NDF-CPP-NPA FIASCO

Juan Ponce Enrile

Of the events that impelled President Marcos to declare martial law in the country, the most critical was the act of the NDF-CPP-NPA to import guns, rockets, ammunitions and military supplies. The NDF-CPP-NPA had two such projects: the MV Karagatan and the MV Andrea.

The Karagatan succeeded. However, it was thwarted. Her cargo of war materials were landed but they were mostly captured by the government. The Andrea failed. Andrea sunk in the waters of the West Philippine Sea and her cargo was lost.

The debacle angered the NDF-CPP-NPA. It derailed their quest for political power. It pushed President Marcos to declare martial law and saved the country from communism. This is why the NDF-CPP-NPA cannot forget and forgive President Marcos. He stopped their plan to subjugate the country and to establish a communist rule for the Filipino people.

In effect, the Karagatan incident is a significant prelude to martial law. Its story must be told so that the public will know what really was and why it pushed Presi dent Marcos to declare martial law.

Late in the afternoon of July 4, 1972, Antonio Gomez, while flying his plane over the Pacific along the eastern coast of the Sierra Madre in Isabela, noticed a ship moored near a beach. Gomez saw men unloading cargoes on small bancas and piles of wooden crates on the beach. Gomez reported what he saw to the Philippine Constabulary in Isabela.

The Isabela PC provincial commander (Lt. Col. Benjamin Dizon) immediately formed an eight-man team of PC soldiers led by Lt. Edgar Aglipay to check the report of Gomez. In the early morning of the next day, the Aglipay team took off on board a Huey helicopter and landed on an airstrip in Palanan.

From there, the team walked for hours to a logging camp of Valeriano Bueno. There, Lt. Aglipay borrowed a tugboat to locate the mysterious ship. The team found it late in the afternoon. It was moored in Digoyo Bay. The ship was deserted. The team found large quantity of military weapons and supplies inside the ship. Also found were foodstuffs, empty rice sacks, powerful radio sets, maps, books written in Chinese characters, poems in Tagalog of Ka Amado Hernandez, and many empty wooden crates.

The team decided to tow the ship away. However, when the team started to pull the ship from its mooring, bursts of gun fire suddenly erupted from behind the thickets on the shoreline towards the Karagatan and the tugboat. The sudden firing startled the team. The tugboat chief mate suffered gunshot wounds on his buttocks. Men on the Karagatan were also wounded.

The tugboat cut loose its towing line and left the Karagatan with the Aglipay team on board. Lt. Aglipay contacted the PC headquarters in Isabela for help. But none came. The weather was ugly. A strong typhoon was over the area. This made the position of team precarious. With the bad weather troops could not be moved either by air or by sea. Even the jet fighter planes that I authorized to give air cover for the Aglipay team could not take off.

The Aglipay team was thus marooned inside the Karagatan. Through the nights and days of the foul weather, the marooned men were harassed by the big swells that battered the ship and the intermittent burst of firing from the shoreline.

The marooned men had no food to eat nor fresh water to drink. They were tired, sleepless, hungry, and thirsty. They could not eat the foodstuff on the ship, and they could not find fresh water to drink

Days later, when the typhoon weakened, a Philippine Army contingent from Task Force Saranay under Lt. Arsenio "Bobby" Santos finally reached and rescued the Aglipay team.

Bobby Santos with 32 army soldiers flew by military helicopters to Palanan in spite of inclement weather. They landed on the Valeriano Bueno logging camp. From there, they walked to Digoyo Bay under heavy rain. When they reached the place, they immediately engaged the rebels. Arrayed against them were an estimated rebel force of 300 men. They were outnumbered 10 to 1. They were outnumbered, but never outfought.

Bobby Santos and his men stood their ground. They engaged the rebels for several days under severe weather condition. I asked General Romeo Espino to support them with jet fighter planes. When the typhoon abated, Army rangers and elements from the Presidential Guard Battalion joined the Santos team.

Not long after, the rebels suddenly silenced their guns. They stopped firing. The entire place became deathly quiet. The rebels abandoned their bunkers. Government troops captured their camp deep in the jungles of the Sierra Madre. The government troops scoured the surrounding heavily forested area. They found initially a cache of 100 M14 rifles, 15,000 rounds of ammunition, and 40 sacks of rice.

The talk of the town at the time was that Lt. Col. Victor Corpus, who defected earlier to the CPP-NPA, led the rebels in that encounter in Digoyo. But that story was not confirmed.

The government troops continued their search of the nearby jungles around Digoyo Bay. And they found another cache of 491 M14 rifles, one rocket launcher, one Browning automatic rifle, five Garand rifles, 150,900 rounds of M14 ammunitions, 900 magazines for M14 rifles, six sacks of magazine pouches, and 564 rounds of 40 millimeter rocket projectiles. All told, the Palanan military campaign earned for the government more than 1,000 M14 rifles from the NPA rebels.

The Karagatan incident greatly alarmed President Marcos. He referred to it as "A conspiracy of greater proportion than we expected." Perhaps his remark was prompted by the fact that in those days the total armed force of the government was less than 50,000 men and women.

The people also were alarmed. They were shocked to learn that the NDF-CPP-NPA imported foreign war materials and supplies for themselves. The public saw on television and print media the quantity and quality of the military weapons and supplies brought in by the NDF-CPP-NPA. Many called for stronger government action against the rebels. A great number even demanded the imposition of martial law in the land.

President Marcos assuaged the agitated public. He said, "The situation is no cause for hysteria. There is no reason to panic. The government is on top of things. There is no need for martial law to deal with the problem."

