VFA advisories?

The official Malacañang line is that the recent travel advisories issued by several countries have nothing to do with the government’s forthcoming review of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States.

But the (reliable) Palace buzz is the opposite: President Aquino himself smells something fishy, and it has everything to do with the VFA.

The President, according to Palace denizens, is wondering why the intelligence report on which the advisories were based was not immediately shared with Philippine security officials.

When the Philippine side finally obtained the report, through informal channels, P-Noy was reportedly incredulous, particularly about a supposed assassination plot on two ambassadors, one of whom represents a country that, as far as P-Noy knows, has nothing to do with the global war on terror.

An official in one of the embassies that issued the advisories told me that the intel might have been shared early on with the Philippine National Police (PNP), but he wasn’t certain and advised me to ask directly from the source.

Let’s hope this is not a case of someone on the Philippine side getting the intel alert but ignoring it or failing to report it to higher authorities.

So far the advisories, apparently based on the same intel, have been issued by Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and the United States. Britain amended its advisory but did not raise its alert level and did not specifically mention Metro Manila as a potential site of a terrorist attack.

It doesn’t look like they’re about to lift the travel warnings despite an appeal from P-Noy, pointing out that it is their obligation to issue appropriate advisories to their citizens visiting or living in the Philippines.

P-Noy probably understands this argument. He reportedly noted that the Australian diplomatic mission in Indonesia was criticized at home following the nightclub bombings in Bali in 2002, wherein 88 of the 202 fatalities were Australians.

But it hasn’t reduced his annoyance over the advisories, which come as the government is preparing for a two-day gathering of potential foreign participants in the PPP, or public-private sector partnerships in big-ticket, job-generating infrastructure and development projects.

US Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr. had told me the other week that there’s a sizable delegation of American investors arriving for the PPP gathering. Thomas has said several times that Washington likes working with the Aquino administration and is bullish about Philippine prospects under P-Noy.

But we can’t tell how bullish Washington will be when P-Noy fulfills his campaign promise to review the VFA. The least that is expected is a renegotiation of the accord, which is regarded as a treaty by Manila and an executive agreement by Washington.

If P-Noy behaves true to form and his snit over the travel advisories is sustained, he might even go along with an abrogation of the VFA, which legal advisers of an influential faction in his government are supporting.

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The buzz is that during a meeting one night last week between a Palace official and an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency, the talk kept gravitating toward the usefulness of the VFA for both countries.

Noynoy Aquino the candidate didn’t look too sold on that usefulness. “Lopsided” was a word the candidate mentioned in describing the VFA, and it’s the same word now being used at Malacañang to describe bilateral relations.

“Lahat ng mga ’Kano puro VFA, VFA, VFA. May pressure point sa atin itong travel advisories doon sa VFA (All the Americans, it’s all VFA, VFA, VFA. These travel advisories are a pressure point on us on the VFA),” a Palace official was overheard grousing last week.

P-Noy has reportedly noted that Islamic extremists generally do not engage in the assassination of individuals. Instead they go for maximum mayhem by hitting soft targets where the loss of lives and destruction of property can be horrific.

The potential for such attacks is in fact specified in the travel alerts of several of the embassies.

There are two ways to test the accuracy of the intel on which the advisories are based. One is by foiling a specific plot and arresting those behind it. This has been done in Australia, Britain, the US and several other countries.

The second way of proving the intel right will be unfortunate: if a specific threat is actually carried out.

P-Noy the commander-in-chief knows he can’t afford to take chances, especially when several governments have warned their citizens about the potential for a terrorist attack.

So fuming or not, disbelieving or not, the President has ordered tighter security all around. Last Friday night there were police checkpoints around Metro Manila, with one of the biggest near the US embassy in Manila.

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The alerts cannot be taken lightly because over the years, both foreign and homegrown terrorists have struck from Mindanao to Metro Manila. Foreign terrorists have also stayed in the country to plan attacks and for general R&R.

Osama bin Laden’s uncle used to operate a charity in Mindanao, which security officers believed was used for terrorist financing. A key perpetrator of the first bomb attack in 1993 on the World Trade Center in New York, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, spent time in Manila.

As a dry run for an assassination plot on Pope John Paul II, Yousef planted a bomb in 1994 on a Tokyo-bound flight from Cebu, killing a Japanese businessman in the mid-flight explosion. Yousef eluded arrest during a fire in his Malate apartment but was later nabbed in Pakistan.

Yousef’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, led a playboy’s life in Manila and later became the chief architect of 9/11. Both men are serving their sentences in the US.

Among the pieces of information retrieved by Manila police intelligence agents from a computer Yousef left behind was a plot to fly planes into CIA headquarters in Virginia. This information was passed on to US authorities.

Years before 9/11, the idea seemed too wild to be taken seriously. Is it as wild as a purported assassination plot on two ambassadors in Manila?

P-Noy can’t take chances. All he wants is for allies to share information on terrorist plots with Philippine security officials, and to avoid panic-causing overreaction. In the absence of the advance intel, he smells a different agenda.