Administration officials spying on anti-GMA opposition

Kinakabahan na yata si GMA ah!

Palace spy ops spread to anti-Gloria leaders

Seemingly gripped by paranoia over the government's sense of impending doom and equating this doomsday scenario with official Washington's “displeasure” with her and her administration, following a report of the Heritage Foundation, a highly influential Republican-leaning think tank piece that was damning to her, President Arroyo and her security officers have reportedly heightened surveillance of key opposition leaders and presidential critics, notably those believed by Malacañang to have close personal contacts with US officials and Filipino community leaders in the US, intelligence sources told the Tribune yesterday.

Very high on this list, the sources said, is former Sen. Francisco “Kit” Tatad, who recently returned from a trip to the United States, where he was said to have discussed the deepening Philippine crisis with influential American officials and Filipino community leaders.

A source with close contacts in the office of the Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said, “the intelligence effort is now focused on Tatad, who was recently monitored in Washington, D.C. and New York, meeting with important American officials and personalities.”

The source pointed out that while Malacañang continues to keep a tight watch on former Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who have been described by a Palace insider as the “major players” in an alleged planned coup d'etat against the Arroyo government to be mounted sometime next month, Tatad, among other opposition leaders, is also under tight surveillance as he is said to be seen by the President and her aides as having “a line to US State Department” officials, following his trip to the US recently.

Tatad and a group of visiting Filipinos were believed to have met with US State Department officials, among others.

Their presence was also noted at an important function of the Philippine-American Foundation in Washington, D.C., where they met with the Philippine-born US Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and the Philippine-born Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Cheryl Diaz Meyer, who criticized the crisis of confidence in the Philippines.

Interesting. The tribune is the second newspaper to report on the Opposition's trip to the US to meet State Dept. officials.

“It is this movement started by Tatad that has made the President really nervous,” the insider told the Tribune, since the movement is focused on documenting US properties not only of Cabinet members of Mrs. Arroyo, but more important, the properties of the President and her spouse, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.

The movement, which is said to have caught fire in the US Filipino communities, had its members digging up documents related to this

Reports have begun circulating here and in the Filipino communities in the US that the American government is preparing to file charges against high-ranking Filipino officials who have amassed properties and money in the US, under the Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) law.

There are allegedly some pinpointed properties said to belong to the Arroyo spouses, albeit listed allegedly under a Filipino realtor's name.

Although these reports are still unconfirmed, Malacañang sources have said there is no assurance such cases are in fact being prepared, and that President Arroyo cannot afford to end up with any slapped against her.

Malacañang, according to the sources, suspects that Tatad's group might have had a hand in this.

“It cannot be mere coincidence that US pressure on President Arroyo has tremendously increased, following this group's visit to the US,” the sources said.

Was the leak on Gen. Garcia's unexplained wealth by US officials a sign of things to come?

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