Let’s keep our hands off the Aragoncillo case: It’s a US problem

Our newspaper’s banner headline last Saturday, based on a report filed by our STAR Washington Bureau Chief Jose Katigbak, says it all: "ARAGONCILLO PLEADS GUILTY."

In sum, Leandro Aragoncillo, a former United States Marine who worked in the Bill Clinton White House and even as a staff member in the office of former US Vice President Al Gore, then US Vice President Dick Cheney (The Shotgun Kid), and ended up as an intelligence analyst in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), betrayed his country – the United States – by ransacking FBI files and other government sources for information to pass on to Filipino opposition politicians.

Aragoncillo, a US citizen of Filipino descent, regularly "downloaded" US national security documents and sent these to his Filipino contacts – much of the stuff designed to embarrass La Presidenta GMA by revealing what nasty things US diplomats and observers were saying about her and her government. Aragoncillo’s contact in the USA (specifically identified by him in his "confession") was former Senior Police Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino – a guy known to be close to opposition leader Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, who was defeated in a run for the Presidency in May 2004. Erap, Jinggoy, J.V. Ejercito, etc., have also readily admitted receiving e-mail from Aragoncillo, so this fellow obviously had a rather interesting mailing list.

Could former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada, Ping Lacson, Sus, even Congressman Roilo Golez, our former National Security Adviser now an anti-GMA member of the House of Representatives be "extradited" to the US in connection with the Aragoncillo case, where the erring ex-Marine and FBI analyst has already pleaded guilty to four counts during his indictment by a federal grand jury in Newark, New Jersey?

Aragoncillo already faces a maximum punishment of life imprisonment based on two counts. Since he has pleaded guilty to espionage and other charges before US District Judge William Walls in Newark, N.J., I guess his goose is cooked.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks which destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City and a section of the Pentagon, Americans are paranoid and angry about anybody with top security clearance leaking secrets from their intelligence files to foreigners.

In short, even if he had just transmitted a recipe for cooking Thanksgiving Turkey from any "classified" file to foreign recipients, Aragoncillo is a dead duck as far as his having betrayed his country’s secrets is concerned.

The Americans should be left alone to clean up their own mess.

The GMA Administration, particularly Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez (our friend Raul has been shooting off his mouth too much lately) should clam up, and not gleefully try to capitalize on the issue by making statements about our government being prepared to hand over former President Erap, now in his Rancho jail, to US authorities if he is indicted in the espionage case involving Aragoncillo. (By golly, Erap has exclaimed, it had been Bill Clinton himself who introduced Aragoncillo to him).

So what if Aragoncillo has been quoted as admitting having come to Manila to meet with his alleged "co-conspirators" in Malacañang on January 12, 2001, just eight days before former President Erap was ousted by "People Power" EDSA Dos? That, too, is a matter which must first be proven by the US Justice Department.

Let’s just concentrate on our own problems here, like solving the energy crisis (with gasoline jumping in price at our corner gas pump), rising criminality from murder to kidnapping and rebellion, etc. and the escalating drug menace.

I see that GMA in Riyadh is once more playing the OFW card, by announcing she has secured the release from Saudi Arabian prisons of some 50 Filipino workers, thank to her appeals to King Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud and Prince Salman, Governor of Riyadh.

She’s even "bumped off" some of the members of her party and accompanying journalists (we’ve no quarrel with that, since media owners must pay for the travels of staff members covering each trip) from the chartered PAL Presidential flight back to Manila – so she can bring back some of the released OFWs to display to the Filipino public upon her return.

Oh well. In the Propaganda War, an embattled Presidenta is entitled to exploit every publicity ploy and every photo opportunity – just as long as it’s genuine and not contrived.

* * *

The President continues to be embarrassed (with no intervention from e-mails from Aragoncillo, or opposition diatribes) by something of her doing, her issuance of Proclamation 1017 last February 24, 2006.

I don’t want to pose as some know-it-all, but this was my reaction when I saw her on television announcing 1017 as an emergency measure. To be frank, I was dumbfounded. Half an hour after the broadcast, the President rang me up on my cellphone (Hello Maxie, not Garci) and asked my opinion. I replied that she looked good and determined on television, but I wished she had called me up half an hour before the broadcast, not half an hour after her TV announcement. I would have cautioned here, I said, to think twice and not issue such a Proclamation which I felt was not only unnecessary – she already had enough emergency powers in her old kit bag – but would send alarm-bells ringing among the general population.

