Puerto Rico's 'Watergate'

By Melinda Beck with Harold Lidin in San Juan

As Puerto Rican police told the story, the two young independentistas went to the top of Cerro Maravilla mountain in 1978 to
sabotage a TV tower. Arriving in a taxicab driven by a police informer, they were confronted by a host of heavily armed police and
started shooting. The agents fired back in self-defense, police said, fatally wounding Arnaldo Dario Rosado, 24, and Carlos Soto
Arrivi, 18. The Puerto Rican Justice Department upheld the police account, and two U.S. Justice Department investigations found no
evidence to the contrary.

But was the "Cerro Maravilla incident" actually a case of police murder and coverup? Suspicions have grown that it was, and the
scandal has prompted Watergate-style hearings in the Puerto Rican Senate. Their findings could bring down Puerto Rican Gov. Carlos
Romero Barcelo and might affect Puerto Rico's chances for statehood.

Bruises: At the time, Romero hailed the police officers as "heroes." But critics suspected thatthe youths, allegedly members of a
little-known group called the Armed Revolutionary Movement, had been lured into a police ambush and murdered while trying to
surrender. Journalists noted bruises on Soto's body in the morgue. The driver of the cab, Julio Ortiz Molina, told the San Juan Star
that police had beaten the victims. Other witnesses said they heard two volleys of gunshots -- not one, as police contended. But some
witnesses were never called to testify in the initial investigations, and both federal and Puerto Rican authorities closed the case in spite
of the lingering suspicions.

Members of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, who won control of the Puerto Rican Senate in 1980, ordered a new
investigation -- and their televised hearings have captivated Puerto Rican audiences since June. Under tough questioning by committee
investigator Hector Rivera Cruz, one Puerto Rican Justice Department official admitted destroying evidence, and one witness said he
had been ordered to corroborate the police version. Last week the hearings came to a dramatic climax with the broadcast of videotapes
of earlier closed-door testimony by two police officers. Granted immunity from prosecution, intelligence agent Miguel Cartagena
Flores said he had seen the youths "on their knees" as police hurled insults. Later, Cartagena Flores said, he averted his eyes: "I
expected that something was going to happen that I didn't want to see." Then he heard shots, he said, and saw guns recoiling in the
hands of two agents. Cartagena Flores also testified that police intelligence chief Angel L. Perez Casillas told him earlier that the youths "should not come down [from the mountain] alive."

Perez Casillas has been temporarily relieved of his duties. Three Puerto Rican Justice Department prosecutors who took part in the
initial investigation have been reassigned. Last week Puerto Rican Senate leaders retained Sam Dash, former chief counsel of the
Senate Watergate committee, to help with the cover-up phase of their investigation, and the Puerto Rican legislature met to consider
appointing a special prosecutor to prepare criminal charges. The U.S. Justice Department has also opened a new grand jury
investigation and is seeking indictments for perjury and obstruction of justice against several police officers.

'Negligence'? All summer long Governor Romero had derided the Senate hearings as "a circus" motivated by partisan politics. When
word of the officers' testimony leaked out two weeks ago, Romero announced he had been deceived, and he, too, called for a special
prosecutor. But Romero's declaration may have come too late. "A chief executive, commander in chief of the police to whom the
secretary ofjustice answers, cannot claim deception unless he claims incompetence," said San Juan Mayor Hernan Padilla. Other
Romero critics are considering bringing impeachment proceedings for what Independence Party president Ruben Berrios Martinez
calls "crass negligence."

Political observers doubt that Romero's foes can collect the necessary votes for impeachment. But the scandal could affect his
chances for re-election next year and, with it, Puerto Rico's political status. Romero had planned to call for a referendum on statehood
in 1985. The Popular Democratic Party supports Puerto Rico's current status as a commonwealth, while Padilla's new Puerto Rican
Renewal Party favors delaying the vote. For now, members of Romero's New Progressive Party say they are still optimistic about the
governor's re-election -- but that may change, pending the outcome ofthe case critics call Puerto Rico's Watergate.