<div class="image-450">
<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources/state-department-people-power-sm.webp" alt="Ramos and Enrile, poeple power" />
<div>
(Enrile and Ramos in February 1986)
</div>
</div>
<p>
Senior administration official: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"It was a tightrope we had to walk. We had to follow a very careful path of our public statements and our private actions in order to achieve the stable outcome that we sought many, many months ago. I believe this is a classical example of a policy which set goals
and then dealt with a series of evolving circumstances - dealt successfully with a series of evolving circumstances - and in the end achieved what we set out to achieve."
</p>
</div>
<p>
Reporter: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"So you were trying to overthrow Marcos?"
</p>
</div>
<p>
Second reporter: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"Why can't we have that on the record?"
</p>
</div>
<p>
On August 16, 1985, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) exposed the plot of U.S. Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, in collaboration with then Acting Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos , to carry out a military coup against President Marcos. Although the press now claims that President Marcos stepped down on February 25 because of the overwhelming pressure of "people power",  the fact is that President Marcos was brought down by a military coup sponsored, directed, and aided at all points by the U.S. embassy on approved orders of the U.S. State Department.
</p>
<p>
It was not "people's power" that protected the military in the agonizing days of February 22-25. The opposite is reality: A
US - ordered coup provided the conditions under which "people's power" - limited to the capital city of Manila was permitted to prevail.
</p>


<p>
The coup was signaled when Corazon Aquino announced February 5 on ABC's "Nightline" that she would not abide by the
election results unless she were the victor.  Aquino claimed she would be unable to restrain her followers. Now it is clear that Mrs. Aquino already had guarantees, if not from the White House,  certainly from Washington.
</p>
<p>
The coup began when Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, fearing he was about to be arrested, seized the defense ministry at Camp Aguinaldo with 400 men. According to his own admission on "Nightline" on February 26, Enrile placed an immediate call to Ambassador Bosworth. EIR has now confirmed from three different reliable sources the contents of that discussion. Enrile was asked by the ambassador, "What do you need?" Enrile replied: "We need weapons".  Those weapons were then supplied.
</p>
<p>
On the afternoon of February 23, 1986, the decision was made at the National Security Council meeting attended by President
Reagan that the United States would officially act to force President Marcos's resignation. This position was rammed through the meeting by Secretary of State George Shultz and special envoy Philip Habib, who knew of the coup plot before he left Manila.
</p>
<p>
As a result of this meeting, the White House issued a statement, written by Shultz and approved by President Reagan, telling Marcos "to avoid an attack" on Camp Crame, to which the coup forces had moved. The White House statement then threatened: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"The United States provides military assistance to the Philippine Armed Forces .... We cannot continue our existing military assistance if the government uses that aid against other elements of the Philippine military which enjoy substantial popular backing."
</p>
</div>
<p>
This statement, in the public record, was an effective call to the Philippines military to join the coup forces , unless they
wanted to face the destruction of the military itself.
</p>
<p>
The Pentagon followed with a telephone call to every field commander in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, "asking" the officer if he would fight for Marcos. According to UPI, "Informed sources said they had been told by responsible Pentagon officials that all but one Philippine general had been persuaded by the Americans to keep his troops off, the streets as the Marcos-Aquino confrontation escalated." State Department officials also reported on Feb. 24 that they had a total profile of every field commander.
</p>
<p>
Labor Minister Blas Ople, who had come to Washington to sound out possibilities for a coalition government, informed
President Marcos by phone that Reagan believed Marcos should step down. Ople, in an interview with the Washington Post, reported Marcos as saying: 
</p>
<div class="article-comment">
<p>
"My life and the lives of my family are threatened right here. They have bombed the palace. They have forcibly taken over the radio
station." 
</p>
</div>
<p>
Ople said that Marcos "said it was a very curious situation, in which he is being told not to defend himself ...
by the United States".
</p>
<h3>
Political environment manipulated
</h3>
<p>
Between August, when the coup plot first surfaced, and the final hours of February 25 , the U.S. State Department, along with the media, and members of Congress led by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Representative Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.), worked to create the political environment that would cover for the U.S. coup. The primary objective was not to bring in an Aquino government, but to break the Reagan commitment to Marcos. The first phase of the operation was a media campaign to convince the White House that the Philippines, if left to Marcos, would be lost to the communists. Bosworth's embassy supplied the "reports" to back up the media claims.
</p>
<p>
The tactical objective was to force Marcos to prove his mandate by calling elections. The biggest fraud perpetrated in the elections was the created perception that the NAMFREL heralded from Manila as "our eyes and ears now" and which proclaimed Aquino the early "victor" - was ever an independent "citizen's watchdog committee".  A creation of the CIA in the 1950s, NAMFREL received funds from the CIA throughout the election period. On February 26, NAMFREL chairman Jose Concepcion, a member of the board of directors of the Benigno Aquino Foundation, was named minister of trade and industry in the new Aquino government.
</p>
<p>
If democracy had ever been an issue for the United States in the Philippines, Reagan's initial February 11 response of neutrality
on the election results would have stuck. Mrs. Aquino would have been congratulated for a "close race".  Instead, by February 24, the State Department was actively studying the option of freezing all Filipino assets in the United States - as if President Marcos were a state enemy! From the State Department's point of view, President Marcos 's crime was that he was a nationalist leader who threatened to block the International Monetary Fund ravaging of the Filipino economy, and challenge the authority of the Fund internationally.
</p>

<p>
<b>Sources</b>:  
<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
The State Department coup against President Marcos by Linda de Hoyos, Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 13, Number 10, March 7, 1986 (http://goo.gl/68dvpS)
</li>
<li>
Photo credit: http://www.digitalphotographer.ph 
</li>
</ol>
</p>


The US State Department coup against President Marcos