A Tale of Two Elections

In February 1986 I was serving as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC). I suppose in time spent, I worked harder and longer on the Philippines in the NIC than any other issue. It was a time of the New People’s Army (NPA) insurgency, Ferdinand Marcos, and Cory Aquino. Producing anything on the Philippines was more complicated than usual by the fact that both the President and Director Casey considered Marcos a swell guy, maybe even a friend. My travels from one end of the archipelago to the other and back again during my time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee helped me sort through all the information coming out of the Philippines.

I quickly discovered that, like me, no one in the Intelligence Community had any love lost for Marcos. As I wrote in a memo to Casey, “Marcos isn’t even a good authoritarian,” and “is the Philippines’ worst enemy.” Everyone agreed that most, if not all of the country’s troubles, could be traced back to him. The government’s failure to provide even a basic level of security, its focus on the cities with little attention given to the problems of the countryside, and its abject failure to provide a fair and efficient judicial system went far in explaining the dangers posed by the communist insurgency. The government never maintained a permanent presence far beyond the cities, creating vast areas of the Philippines captive to the NPA’s intimidation. All the while, Ferdinand and his friends were growing rich and living the high life in Manila.

I only met Marcos once. It was during Senator Chris Dodd’s face-to- face meeting with him, but it told me a lot about Marcos as a person. When we arrived at the Palace, greeters escorted us to a room that obviously was the location where Marcos held most of his meetings – a lot of gold gilding and such. Waiting for the President and then waiting some more, we had a great chance to get acquainted with the meeting room. The most prominent feature was a platform in the center that was at least 18 to 24 inches above floor level. It held a chair for the President. The platform was high enough that there were two or three steps that I assumed Marcos used to mount his “kingly” throne. He eventually arrived by entering through a rear entrance and walked slowly up the steps to his chair without stopping to shake Senator Dodd’s hand. Even when seated, the platform made him the tallest person in the room, allowing him to look down on anyone in the visitors’ area either standing or seated. Whether he had a thing about his height or simply wanted to demonstrate who was in charge, I don’t know. It certainly fit in with the countless jokes aimed at Marcos that were always swirling around Manila.

My favorite one was about his reputation as a championship golfer who bet and won consistently from everyone he competed against. Problem was, it was all a sham. The joke was, when he went golfing, he had to be accompanied by three assistants, two more than the usual caddy – his own personal foursome. The two extra “forecaddies” would takeup their position in the heavy rough on both sides of the fairway before Marcos and the other golfers arrived. Anytime Marcos’s shot went wildly off the mark, which was almost every time he hit the ball, one or the other of the “rough walkers” would locate where his shot had landed. As Marcos walked up the fairway with his playing partners, the ball would somehow miraculously be lying in a perfect position on the fairway for his next shot. Everybody knew what was happening, but few were willing to pass up an opportunity to have a couple of hours with the President of the Philippines. From their perspective, the money they lost was well spent. I wonder if Mr. Trump, before he was elected President, ever played golf with Marcos? That would have been great fun to watch and, if opened to the public, would likely have attracted a Master’s Tournament size turnout.  I know I would have especially paid money to see which one cheated the most.

The biggest disagreement in the IC had nothing to do with Marcos – almost everyone but the President and Director Casey agreed he was the problem -- not Cory Aquino. No, most of the difference was over whether Cory had the capability to run a country. My impression of her was formed, for good or ill, when she met with Senator Dodd during his trip to the Philippines. During the meeting, I saw a different side of her, one that caught me by surprise. She dominated the conversation, but it was filled with self-doubt and pleas for help from a man she was meeting for the first time. She openly questioned her ability, and her lack of experience, admitting that she had nothing to do with her husband's political activities, and that she still felt uncomfortable thinking about such things. At times, she would wring her hands. At other times, she appeared near breaking down altogether. I left with the clear impression that the biggest responsibility she had until then had been making sure someone had picked up Benny’s laundry on time.

Cory clearly loved the Philippines, and she had some understanding of what was tearing her country apart. I believed that she would try to do her best. As a member of the elite, however, I was never convinced that she fully appreciated the grievances of the poor or fully understood the threat posed by the NPA. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop the people in the countryside from loving her. They had seen her husband Benny as someone they trusted, someone they looked up to, someone who could bring economic development to the Philippines, and they had no doubt that Marcos had him killed. They rallied around Cory hoping that she could carry out the programs her husband had championed. Some in the Intelligence Community were confident she could pull it off; the rest of us were not so sure. We of course were wrong. 

Marcos obviously grew increasingly nervous at Cory’s growing popularity because, in late 1985, he announced a snap election to be held on 7 February 1986 on an American TV news show. I assume that he thought that waiting would only increase Cory’s chances to unseat him and give the international community little time to prepare for proper oversight of the election. In this he failed on both counts as he did in so many other things. He may also have calculated that he had little to lose. He doubted Cory had what it took to be President. Her reputation in elite circles as “just a housewife” may have clouded his vision. At worst, he would have to cheat massively to secure his victory. Marcos controlled the election apparatus, and he had not hesitated in the past to use it to his full advantage. He also had an ace up his sleeve – the President of the United States. I’m convinced, like many others, that he believed President Reagan would not withdraw his support from an old friend no matter what he did.

