January 30, 1992

Puerto Rico Gripped by Its Watergate

By MIREYA NAVARRO

(SAN JUAN, P.R.) Nearly 14 years after two young members of a radical pro-independence group were executed by police officers on a remote mountaintop, Puerto Ricans remain gripped by the case and riveted to its latest twist: televised hearings on whether high-level Puerto Rican and Federal Government officials helped plan the killings and cover them up.

The case, known as Cerro Maravilla for the mountain where the killings occurred and already the subject of two books and a movie,
is now the focus of hearings by the Judiciary Committee of the Puerto Rico Senate. An earlier Senate investigation of the killings
exposed them as murders and led to the conviction of 10 police officers.

A central question of the hearings, which resumed Tuesday after a holiday hiatus, is whether the Governor at the time of the incident,
Carlos Romero Barcelo, and agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have had a role in the killings or the cover-up.

Carlos Soto Arrivi, 18 years old, and Arnaldo Dario Rosado, 24, were shot on July 25, 1978, by police officers who said the two
opened fire as they prepared to sabotage a television relay tower on Cerro Maravilla. But several of the officers, who were granted
immunity from prosecution, testified in Senate hearings in 1983 and 1984 that the two youths were beaten up and killed after
surrendering to as many as 20 officers who lay in wait. The officers had learned that the youths would be there from an informer who had infiltrated the group.

Likened to Watergate

The current inquiry is guided by the theory of Senate investigators that Cerro Maravilla was part of an effort by some local and Federal officials to fabricate terrorist acts and discredit the island's pro-independence movement in order to help advance statehood. The two men were killed not because of their importance as individuals, the investigators say, but because the Romero Barcelo administration  wanted to make examples of them to show that it would deal harshly with terrorists.

The evidence coming out of the current hearings indicates that both the Governor and the F.B.I.'s San Juan office knew of the plans
for the police stakeout, but the testimony has yet to offer proof that either one knew that the youths would be killed. However, Samuel
Dash, who was chief counsel to the United States Senate Watergate committee and is now a consultant to the Puerto Rico Senate, said
he sees similarities between the two cases.

"What I've seen here is the abuses of power and violations of democracy that I saw during Watergate," said Mr. Dash, a law professor
at Georgetown University.

But the motivations of the Senate have also come into question. The investigation has taken place under the auspices of the Popular
Democratic Party, which advocates that Puerto Rico remain a commonwealth of the United States and which controls the
governorship and both houses of the Legislature. The party has repeatedly raised Cerro Maravilla as an issue in electoral campaigns
against the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which Mr. Romero Barcelo led at the time of the killings.

"The Cerro Maravilla accusations have been the most infamous and vicious ever made against a politician in Puerto Rico," said the
former Governor, who narrowly averted defeat in the 1980 elections but lost in 1984. "They don't have a shred of evidence because
there is none."

Investigations after the killings by local and Federal authorities, including the United States Justice Department's civil rights division,
produced no criminal charges. But after the 1983-84 Senate hearings, the Justice Department reopened the case. Ten police officers
were convicted on charges of perjuring themselves during Federal grand jury inquiries and were sentenced to prison terms of 6 to 30
years. Included in the group were the three officers who pulled the triggers, two of whom were also convicted of second-degree
murder.

F.B.I. Infiltrators

The Senate President, Miguel A. Hernandez Agosto, said the current hearings seek to find out why the Federal investigations failed
despite evidence that the police had lied about the case. According to testimony from Desiderio Cartagena, who was assistant police
superintendent at the time of the killings, the F.B.I. office in San Juan and the police department were working jointly to investigate
terrorist activities, and their task force had the two youths who were killed under surveillance.

The F.B.I. refuses to discuss the case, but in an August 1990 letter to Mr. Hernandez Agosto, the bureau's Director, William S.
Sessions, admitted that the bureau's San Juan office "erred in not pursuing an independent investigation" to determine the accuracy of
the police account. He also said that after Cerro Maravilla, bureau procedures were revamped nationwide to insure a particularly
thorough review of civil rights cases involving deaths.

The evidence in the new hearings, which began last October, has gone beyond Cerro Maravilla to hint at a broad array of government
activities designed to undermine the independence movement, a minority force on the island. One document introduced at the hearings, a May 1978 memo prepared for a White House aide for domestic affairs in the Carter Administration, culls internal F.B.I. papers from the 1960's to relate how the agency infiltrated legal pro-independence groups to influence their actions.

Senator Fernando Martin, a member of the Judiciary Committee and vice-president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, said
Cerro Maravilla is an example of the harrassment "independentistas" have suffered under both pro-statehood and pro-commonwealth
administrations.

"The independentistas have always known that the independentismo has been persecuted," he said. "The difference now is that the
people of Puerto Rico also know it."

Mr. Romero Barcelo, 59, now in private law practice, has refused to testify before the Judiciary Committee in closed session but said
he would do so at the public hearings. He has denied any involvement in the case -- saying he believes the killings were not
premeditated but "something that suddenly happened" -- and said the Senate investigation was a political ploy to discredit the New
Progressive Party. He said he considers the case closed.

The scandal has undoubtedly had severe political implications for the New Progressive Party, which has not held the governorship
since 1984. The new party president, Dr. Pedro J. Rossello, acknowledged that Cerro Maravilla played a role in the losses but, citing
the commonwealth party's loss on a recent referendum despite advertising that alluded to the case, said that its effect is now "almost
null."

A Father Watches

The proceedings have provided plentiful political grist for a country where voter turnout surpasses 80 percent and most are long
familiar with the case's cast of characters. Although many Puerto Ricans say they are fed up with the case, the legislative hearings
propelled the government television station to the top of the ratings last year. Cable television channels in New York City began
showing tapes of the hearings in full this month.

But the proceedings are often seen through the prism of the view on statehood. Statehooders like Luis Baerga, 57, a postal worker
from Carolina, remain skeptical of the investigation, and denounce the millions of dollars already spent on it. "They bring it up when
elections are coming up," Mr. Baerga said.

Among those watching is Pedro Juan Soto, father of one of the murdered youths. He refuses to comment on the hearings until they
are completed, but he said he doubted the Senate could effectively take on the Federal Government if in fact Federal agents were party
to the deaths or any cover-up.

"I don't think this will lead to anything," he said.

The hearings are expected to last for at least two more months, and could lead to more indictments. In addition, Mr. Dash said he has
pressed for Congressional hearings on the case and is meeting with F.B.I. officials in Washington to apprise them of the Puerto Rican
Senate investigation.

Marco A. Rigau Jr., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said that at the very least he expected the hearings to have a cleansing
effect.

"This is a process of purification," he said. "We have to get the truth out -- how people have been persecuted for political reasons and
how the pro-independence ideology was criminalized -- so that something like that is never repeated."