COMMON ATTEMPT OF THE CIA AND THE DUTCH INTERNAL SECURITY SERVICE BVD TO RECRUIT A FILIPINO REFUGEE AS AN INFORMER UNCOVERED
On October 26, 1991 a team of the Dutch TV station VARA succeeded to cover the attempts of a U.S. CIA official and a member of the Dutch BVD to intimidate, bribe and recruit political asylum seeker Nathan Quimpo to become an informer against his compatriots in the Netherlands.
The Dutch TV crew was able to follow Mr. Quimpo and the intelligence agents in Amsterdam from one meeting place to another and videotape the conversations.
The Dutch Interior Ministry is seeking to justify the unlawfull activity of a foreign secret service on Dutch soil by alleged threats of terrorist attacks against Dutch and American targets from the Filipino "New People's Army (NPA) in the Netherlands. But there is no evidence substantiating these accusations which were made a day after the TV broadcast.
The NPA is a member organization of the Filipino "National Democratic Front" which has its international office in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
A representant of NDF has labeled the BVD and CIA accusations as "untrue" and as another attempt "to portray the NDF as being engaged in illegal and criminal activities." He further stated that after allegations made by the Acquino government that the NDF office in the Netherlands was shipping weapons to the Philippines, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek himself twice declared to the Parliament that the NDF had been found to do nothing illegal.
According to Mr. Quimpo the CIA official wanted him to provide US intelligence with "accurate information" about the internal workings of the NDF and "advance information" about NDF activities. He never mentioned threats of terrorist attacks. With regard to the BVD's participation Quimpo noted: "Although I was not quite sure wether or not I was also being recruited for Dutch intelligence, I presumed that there was some connivence between US and Dutch intelligence."
In exchange for his services as an informator the CIA official offered Quimpo financial assistance, a safe return to the Philippines, should he decide to go back, and the possibility to travel "anywhere in the world." The CIA official told Quimpo that getting a refugee passport for him "would not be so difficult."
FREN, an organization of Filipino refugees in the Netherlands, has protested against what it calls an interference in the privacy and a violation of basic human rights and the particular rights of political refugees. FREN denounced the fact, that the CIA obtained confidential information from the BVD on Mr. Quimpo and other Filipino refugees which obviously had been drawn from the records of their asylum procedures. "This is illegal, since international laws and conventions, as well as explicit guarantees to us by the Dutch Ministry of Justice, stipulate that such information is strictly confidential between the refugees and the Dutch government."
Mr. Quimpo himself declared that he was "no longer confident that the information that I provided in confidence to the Dutch Ministry of Justice (in charge of asylum procedures) when I was interviewed - about myself, my friends and colleagues and the NDF - have not been shared with the US intelligence and other unfriendly forces".
In a further attempt to justifie the action of the BVD the Dutch Interior Minister Dales claimed that Nathan Quimpo himself had offered his services as an informer and that he had taken the initiative in contacting the BVD. This drew the following reply by Quimpo: "If I had wanted to become an informer, why would I have immediately told my friends about the contact made by US and Dutch intelligence? Why would I contact the media to tape a second meeting?"
A decision on Mr. Quimpo's asylum request is still pending.
Nicholas Busch