Directorate of Intelligence (DI) analysts back at CIA Headquarters were not part of Marco’s cheering squad either. They had watched as he and his cronies had cheated their way into power one election after another, and as the Philippines’ economic development fell further behind its Southeast Asian neighbors. As soon as the snap election was announced, the DI analysts began a detailed and comprehensive examination of past election fraud committed by Marcos and other Philippine politicians. They used their findings to create an exhaustive list of past vote rigging schemes. They included warning indicators to spot such techniques should they be used in the upcoming election. These indicators provided a method of spotting vote rigging, and could quickly measure their impact on the final results. It was a first-rate piece of work. An example of the value intelligence officers can bring to policymakers. Without their efforts, convincing the President and others that the election was illegitimate would have been far more difficult. All involved deserve a medal.

Early returns from the snap election indicated a landslide for Marcos. Because of the preparations made for just this occasion, the DI analysts were quickly able to detect that Marcos was cheating. What made such a difference was their ability to explain how it was being done, where it was occurring, and a measure of what difference it was making in the election. They concluded that except for massive cheating, Aquino would have won the election. I came in early that Saturday morning after the election to talk with the Philippine analysts in the DI. They laid out a detailed account of the massive voter fraud that I found compelling. Marcos was going to have a hard time convincing any fair-minded person that he had not rigged the results.

On the Sunday morning after the election, I was asked, along with others, to meet with Director Casey. The Director had been in New York, and he sent word ahead that he wanted to discuss the election results. In his absence, the Deputy Director John McMahon, a veteran CIA officer and former Director of Operations, had been filling in at meetings “downtown.” On his return, Casey was scheduled to attend the next high-level meeting with the President later that day. While we were waiting for the Director to arrive, McMahon asked us to bring him up to date on the latest developments. There were indications that Aquino was not going to accept the results, and there were early signs of the beginning of what later became known as the People’s Power Revolution. The DI analysts had done their job so well that everyone was in agreement on the election results.

When Director Casey finally arrived, even as he was hanging up his winter coat, he started telling us what needed to be done to deal with the confusing results in the election. He suggested that in a few months, the Philippines hold another election and whoever won that one would become President of the Philippines. As he sat down, he said, “Yes, indeed,that’s what needs to happen. We need another election.” It took me a moment to grasp what he was saying, and what he proposed to present at that afternoon’s meeting. I was stunned. It so missed the point of what had just happened in the Philippines, it seemed that the Director was operating in an alternate universe. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw McMahon grimace. Before Casey could say another word, the Deputy Director had turned in his seat, and while looking at his boss said with a stern voice, and I quote, “Bill! Bill! Cory won the god damn election!” Casey sat silently for a moment or two before he said in a quiet voice, “Well okay. We will have to think of something else then.” I don’t know if McMahon’s interjection changed the Director’s view, but it was the last time I heard anyone at CIA talking about conducting a new election. What I can say for certain is that my respect for John McMahon grew enormously that day. His were the right words, said at just the right time.

I learned later that senior officials at State and Defense had been attempting to convince their bosses to cut Marcos loose for some time, but even the election results did not immediately erode top officials’ support for Marcos. It wasn't just the President. Secretary of State Shultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger as well as Director Casey all were reluctant to pull the plug on him. In addition to the personal relationships that Marcos had cultivated with the President and others, the fear of repeating what happened in Iran and the fall of the Shah was ever present. The idea that a solution so obviously out of touch with reality – a new election – remained a plausible answer to the crisis in the Philippines for anyone at that point, I still find troubling. It certainly wasn’t what they were hearing from the Intelligence Community.

The elections results and the chaos that resulted clearly didn’t solve the problem of what to do with Marcos. Weeks went by before the tide shifted against him. Much of this was due to the widespread belief that Marcos would cling to power as long as he was convinced that he had the support of President Reagan. Several high-level emissaries tried to deliver the message that the time had come for him to step down. At the time, I thought the telephone call from the White House between Marcos and Senator Laxalt, who was speaking for the President, which Marcos allowed the world to see live on television, was the turning point. Whether Reagan was embarrassed by the call or not, I thought the stunt was a blatant attempt by Marcos to use the President’s friendship to turn the tide in what was increasingly an inevitable position. In my mind, his action crossed a line; one that even the closest of friends would never attempt. Whatever the case, it wasn’t long after that until Marcos finally recognized he had lost the President’s support, and he agreed to step down. His final request had been to stop in his home province, Ilocos Norte, to say goodbye to old friends. Aquino would have none of it, fearful I’m sure that Marcos would use it as an opportunity to remain in the Philippines and to contest her claim to power. I have heard several stories about where Marcos thought he was heading when he stepped onto a US Air Force transport that was piled high with boxes of his cash and other loot. The one I heard at the time, and still believe is the most accurate description of what happened, was that Marcos did not realize that he would not be stopping in Ilocos Norte until his aircraft landed in Guam.