In any event, what was done was done and could not be undone. Then came the awful mistake ("a collegial decision" the PNP officers involved candidly told this writer later) of sending policemen to temporarily "occupy" the editorial offices and even the printing press of The Daily Tribune of Publisher Ninez Cacho-Olivares, although the cops claimed they did not interfere in the editing and reporting of the newspaper. "How would you feel if you were writing an editorial or a newspaper story," I asked the policemen later, "with a cop looking over your shoulder?"

The Supreme Court has already clearly expressed its strong objection to several actions taken in the wake of Proclamation 1017, while reluctantly upholding the "constitutionality" of the controversial proclamation itself, based on its declaration of a national emergency under Section 17, Article VII of the Constitution.

On the other hand, the High Court en banc, in its 11-3 vote condemned as "unconstitutional" the "warrantless arrest of Randolf S. David and Ronald Llamas; the dispersal and warrantless arrest of the KMU and NAFLU-KMU members during their rallies, in the absence of proof that these petitioners were committing acts constituting lawless violence, invasion or rebellion and violating BP 880; the imposition of standards on media or any form of prior restraint of the press, as well as the warrantless search of the Tribune offices and whimsical seizure of its articles for publication and other materials . . ."

Those are stern words, indeed – and rightly said.

* * *

The Supreme Court has been very tough, indeed, on the GMA Administration despite the fact that most of the members of the Court have been installed there by President GMA.

The unanimous vote of the Supreme Court Justices en banc in the 464 and CPR decisions (in which the GMA government’s moves were shot down) as well as the 11-3 decision on Proclamation 1017 shows that the feeling in the High Court is that it must be a "braking instrument" to curb any excesses by the GMA government.

Solicitor General Antonio Eduardo Nachura will find it hard sledding, obviously, if he undertakes the thankless task of seeking even a partial reconsideration of the three landmark rulings.

Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban has voiced his outrage against those who drafted the illegal executive issuances and those who were seen to have abusively implemented them.

His indignation is expressed in his three-page concurring opinion in which he agreed with the thoroughly and well-written ponencia of Associate Justice Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez in the Presidential Proclamation 1017 case.

Panganiban said that those responsible for PP 1017 "are playing with fire, and unless prudently restrained, they may one day wittingly or unwittingly burn down the country." Sanamagan. The Chief Justice – who, by the way, retires in December – warned that "history will never forget, much less forgive, this court if it allows such misadventure and refuses to strike down abuse at its inception."

Looking back at the late President Ferdinand Marcos’ Proclamation 1081 in which Apo Macoy had put the entire country under martial on September 21, 1972, Panganiban reminisced that "this country would never have had to experience the wrenching pain of dictatorship; and a past President would not have fallen into the precipice of authoritarianism, if the Supreme Court then had the moral courage to remind him steadfastly of his mortality and the inevitable historical damnation of despots and tyrants."

I believe Chief Justice Panganiban is being too kind to Apo Marcos. The late President ran a kleptocracy and when he realized he could not run for reelection and the Opposition, whether the Liberal Party’s Presidential candidate would be Senator Ninoy Aquino or Senate President Gerry Roxas, would inevitably take over Malacañang in 1973, he played his last card: imposing martial law and ruling with an iron hand (on a "throne of bayonets") for another 12 years. That’s the long and short of it.

I guess Panganiban is writing for posterity and for the Law books, and trying to sound as poetic as the renowned US Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

And the PNP really overstepped itself in some of its panicky actions. For example, UP Professor and Inquirer Columnist Randy David was arrested not by virtue of Proclamation 1017 but for allegedly violating Presidential Directive 880 which prohibits rallying without a permit. By gosh, David was not even rallying, he was – when arrested – simply walking towards the EDSA Shrine!

* * *

Chief Justice Panganiban, when all is said and done, was correct in indicating that the Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Fred Ruiz Castro proved supine during the early and mid-70s.

This was never more evident than in October 1972 when Ninoy Aquino, myself, and our nine fellow-detainees in maximum security prison in Fort Bonifacio filed an urgent petition for habeas corpus seeking our release from jail. Our lawyers were the late Senator Lorenzo Tañada, Senator Joker Arroyo, and the late Sandigan Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena.

When the members of the Castro Court interrogated the OSG (government) lawyers, throwing caustic questions at them, we were all elated. However, this was all for show. When the decision was promulgated, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Fred Ruiz Castro rejected our plea and dismissed our petition for "lack of merit."

Justice denied.

Our present Supreme Court by hanging tough, and sternly providing the "brakes" on the current Administration’s excesses is doing the right thing. We must applaud our Justices – and credit them for upholding the Rule of Law.