MARCOS'S WARTIME ROLE DISCREDITED IN U.S. FILES

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2
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RIFPUB
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K
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4
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 4, 2012
Sequence Number: 
14
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Publication Date: 
January 23, 1986
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OPEN SOURCE
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 NEW YORK TIMES 23 January 1986 Marcos's:Warttme Role Ferdinand E. Marcos as shswo In an official biography. Caption said, "File photo of Marcos as a een a t y comm. Ling atrocities Discredited In U.S. Files fighting ghe Japanese and had engaged 1; J The following article is band on re- porting by Jeff Gerth and Joel Brinkley and was written by Mr. Gerth spew to no Nor Yoe! Tlmr WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - The Army concluded after World War II that oM- dal calms by Ferdinand E. Maroon that he headed a guerrilla resistance unit during the Japanese occupation of his try were "tr~audule t" and Throughout his political career, Mr. Marcos, now President of the Philip. pines, has portrayed himself as a heroic guerrilla leader, aad.the imalp has been central to his political appeal. In almost every speech throughout his current reelection camper, in- cluding at least one this week, Mr. Marcos has referred to his war recor d and guerrilla experiences in part to show that he is better able than his op- ponent, Corazon C. Aquino, to handle the present communist insurgency. But documents that had rested out of public view in United States Govern- ment archives for 35 years show that repeated Army investigations found no foundation for Mr. Marcos's official claims to the United States that he led a guerrilla force called Ang Mga Mahar- lika in military operations against Japanese forces from 1942 to 1944. Questions Go Unanswered Mr. Marcos declined today to re- spond to a list of six written questions about the United States Government records, which came to light only rs cently. The questions were submitted to Mr. Marcos's office this morning in Manila. After repeated telephone calls to the Presidential Palace this afternoon, an aide explained that W. Marcos was busy with meetings and a campaign ap- pearance and "didn't have, the oppor- tunity to look into tbs quesow" The aide said the President might have a response later. In the Army records themselves, Mr. Marcos wrote that he strongly pro- tested the Army's findings, adding that "a grave injustice has been committed Philippine Army, found in 1950 that some people who had claimed mem- bership in Mr. Marcos's unit had actu- " to ll b ' in what the V.A. called "nefarious ac- tivity," including selling contraband to the enemy. The records include no di- rect evidence linking Mr. Marcos to those activities. Access Denied Filipino The records, many of which were classified secret until 1959, were on file at the Army records center in St. Louis until they were donated to the National Archives in Washington in November 1984. In 1983, when a Filipino opposition figure asked for access to them a few weeks after the assassination in Manila that August of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., the Army refused to let him see them. Alfred W. McCoy, a historian, dis- covered the documents among hun- dreds of thousands of others several months ago while at the National Ar- chives researching a book on World War II in the Philippines. Dr. McCoy was granted the access normally ac- corded to scholars, and when he came upon the the Maharlika files he was al- lowed to review and copy them along with others. Archives officials did not learn what the documents contained against many officers and men" of the unit. Since Mr. Marcos became President, he Government-owned broadcasting network, the main north-south highway on the island of Luzon and a hall in the Presidential Palace all have been named Maharlika - the name is vari- ously translated as The Free Men or Noblemen - in honor of the unit. In 1978, the Philippine National Assembly considered renaming the nation Ma- harlika. Between 1945 and 1918 various Army officers rejected Mr. Marcos's two re- quests for official recognition of the unit, calling his claims distorted, exag- gerated, fraudulent, contradictory and absurd. Army investigators finally concluded that Maharlika was a ficti- tious creation and that "no such unit ever existed" as a guerrilla organiza- tion during the war. In addition, the United States Vet- erans' Administration, helped by the young officer.ro Richard J. Kessler, a scholar on the Philippines at the Carnegie Endow- ment in Washington, said, "Marcus's military record was one of the central factors in his developing a political power base." estioning Mr. Marcos's war record, 4fovernment authorities shut the paper A War Hero at Home In the Philippines, Mr. Marcos is widely known as the nation's most decorated war hero. The Philippine Government says he won 32 medals for heroism during World War II, includ- ing several from the United States Army. Two of the medals were for his activities as a guerrilla leader, but the rest were for exploits before the United States surrender in 1942 or after the re- turn of United States forces to Luzon, the main Philippine island, in 