Tonight I have committed Philippines to the positions: (DFA [Department of Foreign Affairs] and DND [Department of National Defense] were not informed of this speech nor of the new approach because they may have tried to modify it.)
Our sovereignly is not for sale. Neither is it negotiable.
We are now studying the possible termination of the U.S. Philippine Military bases.
The State Department has insulted and offended the Republic of the Philippines.
We want to be friends until the Americans but they make it impossible to be so.
Their political leadership has lost its capability for fairness and justice.
The State Department submitted a secret report in November in accordance with a recently passed law principally authored by Rep. Donald Fraser, Democrat-Minnesota, Chairman of the Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. This report, required by such law to be submitted upon the request of any member of the committee. Rep. Donald Fraser asked to be declassified. The Department agreed.
As reported by Associated Press, “The Department said that aid to the Philippines should be continued in order to preserve U.S. access to military bases there, despite what it said were reports of torture . . . cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment for political prisoners.”
In the case of Peru, it said reports were “unsubstantiated.” In the case of Iran it said there was no “verifiable evidence of widespread torture.” Regarding Indonesia it said “Most of the communists imprisoned in 1965 have been released and the rest may be released following elections this year.”
The least that they could have said of the Philippines was that the reports of torture . . . or cruel inhuman and degrading punishment for political prisoners are not supported by reliable evidence. For these allegations made by the Filipino and American “steak comrades” in the U.S. are false and untrue. There may have been one or two cases of these but certainly they are not the rule. The subversives have won in the United States propaganda game.
Nor are there political prisoners, if by this is meant persons detained for their political persuasion and without formal criminal charges filed against them.
No Official Gazette entry for this day.
What galls me is that the aid they refer to is a solemn obligation of the United States under a formal treaty, the Military Assistance Treaty.
And such Military Assistance Agreement is a consideration for the use of the military bases.
It is not aid they give without consideration. It is the price they pay for the bases.
We should now protest the attitude to pass judgement over us in a cavalier and casual manner and without relation to the evidence.
Incidentally I had talked to the American Ambassador, Ambassador William Sullivan about the bases negotiations at the New Year Greetings ceremonies and before the call of the new CINCPAC [Commander in Chief, Pacific Command], Admiral [Maurice] Weisner.
Amb. Sullivan informed me that the United States has taken a firm stand against the use of the word “rent” in the past but that how the United States may reconsider to position.
This is encouraging. But with the report on torture, hardly relevant to the study I have now ordered to be made on the wisdom of keeping the American military bases. For I have announced tonight in the speech at the UP [University of the Philippines] Law Alumni Association that we should now determine whether it is to our present and future advantage to allow such bases to be utilized by the United States to protect us or to terminate them because they will attract the first preemptive strikes against the American ring of offenses in the Pacific by potential American enemies like Russia. The Philippines would become the most forward perimeter of the American Defense Line from the Aleutians to Japan, Korea, Okinawa and the Philippines. If there is any outbreak of hostilities, we would be the first target as we were the first target of Japan in the 1941 war. And the Americans abandoned us then. They will abandoned us again.
And if it is a thermonuclear war, we would be so devastated, there would be nothing to rebuild.
At the same time the United States does not seem inclined to help us in the event of a massive infiltration from outside or of subversion. This was demonstrated in the Mindanao Secessionist Movement. We have had to fend for ourselves.
So since the threats of us are not outright aggression but massive infiltration and subversion then the mutual defense pact becomes useless to us.
It is unknown where this paragraph until “The Philippines would become” comes from because the fourth page of this entry is missing.