (who never joined any
U.S.-based opposition); and Eugenio Lopez, a business tycoon whose assets had been taken over by the government
after martial law was imposed, and brother of Marcos's pre–martial law vice president, Fernando Lopez. Marcos
was holding Eugenio “Geny” Lopez Jr., Eugenio's son, among his political prisoners, in effect using him as a
hostage to keep Eugenio Sr. from agitating against him from the United States. He was also settling a score
against the Lopezes. Fernando had turned against him during the last election, using their influential newspaper,
the Manila Chronicle, and their TV stations to keep up a steady drumbeat of negative news about his
administration. Geny was the newspaper's publisher. It was the first newspaper closed down by martial law.
The relationship between Marcos and Lopez Sr. went beyond politics and predated martial law. In a history of
oligarchic clans that dominate Philippine life, Alfred McCoy wrote:
For over thirty years, Lopez had used presidential patronage to secure subsidized government financing and
dominate state-regulated industries, thereby amassing the largest private fortune in the Philippines. After
declaring martial law in 1972, Marcos used the same state power to demolish the Lopez conglomerates and transfer
their assets to a new economic elite of his kin and courtiers…During the period of the Philippine Republic
(1946–72), the two became master manipulators of the state, operators without peer within their respective
realms. Although Marcos was a career politician and Lopez an entrepreneur, the common commingling of business and
politics drew them into the political arena where they met face-to-face, first as allies and later as
enemies.