1945. The validity of those medals has been challenged by Philippine and Amer- ican journalists as well as others. In re- sponse, the Phillipine Government has' vigorously contended that they were properly earned and said the records validating them were destroyed in a tire. When the Philippine newspaper We Forum published an article in 1982 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 The issue of Mr. Marcus's medals is not addressed in the Army records. Like thousands of other Filipinos, im- mediately after the war Mr. Marcos asked the Army to recognize his unit so that he and others could receive back pay and benefits. In his petitions, Mr. Marcos certified that his unit had en- gaged in numerous armed clashes with pence tneri n [arv [ a vat 1V- On o uzon, the ma A ppi~ne is- 1at , and had been the pre-eminent guerrilla force on Luzon. In his submissions to the Army, he of- fered widely varying accounts of Ma- harlika's membership, from 300 men at one point to 8,300 at another. In the years since the war, Mr. Marcos has claimed that Maharlika was a force of 8,200 men. Some Claims Recognized Shortly after the war, the Army did recognize the claims of 111 men who were listed on the Maharlika roster submitted by Mr. Marcos, but their recognition was only for their services with American forces after the inva- sion of Luzon in January 1945. One document says the service that Mr. Marcos and 23 other men who were listed as Maharlika members gave to the First Cavalry Division in the spring of 1945 was "of limited military value." The Army records include conflict- ing statements on whether the United States intended to recognize the 111 men as individuals or as a Maharlika unit attached to American forces after the invasion. It is clear throughout the records that at no time did the Army recognize that any unit designating it- self as Maharlika ever existed as a guerrilla force in the yease of the Japa- nese occupation, 1942 to 1945. The records are a small part of a vo- luminous file containing more than one million documents on military activi- the officers also confirmed the basic findings in the records and said they had not been aware of Maharlika's ac- tivities during the war. They also said they had not known of war.-They Ma as a guerrilla leader until they read his claims later. `This Is Not True' Ray C. Hunt Jr., a 98-year-old former Army captain who directed guerrilla activites in Pangasinan Province north of Manila during the war, said: "Mar- cos was never the leader of a large guerrilla organization, no way. N ing like that could have happened with. out my knowledge." Mr. Hunt, interviewed at his home in Orlando, Fla., said he took no position in the current Phillipine election cam- paign, although he believed Mr. Mar- cos "may be the lesser of two evils." Still, as he read through the records for the first time, including Mr. Mar- cos's own description of Maharlika's wartime activites, he said: 'This is not true, no. Holy cow. All of this is a com- plete fabrication. It's a cock-and-bull story." The documents, the latest of which are dated in the early 1950's, include no indication that Mr. Marcos appealed the Army's final ruling against him in 1948. The last entry in the Maharlika file was an affirmation of the rejection. Today Assistant Secretary of De. fense Richard L. Armitage, the senior Pentagon official in charge of military relations with the Philippines, said his aides had been unable to find any record that the original Army decision denying benefits to Maharlika had been challenged or investigated after the 1948 ruling. "Subsequent to '48 1 am unaware of any further appeals," he said. Donna St. John, a spokesman for the Veterans' Administration, said, "We're not paying any benefits to Fer- dinand Marcos." The "history" and other submissions from Mr. Marcos say Maharlika was officially organised in December 1942 but had been operating for several months before that. It carried out guer- rilla operations throughout Luzon, the main Phihipine Island, and even pub. lisbed an underground guerrilla news- Pape' three times a day, Mr. Marcos wrote. Membership rosters submitted with the filings listed the names of more than 300 Maharlika members. But Mr. Marcos included no documents or copies of the Maharlika newspaper to support the claim because, he wrote, all documentary evidence was "lost due to continuous searches by the Japa- nese." Elsewhere, Mr. Marcos wrote that some of the unit's records were burned and others were buried. The Official records indicate that the Army grew suspicious of Mr. Marcos's calms right away. Mr. Marcos con- tended that he had been in a northern province "in the first days of Decem-, her 1944 on an intelligence mission" and was not aetoget lika headquarters at that time because the American invasion force on Luzon cut him off from Manila. But in the first recorded response to Mr. Marco's recognition request, in September 1945, Maj. Harry McKenzie of the Army noted that the American invasion of Luzon had not actually begun until a month later and "could not have influenced his abandoning his outfit." As a result, Major McKenzie sug- gested an "inquiry into the veracity" of Mr. Marcus's claims. And almost two years later, the Army wrote Mr. Mar- cos to notify him of the official finding that his application for recognition "is not favorably considered." Why the U.S. Said No The official notice cited these rea- sons, among