Senator Arroyo: Beware of US Embassy invitations

Hobnob at your own risk. Those cocktails apparently come with a heavy (political) price.

Government officials should now be wary of invitations from the US Embassy following embarrassing revelations from purported diplomatic cables released by the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks, many of them based on conversations between American officials and prominent Filipinos, Senator Joker Arroyo said.

Referring to US Embassy officials, Arroyo Thursday warned: “They ask you about the situation in a very innocent way when they are actually picking your brains and in fact gathering evidence.”

“And you don’t know who among the embassy officials are really diplomats. Some are connected with the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], the US Drug Enforcement Agency. The moral lesson is, ‘Don’t accept invitations unless it’s official.’ It seems the Philippines is giving too much importance to these invitations,” the senator said.

“The bottom line is don’t talk to them. That’s the whole trouble. Some people get an invitation and they jump (into it). I think Philippine officials should be wary (of) accepting invitations from the embassy.  The whole problem with some (Filipino) officials is that they are so eager to talk to embassy officials. Look at what happened,” Arroyo added.

“This experience tells us how the US government thinks, how they cannot be trusted, how they backbite. Learn a lesson henceforth on how to deal with the US government,” said the 84-year-old, two-term senator.

Arroyo issued the warning after recent WikiLeaks reports caused an awkward episode between Malacañang and the US mission.

In one purported cable, then US Ambassador to Manila Kristie Kenney described President Aquino as a “diffident, unassertive man” based on her impressions when she first met him as a senator. She also reportedly found Aquino to be “vague on specific policies” when he ran for president in 2010.

Kenney also supposedly described Aquino’s mother, the revered late President Cory Aquino, as a “partial icon of democracy” for associating with “dubious political figures such as (deposed President) Joseph Estrada” in protest movements against the Arroyo administration.

The remarks from the American diplomat, who ended her Philippine posting last year, drew rebukes from Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario. The President dismissed her remarks as being “far from the truth.”

Senator Arroyo nevertheless cautioned the government against overreacting to the WikiLeaks exposés.

“I don’t know why everyone is so worked up on the WikiLeaks reports when those are raw information. Like raw intelligence, they don’t amount to anything until validated.  While officials react to it, I don’t see any reason why they should,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo also tried to put Kenney in her place.

“Whatever Ambassador Kenney said, so what? She came from Ecuador, a third-class country, and transferred here. Then she passes judgment on a Philippine official? The other ambassadors who served here were bigatin talaga (real heavyweights),” Arroyo fumed.

Arroyo recalled, for example, that Paul V. McNutt was governor of Michigan before he was posted in the Philippines. Other former US ambassadors to Manila like Michael H. Armacost became US undersecretary of state and permanent representative to the United Nations, while John Negroponte became US deputy secretary of state, Arroyo added.

And turning to the press, Arroyo said: “Media selectively reports (the WikiLeaks stories) so you can see the double damage. Because you report only that which are juicy. And so what happens? The persons affected would be prejudiced.”

“I talked to some people affected by these and they said (the WikiLeaks cables) were not the full conversations reported.

One such person mentioned in another WikiLeak report has come forward to issue an outright denial.

Businessman Francis Chua denied accounts purportedly coming from a US Embassy cable saying industry leaders like him were aware of then First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo’s alleged links to “jueteng,” an illegal racket  in 2005.

Being president of the Federation of the Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. at that time, it was impossible and improbable that he could have made such a “disparaging statement,” Chua said.

Chua, now the president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that if the cable cited by WikiLeaks was indeed prepared by then Ambassador Kenney, “then she should clarify the statements she made.”—With a report from TJ Burgonio