Latin Americas spymaster is expected to face court in the coming months - and many will be nervous as he tells his story.
Already the revelations about - and from - Vladimiro Montesinos have profoundly shaken his native Peru.
It now seems Montesinos was the muscle, evil and much of the genius behind discredited Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori is free for now. Montesinos is in a military cell waiting to play the one card he has left to deal himself out of a life in prison information - on the former president, the countless numbers of key people he corrupted and the foreign governments and intelligence services that dealt with him.
Tim Lester travelled to Lima for this report.
00:23
Plaque on wall 'ALUMNO ARMANDO AMARO CONDOR 18 DE JULIO DE 1992 00:28
Condor walking towards camera Condor: Every time I come, that wound never heals; never closes. I always expect to find my son. 00:31
Lester: Somehow her son, Armando, eight fellow students and a professor became targets of an execution squad run by Perus National Intelligence. 00:46
Condor: They took everyone out. They threw them on the ground face down. 00:56
Lester and Condor walk pass room Lester: So that was his room there?
Condor: Yes. 01:02
Lester: Theres now evidence the elite killers were working on orders from the very top of Perus power structure. 01:05
Lester: Is this where Armando slept? Condor: Yes, Armando. Look, the bullet holes in the ceiling have been patched up.
Lester: If so, this 01:08
Lester: is one in a litany of crimes carried out by Perus most powerful man. 01:24
Footage of Montesinos and Fujimori. Spy, extortionist and media manipulator, Vladimiro Montesinos, and his sidekick -- then President Alberto Fujimori. 01:30
Condor: They didnt have the right to kill my son. They didnt have the right. Whoever it was, they didnt have the right. Theyre going to pay. For each one of my tears, theyre going to pay. 01:51
Views over Lima Lester: Lima -- the arid, polluted capital and centre of power in Peru. 02:20
Old man with sack Lester: Half this countrys twenty-seven million people live below the poverty line. 02:30
Now Peruvians are learning the leadership duo, once regarded as economic and political saviours here and abroad, in fact ripped them off so completely, the country could take decades to recover. 02:35
People sitting on steps watching street entertainment
Shifter: Were talking about very, very large sums of money and were talking about 02:51
Shifter: an operation that really penetrated all areas of Peruvian life. 02:55
Lester: Professor Michael Shifter is a Washington based political specialist on Latin America. 03:01
Shifter: A cleptocracia -- what they call it in Spanish -- of just complete, sheer theft, and it was no ideology particularly that drove it. 03:07
Lester: Michael Shifter was living in Peru in 1989 when an obscure Agricultural engineer - the son of Japanese immigrants -- rose to power on a promise to crush terrorism and turn this once Marxist corner of South America into a free market economy. 03:26
Lester: For a time it seemed Alberto Fujimori was master of all he surveyed. 03:43
Fujimori: Now we have a peaceful country, good prospects, a lot of investment, stability, we have restored authority and order. 03:54
Lester: But even then behind the façade of an honest reformer was a tyrant who bulldozed his way through any opposition -- aided and abetted by his equally ruthless security chief Vladimiro Montesinos. 04:14
Lester: Though few
questioned it , Montesinos was a novel choice. Perus army had banished him for selling secrets to Americas CIA, but hed prospered as a defence lawyer -- for accused drug traffickers. 04:28
Fujimori: His job is mainly as an adviser of this intelligence service and he contributes a lot -- fighting terrorists and now fighting narco traffic, and off course as a lawyer sometime he give suggestion for law. 04:41
Lester: Did Fujimori control Montesinos or did Montesinos control Fujimori? 05:09
Shifter: As information comes out, it seems increasingly clear that Montesinos was the power in Peru. 05:15
Vargas: This was a regime created by criminals, for criminals, with criminal goals. 05:23
Lester: This is the centre of the prosecution of Montesinos and Fujimori hopefully.Vargas: Yes 05:32
Lester: Chief Prosecutor in the Montesinos case, Luis Vargas and his 30 staff have been sifting back through Fujimoris decade, building a case that now suggests the former President and his Security Minister were thieves on an unimaginable scale. 05:38
Vargas: We have linked the former Security Minister, Montesinos, with about three hundred million dollars. We calculate that Fujimori must have taken more than that. But still, we have to add all the other benefits obtained by the other members of the network. 05:55
Lester: Luis Vargas says the money directly stolen from the people of Peru is way over one billion US dollars. 06:12
Vargas: Yes, its true. It is a giant and shocking amount of money, if you consider the poverty levels in Peru. 06:20
Lester: The Fujimori regimes great robbery began unravelling in September 2000 when TV reporter turned Congressman, Luis Iberico, released a leaked videotape. 06:32
Iberico: Its going to cause repugnance to everyone; all Peruvians. This is a treason against the Peruvian State.