others: qMaharlika had not actually been in the field fighting the Japanese and had not "contributed materially to the eventual defeat of the enemy." qMaharlika had no "definite organi- zation" and "adequate records were not maintained." qMaharlika was not controlled ad- equately "because of the desertion of Its commanding officer," Mr. Marcos, who eventually joined an American military unit while in northern Luzon at the time of the American invasion. gMaharlika could not possibly have operated over the wide area it claimed because of problems of terrain, com- munications and Japanese "antiresist- ance activities." q"Many members apparently lived at home, supporting their families by means of farming or other civilian pur- suits and assisted the guerrilla unit on a part-time basis only." Although the Army did recognize 111 people listed on Mr. Marcos's Mahar- lika roster for their service to Amer- ican forces after January 1943, the na- ties in the Philippines during and atteri As commanding officer of the unit, World War II. Approximately **I I Mr. Marcos applied for United States pages deal with matters relating to the Government's investigations of Mr. Marcos and his claims. Dr. McCoy, an American professor of history at the University of New South Wales in Sydn Australia, said he was "stunned , he found the records last summer. He said he worked with the records by himself until this month. He brought them to the attention of Mw New York Times last week. The records were reviewed at the Ar- chives when Archives officials can- Government recognition of his guer- rilla force in the summer of 1945. To support the a !!cation, he included a 29-page document titled "Ang Mga likfn - Its History in Brief." It says that the unit was "spawned from the dragging pain and ignominy" of the Bataan death march and in its members "grew such a hatred of the enemy as could be quenched with his blood alone." firmed their authenticity to The Times. 1 Exploits Are Described In addition, several former American military officers who played important roles in the sequence of events de- scribed. in the records were Inter- viewed. These officers served in the Philip- pines during the war, supervising Fili- pino guerrillas in the areas when Mr. Marcos said his unit had operated. Even though most of them say they are strong s to. of Mr. Marcos today - one, Lapham of Sun City, Ariz., said he spent 90 minutes with Mr. Marcos while in Manila last week - Most of the document is written in the third person and describes a vari- ety of exploits by Maharlika and Mr. Marcos. "It seemed as if the Japanese were after him alone and not after any- one else," it says at one point, referring to Mr. Marcos. The author is never identified, but in two places he lapses into the first person in discussing Mr. Marcos's exploits, indicating the writer was Mr. Marcos. Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 ture of that service is not fully de- After the war, roughly 500,000 Fili- pinos were recognized and paid as guerrilla fighters. But uncounted others were turned down. Mr. Marcos's claim was investigated in the same manner as the others. Af- fidavits were taken from dozens of American and Filipino military offi- cers, enlisted men and civilians. In addition, investigators studied docu- mentary evidence, including wartime intelligence reports, looking for refer- ~ ences to Maharlika's work. After he was turned down, Mr. Mar- cos asked for reconsideration. An Army captain, Elbert R. Curtis, in- quired further but concluded that "the immensity" of Mr. Marcos's claim that Maharlika served over the entire island of Luzon was "absurd." After checking intelligence records ap am Curtis wrote that re was no 0 mention or m e rgence information. He wrote that Ine Iitr roster was a fabrication, that "no such unit ever existed" and that Mr. Marcos's claims about Maharlika were "fraudulent," "preposterous" and "a malicious criminal act." Another Army document said Ma- harlika "possessed no arms prior to the arrival of the Americans" despite Mr. Marcos' claim that the unit had 474 as- sorted weapons and 3,825 rounds of am- munition. The second investigation concluded that "it is quite obvious that Marcos did not exercise any control over a guerrilla organization prior to liberation" in January 1945: A United States Veterans' Adminis- tration investigation concluded that some men who claimed membership in Maharlika and another organization were "hoodlums" who had committed "atrocities" and were "tied together only for nefarious reasons." One man who said he was a member of Maharlika told investigators that the unit "had committed themselves to trafficking in the sale of critical war materials to the brutal enemy," the re- port said, "but only to provide means of watching that enemy." "What a farce!" the V.A. investiga- tor concluded. None of the former officers inter- viewed this week said they remem- bered any involvement by Mr. Marcos in the black-market activities or abuses of civilians. Mr. Hunt said he met Mr. Marcos only once during the war, sometime in 1944. A Filipino military officer "brought him into my guerrilla head- quarters," Mr. Hunt recalled. "He was barefoot, unarmed. We talked for 15 or 20 minutes about this or that. He was never identified to me as a guerrilla, and we didn't talk about guerrilla ac- tivities." "I had no further contact with him," Mr. Hunt added, "and I didn't hear