Venezuelan leader denies complicity

 BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 CARACAS -- In President Hugo Chávez's version of the tale of Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's fugitive former intelligence chief was hidden in Venezuela for seven months by lowly hustlers and ex-cops linked to Chávez foes in Miami.

 And his arrest was worthy of Hollywood, the result of a military intelligence agent's patient infiltration of Montesinos' keepers and a midnight roadblock that ended the Peruvian's life on the lam.

 "You've seen the movie,'' Chávez said. "A car cuts in front, a pistol goes here. Get out of the car!'' As Chávez told "our truth'' about one of Latin America's most explosive scandals in years, he made an imaginary gun with his finger and pointed down, as if he were standing beside the car.

 But radically different versions of the story suggest that Chávez, a sometime friend of Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Colombian guerrillas, and other top Venezuelan government officials helped shelter Montesinos, who stands accused of everything from drug trafficking to directing death squads in Peru.

 Venezuelan security sources and journalists said that Montesinos, the power behind former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's 10-year rule, was protected by top officials of the secret police and wealthy businessmen close to Chávez. And a senior Bush administration official said Montesinos was not captured the way Chávez said.

ONE VERSION OF HAND OVER

 Fugitive's guards got cold feet, aborted agreed plan, U.S. says

 Montesinos was voluntarily surrendered to Venezuelan authorities by bodyguards who got cold feet after agreeing with the FBI in Miami and Peruvian officials in Lima to deliver him to Peruvian officials in Caracas and collect a $5 million reward, the U.S. official said in Washington.

 Two weeks after Montesinos' capture on June 23, his clandestine stay in Venezuela remains wrapped in a web of mysteries, contradictions and reports of mutual
 wiretapping by rival Chávez government agencies.

 Montesinos fled Peru around Oct. 20 last year, following a bribery scandal that forced Fujimori from power the next month and led him to seek refuge in his parents' native Japan. The spy chief arrived in Caracas on Dec. 7 on a flight from the nearby island of Aruba and apparently remained here until his arrest.

 Chávez maintains that the best proof of his government's innocence in the Montesinos case was Montesinos' deportation to Peru 24 hours after his detention -- free to reveal the names of anyone who helped him in Venezuela.

 "We're not going to cover up anything or anyone. We're not a closet for anyone,'' Chávez said in a four-hour speech on the case June 28.

 But the Chávez government has fended off an investigation by eight opposition lawmakers and cooperated only with an inquiry by the National Assembly's Domestic
 Policy Commission, controlled by Chávez supporters.

 The commission has leaked like a sieve over the past week, but only information that tends to clear the government and focus blame on a small group of Venezuelan
 businessmen and former secret police agents.

 Commission member Cilia Flórez said last week that with the inquiry nearly complete, the evidence so far showed that Montesinos was sheltered by six to eight men who "extorted'' $1.2 million from the Peruvian.

 Flórez identified the following suspects:

   José Agustín Guevara, 44, a former inspector in the secret police, known as the DISIP, who was arrested by the FBI in Miami on June 22 as he tried to withdraw $3.7 million from a Montesinos account in a Brickell Avenue bank. He agreed to phone Montesinos' bodyguards in Caracas and arranged for them to deliver the fugitive to the Peruvian ambassador's residence.

   José Otoniel Guevara, older brother of José Agustín and former DISIP inspector, who allegedly helped slip Montesinos past immigration controls when he arrived from Aruba.

   Julio Ayala, a Venezuelan businessman with investments in Aruba, and Carlos Mora, a Caracas physician. The two men allegedly met Montesinos in Aruba and offered to hide and protect him in Venezuela.

   José Luís Nuñez, a former DISIP agent, a sometime employee of José Agustín Guevara and one of two men guarding Montesinos in a three-story house in the Caracas suburb of El Junquito when José Agustín phoned from Miami.

 No current government officials are under suspicion, Flórez told journalists, and the suspects helped Montesinos simply with the goal of milking him for the $250 million he has stashed in several banks around the world.

 "They drew [Montesinos] pretty pictures and told him that someone would protect him, I don't know who, to come here and he would be secure,'' Chávez said in his June 28 speech.

 As he spoke, Chávez displayed evidence that most of the suspects had links to his enemies, especially former President Carlos Andrés Pérez, who was hospitalized in Miami last week. Chávez, a former army lieutenant colonel, tried to topple Pérez in a failed coup attempt in 1992 and was elected president in 1998.

 The Guevaras worked for the DISIP until 1995, under Presidents Pérez and Jaime Lusinchi, and José Agustín Guevara served as security advisor to Lusinchi. José Otoniel Guevara also worked for Francisco Arias, Chávez's opponent in presidential elections last year, and Mora is a close Pérez family friend.

ROLE OF THE BROTHERS

Friend says police work had simply been a job

 A Guevara family friend and former policeman dismissed the brothers' DISIP work under past presidents as simply a job and said they had no particularly close political connections with Pérez or Lusinchi.

 Instead, the source added, José Agustín Guevara was brought into the Montesinos protectors' group by a wealthy Venezuelan businessman with close ties to the Chávez government.