Lester: As well see, such transactions were routine, and while Fujimori tried to rally his supporters and sack Montesinos, the game was up. The President fled to Japan and the Intelligence Minister disappeared. 07:07
Lester: So who caught Montesinos on tape? In fact, he recorded it himself and he did it not once, but thousands of times. 07:28
Lester: Two and a half thousand so-called Valdivideos are now in state hands, records of Montesinos bribing politicians, judges, TV personalities and the like.
Video clip of Montesinos Lester: In one typical video, the master of deceit hands ten thousand U.S. dollars to a key electoral official, who then asks if hes being taped. No says Montesinos. We dont do that for ethical reasons.07:56
Iberico: I imagine that they cant sleep at night because they made a pact with the devil. 08:15
Lester: His hidden cameras gave him leverage for blackmail on a massive scale. 08:26
Montesinos had entrenched his President by compromising every sector that had power in Peru.
Controlling public opinion was a special priority -- and to do that, Montesinos needed to target the countrys TV barons, to whom he was especially generous. 08:41
Vivas: At least we know that each owner of the media received ten million dollars. 08:53
Lester: One at least was offered much more but turned it down. 09:00
Ivcher: I didnt want to sell my reputation for money. 09:04
Lester: Baruch Ivcher the owner of Channel Two was deemed so important to snare his bribe was delivered by the prime minister and president of the congress. 09:14
Ivcher: And they offered me 19 million dollars; it was Friday. On Monday you have it in your account. Lester: Thats what they said.
Ivcher: They said to me. 09:25
Lester: The TV boss says he saluted the two leading politicians with a single finger. 09:40
Ivcher: I told them like this; this is the form that we are not selling here conscience in this channel. Never I told them. 09:46
Lester: But given the huge amounts on offer, the incorruptible were few. 09:56
Vargas: Not only the Executive, Armed Forces and Police but also the Justice Department, the Public Ministry, the Congress and the Electoral Office, so they accomplished an absolutely power in the nation. 10:00
Townsend: For me these tapes are very useful for the political, moral cleaning of Peru. 10:16
Lester: But the tapes are just the start where Anel Townsend is concerned. Head of a Congressional investigation, shes thrown open the curtains 10:25
Lima headquarters for Montesinos National Intelligence Service to a building Peruvians know as the Little Pentagon Lima headquarters for Montesinos and his feared National Intelligence Service. 10:36
Townsend: We found a place full of old beds, old equipments. 10:52
Black and white footage of Montesinos Lester: An unnamed army officer told the Commission of a secret sub-basement Montesinos operated under the building. 11:03
Townsend: He gave us a plan of the place and he said, if you follow my drawing -- 11:12
Townsend: because he draw this -- you will find the incinerator. 11:18
Townsend: He said, after the tortures, came the killing, 11:30
Townsend: and then according to him, the bodies were burned. 11:33
Inside the incinerator Lester: Those who worked in the rooms above will never forget the smell. 11:41
La Rosa: I could smell burnt hair, like a piece of hair. 11:48
Lester: And their horror as it dawned on them why the basement furnace was there. 11:55
La Rosa: To make people disappear. To cremate them. 12:00
Lester: Leonor La Rosa was a Montesinos agent who became a basement victim herself -- raped and bashed into life-long paralysis when she refused to give intelligence on fellow agents accused of leaking information. She got the special treatment in the bosss mind altering dungeon. 12:10
La Rosa: Images would start appearing. Horrific images, and voices from beyond. This dungeon had special effects, to break me, to make me scream. 12:30
Lester: The young mother clinged [sic]. 12:51
Picture of Children Lester: to her sanity by pretending to cuddle her children 12:52
La Rosa: I would sing Sleep my child, sleep my sun, sleep piece of my heart. I would sing this over and over, first with my son and then my daughter. 12:58
Lester: Lying down the corridor was someone else. 13:18
La Rosa in bed La Rosa: I got to the last cell and there was a woman, in the foetal position, naked who was hiding her face between her knees. 13:24
Lester: incredibly, it was Alberto Fujimoris estranged wife Susana Higuchi. 13:37
La Rosa: At that instance I recognised her an I asked her what are you doing here, what happened? 13:46
Lester: The president had allegedly ordered her arrest and torture because shed gone public with her criticism of his autocratic style. She spent weeks in hospital recovering but in the new Peru, is now a congresswoman. 13:53
Condor : Vladimiro Montesinos is an assassin. To me, hes an assassin. 14:13
The brutality was taken from city basement to the rural hills, robbing Rayda Condor of her son. 14:17
Condor daughter What this family wants is not vengeance. We want justice. 14:24
Lester: Justice for the vengeance of the corrupt leadership duo, who sooled the killing squad known as Colina on La Cantuta University to avenge a personal slight. 14:31
Condor: Because Fujimori came here and was pelted with rocks and tomatoes by the students. This I believe was his retribution; to assassinate these students. 14:42
