Erap links self to Aragoncillo

Joseph Estrada always manages to get himself into trouble. His 1998 denial of knowing Cecilia de Castro, who turned out to be his presidential consultant and cousin, blew the lid off a textbook scam. He provoked nasty media prying in 1999 after meddling in a son’s fight with some doctors and another son’s misuse of the presidential plane. By admitting in a live radio interview that he did take jueteng money, as donation to his foundation, he sealed his impeachment in 2000. Now he’s at it again, yakking that he never received classified papers from an arrested Filipino snoop in America, but from the latter’s cohort. Trouble is, that cohort happens to be dangerously guiltier.

What got Estrada again talking too much was a perceived insult from the justice secretary of the President he hates. Michael Ray Aquino had just pleaded guilty in the US of illicit receipt of state secrets from White House analyst Leandro Aragoncillo, and Manila media was soliciting reactions from everybody. Never one to pass up a chance for TV news, Sec. Raul Gonzalez blabbed that Aquino must have done it to save Estrada and ex-boss Sen. Ping Lacson. The latter two had been named in the indictment of Aquino and Aragoncillo for filching 101 classified documents. Estrada took Gonzalez’s conjecture as an affront, saying Aquino could not have covered up for him because "he never sent me anything." It was Aragoncillo who gave him papers, Estrada insisted, unthinking that he could implicate himself.

When Aquino and Aragoncillo were arrested in Sept., Estrada at once sought to distance himself. Interviewed at his hilltop rest house that serves as detention for plunder trial, he admitted having received documents from Aragoncillo, but that these were harmless political analyses. "If you’re in jail, you read everything you get your hands on, even the fish wrapper," he quipped then about the purloined papers from the White House and FBI. Prison can also warp one’s sense of proportion. Estrada insists he is still President although his term, even if not cut short by people-power revolt, had ended in 2004. To prove his point, he even issued on Monday a State of the Nation – and the press amazingly picked it up. Disputing Gonzalez apparently got the better of him. Estrada must have overlooked that Aquino had pleaded guilty of the lesser offense of unauthorized possession of security secrets. But Aragoncillo last May also had pleaded guilty to multiple serious offenses: conspiracy to transmit defense information, transmittal of defense information, illegal retention of defense information, and unlawful use of government computers. By crying to the world that it’s not Aquino but the guiltier Aragoncillo he’s in touch with, Estrada might be inviting deeper investigation by US authorities. More so because of his inconsistent statements that can be construed as guilty lies. He once acknowledged Aquino to be a dutiful godson who e-mails often, but now claims to have never been in touch with him ever since his fall in 2001. He also said he knows Aragoncillo vaguely, but this does not jibe with his assertion of receiving papers only from him, nor with Aragoncillo’s 15 trips to Manila in five years in 1999-2003 to meet with Estrada and company.

Of course, the US might not wish to bother itself – for now – with a septuagenarian detainee. One of the stolen secrets had reported Estrada to interpret his continuing popularity as legitimacy of presidential claim. Still Estrada’s ranting could shift closer attention of US investigators to Lacson, Aquino’s long-time associate. Lacson has admitted to meeting Aragoncillo through Aquino, and that the two did e-mail him many papers which he supposedly did not know to be stolen secrets.

Unlike Estrada, Lacson speaks sparingly and carefully about Aquino and Aragoncillo’s spying. But his enemies in America are moving to link him to the latter. One lead is that Aragoncillo had needed $518,000 to save his home mortgage, and so they’re looking – again – into Lacson’s many dollar accounts in America.

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Estrada was smart, though, to turn the tables on Gonzalez by raking up the Bolante issue. Former agriculture official Jocelyn "Joc-Joc" Bolante stands accused in Manila of misusing P780 million in fertilizer subsidies. The administration had been under fire for foot-dragging, letting him elude a Senate subpoena, and thus raising suspicion that it might have benefited from the fund mess. Bolante is a topic that the administration would want to go away. But it won’t because the guy just made the headlines again by seeking political asylum in the US for political harassment.

Estrada must know that Bolante is Gonzalez’s vulnerability. A crusading writer has been murdered for exposing the P780-million fraud, and the complaint pends with the justice department. Gonzalez may have referred the graft complaint against Bolante to the Ombudsman. But the holding or arrest of the wanted Bolante at the airport was a task of the immigration bureau under Gonzalez. Extraditing him, if the complaint at the Ombudsman reaches court, will also be Gonzalez’s job. Lastly, Bolante claims his life is threatened by the communist New People’s Army; Gonzalez is head of the Cabinet cluster in charge of security and anti-terrorism, a job in which he must show effectiveness by not having anyone shouting to the world that the government cannot protect Bolante from rebels.

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