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By DAVID ADAMS
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 23, 2000
MIAMI -- It's no secret that the United States has in the past had no qualms about siding with Latin American dictators and human rights violators.
"He may be an S.O.B, but he's our S.O.B.," is an oft-quoted phrase attributed to President Franklin Roosevelt.
He was talking about the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. In those days that's how the United States got its way.
But the use of such ogres appeared to have died out with U.S. embarrassment over Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. After a lengthy career sponsored in part by the CIA, "our man in Panama" turned out to be a drug-trafficking dictator.
Now it turns out Washington's old ways may not be dead after all.
This week two more names were added to that list: former Chilean secret police chief Manuel Contreras and Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos, currently at the epicenter of a scandal rocking the government of Alberto Fujimori.
Granted, Contreras is another blast from the past, dating from the 1970s dirty war against leftists by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
A report submitted to Congress on Tuesday revealed that Contreras was a CIA informant from 1974 to 1977. Most troubling is the fact that Contreras was an active CIA "contact" at a time when he was planning an act of terrorism in the U.S. capital: the notorious 1976 assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. According to the congressional report, the "contact" with Contreras was considered "necessary to accomplish the CIA's mission, in spite of concerns that this relationship might lay the CIA open to charges of aiding internal political repression."
That's the common argument made to justify why governments -- not just the United States' -- sometimes have to make friends with the bad guys. It's called "constructive engagement."
By befriending the bad guys, governments believe it helps them gain access to important information and gain confidence that their interests will be protected.
Eduardo Gamarra, head of the Latin American studies unit at Florida International University, explains the theory this way. "These people are going to be running the show anyway so they might as well be our friends, rather than becoming our enemy," he said. "This is a world of pretty evil people and the U.S. has to deal with them. They may be disgusting, but they are real players."
But Gamarra and others argue the theory is short-sighted. "In the long run the most pragmatic approach is the idealistic one," he said. "You can't rely on short-term expediency to make long-term strategy. Generally it comes and bites you in the butt because you end up being burned by these type of people."
Take the case of Montesinos.
His relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies also dates back to the 1970s. But it didn't end.
According to the Washington Post, it was only after an inter-agency review this spring that the Clinton administration decided to "sharply reduce" U.S. ties with him.
His record speaks for itself.
As an army captain in Peru, Montesinos was accused of high treason in 1976 for allegedly selling Peruvian military secrets to the United States. He was eventually jailed only briefly for lesser offenses.
He re-emerged later as a drug lawyer, and also defended generals accused of corruption and human rights abuses.
When Fujimori won election in 1990, Montesinos tidied up some of the president's tax problems. He was soon Fujimori's right-hand man, heading the National Intelligence Service, or aptly named SIN, Peru's equivalent to the CIA.
After more than 20 years of poor relations with Peru, the Montesinos connection "solidified the CIA's comeback in Peru," according to Gustavo Gorriti, a prominent journalist who has investigated Montesinos' murky past.
"By 1990, Montesinos, for all his drug and human rights baggage, was a prized and protected asset of the CIA," Gorriti said.
Things would only get worse. Montesinos made the SIN into the most feared intelligence apparatus in Latin America. Not only did he continue to cover up a series of gruesome human rights abuses by the military, SIN became Fujimori's instrument for undermining Peruvian democracy and extending his grip on power.
The scandals continued. There was the drug trafficker known as "the Vatican" who told a court that he paid Montesinos $50,000 a month in protection money. There was the SIN chief's $2-million in unexplained assets.
That was followed by the murder of an intelligence agent and the brutal torture of another, both accused of leaking incriminating SIN documents to the press.
Despite a few internal disputes at the U.S. Embassy in Lima, the CIA refused to allow any of these scandals to upset Washington's relationship with Montesinos.
When U.S. human rights groups protested to the Clinton administration, they got no response.
By then Peru had become too important to the U.S. war on drugs. Indeed, U.S. officials began to talk about "the Peru success story," referring to Fujimori's cooperation in the eradication of coca fields.
As head of intelligence, Montesinos was a key figure in counter-drug policy. In a famous 1998 meeting with Montesinos in Lima, the U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, publicly congratulated Peru for its efforts.
"He was a crucial asset for the CIA," said Gorriti. "He commanded so much power and he was willing to play ball."
It was only after Montesinos was linked to rigged elections in April that Washington finally began to reconsider the relationship.
But not before the CIA's error was fully brought home. According to Peruvian press reports, while U.S. officials were discussing what to do with their disreputable ally, Montesinos was once again up to no good.
This time he was allegedly involved in an illegal arms deal with the Russian drug mafia to supply left-wing FARC guerrillas in Colombia with weapons.
These were the same guerrillas Washington was denouncing as the greatest threat to regional stability. To combat FARC and the drug trade, the Clinton administration secured a $1.3-billion aid package for Colombia.
If ever the United States got burned, this was surely a case.
But that doesn't compare to the damage left behind in Peru. In just a decade -- and with the backing of the United States -- Fujimori and Montesinos have corrupted almost every institution of state, leaving Peruvian democracy in tatters.
Siding with Montesinos in some ways made sense for the CIA, Gorriti acknowledges. The mistake was letting expediency get in the way of the right policy.
"In the long run it causes a lot of harm and a lot of wrongdoing and impunity," he said.
But he doubts the Peruvian experience will result in any change of strategy at the CIA.
"The trouble is that in this kind of debate the intelligence guys always win."