By the time of the 2020 U.S. election, I had long been retired, but the results and the aftermath, especially the attack on the Capitol January 6^th triggered the memories of Marcos’s attempt to remain in power to come rushing back. At first, Trump’s blatant attempt to incite a mob of people to storm the Capitol, that was at that moment in the process of counting the electoral votes submitted by the States, disturbed me very much. Concern turned to anger when the President waited so long to calm his supporters down. Especially when his initial comments only enflamed the crowds’ actions by suggesting that Vice President Pence’s failure to go along with the “stop the steal” rhetoric and holding fast to his Constitutional requirement was to blame for the problem. Even on TV you could immediately see the tenor of the crowd change, as the mob of people received word of Trump’s latest manifesto, and for the first time trotted out replicas of a hangman’s noose and began to chant “Hang Mike Prince.” I watched transfixed as so many Americans, believing without any proof that there had been such a number of irregularities in the nationwide vote count, that they were attempting to stop the constitutional process of counting the States’ electoral ballots. Never before in American history had we witnessed such an attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. For me, and I suspect others, January 6^th will go down as a second day of infamy, but this time the attack was on our very democracy not just our forces at Pearl Harbor.

As the days, weeks, and months passed instead of a steady stream of information that the election had been stolen, as was the case in the Philippines, just the opposite happened. Trump and his supporters filed more than sixty court cases claiming voting irregularities. Judges ruled just the opposite – the election had been free and fair. At the same time, a number of expensive recounts were conducted in various states. All returned the same verdict: Paraphrasing John McMahon’s words – Joe Biden won the “god damn” election.” None of this muted the “stop the steal” rhetoric from Trump or his diehard MAGA supporters, even when Fox News was fined billions of dollars for its insisting on air wrongly that voting machines had been compromised. Not even when they learned that President Trump’s campaign officials and other close advisors had briefed him shortly after the election that he had indeed lost the election did it make a difference. Neither did the conviction of several of the most prominent spokesmen of “stop the steal” rhetoric for spreading misinformation. 

Despite all that, three years later Trump continues to repeat the lie that he would have won the election had there not been widespread voter fraud. Yet to date he has not produced even one piece of evidence to support his allegations. Nonetheless, he remains the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024 with millions of people still believing that Trump not Biden had won the 2020 election. The best case for such thinking is what I would call intellectual laziness. Indeed, presenting facts to Trump supporters’ is like spiting into the wind. Neither facts nor detailed evidence make a dent in their willful ignorance.

Given the devotion of his followers you would think that they would look closely at his policy prescriptions for his next term in office. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however. Can the MAGA folks truly support crashing the economy before the election so that Biden receives the blame? What about the border? I thought most Americans wanted to fix the immigration issue, particularly the flow of people across our southern border. Trump has signaled both the House of Representatives and the Senate that he doesn’t want a deal this year, no matter how good it is, because he sees it as an important campaign issue for him. The same is true for military assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan. He is against it. In the latter case, he earned from me the reputation of being a “fellow traveler” of communism, when he commented that he would  not be coming to Taiwan’s aid in the event of unprovoked attack by China. Fact is he hasn’t met a dictator he doesn’t admire. The list is long and includes Xi Jinping of Communist China, Kim Jong Un of communist North Korea, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Viktor Orban of Hungary. Strongmen all. His comments suggests he would like to rule like them here in America. Maybe that is what is behind his comments of his wanting to be a dictator, if only for a day. I can only imagine all the laws he could break in twenty-four hours. It is clear that Trump like Marcos doesn’t give a damn about the rule of law, the constitution, or the democracy so many Americans have fought and died for. Everything is about him not what is good for the country. A quote from the National Review captures what we have to look forward to well:

Politics is a contact sport; in ongoing contests, even winners take shots at rivals. But this winner [Trump] accepts only converts, smiling behind him on the podium like bobblehead dolls. Anything less he consigns to perdition or, since defeat is unacceptable, nonexistence (hence Biden did not beat him in 2020). Voters will get to see a lot more of this until November.

The only bright part in all this is that Cory Aquino’s “people’s power revolution” seems to be at work here in 2024. Americans clearly want to keep their democracy. They don’t want a strongman dictatorship. The more Trump speaks the fewer people he convinces to vote for him in November. His weaknesses are glaringly obvious in the results out of Iowa and New Hampshire. Nearly a third of all Republicans say they would never vote for Trump again. The number of independents who would never want to be in the same room with Trump let alone vote for him is growing. Fact is he scares people. Keep it up Donald. Tell us want you are going to do on day one. Keep talking. Insure that there will be an even greater turnout come November 2024.