Agent Morris’s ordeal at WPP

An eerie silence chokes the justice department’s Witness Protection Program. Two weeks after narc agent Mary "Rosebud" Ong denounced it for yanking out four witnesses against narcotrading right inside the PNP’s Camp Crame headquarters, WPP chief Leo Dacera has yet to explain why.

An eerie silence had also stifled the case of one of the four witnesses, narc agent Jonathan Morales. And a month after he and his family were thrown out of their WPP safehouse on Jan. 15, Morales finally narrated his ordeal. It’s a tale of witness gagging and case mangling, for reasons yet unknown, by Morales’s handlers.

Morales was no ordinary witness. In a sworn statement on Sept. 24, 2001 he recounted how, as Agent Morris of the intelligence section of the PNP-Narcotics Group, he had sold shabu on orders of his superior, Supt. Pancho Hubilla. He detailed one particular incident in mid-Dec. 2000, at the height of Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial, when Hubilla ordered him to deliver 20 kilos of the white powder to a dealer in Sta. Cruz, Manila. The car he used was a Nissan Sentra with plate number UGR 847. He remembered it well because Hubilla first had asked him to drive it from their office to the compound nearby of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, and hand over the keys to PAOCTF operations chief, Sr. Supt. Michael Ray Aquino. An hour later Hubilla told him that, on direct orders from then-PAOCTF and PNP chief Panfilo Lacson, he was to retrieve the car and drive it to the drop-off point. Morales narrated another night at the Camp Crame "white house," the PNP chief’s official residence. There, Lacson directed him and Hubilla to study how to catch and execute a certain Boyet Melendrez, a distant cousin of an Estrada mistress who had muscled into their drug territory. He confessed that one night in Pasig, his team accosted Melendrez and pal Jaypee Silverio, whom they rushed to the PAOCTF compound. There, a waiting van took the two to Cavite, where they were killed and their bodies burned inside their car.

Hubilla had found out about the confession and forced Morales to sign an affidavit that his friend Chief Insp. Rodrigo Bonifacio had induced him to lie about Lacson. Morales retracted also on Sept. 24, 2001 in a sworn statement. He said he was disarmed and detained at the NarcGroup office to sign the affidavit.

Morales swore to all this at the height of the Senate inquiry into Lacson’s alleged narcotrafficking and money laundering. He was brought to the WPP to await his turn to testify. He never got to, and he tells why in his latest sworn statement this week before State Prosecutor Roberto Lao.

Morales said that after his first shabu run in Dec. 2000, he was involved in other NarcGroup operations. In most, his team arrested drug suspects to steal their stuff, jewelry, cash and vehicles, and shake them down in the millions of pesos in exchange for release. In some cases, they did file charges, but filched part of the confiscated stuff to sell on their own. Always, he drove the Nissan sedan. In Sept. 2001 they also plotted to kidnap Ronald Lumbao, who had led Estrada’s loyalists in assaulting Malacañang on May 1. Although Lumbao would be charged with rebellion in October, they had wanted to rub him out to divert public attention from the Lacson investigation.

Morales said he couldn’t get out of the shady side, for Hubilla held him by the balls. The boss had found out that he had falsified his school records to enter the police service. Besides, there was big money in the drug trade. Morales first saw it soon after he joined the NarcGroup in August 2000. In front of him inside a restaurant, Hubilla had handed over oodles of cash to a justice department senior state prosecutor. It was the latter’s share of P5 million bribe for their release of drug suspect Aris Arriola. They made it look like an escape, although the police had escorted the suspect from jail to his house, where the wife handed over the cash.

Morales had first mentioned this in an earlier sworn statement in Sept. 2001. And because he had implicated a state prosecutor and police officers, his four statements supposedly were transmitted by the justice department to the Ombudsman for filing of charges. At least that was what Dacera, as WPP head, told Morales in mid-Nov. To this day and despite Morales’ proddings, however, he has yet to see the transmittal slips.

While in WPP custody, the NarcGroup accused Morales of stealing the Nissan sedan. WPP officers confronted him about it. Fortunately for him, he had kept copies of papers showing that he was the official driver of the car – papers that showed he had returned the car after each shady operation. But Morales sensed that the WPP didn’t like him.

Morales had other complaints. One time, he had to write several times to Dacera to release the first of his monthly stipends. Yet all he got was an advance of P3,000 – barely enough to cover his food expenses after weeks in the safehouse. By December, Morales noticed that guards sent to the safehouse would just sleep during the day or night.

What got his goat was when all the guards left on Christmas Day with the staff car. He wrote a letter to Justice Secretary Hernando Perez about it. The ironic result: a dressing down from Dacera, a threat that he would be kicked out of the WPP, and a reminder that he should feel indebted to the guards for his security. Dacera also said that since Morales had not yet been issued a Certificate of Materiality, which would uphold his reliability as a witness, he could soon lose his privileges. Morales pleaded that it was no fault of his, that he and his relatives had been going out of their way to get corroborative witnesses, but that the NBI agents assigned to help him were always busy with other matters. Dacera replied that the lawyers whom Perez had assigned to his case had lost interest.

Days later on Jan. 4, Dacera summoned Morales to the WPP office about his complaint. There, he was handed a paper stating that Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño had discharged him from the WPP. Why? Because he had failed to submit a Certificate of Materiality. Too, because, as Dacera said, he had often gone on trips without informing them – trips that he made precisely to convince his former NarcGroup colleagues to turn state witnesses. And also because, just when the public outcry against narcopolitics was dying down, he gave press interviews about his search for witnesses and why he was never asked to testify at the Senate.

Morales ran to Justice Undersecretary Jose Calida for help. Calida told Zuño to remand the order. Zuño did, but it was too late. Dacera’s men already had thrown Morales’s family out. Morales staked out at the justice department and pleaded his case. Dacera’s men took pity and told him to talk to his NBI handlers. He did, and they agreed to work on potential witnesses every day from thereon.

The WPP took Morales and family back to the safehouse on the night of Jan. 11, a Friday. The next Monday, he met with his NBI handlers to plan their next moves, and agreed to meet again the next day. When he arrived on Tuesday morning, the 15th, he was told to wait for hours. The agents never met him. He walked to the justice department nearby to ask what was the matter. The guards barred him entry. When he returned to the safehouse, Dacera’s men were there, packing him off once again. They confiscated his cellphone and told him they were only following orders from Dacera, whom they said he had terribly displeased.

Where is Morales now? Hiding, of course.

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Narcopolitics has crept into the justice system. This, among many other concerns, will be discussed with surprise guests this morning at 8 on Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, DWIZ 882-AM.

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Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona has turned into a staunch defender of the Balikatan 02-1 RP-US joint military exercise in Basilan. And why not? He had initially criticized it as lacking in safeguards to uphold Philippine sovereignty and against possible violations of the constitutional ban on foreign military facilities. But President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo consulted with him several times before and after her recent trip to London, Ottawa and New York. In the end, Guingona inserted three revisions in the exercise’s terms of reference, to wit:

* delete the line about it being part of a global fight against terrorism;

* US forces would train RP soldiers in Zamboanga and not go to combat zones in Basilan against Abu Sayyaf terrorists; and

* during the six-month exercise, the AFP chief would come out with rules of disengagement to ensure organized departure of US forces.

Guingona was to meet yesterday via teleconference with US State Sec. Colin Powell about the revisions.

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