anything more about him." scribed. But one document, dated May 31, 1945, says 6 officers and 18 men led by Mr. Marcos and indentifying them- selves as Maharlika had "been em- ployed by this unit," the Army's First Cavalry Division, "guarding the regi- mental supply dump and performing warehousing details." Their work, the document added, was "of limited mili- tary value." In his brief history, Mr. Marcos de- scribes his service to the First Cavalry this way: Members of Maharlika "fur- Lions- in~Vlanila ended. They pai-tlcl- pated in the crossing of the rasig River." Mr. Marcos was just one of thou- sands of Filipinos who asked the United States Army for recognition as a guer- rilla. After the Japanese occupation of the Phillppines in 1942, the United States had promised that any Filipinos who continued fighting the Japanese would get back pay and benefits after the war as it they had been members of the American military. Japan mounted a surprise attack on the islands in December 1941 and quickly conquered them. It was not until 1944 and 1946, that United States and Filipino forces won them back. Not long afterward, on July 4, 1946, the islands gained their final independ- ence from the United States as the Re- public of the Philippines. At the time of the Japanese invasion in December 1941, Mr. Marcos was a lieutenant in the Philippine armed forces and was part of the contingent driven back into the Bataan Peninsula. Mr. Marcos has said his fighting de- layed the surrender at Bataan for sev- eral weeks. After the American surrender, Mr. Marcos was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese, but he escaped. For his efforts during the Bataan campaign of January 1942, Mr. Marcos was awarded numerous medals, including two from the United States, but not until many years later. It was after the Bataan campaign, Mr. Marcos wrote, that Maharlika was formed. In 1982 and 1983 journalists in the Philippines and the United States, as well as Representative Lane Evans, Democrat of Illinois, tried to determine the validity of the American awards to Mr. Marcos, including the two Bataan- related medals. The Pentagon, in re- plying in 1984 to Mr. Evans, noted that no official "citations for these awards" could be found, but "they were both. at- tested to in affidavits by the Assistant Chief of Staff" of the Philippine Army. Whether or not the American medals are valid, they had nothing to do with Mr. Marcos's activities during the Japanese occupation. Another Request Denied Although there is no record that Mr. Marcos filed any further objections to those 1948 findings, another Filipino, Cipriano S. Alias, who was listed as a senior Maharlika officer. wrote the Army in 1947 asking for reconsidera- tion of the unit. That request was denied, too. Mr. Alias said he had commanded Maharlika's intelligence section. But numerous American officers and Fili- pinos who were interviewed by Army, Veterans' Administration and Phi- lippine investigators said Mr. Alias and some of his men had in fact been selling commodities to the Japanese during the war. In a 1947 Army document titled "Re- port on Ang Mga Maharlika," Lieut. William D. MacMillan wrote that two American officers, including Mr. Lap- ham, and one Filipino officer had told investigators that "they had heard" Mr. Marcos's name "in connection with the buy and sell activities of cer- tain people," referring to the black- market sales to the Japanese, but that the three had added that they had no firm information about Mr. Marcos. In a file titled "Guerrilla Bandits and Black Marketeers," a Philippine Army document concluded that Mr. Alias and several other men listed on the Mahar- lika roster "engaged themselves in the purchases and sale of steel cables," an important wartime commodity, to the Japanese. 3 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2 14. l21%'noo P~ ~ awdaAs liver wee spanned from the d: a ptratsat cow Is to ` _ _f_fer suffered the Ssw-- .....t. Yntohr and the ft Capaa ? 11t this interim a Y? /fill hoping 040a more -w -_ th but d With his 406 naha tal psis at hilt Wishing as o,U be 9Ye the eneq eWh hotrod for sia1Ar'sr" -_.....onthe ro" n dtaaod t. yerCos. Them who ML. over and gbova the _..e this?r those 1640 tns . -r Valdes and via.. S or SiJMan Y. buff talk from Istoe p to TaslPaas~ were opportunity for ot such strength nor look of 06_006e few oa t. Col. lerdi+rad & ~...._- - - PVs web the n1 of Oapt. AY Must - ?. imp y to viglt the map Um-armed Ss ord... . These two arawI meat of the di -- -.OUT as 4010able ibetlo. asps*?"s Luar1 a ready been atertad in litivid.. _ we airriald a*job had I aid aWDiolos. it* ---?? sat VIM his disaps'Owl = it hot be coavimeed that at t had orders tr4 e. 3111 Mbutuel Ross could Chisel ViAe amd svgs h... _ _ be would not the .- .?~?~? tnat I had gook orders. -erQit ?QUipeeat eomiym is nf.n. - -.....aro as the new arse am ewOSad of wdinand _, ha ys/ Unit der the a11eS'd ~ 90200 2. Th~e At_m~t~ a roster other Marano is !rte _- et his r4of 2? I VA sio?s orsa.r-- xN ~~srblsOtlit the M% roster eta ? S venof" dsLad Dedasbar oonatdarsLith: West hoe 1. Twot &* Val ' the nW ar7 19. )Iles SnLsilidasa for revision 19L7. 2. Thal to Of -21e gidor wtuor 00 wed, 17 m b ,0,6% so per tags ~ Concuusion of a IM U.S. Army document recommending rejection of re- quest by Ferdinand E. Marcos for recognition of guerrilla unit. 4' Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300014-2