14:56
Lester: A military court convicted nine Colina members of the La Cantuta killings, but President Fujimori gave the men amnesty. 15:02
Vargas: We are sure he permitted, consented and also participated in the creation of these policies that had as an objective, the violation of Human Rights; that had as an objective the murders of these people. 15:10
Lester: The killings are one area among many where its not clear who held the power -- Fujimori or Montesinos. But even members of his own family regard Montesinos as capable of anything. 15:33
Cardenal: Hes a person completely infatuated with power and thought of himself transformed as some type of God, a demigod. 15:49
Lester: Cousin Sergio Cardenal Montesinos grew up next door to Valdimiro and the two once shared a law practice. 16:10
Cardenal: Its like I have AIDS. Its terrible. The surname Montesinos is damned. 16:18
Lester: Do you think he is a killer? Cardenal: Yes. When he needs to do something, hell do it, or hell send someone to do it. Of that I have no doubt. Lester: Hes your flesh and blood. Hes your cousin. Cardenal: Yes, yes, yes. Lamentably he is. It doesnt bring me pride to say that. Its true. Its true. Hes that kind of person. 16:31
Lester: Terror helped entrench the power of Vladimiro Montesinos, but his genius went well beyond torture and murder. He understood the importance of controlling public information, in particular television. Through the transmission towers above Lima, Montesinos was able to take a Goebbels like grip on news and information that shaped Peruvian opinion. 17:03
Vivas: We were bought. We were corrupted, perverted. 17:30
Lester: Fernando Vivas is a writer in a country where the written word rates poorly. 17:34
Views of Lima Vivas: There is a very low rate of readers in Peru so TV is very, very important. TV has eighty percent of the advertising market. 17:41
Lester: And as weve seen, many media owners werent just corrupted, they were filmed taking their bribes -- one receiving so much cash he needed a suitcase to carry it - two million U.S. dollars. So when it come to driving the news agenda, the intelligence chief had the crooked barons over a barrel. 17:55
Super: Luis Iberico Former TV Reporter
Iberico: Vladimiro Montesinos drove all types of communication, and Fujimoris dictatorship was sustained by this propaganda system. His dictatorship was propaganda driven. 18:16
Lester: Media insiders saw Montesinos take control of Peruvian thinking as he dictated TV news rundowns. 18:36
Iberico: He would decide how it would start and how it would end. He would decide which news went to air and which news didnt go to air, in which order it ran and how long it ran for. 18:44
Lester: And then hed write the next mornings headlines. 18:58
Vivas: It was a kind of sinister hobby for him, and he wanted just the headlines, and he paid for each one of the headlines. 19:01
Lester: Montesinos even employed psychologists to work up wild stories and divert public attention from politics there were crying statues of the Virgin Mary and the Monster that killed only cab drivers. 19:14
Iberico: And this is how we were kept screaming in the desert. Any time we highlighted a negative issue, immediately there would be a story come out that would overshadow the issue; a popular, extraordinary, fantastic story. 19:28
Lester: Through this extraordinary manipulation, Montesinos seized and held the peoples hearts and minds, distracting them from the increasingly sordid affairs of state. Yet eventually, the very ties that gave him power began to unravel. 19:51
Hed been once close to the Americans. As an intelligence source theyd protected him -- the flavour of the relationship 20:07
U.S. Embassy cables Lester: captured in declassified U.S. Embassy cables, like this one in 1996. 20:14
U.S. Voice: A valued ally in the drug fight, but no choirboy. 20:20
Indeed. For in 1993 the Americans had received information from a Peruvian officer whod secretly gone to the U.S. Embassy with details of the Colina Death Squad. 20:25
U.S. Voice: Reportedly he can identify officers who belonged to the special group, testify about the group's killings and link Fujimori's closest adviser Vladimiro Montesinos to the killings. 20:36
Lester: Yet another cable reports intelligence of Montesinos organizing paramilitary death squads, just days after Fujimori took office in 1990. 20:51
So for a decade Washington knew its man in Peru had the scent of murder around him, but it turned a blind eye. 21:00
Lester: Washington cut Montesinos a lot of slack when he needed it, didnt it? 21:11
Shifter: Absolutely. I think Washington cut Montesinos a lot of slack. He was the guy from Washington that they had confidence and trust in, in Washington, in Peru. They called him the doctor, Mr. Fix it. If there was a problem, he could fix it. 21:16
Lester: So if Washington didnt create Vladimiro Montesinos, it sustained him for a long time didnt it? 21:35
Shifter: I think so. 21:43
Lester: But little of this is known in the barrios of Peru -- all the bribing, blackmailing distorting, distracting just isnt an issue in places like this. 21:53
Daily packaged milk being handed out to children
Lester: In Villa Salvador, one of Limas sprawling slums, its as though the endless Valdivideos have paled against immediate problems. 22:09
Like simply getting daily packaged milk to feed the children.