The Liberal Party belittled the Karagatan incident. Senator Ramon Mitra of the Liberal Party called it a "palabas." Ernesto Granada of the Manila Chronicle, a newspaper owned by the Lopez clan, called it a "hoax," a "dangerous joke."

In reaction to the Liberals and critics, President Marcos said, "All I can say is that I wish they would go into the area and do some fighting instead of talking. And I wish they would help the country instead of trying to protect the communists. And they should be glad that there are some of us who are still ready to fight the communists instead of their adopting a stance of indifference to the security of our people and the integrity of the government. They do not seem to appreciate the services of our soldiers. All I can say is that I hope they will never need the services of the soldiers."

President Marcos convened the military leaders in a command conference in Malacañang. Apart from the President and I, those who attended were: General Romeo Espino, Chief of Staff; Maj. Gen. Rafael Ileto, Vice Chief of Staff; Brig. Gen. Fidel Ramos, head of the Philippine Constabulary; Brig. Gen. Rafael Zagala, commander of the Philippine Army; Brig. Gen. Jose Rancudo, commander of the Philippine Air Force; and Commodore Hilario Ruiz, flag officer of the Philippine Navy.

In that conference, President Marcos looked grave. He said, "The Karagatan presents a new and serious dimension to the insurgency problem of the country. It means the rebels have succeeded in opening a supply line to support their rebellious efforts. The Karagatan is a part of a long-range preparation for their rebellion."

At the end of the conference, President Marcos ordered the defense department and the military to assess and reassess the national situation carefully and to prepare a contingency plan to address the problem should it deteriorate further. He said ominously: "I will not allow the problem to go out of control. I will nip it in the bud."

I never heard President Marcos spoke that way before. He was emphatic and resolute. But he seemed perturbed by the events in the country. His mien showed signs of distress. I never saw him like that in all my years with him.

On my way back to my office after that conference, the thought flashed in my mind that martial law was not far behind. I knew President Marcos's thinking. I knew it because earlier, after the presidential election of 1969, he asked me, as his Secretary of Justice then, to study his powers under the "commander-chief" provision of the 1935 Constitution.

And true enough, a few days later, the President called for another conference with the military leaders. This time, Maj. Gen. Rafael Ileto was not invited. Those who were invited were: Brig. Gen. Fabian Ver, commander of the Presidential Guard Battalion; Col. Ignacio Paz, chief intelligence officer of the armed forces; and Col Alfredo Montoya, commander of the PC Metropolitan Command.

General Romeo Espino, Chief of Staff; Brig. Gen. Rafael Zagala, commander Philippine Army; Brig. Gen, Fidel Ramos, head of the Philippine Constabulary; Brig. Gen. Jose Rancudo, commander of the Philippine Air Force; and Commodore Hilario Ruiz, flag officer in command of the Philippine Navy were also asked to attend.

Also present for the first time were Brig. Gen. Tomas Dias, commander of the First PC Zone in Central Luzon and Col. Romeo Gatan, PC commander of the province of Rizal.

During the conference, one could sense the heavy burden on the President. He looked weary and visibly troubled. He was calm and serious. There was none of the usual light conversations that preceded our past gatherings. It was a business-like conference.

The President went direct to his points. He reviewed the political, economic, social, and law and order condition of the country. He dealt at length with the Karagatan incident. He took time talking about the rapidly expanding NDF-CPP-NPA activities and violence.

He talked also at length on the incessant wrangling among politicians in the country and the prejudice and wasted time suffered by the people from it.

Finally, he focused on the devastation wrought by the typhoon that hit the northern sector of the country. He was terribly concerned with the destruction of infrastructure and the losses in agricultural in Central Luzon because of the flood that nearly connected Lingayen Gulf and Manila Bay.

At the end of the conference and after a brief pause, the President curtly ordered the military to prepare an operation plan for martial law in the country. None asked any question nor raised any objection. The silence in the room gave me the distinct impression that those who were in the conference were in unison with the President.

In the media, there was an obvious effort to distort the facts and confuse the public. Some in the media were bent to direct the blame to others, especially to the government, and to exonerate the NDF-CPP-NPA for the Karagatan incident.

Critics called the Karagatan incident a "gunrunning" operation. The main exponent of this was Ernesto Granada of the Manila Chronicle. He wrote an article about the Karagatan incident on July 16, 1972, where he said, "No invasion But Gunrunning." He also tried to sow intrigue between Malacañang, the military, and the Americans.

More than just to help the radical left from the backlash of the Karagatan incident, Senator Ninoy Aquino made the Karagatan incident a propaganda material for his presidential ambition. Ninoy squeezed every bit of press mileage he could draw from the Karagataan incident.

When the MV Karagatan was in Digoyo, I went there. Brig. Gen. Fidel Ramos was with me. Ninoy Aquino learned about my trip. He boarded his plane with Ramon Mitra and followed me. Ninoy and Mon Mitra joined Gen. Ramos and I in Digoyo.

When Ninoy published his narrative about the Karagatan he exaggerated some details - how Karagatan was discovered and what we did in Digoyo - to suit some ends.

While the barrage of intrigues, conspiracies, and partisan wrangling went on unabated, the military people worked quietly, but inexorably. They prepared the contingency plan for martial law in the country. No one noticed the flurry of activities in the defense department and military establishment.

The media, and the politicians, the NDF-CPP-NPA and their allies, and also the usual incorrigible "mirons" speculated about the possibility of martial law. But none of them really knew what was coming.

Yet, all along, the time was ticking. The reckoning was nearing. And history was unfolding. When it happened, it was too late for those who were very sure of themselves.