Who is spying on whom?

Few years before past Pres. Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, there was nothing ideological which I did. I spent more time in my academic pursuit and some extra-curricular activities in the school's Supreme Student Council. My friends in the left-leaning organizations even called me reactionary. Frankly, I did not care because I did not understand what the word meant. Oh, there were few secret meetings I attended which planned mass activities and yes, I joined in a number of rallies and demonstrations where I got beaten by truncheon wielding constabularies, or wet by firemen's water cannons.

The mass actions I participated in harped on Filipino nationalism. To uphold our independence and to honor our heroes were, to my youthful mind, the least I could do as a Filipino. In the course of our activities though, we, for reasons beyond my ken, aired anti-American slogans. For example, we pointed out that the presence of American military bases in our land was a violation of our territorial integrity. At that stage of my life, I resolved to love more the Philippines and the Filipinos than hate America and Americans. I had hoped that, especially in our country, our government would tend to favor the interest of a Filipino than that of an American. It was not much of an ideology, I suppose. So, I could not understand why when martial law was declared, I was in the order of battle. Defense authorities were looking for me when martial rule was proclaimed.

I recall that part of my life in the light of this incident involving cashiered police officer Michael Ray Aquino who is not even an acquaintance. His sad and miserable plight on US soil and the Philippine government's apparent apathy towards him make me revive my anti-American sloganeering.

Aquino is clearly a Filipino in distress abroad and in dire need of assistance in an unforgiving foreign shore. Arrayed against him is the mighty prosecutorial arm of the most powerful country in the world. The American public, understandably feeling wronged, can wield tremendous influence for his eventual conviction. Aquino's battle, despite western appearance of fairness, is really dauntingly one-sided against him. But, I can not understand why our government does not seem willing to extend any help to him. Pronouncements by responsible officials of the land tend to show that our government lets him fend for himself. Worse, the signals from Malacañang appear ready to admit that Aquino is guilty of espionage. Let me backtrack a little. News reports portray Leandro Aragoncillo and Aquino as liable for spying. They allegedly stole from some US intelligence vaults and confidential offices, classified, meaning secret, American documents on the Philippines. Stated otherwise, there were dossiers on the Philippines, which USA secretly kept in its files. These must be very sensitive pieces of information for which reason intelligence offices considered them classified.

A closer look at the situation will lead us to think that it was America which spied on the Philippines. Not Aquino on America. The possession by the US of secret files on our government would yield no other conclusion. The gathering of bits of information, secret enough to be deemed classified, regarding our country, (people and government, I surmise) must have been done by US agents or other nationals, including perhaps, Filipinos, working at their bidding. If only to drive home a given, I'd say that the only way to get secret Philippine information was for American personnel or their confederates to come to our hospitable country and abusing our friendliness, stealthily look into and cart away the secret files of our government. To me, that's what really happened.

That being the case, I am disheartened by two extreme points. On one end, Philippine government is not concerned with American spying on us. We have not even feigned a diplomatic protest. By keeping silent on this obvious American violation of Philippine sovereignty, our government is giving a wrong signal for other states to spy on us. On the other end, our government, by leaving alone a Filipino citizen, like Aquino to wriggle himself out of trouble, seems to indicate that a Filipino is an easy and helpless prey in distant shores. A foreign government, its agencies or citizens can run roughshod over a hapless Filipino national and our government would not seem to care at all. Oh my god!