Santa Cruz: Look how the girls are. Look how the girls are. Theres no future. We need help, or Peru is going to go to hell, if we continue like this. Theres malnutrition. Mistreatment; were in need of help, in need of foreign aid. Were in need of a lot of things in Peru. 22:27
Lester: Sinner or not, many here remember Fujimori fondly. 22:50
Gutierrez: Look, Im not against Fujimori. He made mistakes, but hes helped us plenty in this sector with human rights. We have schools thanks to him. 22:54
Muñoz: He should come back to confront all the accusations.
Super : 1999Fujimori shaking with crowds of people
Lester: For now the 62-year-old former President is in Tokyo, denying the accusations. 23:08
His Japanese citizenship prevents any extradition, but not the recording of video speeches.
Fujimori: Here we are with our hearts together, like always. 23:20
Lester: He sent this peachy monologue to this Lima Rally pushing for his return. 23:26
Man: He built three thousand schools. 23:27
Lester: Some Peruvians smile when they look back on the Fujimori decade. 23:40
Woman: We came on our own because we believe in him. Weve always believed in him. Now were dying of hunger. 23:44
Fujimori: We would share the table of a popular cafeteria and eat chicken broth and beans. 23:53
Chanting: Hes going to come back; hes going to come back; the Asian guy is going to come back soon. 24:05
Vivas: It could happen that after some years, well see Fujimori as an alternative of power. It wouldnt be impossible. Lester: For Fujimori to come back to power in this country? Vivas: Yes, it wouldnt be impossible. 24:11
Lester: But theres a spoiler in waiting if Fujimori wants the reclaim the Presidency. 24:37
His name Vladimiro Montesinos.
Captured in Venezuela after eight months on the run, hes been flown back to Lima for trial.
Lester: From what weve heard already, theres a theme to the Montesinos defence - Fujimori made me to do it. 24:55
Montesinos: I called Fujimori and said return to the country so that he and I can face the nation and deal with the acts that we have committed, that he ordered and I carried out. 25:07
Lester: Montesinos fell in part because Washington finally did move against him. There are reports American intelligence leaked that first Vladivideo, and later the FBI ferreted the fugitive Montesinos out of Caracas. 25:22
Lester Dumped by his most powerful sponsor and locked in this naval prison youd think the Master of Information would be out of cards to play. Youd be wrong. 26:38
For starters, The fifty-seven year old is very ready to sell out his old boss.
Montesinos: He shouldnt hide behind his Japanese nationality & try to run away from his legal responsibilities, he should come back to Peru. 26:02
Lester: Then theres the Valdivideos not the two and a half thousand already seized, but undiscovered tapes containing still hidden crimes. 26:14
Some say Fujimori seized many videos as he fled.
Montesinos told Justice officials he knows where thirty thousand videos are stashed. Is he bluffing? His enemies are inclined to believe him.
Super: Luis Vargas Valdivia Chief Prosecutor
Vargas: The majority of the videos are in hands of ex President Fujimori or in hands of ex Minister Montesinos. In fact, we believe that both, Fujimori and Montesinos, have these videos in their power. And it is obvious that Montesinos is using them to control the people that are outside prison. 26:49
Lester: Even now, Peruvians are unsure whos honest and whos compromised, and who led in the curious love/hate relationship between their former President and his Intelligence Minister. 27:21
Ivcher: Today, Im sure that Fujimori was, with the help of course of his bulldog named Montesinos. 27:35
Ivcher: Myself, Im sure today that Fujimori is the biggest devil that I have ever seen never seen after Hitler. 27:46
La Rosa: Montesinos is the Machiavellian mind behind all this. He dominated it. 27:58
Lester: Rayda Condor knows little about who to blame; just that her son was executed and her hopes died with him. 28:13
Condor: Im an ignorant woman from the ridges of Lima because I never studied. I wanted him to be a university student. He was going to be the one to make me proud. 28:29
Lester: It hurts still, ten years on as she visits the La Cantuta Memorial to her son and his colleagues. 28:46
Lester: Montesinos denies the murder and drug related charges against him and although hes finished as a leader, hes still powerful. 29:03
Then theres his old partner. Fujimori is free and he and his supporters are not yet ready to say Never Again. 29:12
Plaque on wall 'ALUMNO ARMANDO AMARO CONDOR 18 DE JULIO DE 1992' Music 29:21
Out: 29:29
Credits: Reporter: Tim LesterProducer: Vivien AltmanCamera: David MartinSound: Jason RackiEditor: Garth Thomas
Already the revelations about - and from - Vladimiro Montesinos have profoundly shaken his native Peru.