 The businessman, who had hired Guevara to perform many ``security jobs'' in past years, asked him recently to handle some of Montesinos' bank transactions, the
 source said.

 "José [Agustín] was not working for the government, but you can be sure the top people [helping] Montesinos were in the government,'' the source said, asking for
 anonymity for himself and the businessman out of fear for their lives.

 Guevara, an electronics engineer, recently closed his small pager and two-way radio rental business after suffering three heart attacks in the last two years and was living off the charity of relatives, the source said.

 But a police search last week of his three-bedroom apartment in a Caracas neighborhood, where comparable condos sell for $250,000, turned up posh furnishings and a bar stocked with 40 bottles, according to media reports.

 The friend added that Guevara occasionally hired Nuñez as a chauffeur and errand runner, and that José Otoniel Guevara had been chief of security until last week at a luxurious gun club in Caracas, the Magnum Club.

 Lawmaker Flórez said that Julio Ayala and Carlos Mora were part owners of the Magnum Club, and that Montesinos had apparently stayed in one of its guest rooms shortly after his arrival in Caracas.

 None of the suspects identified so far have been arrested, with Interior Minister Luis Miquilena saying that they may have committed no crime, since Montesinos himself appeared to have done nothing illegal while here.

 In Chávez's June 28 speech, he reported that Military Intelligence, known as DIM, had infiltrated an agent among Montesinos' protectors several months ago in the last of at least five operations to capture the fugitive. He did not explain why the DIM was used rather than the DISIP, which normally would handle such politically sensitive cases.

 Chávez said the DIM got word from its spy June 23 that Montesinos was about to change his hideout -- the result of the agreement between José Agustín Guevara and Nuñez to hand him over to Peruvian officials -- and moved to intercept the white Toyota vehicle carrying him.

 "Montesinos left point A, was going to point B and reached point CH . . . the Chávez point,'' the president boasted.

 The Bush administration official gave a different version.

 When Nuñez failed to deliver Montesinos to the ambassador's residence at the agreed hour, officials in Lima phoned Nuñez and he reported that he had voluntarily turned him in to Venezuelan authorities, the official said.

 "We believe the Venezuelan government knew of Montesinos' presence all along, so our best guess is that . . . once it was faced with the fact that the game was up, it decided to arrest him and ship him to Peru quickly to make it look good,'' the official added.

 In another contradiction, Chávez read on June 28 from an alleged statement by Miami FBI director Hector Pesquera ``denying'' that the FBI had ``kept Venezuelan
 authorities in the dark'' about the pact with Nuñez to surrender Montesinos.

 Pesquera had indeed said earlier in the week that the FBI did not tell the Venezuelans, and his real statement simply stated that no FBI agents in Caracas took part in the operation to seize Montesinos.

 CONFLICTING STATEMENTS

 Chávez, U.S. versions of the FBI's role differ

 The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has not publicly challenged Chávez's portrayal of the Pesquera statement, apparently not wanting to antagonize a government that each year sells the United States about 15 percent of its oil imports.

 Chávez also spent much time on June 28 attacking Patricia Poleo, an editor at the newspaper Nuevo País who has written several stories accusing former DISIP chief Eliézer Otaiza and DISIP's chief of investigations, Enoé Vásquez, both replaced two weeks ago, of being Montesinos' top protectors.

 "Some women journalists here . . . are helping this conspiracy to try to make the world believe that Venezuela is a criminal state, that Hugo Chávez is a criminal
 president, that he protects narcotraffickers,'' the president said.

 Otaiza, a former army captain, was a member of a second coup attempt against Pérez in late 1992. He was wounded and jailed, but several dozen other conspirators escaped to Peru, where they were sheltered by Montesinos until President Rafael Caldera pardoned them 18 months later.

 Poleo has reported that Otaiza, Vásquez and two other top DISIP officials mounted the operation to get Montesinos from Peru to Venezuela in thanks for his help to the coup plotters and to relieve Fujimori of the hot potato that the intelligence chief had become.

 Interior Minister Miquilena, in overall charge of security issues, said last week that ``at least from the information that the Interior Ministry has, there's no indication
 [Otaiza] has any ties'' with Montesinos.

 EX-POLICE CHIEF'S PART

 Would official have kept the president in the dark?

 Poleo has reported that Otaiza never told Chávez about Montesinos' presence in Venezuela and instead appears to have been trying to position himself as a successor or even a replacement for Chávez.

 Wiretaps on Otaiza's phone lines by rivals in the Interior Ministry revealed his role in the Montesinos affair by about March, Poleo wrote, but Chávez refused to believe the reports until about two months ago. Few Venezuelan analysts believe, however, that if Otaiza was involved in the Montesinos case he would not have informed Chávez, the leader he has staunchly supported since 1992 and once called ``my spiritual father.''

 "He was Chávez's attack dog, his most trusted operator. And if he didn't tell Chávez about Montesinos, why is he not under arrest?'' said Ivan Carratú, a retired navy admiral and chief aide to former President Pérez.

 Herald special correspondents Phil Gunson and Christina Hoag contributed to this report.

                                    © 2001