Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Volume 3,  Number 37              October 19 - 25, 2003            Quezon City, Philippines


 





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Oplan Greenbase is Real, Trillanes Says

Government policies corroborate Oplan’s success
 
Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV, acknowledged leader of the junior military officers who seized the posh Oakwood Hotel July 27 this year to demonstrate against state-sponsored terrorism and corruption in the armed forces, asserts that the government’s Operational Plan (Oplan) Greenbase is not a spurious document as earlier dismissed by Malacañang.

 

By Gilbert L. Pacificar

Bulatlat.com/Mindanao Bureau

 

DAVAO CITY- Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV, acknowledged leader of the junior military officers who seized the posh Oakwood Hotel July 27 this year to demonstrate against state-sponsored terrorism and corruption in the armed forces, asserts that the government’s Operational Plan (Oplan) Greenbase is not a spurious document as earlier dismissed by Malacañang.

 

Roel Pulido, legal counsel of the six core leaders of the junior military officers, presented “The Greenbase Expose,” a document penned by Trillanes before an investigative panel of the citizen-led Mindanao Truth Commission during the group’s second inquiry session in this city last Oct. 16.

In the paper, Trillanes said he based his own findings from facts, circumstances and official pronouncements of government officials including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself.  

 

Pulido said events that occurred as predicted in the Oplan Greenbase paper would validate the authenticity of the document.  He also said the Oplan was “highly successful” in terms of objectives attained.

 

Government policy papers, according to Trillanes, highlighted his group’s assertion that Malacañang and top officials of the Department of Defense (DoD) had a hand in the spate of terrorist acts in Mindanao.

NICA document

Pulido said his clients got hold of the document from their network inside the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), the government’s chief spy agency.  He said it was leaked sometime in February this year right after the start of the AFP’s offensive against the Buliok Complex of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). 

 

Trillanes said the Memorandum of Instruction (MoI) signed by Macapagal-Arroyo, as well as Malacañang’s Four-Point Policy Framework (FPPF) in Addressing the Southern Philippine Secessionists/MILF Problem signed by then adviser on the peace process and former general Eduardo Ermita are the focal points of the Oplan. Both papers have been called by Trillanes as the Greenbase Documents.

 

The MoI is the President’s authorization to then Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes to carry out Oplan Greenbase, which is mainly an action plan to capture and occupy the Buliok Complex surrounding the Liguasan Marsh while the FPPF is the detailed and expanded action plan that would operationalize the approved MoI, Trillanes said.

 

AFP’s psywar operations

 

Trillanes also revealed the AFP’s plan to conduct comprehensive psychological warfare (psywar) operations through the print and broadcast media.  The plan, according to him, included destabilization efforts in urban Christian-dominated areas, particularly in the airports of Davao, Cotabato, General Santos, Zamboanga and, Cagayan de Oro cities, principal ports and wharves, foreign embassies and consulates, hotels and restaurants, shopping malls, hospital churches, public markets and terminals, radio and television stations, factories, oil depots and gasoline stations, buses, cinemas, schools and plazas.

 

Pulido said, with the mystery bombings at the Davao International Airport last March 4 and at the Sasa Wharf April 2, the junior officers have reason to believe that Oplan Greenbase is a real government operation.  He said an operational plan has specific targets and most of the objectives of the Oplan Greenbase have been met.

 

But the Macapagal-Arroyo government through Presidential spokesperson Ignacio Bunye has dismissed the Oplan Greenbase paper as merely propaganda and that it has been circulated purportedly to agitate the Muslim population in Mindanao.

 

The young junior officers involved in the Oakwood incident concluded likewise that the presence of Gen. Victor Corpuz , then chief of ISAFP, in Davao had something to do with the implementation of the Oplan Greenbase. As far as Reyes is concerned, Pulido said quoting the junior officers, as defense secretary “logically, he knows the activities outlined in the Oplan Greenbase.”  Pulido said the evidence against Reyes are circumstantial but added that a plan as comprehensive as Oplan Greenbase would not be implemented without authorization from the highest authorities, including Reyes and Arroyo.

 

Blame on the MILF

 

The document also included a plan of putting the blame on the MILF as responsible for the alleged AFP-backed spate of bombings in urban areas and the destruction of several Napocor transmission towers, power sub-stations and barges.

 

Subsequently, charges of rebellion, sedition, multiple murder and multiple frustrated murder were filed against MILF leaders in various courts in order to secure warrants of arrest against them.  This scenario is also prescribed in the FPPF.

 

The FPPF also warranted the declaration of the MILF as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., Asean and European Union and of Chairman Salamat Hashim as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” because of the “gravity and magnitude of threat he and the MILF pose on the national security and territorial integrity of the Philippines and Asean Countries,” the document said. Hashim died of heart attack recently.

 

The FPPF added that Hashim’s capture or death, and MILF’s designation as an FTO, will ensure the smooth conduct of Balikatan 03-1 in Central Mindanao and the U.S. troops’ planned basing in Sarangani-General Santos City.

 

CIA-Meiring angle

 

In a related development, Dr. Robinson Montalba, convenor of the Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao, urged U.S. President George Bush to bring with him the American national Michael Terence Meiring to face questions on his possession of explosives at the time of mysterious bomb threats and actual attacks in various parts in Mindanao.

 

Meiring figured in a bomb explosion at the Evergreen Hotel Davao City on May 16, 2002. The bomb nearly killed the owner of the explosives, identified as Meiring.

 

“We want Meiring to be subject to investigation by Philippine authorities as much as we demand Gen. Angelo Reyes and Gen. Victor Corpuz to explain their parts in the bombings,” Montalba said. “We strongly believe that Meiring is a missing link in the series of Davao bombings that were used as justification for increasing military intervention of the U.S. in its so called war on terror.”

 

“It is obvious that Meiring’s handlers belong to the higher ups in the U.S. But how can the Arroyo government solve the case of mysterious Davao bombings when it allows the mysterious handler of explosives to be fetched by American plane and evade investigation? Why wasn’t he immediately arrested, while our Muslim brothers here have been abducted and illegal detained?,” Dr. Montalba asked. Bulatlat/Mindanao Bureau

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