It now seems Montesinos was the muscle, evil and much of the genius behind discredited Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori is free for now. Montesinos is in a military cell waiting to play the one card he has left to deal himself out of a life in prison information - on the former president, the countless numbers of key people he corrupted and the foreign governments and intelligence services that dealt with him.
Tim Lester travelled to Lima for this report.
00:23
Plaque on wall 'ALUMNO ARMANDO AMARO CONDOR 18 DE JULIO DE 1992 00:28
Condor walking towards camera Condor: Every time I come, that wound never heals; never closes. I always expect to find my son. 00:31
Lester: Somehow her son, Armando, eight fellow students and a professor became targets of an execution squad run by Perus National Intelligence. 00:46
Condor: They took everyone out. They threw them on the ground face down. 00:56
Lester and Condor walk pass room Lester: So that was his room there?
Condor: Yes. 01:02
Lester: Theres now evidence the elite killers were working on orders from the very top of Perus power structure. 01:05
Lester: Is this where Armando slept? Condor: Yes, Armando. Look, the bullet holes in the ceiling have been patched up.
Lester: If so, this 01:08
Lester: is one in a litany of crimes carried out by Perus most powerful man. 01:24
Footage of Montesinos and Fujimori. Spy, extortionist and media manipulator, Vladimiro Montesinos, and his sidekick -- then President Alberto Fujimori. 01:30
Condor: They didnt have the right to kill my son. They didnt have the right. Whoever it was, they didnt have the right. Theyre going to pay. For each one of my tears, theyre going to pay. 01:51
Views over Lima Lester: Lima -- the arid, polluted capital and centre of power in Peru. 02:20
Old man with sack Lester: Half this countrys twenty-seven million people live below the poverty line. 02:30
Now Peruvians are learning the leadership duo, once regarded as economic and political saviours here and abroad, in fact ripped them off so completely, the country could take decades to recover. 02:35
People sitting on steps watching street entertainment
Shifter: Were talking about very, very large sums of money and were talking about 02:51
Shifter: an operation that really penetrated all areas of Peruvian life. 02:55
Lester: Professor Michael Shifter is a Washington based political specialist on Latin America. 03:01
Shifter: A cleptocracia -- what they call it in Spanish -- of just complete, sheer theft, and it was no ideology particularly that drove it. 03:07
Lester: Michael Shifter was living in Peru in 1989 when an obscure Agricultural engineer - the son of Japanese immigrants -- rose to power on a promise to crush terrorism and turn this once Marxist corner of South America into a free market economy. 03:26
Lester: For a time it seemed Alberto Fujimori was master of all he surveyed. 03:43
Fujimori: Now we have a peaceful country, good prospects, a lot of investment, stability, we have restored authority and order. 03:54
Lester: But even then behind the façade of an honest reformer was a tyrant who bulldozed his way through any opposition -- aided and abetted by his equally ruthless security chief Vladimiro Montesinos. 04:14
Lester: Though few
questioned it , Montesinos was a novel choice. Perus army had banished him for selling secrets to Americas CIA, but hed prospered as a defence lawyer -- for accused drug traffickers. 04:28
Fujimori: His job is mainly as an adviser of this intelligence service and he contributes a lot -- fighting terrorists and now fighting narco traffic, and off course as a lawyer sometime he give suggestion for law. 04:41
Lester: Did Fujimori control Montesinos or did Montesinos control Fujimori? 05:09
Shifter: As information comes out, it seems increasingly clear that Montesinos was the power in Peru. 05:15
Vargas: This was a regime created by criminals, for criminals, with criminal goals. 05:23
Lester: This is the centre of the prosecution of Montesinos and Fujimori hopefully.Vargas: Yes 05:32
Lester: Chief Prosecutor in the Montesinos case, Luis Vargas and his 30 staff have been sifting back through Fujimoris decade, building a case that now suggests the former President and his Security Minister were thieves on an unimaginable scale. 05:38
Vargas: We have linked the former Security Minister, Montesinos, with about three hundred million dollars. We calculate that Fujimori must have taken more than that. But still, we have to add all the other benefits obtained by the other members of the network. 05:55
Lester: Luis Vargas says the money directly stolen from the people of Peru is way over one billion US dollars. 06:12
Vargas: Yes, its true. It is a giant and shocking amount of money, if you consider the poverty levels in Peru. 06:20
Lester: The Fujimori regimes great robbery began unravelling in September 2000 when TV reporter turned Congressman, Luis Iberico, released a leaked videotape. 06:32
Iberico: Its going to cause repugnance to everyone; all Peruvians. This is a treason against the Peruvian State.
