[The following interview with the Peruvian Trotskyist leader Hugo Blanco was published in the June 16 issue of Internationalen, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Workers League, Swedish section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor.]
muestion. Is it true that you were a ested by the police only a tew hours afte you appeared on TV?
Answer. Yes. The promises about the election to the constituent assembly included giving all parties an opportunity to present their policies in the mass media. I am on the slate of the FOCEP electoral front, and when I spoke on TV I called on people to support the planned strike against the regime's price increases. That was on May 18.
In the evening, a few hours later, I was arrested by police in my home. That night a state of emergency began to be imposed. But it was not announced officially until two days later. Along with me, other leaders of the left were picked up. A number of them were taken in the day following my arrest.
After spending a few days in jail, on the evening of May 24, I and a group of other prisoners were told that we had ten minutes to get ourselves together before being taken away. We were put in a car without being told where we were going.
We were driven off in the company of two imprisoned admirals, who had been naval ministers under the Velasco regime. The police told us that we were going to be flown to Argentina.
We didn't believe it at first. When a police chief repeated it, I told him that it was a form of psychological torture to fool us about that.
When we got to the airport and found that it was true, we refused to go onto the plane. The police called for reinforcements and handcuffed us so that they could drag us onto the plane. They were secret police, not the ordinary kind.
The airport personnel knew nothing about the deportations. We took every opportunity to protest against the way we were being treated. Finally, the police had to drag us into the plane.
Q. Weren't you taking a big risk by resisting?
A. It was a good thing that we did what we did. It was because of it that the deportations became known. The next day a picture of the scene at the airport appeared in the newspapers along with news about our being exiled. The international campaign got under way, and then it was hard for the Argentine government to do anything to us.
Q. What happened when you got to Argentina?
A. We were turned over to the Argentine army in Jujuy, near the Bolivian border. The army could have killed us there and said that we were a group of Bolivian guerrillas who had crossed over the frontier.
We were transferred into a truck. The soldiers pointed their rifles at us. We were taken to a military barracks, where we were kept under armed guard. The guards often pointed their weapons at us.
But when the news got out, things got better. Officials came from Buenos Aires and said that we would be granted asylum in Argentina.
We said no. We wanted to go to another country and asked to be put in contact with some embassy. That was refused. We were not being persecuted in Argentina, the officials claimed, and so the only possibility was to accept asylum in Argentina and then go to some other country.
I said that I had a Swedish residency permit. Another ore of us, the union lawyer Ricardo Díaz Chávez, had a Mexican residency permit, since he had a job there as a university lecturer.
Q. Why did they want to give you "asylum" in Argentina?
A. It was important for the regime's propaganda. There is a lot of talk about human rights.
Two union leaders who were forced to accept the offer of "asylum" were taken to the town of General Pico in the province of La Pampa. They are to be forced to stay there.
After we were flown to Buenos Aires, we were put in cells at the federal police headquarters. We got nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, and when we did get food, it was so bad that not even Peruvian dogs would eat it.
But it was never said that we were under arrest. They claimed that we were only beingly t ias ail foredcho cal to one. being kept in jail for technical reasons.
Swedish consul and Swedish journalists. Keep ot hardered from dee outhed police to
It got harder and harder for the police to and my comrades got permission to make some telephone calls. Then I came here. I
Showdown Nears in SWP
The possibility that Attorney General Griffin Bell might be jailed for refusing to obey a court order in the Socialist Workers Party case has alarmed the editors of several of the country's major daily newspapers. In lead editorials the Washington Post of June 17 and the New York Times of June 20 urged Federal Judge Thomas Griesa not to force Bell to obey an order to turn over FBI files on eighteen informers in the SWP and Young Socialist Alliance.
The Washington Post admits that "at first glance, the position of Attorney General Griffin Bell in the Socialist Workers Party case seems outrageous." Actually, Bell's stance does not look so good upon closer examination either. But the Post and Times both claim that Bell's defense of "informer privilege" has merit.
A year ago, Judge Griesa ordered the government to turn over some twenty-five file drawers of uncensored records to attorneys arguing the socialists' $40 million lawsuit. His directive has been upheld twice by the Court of Appeals and once by the U.S. Supreme Court. Bell still refuses to comply, and attorneys for the socialists have asked that he be cited for contempt of court and put in jail until he obeys the order.
The judge has read the files and declared that they are an absolutely indispensable source of evidence in this case." In a February 1978 hearing, Griesa said that "[there] simply is no substitute for what is seen in these files." Attorneys for the SWP and YSA have explained that the files are necessary to assess the full damage done to the organizations by government spies planted in their ranks. The Times editorial, however, questions "whether the party has substantial need for the informer files.
The editors of the Times and Post are not really worried about whether the socialists honestly need the files to press don't know exactly what happened to the others.
Q. You said that you suspect the CIA of being behind this operation.
A. We had not done anything directed against the Argentine government. There are grounds for suspecting an international conspiracy with CIA involvement. One reason is that Admiral Guillermo Faura, a naval minister under Velasco, was among those deported.
In his term in office, he moved against the CIA offices that had been set up in government buildings. He threatened the CIA with more sweeping measures if they did not immediately clear out of the offices they were using in the Ministry of the Navy buildings in the Centro Civico in Lima.
Suit Against FBI
forward their case. Rather, they are concerned because turning over the files would strike a serious blow to the whole use of undercover informers against dissident groups. Bell's argument is true in a certain sense: Informers will be less willing to do the government's dirty work if they think they might eventually be identified and become liable to prosecution by a criminal or civil court for their activities.
In the past the Times and the Post have complained about the FBI's illegal harassment of the SWP and YSA. Now they counsel the attorney general to compound this illegal activity by defying a valid court order. Both newspapers think that the socialists have gone too far, even though they clearly have the law on their side.
The sections of the U.S. ruling class represented by the New York Times and Washington Post are convinced that the FBI needs to polish up its image by minimizing "abuses" like burglaries and illegal wiretaps. But they do not think that planting secret agents inside a legal political organization is itself an abuse. "Informers are often essential," says the Times. The Post politely calls the snitches "sources of information" and says it is logical to believe "the government has a legal right to protect the confidentiality of its sources."
The June 24 issue of the liberal New York weekly The Nation carried quite a different editorial on Bell's conflict with the court. It accused the Attorney General of seeking "to preserve the dishonorable profession of political informer, one that is so useful to police prying into the lives of citizens," and suggested Bell pay more attention to "the strict observance of the law at all levels of police activity,
" and less to "the protection of a few miserable informers and their like in the future."