Monday
Nardong Putik alias Leonardo Manecio, Cavite bandit chieftain was shot and killed inside his red Impala car by the NBI [National Bureau of Investigation] at about 8:00 this morning at Panamitan, Kawit, Cavite. The PC [Philippine Constabulary] and local police served as support units but it was a nine man NBI team under supervising agent Feliciano that has been tracking him down since his men killed two NBI agents in Cavite on mission against drugs, who accomplished this. I have commended them.
Mayor [Antonio] Tony Villegas submitted a report on the Plaza Miranda grenade bombing, which with the reports from the MPD [Manila Police District] and other intelligence reports from Gen. [Fabian] Ver I place inside Envelope No. X-C.
The metropolitan dailies front paged my directive to file a libel case against Aquino. The Manila Times and writer of the article on seven mansions.
Sec. [Alejandro] Melchor [Jr.] reports that Helms of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] in Washington and the assessment bodies of the U.S. government do not believe with our assessment of the urgency of the communist threat.
So apparently the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government are conforming to the basic [Richard] Nixon policy of pulling out gradually from Asia and not intervening in local interest.
I also place in Envelope No. X-D, the newspapers and the local CIA Mr. George Kalaris assessment of the NPA [New People’s Army] in Isabela for the U.S Embassy wherein it is said that the NPA has presented the government with a challenge in Isabela that cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, the long term threat posed by its “people’s war” remains at this early stage, very much a tentative proposition. Much of the NPA’s success has been due to a head start which allowed the insurgency to establish itself with little or no opposition from the government. As an organization, the NPA remains small and vulnerable. At present, the insurgency is being practically out of the big pockets of [Jose Maria] Sison, Dante [Bernabe Buscayno] and perhaps a few party leaders. If they are in some way removed from the scene, the NPA could degenerate into just another non-ideological outlaw band that could more easily be contained or eliminated.
It states that the main strength of the party and its student fronts is in Manila. And that throughout 1971 the party has been preparing “for urban guerilla warfare in Manila.” At some point Sison could conceivably be tempted to return to Manila and devote the party’s full attention to the promising situation there, putting in the back burner, if not abandoning, the arduous and protracted struggle he faces in Isabela.