Lester: As well see, such transactions were routine, and while Fujimori tried to rally his supporters and sack Montesinos, the game was up. The President fled to Japan and the Intelligence Minister disappeared. 07:07
Lester: So who caught Montesinos on tape? In fact, he recorded it himself and he did it not once, but thousands of times. 07:28
Lester: Two and a half thousand so-called Valdivideos are now in state hands, records of Montesinos bribing politicians, judges, TV personalities and the like.
Video clip of Montesinos Lester: In one typical video, the master of deceit hands ten thousand U.S. dollars to a key electoral official, who then asks if hes being taped. No says Montesinos. We dont do that for ethical reasons.07:56
Iberico: I imagine that they cant sleep at night because they made a pact with the devil. 08:15
Lester: His hidden cameras gave him leverage for blackmail on a massive scale. 08:26
Montesinos had entrenched his President by compromising every sector that had power in Peru.
Controlling public opinion was a special priority -- and to do that, Montesinos needed to target the countrys TV barons, to whom he was especially generous. 08:41
Vivas: At least we know that each owner of the media received ten million dollars. 08:53
Lester: One at least was offered much more but turned it down. 09:00
Ivcher: I didnt want to sell my reputation for money. 09:04
Lester: Baruch Ivcher the owner of Channel Two was deemed so important to snare his bribe was delivered by the prime minister and president of the congress. 09:14
Ivcher: And they offered me 19 million dollars; it was Friday. On Monday you have it in your account. Lester: Thats what they said.
Ivcher: They said to me. 09:25
Lester: The TV boss says he saluted the two leading politicians with a single finger. 09:40
Ivcher: I told them like this; this is the form that we are not selling here conscience in this channel. Never I told them. 09:46
Lester: But given the huge amounts on offer, the incorruptible were few. 09:56
Vargas: Not only the Executive, Armed Forces and Police but also the Justice Department, the Public Ministry, the Congress and the Electoral Office, so they accomplished an absolutely power in the nation. 10:00
Townsend: For me these tapes are very useful for the political, moral cleaning of Peru. 10:16
Lester: But the tapes are just the start where Anel Townsend is concerned. Head of a Congressional investigation, shes thrown open the curtains 10:25
Lima headquarters for Montesinos National Intelligence Service to a building Peruvians know as the Little Pentagon Lima headquarters for Montesinos and his feared National Intelligence Service. 10:36
Townsend: We found a place full of old beds, old equipments. 10:52
Black and white footage of Montesinos Lester: An unnamed army officer told the Commission of a secret sub-basement Montesinos operated under the building. 11:03
Townsend: He gave us a plan of the place and he said, if you follow my drawing -- 11:12
Townsend: because he draw this -- you will find the incinerator. 11:18
Townsend: He said, after the tortures, came the killing, 11:30
Townsend: and then according to him, the bodies were burned. 11:33
Inside the incinerator Lester: Those who worked in the rooms above will never forget the smell. 11:41
La Rosa: I could smell burnt hair, like a piece of hair. 11:48
Lester: And their horror as it dawned on them why the basement furnace was there. 11:55
La Rosa: To make people disappear. To cremate them. 12:00
Lester: Leonor La Rosa was a Montesinos agent who became a basement victim herself -- raped and bashed into life-long paralysis when she refused to give intelligence on fellow agents accused of leaking information. She got the special treatment in the bosss mind altering dungeon. 12:10
La Rosa: Images would start appearing. Horrific images, and voices from beyond. This dungeon had special effects, to break me, to make me scream. 12:30
Lester: The young mother clinged [sic]. 12:51
Picture of Children Lester: to her sanity by pretending to cuddle her children 12:52
La Rosa: I would sing Sleep my child, sleep my sun, sleep piece of my heart. I would sing this over and over, first with my son and then my daughter. 12:58
Lester: Lying down the corridor was someone else. 13:18
La Rosa in bed La Rosa: I got to the last cell and there was a woman, in the foetal position, naked who was hiding her face between her knees. 13:24
Lester: incredibly, it was Alberto Fujimoris estranged wife Susana Higuchi. 13:37
La Rosa: At that instance I recognised her an I asked her what are you doing here, what happened? 13:46
Lester: The president had allegedly ordered her arrest and torture because shed gone public with her criticism of his autocratic style. She spent weeks in hospital recovering but in the new Peru, is now a congresswoman. 13:53
Condor : Vladimiro Montesinos is an assassin. To me, hes an assassin. 14:13
The brutality was taken from city basement to the rural hills, robbing Rayda Condor of her son. 14:17
Condor daughter What this family wants is not vengeance. We want justice. 14:24
Lester: Justice for the vengeance of the corrupt leadership duo, who sooled the killing squad known as Colina on La Cantuta University to avenge a personal slight. 14:31
Condor: Because Fujimori came here and was pelted with rocks and tomatoes by the students. This I believe was his retribution; to assassinate these students. 14:42
