We didn’t learn where Nick was being held from Elaine’s father. We came away feeling frustrated because it seemed as if he withheld information from us. By then we had narrowed it down to two detention centers: Fort Bonifacio or Camp Crane. We knew that detainees of The First Quarter Storm, mostly students, were being held in both places. Fort Bonifacio, or old Fort McKinley would’ve been my choice, if I had a choice, because of its location in Makati and its close proximity to Forbes Park, in my mind that made it the Cadillac of detention centers. But probably I was wrong about that, and its location bore no relation to what went on within the facility. Yet we hoped that regardless, whether he was held at Fort Bonifacio or Camp Crane, that Nick received humane treatment. Humane or not I knew there wasn’t much I could do about it. Given my tenuous situation, I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself. I was an American expatriate, whose influence was nil and views were considered suspect. Now that I was on the lam and seemed to have attracted unwanted attention, I knew that I had to be careful or else I could end up in the slammer like Nick, and I would be in worse shape because of my nationality. I had heard horror stories about Americans held in foreign prisons. After all, judicial systems vary from country to country; in many countries people were presumed guilty instead innocent. I didn’t know that much about the Philippine system. But then I also heard enough about Marcos violating human rights to make me squirm; hearing about political prisoners held indefinably gave me pause. And could I ever really feel comfortable as long as I had the draft hanging over my head? Even if I somehow managed to duck the draft, wouldn’t I, because of guilt by association always be labeled a Communist? At least, this was what I feared. I also knew my profession as a journalist placed me in the limelight, albeit a dim one.
On the other hand, no one made us stay in Manila. I wasn’t born here. I hadn’t decided to die here either. And even though I hadn’t committed myself to accepting my responsibilities as a citizen, I wasn’t about to change my citizenship and seemed willing to accept the pride and the guilt of an American. The pride came from just having landed men on the moon. The guilt seemed to hit me harder. So, just as I tried to run away, as far away as I could, I found myself within the reach of Uncle Sam. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t escape the Vietnam War. At the beginning I hadn’t been against it and hadn’t pay much attention to it throughout my college career, which allowed me to avoid the draft while I attended both undergraduate and graduate school. What if I hadn’t had those deferments? Would have I joined the fight then? And then there were the assassinations. There wasn’t an American who couldn’t tell you where they were when President Kennedy was shot. And there was the issue of what I was going to do for my country? Yes, I took Kennedy’s challenge seriously. Susan and I talked about it before and after we got married. We thought about joining the Peace Corps. I received, though, my first draft notice. It seemed obviously then that we didn’t have time to wait for the Peace Corps. Later, I let Susan accept the blame for our decision to run, when I had more to do with than she did. I was the one they wanted. But I found reassurance from Susan’s support. ”Frankly I don’t think I would’ve made a very good GI…too opinionated and simply not the John Wayne type,” I said to Elaine when she asked me about it. “I don’t see how I would fit in. And to expect me to keep my mouth shut about something I was against, and to have to say, ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’…this to me not only seemed ‘un-me’ but also represented everything in the world I hated.” Some would say we were rejecting our own ideals and principles, the ideals and principles of our parents, and for which my father had gone to his war, but that wasn’t how we viewed it.
Since I suspected the CIA was interested in me, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the agency’s activities in Manila, but this history of intrigue, by its very nature, was hard to learn about. I had read Graham Greene’s novel, THE QUIET AMERICAN, before heading to the Philippines, and had heard of Col. Edward Lansdale. Nick also referred to him several times on our trip to Central Luzon and how the CIA, through Lansdale, ran Magsaysay’s successful campaign against the Huks. Basically because of this alliance, in 1954, American policy in Southeast Asia was best represented in the Philippines, as the policies of the two nations became inseparable. More than in any other place in the region, the CIA found a home. Then throughout the fifties, the CIA used Clark as a base of operation as it covertly supported dissident factions in other countries. All of this was common knowledge, though the activities of the agency were suppose to have been secret. True or not, the idea of an omnipresent CIA became fixed in the Philippine psyche, and I couldn’t help but pick up on it. The Manila station, I assumed, was quite large because of the American bases and the location of Philippines, and there had to have been a connection with the American military. How else do you explain the appearance of the infamous photograph of Elaine and Nick, Joe Wilson’s visit, and Nick’s detention, how all three events coincided? It seemed highly unlikely to me that all of this was coincidental. Remember there was also the sudden transfer of Elaine’s father to the Pentagon. Historians will probably find that CIA in the Philippines has engaged in countless covert operations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t many Mr. Wilsons posing as businessmen. At the time I was placed in an almost untenable spot, and almost all of the blame for this I have to take. The question then came down to, if Joe Wilson was a CIA operative, then what did the CIA want from me?
Randy Ford