14:56
Lester: A military court convicted nine Colina members of the La Cantuta killings, but President Fujimori gave the men amnesty. 15:02
Vargas: We are sure he permitted, consented and also participated in the creation of these policies that had as an objective, the violation of Human Rights; that had as an objective the murders of these people. 15:10
Lester: The killings are one area among many where its not clear who held the power -- Fujimori or Montesinos. But even members of his own family regard Montesinos as capable of anything. 15:33
Cardenal: Hes a person completely infatuated with power and thought of himself transformed as some type of God, a demigod. 15:49
Lester: Cousin Sergio Cardenal Montesinos grew up next door to Valdimiro and the two once shared a law practice. 16:10
Cardenal: Its like I have AIDS. Its terrible. The surname Montesinos is damned. 16:18
Lester: Do you think he is a killer? Cardenal: Yes. When he needs to do something, hell do it, or hell send someone to do it. Of that I have no doubt. Lester: Hes your flesh and blood. Hes your cousin. Cardenal: Yes, yes, yes. Lamentably he is. It doesnt bring me pride to say that. Its true. Its true. Hes that kind of person. 16:31
Lester: Terror helped entrench the power of Vladimiro Montesinos, but his genius went well beyond torture and murder. He understood the importance of controlling public information, in particular television. Through the transmission towers above Lima, Montesinos was able to take a Goebbels like grip on news and information that shaped Peruvian opinion. 17:03
Vivas: We were bought. We were corrupted, perverted. 17:30
Lester: Fernando Vivas is a writer in a country where the written word rates poorly. 17:34
Views of Lima Vivas: There is a very low rate of readers in Peru so TV is very, very important. TV has eighty percent of the advertising market. 17:41
Lester: And as weve seen, many media owners werent just corrupted, they were filmed taking their bribes -- one receiving so much cash he needed a suitcase to carry it - two million U.S. dollars. So when it come to driving the news agenda, the intelligence chief had the crooked barons over a barrel. 17:55
Super: Luis Iberico Former TV Reporter
Iberico: Vladimiro Montesinos drove all types of communication, and Fujimoris dictatorship was sustained by this propaganda system. His dictatorship was propaganda driven. 18:16
Lester: Media insiders saw Montesinos take control of Peruvian thinking as he dictated TV news rundowns. 18:36
Iberico: He would decide how it would start and how it would end. He would decide which news went to air and which news didnt go to air, in which order it ran and how long it ran for. 18:44
Lester: And then hed write the next mornings headlines. 18:58
Vivas: It was a kind of sinister hobby for him, and he wanted just the headlines, and he paid for each one of the headlines. 19:01
Lester: Montesinos even employed psychologists to work up wild stories and divert public attention from politics there were crying statues of the Virgin Mary and the Monster that killed only cab drivers. 19:14
Iberico: And this is how we were kept screaming in the desert. Any time we highlighted a negative issue, immediately there would be a story come out that would overshadow the issue; a popular, extraordinary, fantastic story. 19:28
Lester: Through this extraordinary manipulation, Montesinos seized and held the peoples hearts and minds, distracting them from the increasingly sordid affairs of state. Yet eventually, the very ties that gave him power began to unravel. 19:51
Hed been once close to the Americans. As an intelligence source theyd protected him -- the flavour of the relationship 20:07
U.S. Embassy cables Lester: captured in declassified U.S. Embassy cables, like this one in 1996. 20:14
U.S. Voice: A valued ally in the drug fight, but no choirboy. 20:20
Indeed. For in 1993 the Americans had received information from a Peruvian officer whod secretly gone to the U.S. Embassy with details of the Colina Death Squad. 20:25
U.S. Voice: Reportedly he can identify officers who belonged to the special group, testify about the group's killings and link Fujimori's closest adviser Vladimiro Montesinos to the killings. 20:36
Lester: Yet another cable reports intelligence of Montesinos organizing paramilitary death squads, just days after Fujimori took office in 1990. 20:51
So for a decade Washington knew its man in Peru had the scent of murder around him, but it turned a blind eye. 21:00
Lester: Washington cut Montesinos a lot of slack when he needed it, didnt it? 21:11
Shifter: Absolutely. I think Washington cut Montesinos a lot of slack. He was the guy from Washington that they had confidence and trust in, in Washington, in Peru. They called him the doctor, Mr. Fix it. If there was a problem, he could fix it. 21:16
Lester: So if Washington didnt create Vladimiro Montesinos, it sustained him for a long time didnt it? 21:35
Shifter: I think so. 21:43
Lester: But little of this is known in the barrios of Peru -- all the bribing, blackmailing distorting, distracting just isnt an issue in places like this. 21:53
Daily packaged milk being handed out to children
Lester: In Villa Salvador, one of Limas sprawling slums, its as though the endless Valdivideos have paled against immediate problems. 22:09
Like simply getting daily packaged milk to feed the children.
Santa Cruz: Look how the girls are. Look how the girls are. Theres no future. We need help, or Peru is going to go to hell, if we continue like this. Theres malnutrition. Mistreatment; were in need of help, in need of foreign aid. Were in need of a lot of things in Peru. 22:27
Lester: Sinner or not, many here remember Fujimori fondly. 22:50
Gutierrez: Look, Im not against Fujimori. He made mistakes, but hes helped us plenty in this sector with human rights. We have schools thanks to him. 22:54
Muñoz: He should come back to confront all the accusations.
Super : 1999Fujimori shaking with crowds of people
Lester: For now the 62-year-old former President is in Tokyo, denying the accusations. 23:08
His Japanese citizenship prevents any extradition, but not the recording of video speeches.
Fujimori: Here we are with our hearts together, like always. 23:20
Lester: He sent this peachy monologue to this Lima Rally pushing for his return. 23:26
Man: He built three thousand schools. 23:27
Lester: Some Peruvians smile when they look back on the Fujimori decade. 23:40
Woman: We came on our own because we believe in him. Weve always believed in him. Now were dying of hunger. 23:44
Fujimori: We would share the table of a popular cafeteria and eat chicken broth and beans. 23:53
Chanting: Hes going to come back; hes going to come back; the Asian guy is going to come back soon. 24:05
Vivas: It could happen that after some years, well see Fujimori as an alternative of power. It wouldnt be impossible. Lester: For Fujimori to come back to power in this country? Vivas: Yes, it wouldnt be impossible. 24:11
Lester: But theres a spoiler in waiting if Fujimori wants the reclaim the Presidency. 24:37
His name Vladimiro Montesinos.
Captured in Venezuela after eight months on the run, hes been flown back to Lima for trial.
Lester: From what weve heard already, theres a theme to the Montesinos defence - Fujimori made me to do it. 24:55
Montesinos: I called Fujimori and said return to the country so that he and I can face the nation and deal with the acts that we have committed, that he ordered and I carried out. 25:07
Lester: Montesinos fell in part because Washington finally did move against him. There are reports American intelligence leaked that first Vladivideo, and later the FBI ferreted the fugitive Montesinos out of Caracas. 25:22
Lester Dumped by his most powerful sponsor and locked in this naval prison youd think the Master of Information would be out of cards to play. Youd be wrong. 26:38
For starters, The fifty-seven year old is very ready to sell out his old boss.
Montesinos: He shouldnt hide behind his Japanese nationality & try to run away from his legal responsibilities, he should come back to Peru. 26:02
Lester: Then theres the Valdivideos not the two and a half thousand already seized, but undiscovered tapes containing still hidden crimes. 26:14
Some say Fujimori seized many videos as he fled.
Montesinos told Justice officials he knows where thirty thousand videos are stashed. Is he bluffing? His enemies are inclined to believe him.
Super: Luis Vargas Valdivia Chief Prosecutor
Vargas: The majority of the videos are in hands of ex President Fujimori or in hands of ex Minister Montesinos. In fact, we believe that both, Fujimori and Montesinos, have these videos in their power. And it is obvious that Montesinos is using them to control the people that are outside prison. 26:49
Lester: Even now, Peruvians are unsure whos honest and whos compromised, and who led in the curious love/hate relationship between their former President and his Intelligence Minister. 27:21
Ivcher: Today, Im sure that Fujimori was, with the help of course of his bulldog named Montesinos. 27:35
Ivcher: Myself, Im sure today that Fujimori is the biggest devil that I have ever seen never seen after Hitler. 27:46
La Rosa: Montesinos is the Machiavellian mind behind all this. He dominated it. 27:58
Lester: Rayda Condor knows little about who to blame; just that her son was executed and her hopes died with him. 28:13
Condor: Im an ignorant woman from the ridges of Lima because I never studied. I wanted him to be a university student. He was going to be the one to make me proud. 28:29
Lester: It hurts still, ten years on as she visits the La Cantuta Memorial to her son and his colleagues. 28:46
Lester: Montesinos denies the murder and drug related charges against him and although hes finished as a leader, hes still powerful. 29:03
Then theres his old partner. Fujimori is free and he and his supporters are not yet ready to say Never Again. 29:12
Plaque on wall 'ALUMNO ARMANDO AMARO CONDOR 18 DE JULIO DE 1992' Music 29:21
Out: 29:29
Credits: Reporter: Tim LesterProducer: Vivien AltmanCamera: David MartinSound: Jason RackiEditor: Garth Thomas